Making A Paradigm Shift
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. Well, I thank my good friend and colleague from Utah. You know, America does have an energy addiction. There's no doubt about it. But it's an energy addiction to foreign energy. And it's an addiction that's just absolutely unnecessary. We are facing a crisis in the fact that over 70 percent of our energy resources we obtain from foreign countries. Many of those countries are those that, frankly, don't like us very much, and they take our money willingly, but what they use it for could potentially easily do us harm in the future. And that's wrong. That's a threat to our economy.
And we know that we have been spending a lot of time in this body talking about the economy in the past 3 months since I came to Congress. And it's a threat to our national security.
So what are the--such a looming crisis that we're experiencing every day, and what's the solutions that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, our Democrat Party solution? Well, we saw that just a couple of hours ago with the budget that was proposed. That was cap-and-trade. That's how we address energy. We put a tax on everything. We put $1.8 trillion in taxes.
Now, The White House's budget showed somewhere around $630 billion of new taxes that we placed on. But I know that there was a briefing on the Senate side with somebody from, a White House staffer that was able to talk that actually the impact on the economy will be triple that. We're talking $1.8 trillion.
I've got to tell you, Mr. Bishop, before I came to Congress I didn't know how many zeros were in a trillion. That's a new skill for me. Unfortunately, it's a sad skill to have to have and have to profess here.
We're looking at broken promises. The President promised that 95 percent of all Americans would have a decrease, see their taxes decrease. Well, that promise has been broken with cap-and-trade, because cap-and-trade puts a tax on just absolutely everything.
In Pennsylvania alone, it's estimated that our energy costs, the cost of turning on your electrical switch, is going to increase by 40 percent. And that's going to increase, and then you have the tax on everything, anything that's produced or consumed, if it's
made with carbon or it's got a carbon footprint which is, you know, we took pride in that, that that advances our economy and our society, but today it's a bad word. But that, anything that uses that puts a tax today.
Well, that's going to impact everybody, businesses industries, families. But I've got to tell you, the people I feel--I'm scared most for are the people that are living, just barely getting by, paycheck to paycheck, those folks who are poor, those who are not making it today. And just the electricity costs alone are going up by 40 percent in Pennsylvania. Cap-and-trade, cap-and-tax, that's a war on the poor. And what that's going to do to people that are just living, just barely getting by today is, it's absolutely unacceptable. It's just not bad policy, frankly, it's harmful.
Now before I came to Congress, I worked 28 years in health care. I actually thought that I was going to retire in nonprofit community health care. And for me that meant that hopefully they'd have a nursing home bed for me when I got to the end of my career in nonprofit community health care.
But one of the things I learned first in my health care career was, do no harm. And I use that in my decision-making here on the House floor. The first thing in terms of any type of public policy is, do no harm. And that's something that would serve all of myself and my colleagues to remember in the public policy we're doing, especially on this energy debate, because cap-and-trade is harmful.
Now, we have great potential, I think, for moving towards and accomplishing energy independence. Let me talk a little bit about that, starting with domestic oil.
150 years ago this year, and actually, the third week in August, in Titusville, Pennsylvania, Colonel Drake drilled the first well ever in the history of the world and produced energy, produced oil. And that's something we take great pride in. And we have tremendous domestic oil resources today that we have not been utilizing, that we could be utilizing to not just be dependent on foreign sources, but what a great economic stimulus that would be to take that $700 billion that we send overseas every year and invest that in American energy-producing companies that hire American workers. That's the best stimulus that we could have done, and that's the stimulus that we need to do, and it will be the first stimulus that we do out of this Congress that will be effective in this congressional cycle.
Let me talk about natural gas. Credible, clean energy. And we have lots of it. The Outer Continental Shelf. We certainly have it throughout my district. We have the third largest natural gas play in the world that goes through Pennsylvania, 15 of my 17 counties, wonderful, clean, natural gas that's available. And we have at least two bus lines in my Congressional district that runs on compressed natural gas. It's clean, it's cheaper, and it's a good resource, and we need to be using more of that.
Nuclear. We haven't built a new nuclear plant in how long? Countries such as France are way ahead of us. Nuclear energy has come a long way since the days when we were concerned about accidents. It's clean, it's safe and the technology advancements are wonderful.
Coal. We have, my district, I'm proud of the fact that we have a tremendous amount of coal. We have a history of providing coal for the country. And, in fact, we've got great educational institutions in my facility, we have lots of them, but one in particular is doing some wonderful research on coal sequestration techniques. And that technology is being developed with the researchers that we have right in rural Pennsylvania where we have these vast coal resources to be able to use.
And then alternative energy. And I do believe in all of the above and support an all-of-the-above approach to addressing our energy independence. But if you take the alternative energies today, where we're at today with solar, with wind, we're looking at producing less than 1 percent, meeting less than 1 percent of our energy needs. So let's say we work real hard and we double that. All right. That's 2 percent. We're a long ways off from fulfilling and meeting the energy needs that our country has today.
We need to be able to use our domestic resources, oil, natural gas, coal, and continue the research and development of alternative energies.
I'm very proud of the higher education institutions that I do have in the district that are working also on developing these alternative energy sciences. But as I talk with those researchers on alternative energies, they tell me that the best hope for the future, to be able, at one point, to be able to replace the use of fossil fuels perhaps is solar at this point. But even with that, they tell me it is generations and generations away from being developed to the point where we can actually fill that gap.
So for us to be energy independent, to meet our economy needs, to provide good jobs for Americans, producing domestic energy and for our national security, we really need an all-of-the-above type solution to our energy.
So why are we dependent on foreign energy?
Well, the best way to do that is, let me illustrate with a bit of a riddle. My alma matter, I've talked about Penn State. We have a great winning football coach, Joe Paterno. How'd you like to be in your mid eighties and just get a 3-year extension on your contract? He's a great guy and he's got a great record.
So here's the riddle. What's the difference between Coach Paterno's winning record and America's energy policy? Well, actually Coach Paterno's winning record really is there, it really exists. We do not have, America has never had an energy policy. And, in fact, the biggest barrier we have to American energy independence, and American economic independence using our energy resources, has been the Federal Government. And it's time for that to stop.
And let me share with you a living example of how government gets in the way of using domestic resources, domestic energy resources. In my district, in the northern part, we have this wonderful four counties, it includes the Allegheny National Forest. It's 513,000 acres. It's a wonderful area. It was formed back in 1923. 85 years it has existed, and it was formed for the purpose of providing a sustainable timber supply for industry, and also to supply sustainable energy, specifically, oil to begin with, and now natural gas that is drilled in the forest.
And, in fact, the Federal Government, in its wisdom in 1923, when it secured all these lands to form this national forest, chose not to secure the private property subsurface rights, the mineral rights there. And the reason for that was because it felt that private property owners would be better able to access and to produce the energy that is contained in those minerals, the oil and the natural gas that is there today.
Well, that has worked well for us for approximately 85 years. Just about a little over 70 days ago, the Forest Service, who manages that, decides to no longer proceed with what's called ``notices to proceed.'' That's basically the green light to be able to go after the oil and the natural gas that our country needs to fuel our needs. It's domestic energy.
Now, the impact of that in just 70 days has been, as you can imagine, on the businesses. First of all, it's an attack on those who own the private property rights, which is wrong. We respect private property rights in this country, but then there are the businesses, the drillers who go after the oil. We haven't had a new start on a well in over 70 days. You have the schools and the counties and the municipalities that rely on that, that being the big part of our economy in those four counties. Then you have the families, the families who depend on those jobs, and we have seen job loss, and we have seen people's hours being cut back across the board in many different industries. It's just not the drillers. They're the individuals who are involved with the small excavating companies, who come in to clear the access road. They're the folks who work in timbering, who remove the timber to be able to open up those areas for drilling.
You have to remember that this is something we have worked well together on with the Forest Service for 86 years. It has been a great partnership of making sure that we provide the resources that America needs. Then, all of a sudden, the Forest Service, because of lawsuits by environmentalists, has shut this process down. It has shut down the economy in the four counties, in the Allegheny National Forest and in those counties that depend on that economy around it. Well, that's wrong. That's absolutely wrong.
You know, America has the ingenuity. In terms of being energy independent and in using our resources, we've got the ingenuity. We've got the resources. We've got the American spirit. We've got people who work hard in those industries, I mean long days, days that a lot of Americans wouldn't want to put in, but they do that because that's what they enjoy; that's their passion, and they help to provide the energy resources that our country needs.
As I said before, the biggest barrier to accessing these domestic resources, to accessing America's energy resources for America's being energy independent, has been our own government. It's time for smart government energy policy.
Again, I propose that the best stimulus that we could ever do for our economy would be to access all of our domestic energy resources. That would be oil, natural gas, the building of nuclear plants, the use of coal, the development of the alternative energies at the same time, concurrently. As we do that, we put American energy-producing companies to work that are hiring American workers.
I thank my friend and colleague from Utah for the opportunity to join him this evening.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source