Barton: Energy Bills Without Energy

Statement

Barton: Energy Bills Without Energy

U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, issued the following statement today as part of the energy legislation markup:

"Mr. Chairman, I value our friendship, our professional working relationship, and most days I look forward to coming to committee to engage in the debate, the give and take, the legislative process. Today is not one of those days that I look forward to.

"It's not a coincidence that when you walk in to the main entrance of the Rayburn Office Building, your looking squarely at the Energy and Commerce Committee hearing room. This committee that we serve on is the preeminent authorizing committee of the House. It's one of the few committees that has been around since the 1st Congress. It has a well-earned reputation for handling the big issues, and most times it is bipartisan. Our work product has benefited the country over and over again.

"So when we are here today, marking up an energy bill that, to prevent there being any energy in it, we have fixed committee prints that cannot be amended because almost anything that makes sense in the energy field is non-germane. In my opinion, this is a sad, sad day for this committee.

"I respect the parliamentary brilliance that came up with that strategy, but I thought energy policy was about bipartisan compromise and working together to put legislation on the president's desk that would help secure sound energy policy for this country, not about playing parliamentary tricks so that amendments are not germane.

"We on the Republican side are going to be professional today. We are going to offer substantive amendments. We tried to draft them so that they will be germane. Obviously there will be a number where a point of order will be reserved and those points will be debated. Just for an example, isn't it ironic that our most abundant domestic energy resource, coal, is not germane; that our cleanest energy resource, nuclear energy, is not germane; that our most used energy resources, oil and gas, are not germane; that the system of refining those products, unless we draft the amendment in such a way that biofuels are the principle reason for the amendment that refinery amendments, are not germane? I could go on, and on, and on.

"I have watched this committee since the 1970s, in the Carter presidency, in the aftermath of the Arab oil embargo, and we had all of those major energy debates. I watched in the early '80s, in the beginning of the Reagan presidency. I came on the committee in 1987 in my second term as a congressman and have participated in all those debates on energy policy since then, and I can honestly say I have never seen a situation like we are about to have today.

"What is so frustrating, Mr. Chairman, is that there is a bipartisan coalition on sound energy policy on this committee and on the floor of the House and the Senate and with the president. It's there if we only allow it to happen.

"I am still hopeful that common sense will break out sometime today during the markup, but if it cannot, we will wait for the glorious time in the future that you keep alluding to when perhaps that will occur.

"With that, we look forward to the markup. We wish it were being held in a different environment where there was bipartisan give and take and amendments were germane that would give us an energy bill that we could take to the floor that would actually have some energy in it. So with that Mr. Chairman, and with all personal affection, I look forward to today and yield back the balance of my time."

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