Providing for Consideration of H.R. Preventing A Patronage System Act of Providing for Consideration of H.R. Whistleblower Protection Improvement Act of Providing for Consideration of H.R. Ensuring A Fair and Accurate Census Act; and for Other Purposes

Floor Speech

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Mr. BARR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Reschenthaler) for yielding.

I rise to oppose the previous question so that we can immediately consider Representative French Hill's H.R. 8589 to prohibit the Securities and Exchange Commission from trading its independence and statutory authority away in the name of alarmist climate advocacy.

The proposed climate change rule from the Securities and Exchange Commission will further crush our fragile economy, and struggling families will ultimately pay the price.

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the Consumer Price Index numbers for the month of August. As has been mentioned already today, CPI surged to 8.3 percent, above projections, still a 40-year high, showing that this inflation crisis is not going away anytime soon. Americans are paying more for everything, and rising prices continue to wreak havoc on farmers, middle-class families, and small businesses struggling to stay afloat all across America.

Of course, Democrats' overspending for the last year and a half has produced excess demand, pushing up prices, but no amount of Fed tightening can fix the inflationary supply-demand mismatch without also addressing the supply side.

At the heart of this inflation crisis is the Biden administration's war on American energy production. This policy of deliberately constraining the supply of energy is taking its toll on the American people. According to a Penn Wharton study, inflation reduced the purchasing power of American households by approximately $6,000 last year. That is like taking an entire paycheck away for an entire month for every American household.

Real earnings, hourly earnings, dropped 2.8 percent over the year in August. Wages are down because of this inflation crisis. Credit card debt is up. It hit an all-time high last month.

One in six American households are now behind paying their electricity bills and in danger of losing their utility services altogether, with natural gas prices up 30 percent since last July. Effectively, electricity prices are now up 15 percent, a 14-year high.

When Joe Biden took office, the average price of gasoline was $2.36 per gallon. Today, the average gas price in America is $3.72 per gallon, and stubbornly, diesel prices are much, much higher. That goes into everything: transportation, manufacturing, farmers having to fill up the tank on their tractors. All of that is passed on at the retail point of sale. In less than 2 years, America has gone from energy dominant to energy desperate.

Mr. Speaker, ground zero for the Biden administration's war on American energy is the weaponization of financial regulation and the politicization of access to capital.

What do I mean by this? We all know that the Biden administration killed the Keystone XL pipeline and other critical energy infrastructure projects. We know that they are frustrating the construction of new refineries. We know that they have held up 4,400 drilling permits. But ground zero is the weaponization of financial regulation to deny American energy the access to the capital that they need to invest in a very capital-intensive business.

Throughout the executive branch, at the Treasury Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Reserve, the OCC, and other financial regulators, Biden has installed or nominated unelected climate alarmists and given them free rein to attack American energy businesses, all in the name of climate change.

The sad irony, Mr. Speaker, is that if we want to innovate and actually solve climate change, we wouldn't be denying American energy companies and the scientists there access to financing. We would be giving them more financing to innovate and to solve the problem the American way, through free enterprise and innovation. One of these radical nominees even called for bankrupting American fossil fuel companies.

Perhaps the most dangerous regulation issued by the Biden administration to destroy American energy is the SEC's climate risk disclosure rule proposed in March. This 534-page monstrosity marks the transformation of the SEC from an independent agency dedicated to investor protection to an unaccountable and politicized bureaucracy intent on advancing radical environmental and social policy over which it has neither expertise nor jurisdiction.

This proposed rule is totally disconnected from the longstanding investor-driven materiality standard and will politicize the agency and reduce its credibility by hurting investors, elevating nonpecuniary factors above financial returns, and steering retail investors into lower performing, higher fee, and less-diversified ESG investments.

As a reminder, Mr. Speaker, the statutory mission of the SEC is to protect investors; maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets; and facilitate capital formation. This is not about protecting investors. It is about hurting investors. It is not about capital formation. It is about capital destruction. It is definitively not to reduce carbon emissions or solve climate change, but the SEC is wading into environmental policy debates like climate change with its top-down, government-directed, one-size-fits-all mandatory environmental, social, and governance disclosure regulation, or ESG.

SEC Chair Gary Gensler claims that the requirements in the proposal are material because institutional investors are demanding this information. But according to a study conducted by the University of Chicago and FINRA, only 21 percent of surveyed retail investors in this country even knew what ESG stands for.

The fact of the matter is, retail investors are not demanding this information. They want returns, not politics, guiding their retirement and college savings.

What do retail investors really care about? Yesterday's bloodbath in the stock market when the Dow plummeted by over 1,000 points in a single day, the worst drop since June 2020.

That tells me what investors actually want, Mr. Speaker, and it is returns. They need returns. They don't need an inflationary environment that is eating away their purchasing power and rising interest rates because of it that result in turmoil in the financial markets, destroying retirement savings.

ESG funds are hurting American investors. They are tech-heavy, and in a market where tech stocks are in a massive sell-off and are vastly underperforming non-ESG funds that contain investments in energy, who are the losers? Retail investors who are unwittingly invested in and overexposed to ESG. On top of that, ESG funds charge 43 percent higher fees than non-ESG funds.

In short, the government is redirecting capital away from energy, and it is costing retail investors, which include teachers, police officers, and other ordinary Americans saving for retirement, extraordinary amounts of money.

But, today, Congress can actually do something to protect investors. I am leading this previous question that would amend the rule to immediately consider H.R. 8589, legislation offered by the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Hill), my friend, to stop this SEC rule in its tracks before it causes more damage to retail investors and to Americans struggling to keep up with unsustainable energy prices.

Mr. Speaker, House Republicans will keep pushing for America to get back to basics. We need to deliver economic relief to the American people to alleviate the pain of inflation. To do that, we need to unleash the supply side. That means more, not less, financing of American energy to lower the price at the pump, to reduce the cost of heating your home.

Yes, Mr. Speaker, we need financial advisers to get back to the basics of investing. That means diversified portfolios that include American energy, not just tech, because the point of investing your hard-earned money isn't to further a political agenda or some far-left view of America that some woke asset manager on Wall Street thinks. Instead, it is to generate a financial return that will enable you to send your kid to college, ensure you can live a comfortable life in retirement, or pursue some other aspect of your American Dream.

Yes, Mr. Speaker, it is about capital formation. It is about giving heroic American energy companies access to the capital and the financing that they need, not only to make energy affordable and reliable for the American people but to make America competitive in the global economy.

It is for all of these reasons, Mr. Speaker, that I urge my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to join me in supporting this previous question.

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Mr. BARR. Mr. Speaker, let me respond to my friend from Maryland on some of the specific points that he made in rebuttal to my opposition to the previous question.

The gentleman says that we don't want to talk about the underlying bills.

What Republicans want to talk about is what the American people are worried about, which is rising prices. What we are focused on is opposing a previous question so that we could actually go and consider legislation that would actually help improve the record inflation, 40- year-high inflation that Americans are suffering with.

What we are talking about is how we are going to lower the pain at the pump and lower the cost of heating your home, which is at a 15-year high in America right now. That is what Republicans want to talk about; what the American people actually care about right now.

The gentleman says that, Oh, unemployment is down.

Let me tell you the statistic that matters.

It is the fact that we have 12 million unfilled jobs in America because the Democrats' spending spree has paid Americans to not go to work, because employers in my district and every district around the country can't find labor.

The supply-demand mismatch that has produced this inflation crisis is the result of fiscal policy errors. It is the result of a war on American energy constraining the supply of energy. It is because of excessive spending that has discouraged people to return to the labor force.

So we have excess demand from overspending, and we have constrained labor supply and constrained energy supply, which is impounded into everything and results in higher retail prices.

The gentleman says that, Oh, don't look here; don't look at us; don't look at the Biden administration's war on energy and labor supply. No, it is not that. It is not the Fed that continued to keep interest rates too low for too long and flooded our money supply at a time when all of these fiscal policy errors were going on. No, it is not that. It is global inflation.

Well, why is it, then, in March of 2021, at the precise time that this Congress passed the American recovery plan, $2 trillion of unpaid- for spending, why is it then that U.S. inflation rates became untethered from global price increases? That is what happened, in synchronicity with their legislation.

Mr. Speaker, finally, he blames Vladimir Putin.

Gas prices on the day Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine were the highest in 40 years. Inflation was over 8 percent on the CPI, the highest in 40 years, the highest since 1981 on the day Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.

This is not about Vladimir Putin. It is about Americans not producing energy anymore.

And why do we want this particular legislation, the legislation to block the SEC's climate disclosure rule? Because we need more financing of American energy.

Mr. Speaker, I would argue to my friend from Maryland, also, if the obsession on the other side with the climate, if that is the concern, if that is why we have this SEC rule, if that is why we have weaponized financial regulators to go after the American energy sector and redirect capital and financing away from the American energy sector, if that is the solution to climate change, I want the gentleman to explain that to me. Because the best scientists in the world working on the issue of carbon capturing, carbon sequestration, and harnessing the carbon cycle, they work at American energy companies.

The answer to climate change is not to centralize power in Washington and add a thousand pages to the Federal Register. That will not change the weather. What will solve climate change is to solve that problem the American way. The American way is through innovation, technology, and science, and that means robust, free enterprise. That means more, not less capital formation. That means more financing of American energy, more financing of innovation. That is the Republican solution to climate.

It is also the Republican solution to our energy crisis and our inflation crisis. That is what we are focused on, not these bills that the American people don't care about.

We are focused on lowering prices at the grocery store and at the pump and financing American competitiveness, American innovation, and American know-how.

That is what we want to do.

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Mr. BARR. We may have found a point of bipartisan agreement that we all dislike Vladimir Putin. But one of the main reasons why Vladimir Putin was able to invade Ukraine was the removal of deterrence: unilaterally waiving sanctions on Nord Stream 2, refusing to respond for a full year of a buildup, inviting aggression by retreating from Afghanistan, and signaling to our allies that we are not coming to help you. That might be one of the reasons why we have a problem with Vladimir Putin right now.

To the gentleman from Maryland's argument that we are just purporting to speak for all Americans, we are the Representatives of the American people, and we are their only voice in this Chamber. I am not purporting to speak for Americans. I am telling you what my constituents in Kentucky are telling me.

Charlie from Fleming County says that he can't afford to fill up his tractor as a farmer because diesel prices are where they are. He says: I don't know where they get their numbers in Washington, Congressman, but it feels three times 8 percent on the CPI.

Lorna from Mount Sterling, Kentucky, owns a floral business, a Main Street small business, and everything costs more. She said: This is not the America I know.

Then, Jamie, who is a mom of two kids, she goes to get baby formula. She goes to the grocery, and she can't afford groceries. She tries to fill up her car to take her kids on errands, and she can't afford it.

This is not purporting to speak for the American people. These are the American people, and they are suffering because this administration will not fix the supply side.

They raise taxes on businesses, which discourages business investment and capital expenditures that we need to fix the supply bottlenecks. They raise prices at the pump by declaring war on American energy production by weaponizing financial regulation. They refuse to take actions that actually will solve the supply problem by encouraging people to go back to work.

We don't need to be discouraging people from going back to work. We need to fill those 12 million unfilled jobs right now by encouraging productivity and American people going back to work.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to defeat the previous question so that we can go to some legislation that would actually help lower prices, what the American people do care about, not what they purport to care about, what they tell us they care about, and that is lowering prices.

This bill would help us do that because it would unlock the financing we need to make America energy dominant once again and lower prices across the board.

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