American Energy Solutions for Lower Costs and More American Jobs Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. Speaker, Doc Hastings, I really appreciate your leadership on energy issues and natural resources issues. It has just been incredibly important to our Congress.

I want to thank my colleagues for allowing me to bring this package here today because this is a commonsense energy approach that grows our economy, creates jobs, and ensures our energy is affordable and reliable.

Yes, Mr. Speaker, most of these, or all of them, have already been voted on at some point in time over the last couple years. It is important that we continue to push the Senate into taking up these energy bills so we can expand our economy and grow the jobs.

Too many of the rules and regulations coming out of this administration are making energy more costly and less reliable to the consumers. This is the point of this bill. The House continues to do our job with legislation, but the Senate continues to block it. I am not going to stand idly by and keep allowing that to happen.

This approach puts together bills that allow us to build up our infrastructure of abundance, streamlines permitting processes, Mr. Speaker, and provides commonsense guidance to the EPA rulemakers, all of which provides reliability and affordability for our consumers, which is an inherent cornerstone to economic success.

So what does this bill do?

It allows the United States to take advantage of the fact that we are incredibly close to being self-sufficient, no longer reliant on those outside of North America. This bill approves the Keystone pipeline, which was filed, originally, 6 years ago tomorrow. But yet 22,000 pages of studies have been completed that show that this pipeline does not pose an environmental risk to land or aquifer and will actually reduce CO

2 emissions compared to not allowing the pipeline.

Recently, Larry Summers, President Obama's former senior economic adviser, was quoted as saying: ``I am very much aware of the toll that the Keystone pipeline issue has taken on the relations with a crucial U.S. ally, Canada.''

So it is even straining our relationship with our good friend Canada.

This bill also removes Federal barriers to offshore energy production, enhances onshore production by removing red tape and making sure that any regulations are reasonable.

This bill will expedite LNG exportation to our allies, allowing us to maintain a strong, strategic position in the world.

This bill will modernize the permit process for natural gas pipelines. This is important as we use more natural gas for manufacturing, electrical production, and as a transportation fuel.

There is an abundant supply of natural gas here in North America and it has been proven to be cheaper and cleaner, but I believe it is greatly underutilized. We need to make natural gas a priority, which this bill does.

Our country is blessed to have these abundant natural resources. We must do everything in our power to make sure that our policies support resource development and minimize the red tape that strangles our job creators.

I am proud to lead this effort in support of lower cost energy and more American jobs. With these policies, we can make real progress towards reducing prices at the pump and protecting families.

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