Make Our Energy More Reliable and More Affordable

Floor Speech

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Mr. Speaker, today the House passed a commonsense approach to make our energy more reliable and more affordable. Our vote today would create jobs and secures our energy future by making us dependent on North American resources, not OPEC, Venezuela, or others.

I am proud to lead this effort in support of lower energy costs and more American jobs. With commonsense policies like these, we can make real progress toward reducing prices at the pump and protecting families from higher monthly electric bills. Lower energy costs also mean lower prices for groceries and other consumer goods; and by producing more American energy, we can create more American jobs. These are the issues that families struggle with at the kitchen table every night and keep you awake at night.

But House Republicans have put forward a positive bipartisan solution to strengthen our energy policy that will allow us to begin fostering the development and use

of our own energy resources. Today the House acted. We passed commonsense energy legislation that takes advantage of our abundant North American energy and puts our country on a path to better infrastructure.

This approach is simple. It is a package of 13 bills the House has already passed on a bipartisan basis, including three of which were even voice-voted. They are not controversial.

For instance, this bill includes the Natural Gas Pipeline Permitting Reform Act that would expedite and modernize the Federal review process for natural gas pipeline permits to help facilitate the construction of new pipeline infrastructure. This bill passed with 26 Democratic votes.

It also includes H.R. 6, the Domestic Prosperity and Global Freedom Act, sponsored by my good friend Cory Gardner from Colorado. This would speed up the approval of liquid natural gas exports. We have an abundant supply of natural gas here in the United States, an abundance of which will allow other countries to become dependent upon us for their energy needs.

Now, our Energy and Commerce Subcommittee, several of us on the Republican side went to North Dakota last year to visit the oilfields. We flew in at night. When you fly over western North Dakota at night, it looks like you are flying over a birthday cake with lots of candles. Those candles are flaring off natural gas because the price is so low and it is so plentiful that it just makes better economic sense to burn it off. So we need to find additional resources and uses for the natural gas. They are already there: exporting, transportation. We just need to focus more on those.

Just today we heard in a joint meeting of Congress from the President of Ukraine. He talked about the security in his own country and the strong partnership with the United States. Can you imagine how much weaker Russia would be if Ukraine was more dependent or would use North American U.S. natural gas resources?

Former Obama National Security Adviser General Jim Jones testified before the Senate that Vladimir Putin uses energy as a weapon. I believe that we would be using our energy resources as our weapon. And by expediting the permitting processes for liquified natural gas terminals, it would allow us to export natural gas to countries like Ukraine and our European partners and Japan.

These policies to develop natural gas would further cement U.S. leadership in the world and grow our economy and create jobs here at home.

Secondly, this package includes the Electricity Security and Affordability Act. That would protect an affordable and diverse electricity portfolio by providing reasonable alternatives to the EPA's greenhouse gas emissions rule. It would require the EPA to develop practical solutions for new coal-fired powerplants, including just saying that you can't implement a rule until the technology exists.

Doesn't that make sense to have a rule that the technology can actually comply with instead of making a rule where there is no technology allowing you to comply with it? I wonder if there is another agenda behind that.

Lastly, this bill includes H.R. 3, the Northern Route Approval Act, which would approve the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline.

Tomorrow marks the sixth birthday or anniversary of the filing of that permit--6 years. We have liberated continents and put a man on the Moon in less time than it has taken to review this permit and approve it. It not only has strong bipartisan support in the House, it is one of the few issues that enjoys broad bipartisan coalition in the Senate as well.

We can't get this done because the President lacks the leadership to make a decision. He would rather make a decision based on politics, continuing to delay the decision until after the next election. It is just now the third election.

Consider these few things about the Keystone pipeline that come directly from this administration's environmental impact statement on the Keystone pipeline.

It would create over 42,000 jobs directly related to the construction of the pipeline project and downstream jobs.

During the construction of the pipeline, it would contribute $2 billion in wages to the economy in the United States--$2 billion.

The administration acknowledged that by not building the Keystone pipeline, we had actually increased carbon emissions by 28 to 41 percent.

Many people come up to me and say, I don't get how it would reduce. The reality is, the alternative is, the pipeline that Canada is building to the east and to the west will then be exported. So that oil then is put on a ship, tanker, at least for the west it will be shipped directly to China. Maybe even the east coast pipeline will go down into the Panama Canal and over to the east.

So when you use the energy taken to ship it to China and then refined in China with less pollution controls and emission controls in their refineries than we have in the United States, you will actually be increasing the CO

2 carbon emissions.

Now, like every other piece of legislation in this package, this is stuck in the Senate and being held hostage by the majority leader. Time is of the essence before the clock runs out on this Congress. So this package of energy bills to grow our economy actually does Harry Reid a favor.

Instead of having to schedule 13 different bills, Mr. Speaker, he only has to bring up one. We have nearly 400 bills that this House Chamber has sent to him that have not been acted upon. Let's make it easier, package them together, and if he passes ten of the bills like this then maybe we are making some real progress.

The Senate floor wants the comprehensive package and to hold one vote to meet our national energy needs and grow our economy.

Mr. Speaker, I ran to make our country energy independent, to have the level of security, national security, when you can be in control of your own economy and destiny. In my view, the cornerstone of a dynamic economy is your own energy and your own resources. You compare the countries that have the resources that they can control themselves and not be dependent on others and you see the strongest economies in the United States. This is the cornerstone. It creates jobs, it creates security. And I just don't understand why our majority leader--the majority leader in the Senate--won't bring these great bills to the Senate floor. In fact, I think he is scared they are going to pass, and they will. They have a great deal of support.

So let's say ``yes'' to American energy, ``yes'' to more affordable energy in the United States.

I would like to recognize the gentleman from Indiana to say a little bit more on how we secure America's energy.

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Thank you, Mr. Bucshon.

You mentioned manufacturing and how important it is to your State. The reality is also that manufacturing is reliant on affordable and reliable energy.

I am the chairman of the Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade Subcommittee under Energy and Commerce. We did a series of hearings, Mr. Speaker, on manufacturing in the United States. We had industries of all sorts testify in front of our committee. I left that series of hearings very optimistic about manufacturing in the United States, because what we are seeing is many manufacturers returning to the United States.

There was one common theme to every one of the manufacturers that were moving to the United States or returning to the United States, and it was affordable and reliable energy. Many of them use natural gas, whether it is the steel industry that is having a resurgence right now--by the way, a beginning job in the steel industry--and, yes, they are looking for workers right now--$77,000.

That is the middle class that is being hammered right now. We need to create those jobs, expand those jobs, but you need affordable and reliable energy.

So what is this administration doing? They pass a rule on existing electrical generation plants, existing plants, not ones yet to be built, and they say you have to lower your emission rates to the level of using natural gas. So when we talk about Mr. Bucshon and Mrs. Brooks, who is going to come up here and talk about the impact on coal and jobs, that is the war on coal. They aren't using ``don't use coal''; they just put the number of emission particulates below what you can get if you use coal.

But, now, here is what happens in a State like Nebraska. The State of Nebraska has older coal-fired plants, most of them are smaller, in our rural areas of Nebraska. They won't be able to afford to pay for all of the changes that have to occur to meet that. And, by the way, this rule is not even finalized yet, but when it becomes finalized these plants have until June 30, 2016. We are in September of 2014. That is less than 2 years that they have to prepare.

That is why some of these rules are just so ridiculous and so obvious in how they are attacking our energy sector and making affordability and reliability a question mark.

Now I would like to yield to the gentleman from South Carolina, Jeff Duncan.

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Thank you, Representative Brooks. You had mentioned something that we really haven't injected into this particular conversation, and that is the renewables.

I am proud that our local power district has 30 percent of their energy produced by wind, a renewable source. I personally think that solar is going to be, over time, a significant part of a portfolio, but maybe not in the way that many people think because many people think of filling the desert with these solar panels.

The reality is that technology today is to be integrated into buildings. Think of your office building's windows generating power. That is exciting technology that is in the research labs right now, so we need to include that.

I am glad you brought it up because people listening may think that we only want fossil--but it is just that fossil fuels are under attack--and you need a diverse portfolio; otherwise, you really jeopardize your economy. If you are just only on oil and you only get it from overseas, you can see where you are in jeopardy.

I just wanted to thank you for bringing that up.

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And I am grateful you stayed long enough to speak tonight. You did a great job, and I really appreciate all of the work and effort you do to secure America's future.

In conclusion, Madam Speaker, energy, again, is the cornerstone of our economy. Sometimes we speak rather scientifically. We don't speak in the terms of how does it really affect me, not as a Member of Congress, but, you know, we represent 600,000 or 700,000 people in our districts. What we are trying to do is secure America's future. If we focus on energy, we secure it in so many different ways.

I hear from my constituents that they are frustrated at the increase of food prices in the grocery store, the continuous up-and-down swings of gasoline at the pump. The costs per family for just transportation fuel has gone from 6 percent of their income to now 11.6 percent, just in the last 6 years. Those are the type of things that really make it more difficult for our families in our districts. So a solid, encompassing energy policy helps alleviate those cost frustrations of every family.

Many people will say, You talk about affordability and reliability. What are you talking about? How does it actually make things more affordable? What is reliability?

Well, if your electric bill is going to go up, if you have an existing powerplant that can't meet the new rule where the plans have to be submitted in June of 2016, so what they will have to do is either close that plant or invest, some are talking anywhere from 100 to $500 million or more to comply to this rule. What do you think happens when that power district spends $500 million? They pass that on to the consumers. Your electric bills will go up.

We met with our electric generators over the break, and they told me that some of these, they are just going to have to shut down these smaller powerplants.

What happens to those communities? They can't invest $100 million or more into those, so they just close them down, go onto the market and bid for the energy that is out there.

But when you have--and a new GAO report just came

out recently, or some report, that they expect even more powerplants to close because of these rules. So when you have more communities and districts bidding against each other, the price is going to go up for that electricity as well.

So you have kind of got it both ways. If you comply to the rule, you are going to raise costs. If you just close the powerplant, the rates are going to go up.

What we are trying to do here is just figure out a pathway where we don't have to have this level of disruption and price increases by these rules. And what we are saying here is, come forward with a better rule that gives us more time and a bright pathway so that we don't make a financial impact to our families.

So the bottom line here, Madam Speaker, is, if we secure our own energy future, our country will continue to be the greatest country in the world.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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