Providing for Consideration of H.R. 8, North American Energy Security and Infrastructure Act of 2015; Providing for Consideration of S.J. Res. 23, Providing for Congressional Disapproval of a Rule Submitted by the Environmental Protection Agency; and Providing for Consideration of S.J. Res. 24, Providing for Congressional Disapproval of a Rule Submitted by the Environmental Protection Agency
Floor Speech
Mr. Speaker, H. Res. 539 provides for a rule to consider three important bills that will help millions of Americans and their families who are having to pay or will soon be paying higher energy costs due to the administration's misguided and ill-conceived energy policies. The rule provides for 1 hour of debate, equally divided between the majority and the minority of the Energy and Commerce Committee, on each of the pieces of legislation before us, including S.J. Res. 23, a resolution of disapproval of a rule promulgated by the Environmental Protection Agency on greenhouse gases from new stationary sources; S.J. Res. 24, a resolution of disapproval of a rule promulgated by the Environmental Protection Agency on greenhouse gases from existing stationary sources; and H.R. 8, the North American Energy Security and Infrastructure Act of 2015, which will move this country in a direction of greater energy independence.
The rule before us today provides for a closed rule on both resolutions of disapproval, as is standard for such measures, allowing for 1 hour of debate equally divided between the majority and minority of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, while allowing the minority a motion to commit on each of the resolutions.
Further, the rule provides for 1 hour of debate on H.R. 8, also equally divided between the chair and ranking member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce. A subsequent order from the Committee on Rules will likely address any amendments to be made in order later in the week.
The House, in taking up these measures, is doing so to reflect the will of the people so many of us represent who are opposed to the administration's actions and wish to stop this out-of-control Environmental Protection Agency from doing further damage to the economy. Further, H.R. 8 reflects a broad consensus of energy stakeholders who are ready and willing to move the country's energy future into high gear.
S.J. Res. 23, disapproving of the Environmental Protection Agency's new greenhouse gas rules on new stationary sources--loosely translated, that means the Nation's power plants, keeping the lights on in your home, the heat on in the winter, and the air-conditioning on in the summer--and S.J. Res. 24, disapproving of the EPA's new greenhouse gas rules on existing stationary sources, both of these joint resolutions passed in the Senate in October by a majority vote of 52-46. The Congressional Review Act, the law which allows for the process of disapproval by Congress when an administration goes too far with one of its rules, allows us an up-or-down vote on the resolution, which cannot be filibustered, thus allowing the measure to be considered in the Senate. It is now time for the House to be heard on this measure as well.
Mr. Speaker, the Environmental Protection Agency's overreaching greenhouse gas rules have had an extensive number of hearings in the Energy and Commerce Committee over the last few years. The committee reviewed all aspects of the proposed rules, including the impacts on reliability and the impacts on consumer costs, including bringing the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to discuss possible impacts on reliability around the country due to these rules.
Already, in many States across the Nation, coal-fired power plants are closing because they see that the Obama administration's EPA has made it clear that it will go after them relentlessly until they are shuttered. This means fewer cost-effective options for consumers and also the potential for brownouts and blackouts during high-consumption times, like during the peak of the summer in Texas, where rolling brownouts are already not uncommon. The Environmental Protection Agency's new rules will only exacerbate this issue.
Whether Members of this body support these rules or oppose them, the measures before us today will provide each Member the opportunity to be officially registered on where they stand on these EPA rules, and that is what we are all here to do.
H.R. 8, in contrast to the EPA's regulations, moves the country to a place of greater energy security and abundance. Over the past several years, the Energy and Commerce Committee has worked towards modernizing the Nation's energy laws, making the government more accountable, more accountable to the people it is meant to represent as it makes decisions which affect literally every citizen in this country and their pocketbooks.
The free market has long been the guiding force in moving this country ahead in the energy sector. Texas was one of the first major beneficiaries, with the oil boom in the last two centuries. Now, as new technologies and innovations emerge, Congress must stand on the side of the free market again, stopping the executive branch from picking winners and losers in the energy market and allowing consumers--allowing consumers--to make those decisions for themselves.
When consumers choose what energy sources and what technologies work best for them, the economy grows faster and grows more efficiently than ever the government could possibly drive it. That is what the Architecture of Abundance is all about.
This country has the resources to be energy independent. It has the ability to end our reliability on oil and gas from the Middle East, a region that is perpetually in turmoil. But the Obama administration has stymied much of the progress that was made in the first decade of this century, slowing or stopping leases on public lands for new exploration of our own resources and putting up red tape and numerous barriers to allowing Americans to tap into what is rightfully theirs. This is a bill that is long overdue, and I certainly thank Chairman Upton for his work on the bill, H.R. 8.
I encourage all of my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on the rule and ``yes'' on the three underlying bills. They are an important first step in setting this country on the path to a modern, stable, and abundant energy future.
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The Republican Party is in the majority today. There are a couple of reasons that is so.
There were bills passed in 2009 and 2010, and the American people looked at what was happening in their legislative body and said: We need a change. We need a change from the direction in which we are going.
One of those bills, I will submit, was the Waxman-Markey bill, the cap-and-trade scheme that was drawn up in the Energy and Commerce Committee, of which I am a member. I sat through the debate on it. I remember it very well.
That bill was brought to this floor, and that bill was forced through this House in June of 2009, right before Members went home for the 4th of July weekend.
A lot of people will look at the Affordable Care Act and say that is the reason Congress changed from a majority-Democrat institution to a majority-Republican institution. It is because of the passage of the Affordable Care Act.
Yet, Mr. Speaker, I submit that it was actually that activity in June of 2009 that caused people to look at what was going on in their Congress and to look at that bill that was drafted in the Energy and Commerce Committee by Chairman Waxman and Chairman MARKEY and say: No, not for us. We are not going along with this. This is not a direction in which we want you to take this country.
We still function under that quaint notion that we have government with the consent of the governed, but the governed did not consent to what they saw being passed in Congress late in June of 2009. So it is no accident that things are the way they are today.
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I want to read a passage from columnist George Will from earlier this year, January 7, of his writing in the Washington Post. Mr. Will writes:
``We know, because they often say so, that those who think catastrophic global warming is probable and perhaps imminent are exemplary empiricists. They say those who disagree with them are `climate change deniers' disrespectful of science.
``Actually, however, something about which everyone can agree is that, of course, the climate is changing--it always is. And if climate Cassandras are as conscientious as they claim to be about weighing evidence, how do they accommodate historical evidence of enormously consequential episodes of climate change not produced by human activity? Before wagering vast wealth and curtailments of liberty on correcting the climate,'' perhaps they should consider the past.
Then he goes on to detail those episodes in the past: the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period.
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There are, indeed, recent episodes in recorded history that can be looked to where the climate has changed and, yes, has affected human behavior and the human condition, but those were not climate changes affected by the result of human activity. Those were caused by natural cycles, within the Sun cycle, within things over which none of us had any control.
Again, I would take the words of Mr. Will to heart. Before we wager vast amounts of wealth and curtailments of liberty, we would do well to consider those facts.
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