Offshore Energy and Jobs Act

Floor Speech

The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Rigell) for 5 minutes.

Mr. RIGELL. Mr. Speaker, before I begin my remarks, I want to just express my appreciation to our colleague, Mr. Fleischmann, and my respect for him and the eloquent tribute that he paid his father. Indeed, his father was a member of the Greatest Generation, and we thank him, his father, for his service to our country.

Mr. Speaker, I rise this morning to talk about my number one priority in serving the Second District of Virginia and this incredible country that we have the privilege to live in, and that's jobs. That's the number one focus for our office.

I rise in strong support of House Resolution 2231, Offshore Energy and Jobs Act, that will come before this House either today or tomorrow. That bill includes language that I authored and introduced, and it creates a clear path, an opportunity that can really change the lives of hardworking Americans.

And I'm awfully proud of what the bill will do--ideally, when it's passed through the Senate and made into law by the President--in job creation.

But before I share with this House what the bill actually does and what the language does, I want to make clear what it's not. It's not a bill that spends more money. In fact, it's just the opposite. It's a bill that actually creates Federal revenue.

Here's how it works:

Right now, there is a moratorium, a full stop, on offshore exploration of energy off the coast of Virginia. And what our bill does and what the language does is it breaks through that, and it opens up that tremendous job-creating potential of Virginia's offshore energy.

The first benefit of this bill, of course, is jobs. Eighteen thousand jobs are estimated to be created by this bill, just in Virginia alone. And, Mr. Speaker, every one of those jobs is a life-changing job.

I'm an entrepreneur in what I refer to as a season of public service, and I've had the privilege, hundreds and hundreds of times--perhaps thousands, I don't know--of being able to look at an applicant and say these incredible words, ``You're hired.'' And I know the person goes home and says, ``I got the job.'' That's what Americans are looking for is opportunity, and that's what this bill advances.

And as we become more energy independent, what happens is we've reduced our need to have our young men and women around the world protecting our sources of energy. It makes America a safer country.

Right now, more money than any one of us would like is going to countries like Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. These countries don't share our values, and we're fueling their economies. We should be fueling our economy.

It creates the revenue, Mr. Speaker, that we need. I'm a Republican who talks about the need for more revenue, but we get that by growing our economy. This is the way we can invest in our schools and have better roads, make the investments that we need to make into our infrastructure.

And look, it fast-tracks a great renewable--wind. It has tremendous opportunity. Frankly, it's too expensive right now. But we're Americans. We're smart. We can innovate. We can think our way through this and find a way to make wind energy more affordable.

In this very body right here, the President came in and he said, I'm all of the above with respect to energy. Mr. Speaker, that's common ground, and I'm delighted to say it's common ground.

Right now, I'm having difficulty reconciling what he said with this full moratorium off the coast of Virginia, and this bill represents common ground. We've got the Governor of Virginia. We have our two U.S. Senators, interestingly, both Democrats, Senator Kaine and Senator Warner, both support, in principle, this same objective. In fact, they're introducing similar legislation in the Senate. The General Assembly of Virginia wants to move forward. There is a clear consensus in Virginia that this legislation ought to go forward.

Right now, the only thing holding up these jobs, every one of these life-changing jobs, is the administration. We're not asking for a tremendous amount of money. As I mentioned, in fact, we're just asking for the administration to get out of the way.

Mr. Speaker, I didn't mention what tremendous local support this bill has: We have the local NAACP behind the bill. The mayor of Virginia Beach, the largest city in our district, is behind the bill; Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce, Hampton Roads Planning District Commission, Hampton Roads Global Commerce Council, the Virginia Port Authority.

And we can do this, Mr. Speaker, while meeting the deep obligation that we have, the moral obligation to leave our children with clean air and clean water and clean soil.

To those who put one against the other, that it's either jobs or a good environment, I reject that outright. Why? Because we're Americans. It's in our DNA to innovate and to think through these things. We can have a reliable source of energy. We can help right off the coast of Virginia. We can create the local jobs that we need to give our young people opportunity and our veterans that are exiting the military, so many of whom exit the military right there in Hampton Roads.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of the bill.

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