Defending American Liberties

Floor Speech

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Mr. WHITFIELD. I want to thank the gentleman very much.

Yesterday, the President made a speech at Knox College in Illinois. And in that speech, he categorized Republican Members of Congress in three groups. He said there was a group of Republicans who agreed with him on his policy but were afraid to vote for it and did not have the courage to vote with him. He also said that another category of Republicans are those who, because it was his idea, are opposed to it. And then the third group of Republicans, he said, were those who have a view of the world that inequality and injustice is inevitable.

I was a little bit offended by that categorization, and I wanted to take a few moments today to explain to the American people specifically why many in our Conference oppose the President on some of his economic and energy policies, particularly.

I want to preface my remarks by saying, when the President was elected, the first thing that he focused on was transforming America's electricity policy. His number one goal was to produce more green energy through solar panels and wind energy. He spent billions of dollars on that through the stimulus package, much of the money going to venture capital friends of his, wealthy supporters of his, like Mr. Kaiser of Oklahoma, on the Solyndra project. And, in addition to that, the 1603 Treasury program that gives grants to certain green energy projects, the 1703 and 1705 programs at the Department of Energy.

Now, that was the focus of the President. That was the part of his stimulus package that was going to get the economy back on track. Well, I would like to remind people that in June--just this past June--we lost, in America, 240,000 full-time jobs. The last quarter of 2012 and the first quarter of 2013, our growth in gross domestic product was not even 2 percent; it was below 2 percent. And for the last 15 quarters, our gross domestic product has increased only a little over 2 percent--the weakest growth since World War II in America.

Now, for this year, 2013, we've created 750,000 new jobs, but 557,000 of those were part-time jobs. Now, why is that happening and why are we losing full-time jobs? Well, under the President's Affordable Care Act--or as some people call it, ``ObamaCare''--any employer that has 50 or more employees and they work more than 30 hours a week, he is going to have to provide health coverage for them. If they do not do so, they will be penalized with a monetary penalty. So the reality is what's happening is that small business men and women in America are laying off their employees and making sure that they only work part-time. So the President, focusing on green energy, encouraging small business men and women to lay off workers, that's precisely why we have a sluggish economy today.

Now, the President says that he is for an all-of-the-above energy policy. And I would say to you that everyone on our side of the aisle supports an all-of-the-above energy policy. But after spending billions of dollars for renewables, the President has only been successful to a very limited degree. As a matter of fact, today, renewables in America are creating only 500 million kilowatts a day; coal is producing 4.5 billion a day; gas, 3 billion a day; nuclear, 2 billion a day. So the President has jeopardized and created obstacles to economic growth because of his sole commitment to renewable energy.

Now, like I said, we need renewable energy; but this President says one thing and does another. He says he is for an all-of-the-above energy policy; and yet because of his actions and his administration's regulations, America is the only country in the world where you cannot build a new coal power plant. As a result of that, we're losing jobs in that industry as well.

So I would just say to the President his priorities are wrong. He is so focused on fulfilling his political goals of changing the way electricity is produced in America and creating obstacles for economic growth that he is self-defeating our abilities to stimulate the economy.

And I would just emphasize once again, we do need an all-of-the-above energy policy. We need wind, we need solar, we need natural gas, nuclear and coal; and yet we cannot build a new coal power plant in America.

If we're going to get this economy growing, we have to have electricity at a rate that we can afford in order to compete in the global marketplace, in order to get people to build plants in America, create jobs in America, and move this country forward.

So I would just say to the President instead of focusing on categorizing Republicans and who they are and what they are, he needs to get his priorities right and start focusing on economic growth and stop using stimulus funds to reward his friends in the joint venture capital business and his wealthy supporters and start helping us build an energy policy that will work for America.

I want to thank the gentleman from Texas for giving me a few minutes to talk about that issue.

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