Lowering Gasoline Prices to Fuel an America That Works Act of 2014

Floor Speech

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Mr. HOLT. Mr. Chair, I rise in strong opposition to this bill.

The legislation before us today is hardly worth debating, not because these issues are unimportant, but because these are the same tired pro-big oil and gas bills that we have debated over-and-over again.

H.R. 4899 is a combination H.R. 2231, Offshore Energy and Jobs Act and H.R. 1965, Federal Lands Jobs and Energy Security Act of 2013.

Both these bills have already been passed by the House in the First Session, over my objections, and in the 112th Congress we similarly considered nearly identical bills.

The White House threatens to veto these bills, the Senate will never bring them up, but here we are again, on the week before the July recess, in another attempt to score political points by pushing policies that harm our environment and ignore the threat of climate change.

I know my friends on the other side of the aisle wouldn't consider themselves environmentalists, but I'm glad to know that at the very least they support recycling.

I think this has been said before but there are three Rs to recycling and one of them is reuse.

However, another recycling-R is to reduce but we certainly are not making an effort to limit how many times we can bring the same bill to the floor. And the bill before us absolutely does not recognize that our domestic demand for oil has decreased in recent years even as production has continued to rise.

I'm opposed to H.R. 4899 for the same reasons I have opposed H.R. 2231 and H.R. 1965.

This bill would require a new outer continental shelf leasing plan, even though the Department of Interior has already begun the process of writing a new plan. It would require leases of offshore areas that have been excluded from leasing previously because of lack of infrastructure and environmental concerns.

The bill cost the federal government money by providing more offshore revenue to a handful of coastal states.

The bill prevents coordination of agencies with coastal management responsibilities by prohibiting the National Ocean Policy. This will create more offshore conflicts and likely limit the ability of energy companies to operate safely and effectively in coastal areas.

And all of that is just offshore.

Onshore H.R. 4899 irresponsibility and unnecessarily would expedite the approval of drilling, while limiting judicial review.

The bill would also require a plan to lease an ever increasing amount of area onshore, in part by requiring a plan to cover the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska with a spider web of roads and pipelines.

In closing, oil and gas production is up, thanks in part to the policies of the Obama administration, and as a result energy imports are down.

This bill will not lower energy prices, and it will not help us develop new sources of clean energy. These are the same policies and the same talking points we have heard again-and-again.

And again, I am strongly opposed to this bill and I urge my colleagues to oppose H.R. 4899.

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