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Mr. LUCAS. I rise in support of H.R. 910.

Mr. Chairman, for more than 2 years, we have watched Obama's Environmental Protection Agency try to expand its authority over American agriculture. Most telling of the EPA's irrational regulatory approach is how it has concluded that the breath we exhale and the gas that livestock expels are dangerous pollutants and should be regulated under the Clean Air Act.

During a recent Agriculture Committee hearing, the EPA Administrator said agriculture is currently exempt from the proposed regulations because the EPA has targeted only the largest greenhouse gas emitters. This doesn't provide any certainty to our farmers and ranchers, especially since, in a recent interview, Lisa Jackson was quoted as saying that the EPA will begin looking at regulating greenhouse gases from farms as soon as 2013, which counters her own remarks at that hearing.

Additionally, a mythical exemption doesn't insulate farmers, ranchers and rural businesses from the higher energy and operating costs they'll face from other industries hit by these regulations. Whether it's the fuel in the tractor, the fertilizer for the crops or the delivery of food to the grocery store, this backdoor energy tax will increase the cost of doing business in rural America.

I urge my colleagues to join me in passing H.R. 910, the Energy Tax Prevention Act, and protect agriculture from EPA's overreach. This bill will prevent the EPA from running wild across America's farms and from subjecting our producers to more burdensome regulations that threaten to put them out of business. Rural America has never stopped being a good place to live; so it's our job to make sure it's a good place to make a living, too.

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