[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                     THE U.S. TAX CODE SUBSIDIZING
                      GREEN CORPORATE HANDOUTS AND
                      THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                      COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS
                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION
                               __________

                             APRIL 19, 2023
                               __________

                           Serial No. 118-10
                               __________

         Printed for the use of the Committee on Ways and Means
         
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                               __________

                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
                    
53-011                    WASHINGTON : 2024                     
         


                      COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS

                    JASON SMITH, Missouri, Chairman
VERN BUCHANAN, Florida               RICHARD E. NEAL, Massachusetts
ADRIAN SMITH, Nebraska               LLOYD DOGGETT, Texas
MIKE KELLY, Pennsylvania             MIKE THOMPSON, California
DAVID SCHWEIKERT, Arizona            JOHN B. LARSON, Connecticut
DARIN LaHOOD, Illinois               EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon
BRAD WENSTRUP, Ohio                  BILL PASCRELL, Jr., New Jersey
JODEY ARRINGTON, Texas               DANNY DAVIS, Illinois
DREW FERGUSON, Georgia               LINDA SANCHEZ, California
RON ESTES, Kansas                    BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
LLOYD SMUCKER, Pennsylvania          TERRI SEWELL, Alabama
KEVIN HERN, Oklahoma                 SUZAN DelBENE, Washington
CAROL MILLER, West Virginia          JUDY CHU, California
GREG MURPHY, North Carolina          GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin
DAVID KUSTOFF, Tennessee             DAN KILDEE, Michigan
BRIAN FITZPATRICK, Pennsylvania      DON BEYER, Virginia
GREG STEUBE, Florida                 DWIGHT EVANS, Pennsylvania
CLAUDIA TENNEY, New York             BRAD SCHNEIDER, Illinois
MICHELLE FISCHBACH, Minnesota        JIMMY PANETTA, California
BLAKE MOORE, Utah
MICHELLE STEEL, California
BETH VAN DUYNE, Texas
RANDY FEENSTRA, Iowa
NICOLE MALLIOTAKIS, New York
MIKE CAREY, Ohio
                       MARK ROMAN, Staff Director
                 BRANDON CASEY, Minority Chief Counsel
                                 ------                                

                         C  O  N  T  E  N  T  S

                              ----------                              

                           OPENING STATEMENTS

                                                                   Page
Hon. Jason Smith, a Representative from Missouri, Chairman.......     1
Hon. Judy Chu, a Representative from California..................     2
Advisory of April 19, 2023 announcing the hearing................     V

                               WITNESSES

Daniel Turner, Executive Director, Power The Future..............     4
Drew Horn, CEO, GreenMet.........................................     8
Kenny Stein, Policy Director, Institute for Energy Research......    19
Vance Ginn, Senior Fellow, Americans for Tax Reform..............    27
Ben Beachy, Vice President of Manufacturing and Industrial 
  Policy, BlueGreen Alliance.....................................    43

                   PUBLIC SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD

Public Submissions...............................................   197

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                     THE U.S. TAX CODE SUBSIDIZING
                      GREEN CORPORATE HANDOUTS AND
                      THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY

                              ----------                              


                       WEDNESDAY, APRIL 19, 2023

                          House of Representatives,
                               Committee on Ways and Means,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:04 a.m. in Room 
1100, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Jason Smith 
[chairman of the committee] presiding.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. The committee will come to 
order.
    We are here today to examine what has happened with the 
mountain of green special interest tax breaks in the 
President's so-called Inflation Reduction Act. In the eight 
months since that law's passage, three things are clear.
    Number one, taxpayers are footing a bill for these tax 
breaks that are hundreds of billions above what they were told. 
Some estimates reach as high as 1 trillion, over three times 
more than originally estimated. Other economists estimate the 
battery manufacturing credits alone will cost over $196 
billion, a 542 percent increase--542 percent increase.
    Number two, the White House opened up convenient loopholes 
to make not only foreign countries, but even our adversaries 
like China eligible to claim these taxpayer-funded subsidies.
    And number three, the design of these credits has allowed 
large companies, big banks, and the already wealthy to make 
billions off the backs of hard-working American taxpayers.
    Ultimately, the White House and my colleagues on the other 
side pushed through these corporate welfare subsidies that cost 
more than three times as much as they told us it would, while 
paying big dividends to big business and China.
    While the wealthy and politically connected get a massive 
windfall from the Democrats' taxpayer-subsidized handouts, 
working families, small business owners, and farmers, they are 
struggling. Witnesses at Ways and Means field hearings have 
told us of the challenges they face to hire, make payroll, 
afford input materials because of the President's inflation 
crisis. I anticipate we will hear more of these challenging 
stories at our hearing Friday in Georgia.
    President Biden, he may succeed in strengthening the 
manufacturing sector, but for China, not the U.S. Solar cells 
manufactured in China and assembled into panels in the U.S. 
will qualify for these special interest tax breaks, even if 
they are implicated in human rights abuses. The world's largest 
solar manufacturer is a Chinese company that just had its solar 
shipments confiscated at the border last fall over forced labor 
concerns. They are now planning to partner with a business in 
Ohio to utilize these very credits to build a facility here in 
the United States. Are these the type of businesses that we 
should be rewarding?
    This is just one area where the Biden Administration has 
opened the door to China. To develop projects like EV battery 
manufacturing, U.S. companies are partnering with Chinese 
Communist Party-controlled companies that control over 50 
percent of the processing capacity of key battery ingredients. 
Meanwhile, White House regulations and red tape make it 
difficult for America to develop critical resources for EV 
battery ingredients right here at home.
    As congressional scorekeepers now realize, this money will 
get spent faster than expected. The Biden Administration is 
creating even new loopholes to benefit foreign companies and 
foreign workers. The latest example is the Administration's new 
critical minerals agreement with Japan that evades IRA 
safeguards and allows benefits to flow to foreign companies. No 
wonder USTR did not let the American people see the text of the 
agreement before signing it. This is a low-emission tax subsidy 
fire sale only Washington and Wall Street would love.
    These special political tax breaks flow to big companies 
and big banks, with congressional scorekeepers estimating that 
large corporations today receive over 90 percent of them. These 
are companies with sales in excess of $1 billion. Financial 
institutions receive three times more than any other industry. 
Financial institutions receive three times as any industry, 
that is correct.
    And when it comes to the 15 percent minimum tax on 
corporations that Democrats touted last year to look tough on 
big business, and to make sure everyone pays their fair share--
that is what they say, but guess what? They exempted their 
special interest tax breaks from that rule, creating a loophole 
for their friends, their donors, their buddies, and politically 
favored corporations.
    American workers should not have to send money to 
Washington in order to subsidize big corporate virtue signaling 
about climate commitments and woke agendas. We cannot ignore 
these facts among misleading marketing about good intentions 
and climate change. Democrats sold America a bill of goods with 
the Inflation Reduction Act. And the sad part is, once again, 
America and the American worker will pay the price.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. I now turn to Ms. Chu for the 
purpose of an opening statement.
    Ms. CHU. Thank you, Mr. Chair, for gathering us to discuss 
how, in just eight months, the Inflation Reduction Act has done 
more for American workers and families than the Tax Cuts and 
Jobs Act has done in almost six years.
    The climate crisis is real, and its effects are only 
becoming more extreme. In California, all but one of the 
state's 10 largest wildfires in history have occurred since 
2017, and years of severe drought have now been followed by 
months of extreme rain and snow.
    Democrats did something about this, and we made sure that 
the clean energy transition will mean more jobs, more 
manufacturing, and higher wages here in the United States. The 
Inflation Reduction Act is the single-largest clean energy 
investment in U.S. history, with first-of-their-kind 
requirements to strengthen American supply chains and create 
quality, high-paying jobs. This legislation is proving that 
green jobs are good jobs, and putting the country on a path to 
responsible, sustainable energy independence.
    So far, the green tax credits have spurred over 100,000 
jobs for U.S. electricians, mechanics, construction workers, 
technicians, support staff, and others. Just in the law's first 
6 months, 90 new clean energy projects have been announced in 
31 states. These projects include battery manufacturing, 
electric vehicle manufacturing, and wind and solar 
manufacturing sites. If this isn't delivering results for the 
American people, then what is?
    Along with the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the CHIPS 
and Science Act, these landmark laws have led to companies 
committing more than $200 billion to U.S. manufacturing. Our 
investments in semiconductor and clean tech are nearly double 
what they were in 2021, and nearly 20 times the total in 2019. 
The result is less reliance on vulnerable supply chains 
overseas and offshoring of well-paying jobs: just another way 
that Democrats are growing the economy from the bottom up and 
the middle out.
    Meanwhile, Republicans are over 100 days into the Congress, 
and the American people can see that their priorities include 
shielding tax cheats from accountability, proposing a 30 
percent tax increase on everything Americans buy, and 
threatening to drag the country into an unnecessary economic 
crisis that would decimate Social Security and Medicare. What 
we have not seen is any plan that would reinvest in American 
workers and families.
    If they were serious about these goals, they would support 
the Inflation Reduction Act's work to onshore critical supply 
chains and revitalize communities. But instead, we get hearings 
like this one, which use China as a way to distract from their 
own policy failures. It is dishonest, because the truth is that 
the Inflation Reduction Act is one of the most impactful laws 
in our nation's history to reduce our reliance on China and 
other foreign markets and move jobs and supply chains back here 
to the United States. And it is reckless and false rhetoric 
that has consequences. As we have seen since the pandemic, this 
rhetoric contributes to dangerous anti-Asian hate that hurts 
Asian Americans here in the United States.
    In the last 100 days, notwithstanding all their America-
first rhetoric, one of the most consistent themes of our 
committee's majority has been to put foreign interests ahead of 
the American people. Last month we marked up a bill in this 
committee that would put the interest of foreign bondholders, 
including Chinese bondholders, ahead of veterans, seniors on 
Medicaid that are in nursing homes, Pell Grant recipients, and 
every American awaiting a tax refund. And this is a pattern. 
The Republican tax scam gave more benefit to foreign investors 
than the bottom 60 percent of Americans. We didn't hear any 
America-first concerns at that time.
    I am disappointed that we are once again spending valuable 
time on political posturing against our clear successes, 
instead of working together to create American jobs, shore up 
our domestic supply chains, or catapult our nation to leading 
in the new green energy economy. It is a waste of our time, a 
waste of the American people's time, and it is all in the 
service of extending another round of handouts to the wealthy 
and well-connected.
    Ms. CHU. I yield back the balance of my time.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Thank you, Ms. Chu.
    I want to welcome the witnesses and thank you for taking 
your time out to be before the best committee in Congress, the 
House Ways and Means Committee. I will now be pleased to 
introduce each and every one of you.
    Daniel Turner is the founder and executive director of 
Power The Future.
    Drew Horn is the founder and CEO of GreenMet, and formerly 
associate director of policy for the Office of the Vice 
President.
    Kenny Stein is policy director at the Institute for Energy 
Research.
    And Vance Ginn is senior fellow at Americans for Tax 
Reform, and formerly the chief economist at the Office of 
Management and Budget.
    And Ben Beachy is vice president of manufacturing and 
industrial policy at the BlueGreen Alliance.
    Mr. Turner, you are now recognized.

   STATEMENT OF DANIEL TURNER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, POWER THE 
                             FUTURE

    Mr. TURNER. Thank you. Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Neal, 
and members of the Ways and Means Committee, good morning and 
thank you for the opportunity to appear before you.
    My name is Daniel Turner, and I am the founder of Power of 
the Future, a group that advocates for the millions of energy 
workers, especially those in rural America. These men and women 
produce the energy which powers our homes and our nation, and 
their jobs are under constant attack.
    Energy undergirds everything from our economy to our 
national security. Everything grown, manufactured, transported 
requires energy. And as energy prices go up, food and consumer 
goods have become more expensive. Our current state of high 
inflation is driven largely by administrative actions designed 
to significantly raise the cost of fossil fuels. No one has 
been hit harder than working-class and rural Americans.
    We are producing less oil than we have in years because we 
have an administration that has promised no new drilling. As a 
result, gas prices are still nearly $1.50 higher, on average, 
than when President Biden took office. The proposed government 
solution: $7,500 tax rebate on new electric vehicles. For most 
Americans who cannot afford an EV, which averages $60,000, that 
is not clearly a solution at all.
    So who is benefiting from these tax rebates? Data shows the 
average EV owner earns over $100,000, more than double the 
average salary. The tax benefits for going green are anything 
but equitable.
    The other beneficiary is the Chinese Government. My 
organization has previously authored two studies, one showing 
how 70 percent of EVs and green technology are manufactured in 
China; the other showing how 90 to 95 percent of the rare earth 
elements in those technologies are sourced from markets 
dominated by China. As a consequence, every tax break, subsidy, 
or government program meant to incentivize the purchase of EVs 
is really a direct benefit to China.
    It does not have to be this way. President Biden has spoken 
often about a supply chain that starts in America, a goal with 
which I wholeheartedly agree. Yet, along with that lofty 
rhetoric comes a sobering truth. Efforts to open the U.S. mines 
needed for the green supply chain have been thwarted. Mines in 
Minnesota, Arizona, Alaska, and many other states are stopped, 
while the Biden Administration has made deals for these same 
materials from foreign countries, some of which have records of 
slavery and child labor and disastrous environmental practices.
    Yes, the metals and the rare earths to ``go green'' are 
still needed, but the jobs and the tax revenue are being 
outsourced, rather than coming to Americans.
    I have been to Alaska Native villages fighting the 
government to open a mine, where the unemployment rate 
currently runs around 80 percent, where mothers pour soda into 
their babies' bottles because milk, if they can even find it, 
costs $12 a half gallon, and there is no running water. These 
communities are pleading for the mine to open for the jobs, 
electricity, infrastructure. But most of all, the dignity and 
hope. These communities deserve the chance to utilize their 
land for their much-needed benefit.
    And we have done this for decades to coal communities. All 
across America, the war on coal has closed mines and plunged 
once thriving communities into poverty. Radical environmental 
groups, many of whom have been investigated for their ties to 
Russian and Chinese funding, launch glitzy ad campaigns to 
close coal mines. And when they win, they return to their 
headquarters and leave those towns struggling with systemic 
poverty. Yet we still use coal, it is just more expensive. And 
eventually, like the metals and the rare earths, it will be 
imported from other countries, where child and slave labor 
often mine it.
    Fossil fuels are not going away. The government is just 
making them more expensive and, as a result, making life more 
expensive. The burdens grow harder. The natural gas tax this 
Congress passed last year will not have companies ``pay their 
fair share,'' as proponents claim. The American people will 
just face higher costs. Even the discussed bans on gas stoves 
and gas hot water heaters will do nothing for climate change, 
they will just make life harder for struggling Americans.
    I am here today to talk about policies that unleash 
American energy and, by extension, American prosperity and the 
American dream. I look forward to taking your questions and 
having a robust and honest conversation.
    [The statement of Mr. Turner follows:]

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    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Thank you, Mr. Turner. Mr. 
Horn, you are now recognized.

             STATEMENT OF DREW HORN, CEO, GREENMET

    Mr. HORN. Thank you, Chairman Smith, members of the 
committee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. My 
name is Drew Horn, and I am president and CEO of GreenMet, a 
private company working to develop American critical mineral 
and green energy supply chains. I am here today to explore the 
connection between our domestic energy supply chain policy and 
our national security.
    The intent of the Inflation Reduction Act, signed by the 
President in 2022, was to invest in companies whose focus is 
domestic energy production and manufacturing. As we have seen 
in recent headlines, implementation of the IRA has been 
inconsistent with congressional intent.
    The Treasury Department is responsible for ensuring 
compliance with the IRA. It is imperative that Treasury close 
loopholes that currently enable foreign adversaries to 
circumvent U.S. law. Treasury has already announced guidance 
pertaining to the qualification of critical mineral 
requirements, highlighting the need for supply chain 
transparency and sourcing requirements. However, industry 
stakeholders are still waiting for Treasury guidance on what 
countries qualify as a foreign entity of concern.
    In the meantime, Chinese-backed companies are taking 
advantage of U.S. tax credits by establishing quasi-Chinese 
subsidiaries on U.S. soil within U.S. supply chains. 
Nationwide, industry and financial leaders are waking up to the 
threat that this presents to America and to our allies.
    Chinese dominance and continued incursion of our energy 
supply chains is the most significant national security threat 
that the United States and other friendly countries are facing 
in the 21st century. I want to emphasize the fact that when 
Chinese-backed companies are allowed to do business inside the 
U.S., we must assume Chinese intelligence agencies are 
illegally collecting sensitive U.S. information, stealing 
intellectual property, and doing everything they can to 
continue Chinese Communist Party dominance in this sector. In 
effect, a Trojan horse is introduced into our nation's 
industrial and manufacturing sectors.
    The CCP's approach is to conceal its ownership or 
influence. U.S. companies and universities that present 
themselves as homegrown domestic entities dedicated to 
promoting U.S. commercial and national interests is one method 
of that disguise. In some instances, Chinese-backed companies 
or universities have filed for and were actually granted U.S. 
Government funding. All of this is supported by CCP national 
policies.
    Current U.S. control mechanisms like CFIUS are insufficient 
to protecting U.S. industry from this subterfuge. I 
emphatically urge each Federal agency and department to take 
this issue seriously by, one, defining foreign entities of 
concern; two, solidifying congressional free trade agreements 
with our allied partners; and three, investing in true American 
companies. Doing all these things will secure and diversify 
America's supply chains.
    To begin, Congress should push Treasury to provide clear 
definitions of foreign entities of concern. Look to current law 
for our National Defense Industrial Base, which prohibits 
acquisition of sensitive materials from non-allied foreign 
nations in the interests of national security. Foreign entities 
of concern should match the definition of covered nations as 
defined in U.S. law. The case for applying this definition to 
our domestic mineral supply chains is now.
    Next, Congress should continue to play an active role in 
ratifying ongoing free trade agreements and giving clear 
mandates for cooperation with allies. At any point, the PRC may 
limit global access by restricting trade of these critical 
minerals, all of which have China as the dominant global 
mineral and metal producer. Therefore, trade policy plays a key 
role in decreasing our import reliance on foreign entities of 
concern.
    In the short term, the U.S. will need to engage with allies 
and free trade partners to secure our mineral supply chains. 
The solidification of free trade partnerships, even with the 
current patchwork of agreements, ensures our continual 
cooperation with longstanding allies, and buys us time to bring 
more American supply online.
    And finally, we all must commit to building domestic supply 
chains, thereby reducing our reliance on other nations.
    I truly believe this is a bipartisan issue, and one that 
affects the entire industry. We must incentivize true U.S. 
alternatives to support our national security and policy goals. 
Our energy security is our national security. Strong policy 
will continue to de-risk domestic energy production, creating 
pathways for willing Wall Street investors and patriotic 
companies to unleash American energy production again. Domestic 
options, when paired with the right mix of prudent government 
support and time, can organically grow without foreign 
interference.
    We must control our own destiny. But the window of 
opportunity to rebuild domestic supply chains is closing if we 
don't take action now.
    Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I look 
forward to your questions.
    [The statement of Mr. Horn follows:]

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    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Thank you, Mr. Horn.
    Mr. Stein, you are recognized.

STATEMENT OF KENNY STEIN, POLICY DIRECTOR, INSTITUTE FOR ENERGY 
                            RESEARCH

    Mr. STEIN. Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to 
testify at this hearing.
    The subsidies in the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act which 
we are examining today are worse than merely misguided 
industrial policy because the industries singled out for the 
most generous subsidy, which--namely, the wind, solar and 
batteries industries--are not actually domestic industries. The 
inputs and components that will build the subsidized green 
energy system envisioned by the IRA will be coming from foreign 
countries, especially China, which thoroughly dominates both 
the solar and battery industries, and is a major part of the 
wind industry.
    The IRA thus discards even the usual justifications for 
industrial policies such as domestic industry or security. This 
green industrial policy actually seeks to destroy domestic 
energy and replace it with foreign energy. The policy set 
forward in the IRA will tax our children to pay China for green 
energy to replace the oil, natural gas, and coal that we 
currently produce here in the United States. Because of the 
uncapped nature of the IRA tax credits, there is actually no 
way to know how much taxpayers are eventually going to be on 
the hook for.
    Additionally, despite some of the IRA subsidies getting 
firm end dates, both the Production Tax Credit and the 
Investment Tax Credit could hang around for decades, as they 
are set to phase out only after a certain emissions target has 
been met. Most forecasts don't see that threshold being met 
until the 2040s, or even later.
    If the prospect of our children and grandchildren paying 
for these vast subsidies for decades to come isn't bad enough, 
these subsidies will ultimately be funneled into the hands of 
Chinese companies.
    The problem with wind, solar, and batteries is that they 
require an enormous amount of minerals to build in the first 
place. For example, a typical electric car requires six times 
the mineral inputs of a conventional car, mainly due to the 
battery module. An onshore wind plant requires nine times more 
mineral resources than a gas-fired plant. Because of this, 
since 2010 the average amount of minerals needed for a new unit 
of power generation capacity has increased by 50 percent, as 
the share of renewables in new investment has been rising.
    Unlike oil and natural gas, which are found and produced 
around the world, the production of the main green minerals is 
quite concentrated. In 2019, for example, the top 3 extractors 
of copper and nickel produced more than half of global 
production alone. And the top 3 extractors of cobalt rare 
earths and lithium produced 75 to 85 percent of global 
production. In contrast, the top 3 producers of oil and natural 
gas, which both include the United States, produce less than 50 
percent of total global production.
    But this mining concentration actually pales in comparison 
to the concentration in processing, where China thoroughly 
dominates. China now processes the majority of the world's 
nickel, cobalt, lithium, graphite, manganese, and rare earths, 
which are all key inputs for wind turbines, solar panels, and 
batteries. For several of those categories such as graphite, 
manganese, and rare earths, China accounts for 80 to 100 
percent of global production.
    China's dominance goes beyond the processing itself. China 
also controls the manufacturing and production of lithium ion 
battery cells, anodes, and cathodes, and polysilicon wafers, 
crystalline silicon cells, and solar modules. What this means 
is that green energy is truly made in China. Thus, the vast 
spending from IRA subsidies will be spent on Chinese products 
and inputs, and enrich Chinese companies.
    Now, the IRA did include some incentives to try and bring 
back many of these inputs domestically. But the process of 
opening a new mine stretches for many years, if not decades. 
New processing facilities will--unlikely to meet U.S. 
environmental standards, which, frankly, is part of why a lot 
of this production happens in China today. Some final assembly 
of imported Chinese components will probably happen in the U.S. 
and often foreign-owned facilities in order to gain the IRA 
subsidy eligibility. But that facade cannot hide what is 
actually happening, which is a long way of saying that green 
energy will not be made in the USA any time soon. To subsidize 
green energy today is to subsidize China.
    For decades, the primary goal of American energy policy has 
been security of supply to ensure that the United States can 
rely on itself for energy supplies in the event of a conflict 
or crisis. Just in the last five years, we have just about 
achieved that energy security that had been so elusive for so 
long. The U.S. is a net exporter of oil, natural gas, coal, and 
refined products, and what oil we still import mostly comes 
from Canada and Mexico. Yet the avowed goal of the IRA is to 
throw away that hard-earned security and replace our entire 
energy system with inferior green alternatives sourced from 
overseas.
    To put this in context, at the peak, in 2001, the United 
States relied on the Middle East for 23 percent of our oil 
needs. That was viewed as a national security crisis. The U.S. 
currently imports 74 percent of our rare earth needs from 
China, with many other green metal needs over 50 percent. There 
is no prospect of that changing in the near future. Yet we are 
intentionally seeking to increase reliance on these Chinese 
energy sources.
    The security issue goes beyond merely China's control of 
the inputs of the green energy system. An electric grid that is 
more reliant on intermittent sources is more fragile and 
expensive. This weaker, more expensive grid is more susceptible 
to failures, be they weather events, human error, or deliberate 
damage, because there is not a strong reserve of stable, 
dispatchable generation.
    The IRA energy subsidies are pushing the U.S. towards more 
expensive and less reliable electricity, while also discarding 
America's energy security in favor of dependence on China. 
That--we get this supposedly in return for a small degree of 
reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, even though the 
magnitude of that reduction is questionable once you calculate 
Chinese manufacturing and the overbuilding of the grid.
    It might seem incredible to the average voter to believe 
that we would be consciously replacing domestic energy with 
unreliable, expensive, foreign-controlled energy, but that is 
the net effect of the subsidies in the IRA.
    Thank you for the opportunity.
    [The statement of Mr. Stein follows:]

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    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Thank you, sir.
    Mr. Ginn, you are recognized.

   STATEMENT OF VANCE GINN, SENIOR FELLOW, AMERICANS FOR TAX 
                             REFORM

    Mr. GINN. Chairman Smith, members of the committee, my name 
is Dr. Vance Ginn. I am the president of Ginn Economic 
Consulting, senior fellow at Americans for Tax Reform, and 
chief economist at the Pelican Institute for Public Policy. I 
was also the associate director for economic policy at the 
Office of Management and Budget in 2019 and 2020.
    And when--yesterday was Tax Day. And we have got an issue 
here where we are looking at taxes, what was in the Inflation 
Reduction Act and the massive amount of debt, excessive 
government spending that is hitting the nation. I think this is 
a major fiscal crisis that we are looking at, an economic 
threat that is very large for the American people across the 
nation that is driven by excessive spending.
    But at the same time, we do have a tax problem in this 
sense--usually excessive spending problem, which it is, but now 
we are seeing how taxes are also influencing the economy and 
taking a pretty big hit, overall. We have got about $31 
trillion in national debt, which amounts to $95,000 owed per 
tax--per American, or $250,000 per taxpayer.
    The CBO estimates we are going to have an average of $2 
trillion a year in--just in the deficit annually, and nearly $1 
trillion pretty soon on the net interest payments on the debt. 
This is a massive amount of an issue. Along with rising 
interest rates, we are also seeing slow economic growth. Last 
year, when you look at the fourth quarter of 2021 to the fourth 
quarter of 2022, there was 0.9 percent growth, and the overall 
economy was the slowest from Q4 over Q4 on record during a so-
called recovery.
    So I think what we really need to be focused on, as well, 
is reining in government spending, passing responsible American 
budgets that grow no more than the means of the--of taxpayers 
across the country. And I think we would be in a much better 
position.
    And that fiscal crisis has been increased dramatically by 
the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which--inflation is 
still at a multi-decade high of over five percent, still 
running pretty hot. I think we have still got some increases in 
inflation that is moving forward, as well. So it is something 
that really needs to be looked at.
    And so when you are breaking down what is in the Inflation 
Reduction Act, the CBO's estimate of $391 billion last year, 
there have been more estimates that have come out that show 
this is closer to $1.2 trillion, more than 3 times as much as 
what was initially estimated just last year at a huge cost to 
the American taxpayer over time, along with a lot of the green 
energy agenda, other things that are a part of this for 
unreliable sources of energy that are putting money into the 
situation of picking winners and losers throughout this overall 
economy.
    Some of this has been because of, you know, the incentives 
matter. When you start handing out taxpayer dollars, there will 
be an increase in EV production, and we have seen that. So 
those estimates have been changed compared to what was done 
last year.
    There is also Treasury guidance that has changed some of 
the dynamics of how much the costs were going to be within the 
Inflation Reduction Act, and also looking at the electric 
vehicle, you know, battery cells and modules and what those 
costs were going to be. CBO initially estimated those to be $30 
billion, and now the estimate, when you look at $45 for these 
batteries per kilowatt hour, are being closer to $196 billion, 
nearly $200 billion, nearly 7 times what CBO initially 
estimated just last year. This is quite remarkable when you 
think about it, that--the cost to taxpayers of what this is 
going to do.
    And there is still a lot more that is going to be done. I 
mean, even Senator Manchin said recently, when he looked at the 
Treasury's recent guidance, he said in a press release, ``The 
guidance released by the Department of Treasury completely 
ignores the intent of the Inflation Reduction Act. It is a 
pathetic excuse to spend more taxpayer dollars as quickly as 
possible, and further control--cedes further control to the 
Chinese Communist Party in the process.''
    And so, as has been mentioned before, this will mean more 
production in other countries, one of those being in China. So 
what are the concerns with that?
    There are a lot of concerns that have been discussed over 
time. But also looking at the defining eligibility, there are 
still going to be additional eligibility requirements coming 
out of Treasury. What sort of effects will those have on the 
estimates that were done?
    You know, in economics trade-offs matter, incentives 
matter. The amount of money that is being spent of taxpayer 
dollars continues to matter. And we want more money in the 
pockets of taxpayers, so that way they can put food on the 
table, save for a rainy day, and things of that nature. And as 
we are spending more, running up deficits and debt, we are 
crowding out the productive private sector of our economy, and 
we are picking winners and losers in the process.
    So our hope is that Congress and others will look at re-
estimating the high cost of the Inflation Reduction Act, and 
finding ways to start to look at what those costs really mean 
to taxpayers in the process as you move forward here in this 
committee and in others.
    So, you know, given the economic situation that is 
happening right now, slowing growth, slow growth last year, you 
know, Americans have faced 24 consecutive months of declining 
real wages in inflation-adjusted wages year over year. This is 
not a good situation. So I hope that you will take a re-look at 
the--estimating the Inflation Reduction Act's cost.
    Thank you for your time, and I look forward to your 
questions.
    [The statement of Mr. Ginn follows:]

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    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Thank you, sir.
    Mr. Beachy, you are recognized.

 STATEMENT OF BEN BEACHY, VICE PRESIDENT OF MANUFACTURING AND 
             INDUSTRIAL POLICY, BLUEGREEN ALLIANCE

    Mr. BEACHY. Thank you, Chair Smith, Ranking Member Chu, and 
the distinguished members of the committee. My name is Ben 
Beachy, and I am the vice president of manufacturing and 
industrial policy at the BlueGreen Alliance, which is a 
national partnership of labor unions and environmental 
organizations.
    At the BlueGreen Alliance it is our belief that we should 
not have to choose between good jobs, a livable climate, and a 
fairer economy. The Inflation Reduction Act is the nation's 
most full-throated embrace to date of this essential truth.
    Addressing climate change requires us to build a clean 
economy, and that offers real opportunities to create good jobs 
for workers and to invest in hard-hit communities. This win-
win-win for climate, jobs, and justice is embedded in many of 
the IRA's more than 100 climate and clean energy programs. I 
will zoom in on the law's investments in manufacturing.
    As we build the growing clean energy economy, we face a 
clear choice. We can continue to hitch our climate goals to 
vulnerable overseas supply chains that are marred by labor 
abuses, higher levels of pollution, and shipping bottlenecks, 
or we can build our clean energy future on a foundation of good 
jobs, clean manufacturing, a reliable industrial base, and 
greater equity. The investments in the Inflation Reduction Act 
decisively put us on the latter path, offering more than $50 
billion in landmark investments to revitalize manufacturing for 
the clean economy.
    The IRA's clean manufacturing investments alone will create 
an estimated 900,000 good jobs over the next decade, according 
to recent economic analysis. The law's total climate 
investments are expected to create more than nine million jobs. 
This offers an unparalleled opportunity for hard-hit workers 
and communities to reap the economic gains of climate action. 
Many of the jobs will be in communities in both Republican and 
Democratic districts that have been hollowed out by decades of 
divestment and de-industrialization.
    By creating good manufacturing jobs in the hardest-hit for 
the hardest-hit workers, including Black and low-income 
workers, we have the opportunity to counter the racial and 
economic inequality fed by manufacturing job losses; the 
opportunity to build the clean economy with union labor, not 
forced labor overseas.
    And we are already starting to see the results. As Ranking 
Member Chu named, within six months of President Biden's 
signature on the Inflation Reduction Act, companies have 
announced a wave of solar, battery, and other clean tech 
manufacturing investments that will create more than 100,000 
jobs across 31 states. That is faster than anyone predicted.
    The IRA's onshoring incentives also support our climate 
goals. You know, much has been said already this morning about 
the extreme concentration of clean tech manufacturing overseas, 
that 97 percent of the wafers used in solar panels are made in 
China, that China also makes 3 out of 4 of the world's electric 
vehicle batteries. The IRA's historic domestic manufacturing 
investments are squarely aimed at solving that very problem. 
The law rightly recognizes that ensuring access to clean energy 
means making more of the nuts and bolts here at home.
    The pandemic has taught us much about the dangers of heavy 
dependency on vulnerable supply chains for essential goods. 
That is as true for clean energy as it was for N95 masks. 
Overseas corporations also tend to produce more emissions than 
U.S. factories in making the aluminum and steel that go into 
our clean energy goods. Solar panels, for example, are about 85 
percent aluminum, and producing the average ton of aluminum in 
China causes 65 percent more climate pollution than in the 
United States.
    To meet our climate goals, we need to invest in clean, 
reliable domestic supply chains for clean energy. That is what 
the IRA does. In short, it changes the game. The law finally 
reverses the untenable status quo. It attaches clean energy 
expansion to manufacturing job growth, while detaching clean 
energy from vulnerable imports. It marks an overdue return to 
smart industrial policy by investing in industries that are 
strategically imperative not only for climate action, but also 
a thriving and more just economy. That is a win-win-win: a win 
for the workers now taking good union jobs; for the hard-hit 
communities seeing investments for the first time in decades; 
and for all of us who seek a livable climate.
    Thank you again for the opportunity to speak today.
    [The statement of Mr. Beachy follows:]

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    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. I want to thank you all for 
your testimony, and we will now proceed to the question-and-
answer session.
    And I will first start with you, Mr. Turner. Rural, 
working-class communities, as taxpayers, will be on the hook to 
pay for these green energy subsidies. Meanwhile, analysis has 
shown that these special interest tax breaks in the Inflation 
Reduction Act overwhelmingly flow into the pockets of large 
financial institutions three times more than any other 
industry. Large corporations with sales in excess of $1 billion 
receive over 90 percent of all these tax breaks. Companies who 
make more than $1 billion received 90 percent of the Democrats' 
green handouts. That is not helping working-class families. 
That is not helping rural communities. That is helping their 
political buddies.
    So will rural working-class communities benefit from these 
credits, Mr. Turner?
    Mr. TURNER. Thank you for the question, Mr. Chairman. Rural 
Americans bear the brunt of these last couple of years since 
the pandemic.
    A study I found out of Iowa State University talked about 
how rural Americans' cost of living have increased 9.2 percent. 
Their earnings have only increased 2.6 percent. Rural Americans 
are paying more than $2,500 a year in gasoline than they did a 
couple of years ago. And that makes sense: rural Americans have 
longer commutes to work, to the grocery store, et cetera. 
Expenses now consume 93 percent of rural take-home pay. Two 
years ago it was eighty-five percent. So there is a lot less 
available cash, just liquid cash for rural Americans to 
suffer--to have at their advantage.
    I used personal analysis of what the Biden Administration 
is offering to rural Americans. I like to think I am a good 
ambassador for rural America. I was up at 4:00 this morning to 
do a couple of hours of farm work before I drove here. So I am 
from rural America. I use the Virginia estimator--because I 
live out in rural Virginia--for their solar panels. The average 
cost for my solar panels for my farm would be around $38,500. 
Now, with the Federal rebate it would be $26,900. But I still 
have to come out of pocket $26,900.
    There is still a problem. That doesn't work at night-time, 
which is a drawback, I think you could say, to solar panel 
because there is a thing called night, and it is not going away 
anytime soon. So I would need to add another $12,000 worth of 
batteries on top of that.
    Now, this would save me maybe about $125 a month in my 
electric bill. But to offset that cost, I need about 18 years, 
while the average lifespan of a solar panel is 20 years. And 
that is to assume that it doesn't break, it doesn't get hit by 
a hail storms--which we have in rural America--it doesn't have 
any roof damage, et cetera.
    So what are my savings? And what they say to me as a 
response is, well, then you should go to the bank and get a 
loan. And to your point, Mr. Chairman, financial institutions 
receive the bulk of this. So they get the tax benefits on the 
upfront, but then I am supposed to take out a loan at 9.5 
percent APR to pay for these solar panels.
    And I can say the same about electric vehicles. Motortrend 
did a very good study on a famous pickup truck that the 
President drove around in. Not to knock the pickup truck, but 
the pickup truck was incapable of hauling 8,000 pounds more 
than 100 miles. I haul 900-pound steers often enough to know 
that that pickup truck is absolutely useless. Well, that pickup 
truck is close to $100,000. What is the response? Here is a 
$7,500 rebate, and finance the rest.
    So it is not made for the farmer in mind. The green 
subsidies are not made for rural Americans in mind. We are 
paying with our tax dollars for benefits and subsidies that 
others--the wealthy, quite frankly--are getting.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Thank you.
    Mr. Horn, the unfortunate truth is that, instead of making 
us more independent for the minerals and components needed in 
electric vehicles, the structure of the Inflation Reduction Act 
credits and the subsequent regulation have actually 
supercharged demand in China and made us more reliant on them. 
Can you shed some light on how the Inflation Reduction Act and 
the Biden Administration's interpretation of the law is 
emboldening China, increasing the Chinese Communist Party's 
ability to spread its harmful influence?
    Mr. HORN. Mr. Chairman, I want to be clear about a few 
things. I am in no way, shape, or form against technological 
advancement, or energy efficiency, or any of these other 
developments. And I am not here today to debate or even speak 
so much on acting and standing U.S. law as I am to try and 
recommend closing loopholes and solutions that move things 
forward.
    I think there is some intent that may have been missed in 
execution when we talk about some of the recent bills and 
legislation that has been impacted. And I think that it doesn't 
take into consideration the nature of some of the adversaries 
that we are dealing with around the world.
    When you take the Chinese Communist Party--and I want to 
take a moment to say Chinese Communist Party, not the Chinese 
people, but an extension of the government in communist China 
that looks to exploit and predatorily take advantage of folks 
all over the world--you are dealing with a very complex and 
sophisticated entity. It is one that watches us, that has 
massive resources, that looks at everything we do, and looks 
for any moment of weakness or access to exploit a loophole so 
that it can take advantage and use it against us.
    So while the Inflation Reduction Act is meant to build 
domestic energy supply chains, to build domestic green energy 
materials sourcing, what it has done in effect, without the 
proper enforcement, is allow workarounds for Chinese state-
subsidized, state-owned entities to infiltrate inside our 
country, and to actually work against the very intent of the 
actual legislation and the IRA itself.
    So what I would say is that it really comes down to proper 
enforcement. And what we have right now is a situation where, 
with the loopholes, it is actually going to lead to a worsening 
of the problem if we don't close those.
    And I would just like to summarize and finalize that by 
saying that American solutions do exist. And there is an 
effective lobby out there that tries to dissuade from the fact 
that they are not that far and not as far from coming online. 
But they have to be legitimate, they have to be truly American, 
and they have to be solutions that, once they have assistance 
in time that is initially given from government subsidies and 
involvement, can stand on their own. And those need to be given 
the true ability to grow and to flourish.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Thank you, Mr. Horn.
    Adding on to the loopholes that Mr. Horn just was 
suggesting, Mr. Stein, both Chinese and American companies are 
getting creative in the ways in which they partner to exploit 
these taxpayer-funded credits to take advantage of this massive 
new windfall.
    [Slide]
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. As you can see from the 
headline in the poster right beside me, Ford will build a U.S. 
battery factory with technology from China. That is in 
Michigan. Can you walk us through how a foreign company like 
the Chinese battery maker CATL, which is partnering with Ford 
on EVs, can gain economic benefits from this green handout 
regime?
    Mr. STEIN. Sure. So the IRA has many tiers of stackable tax 
credits that go into all these incentives. And at the 
foundational level for this battery factory, there is a tax 
credit for manufacturing the batteries here. And that is open 
to anybody. There is no domestic input requirements. That is 
just having the factory physically located in the United 
States.
    Now, there is additional requirements if you want to--for 
the EV tax credits that--you know, the national sourcing 
requirements, what countries they are coming from, and that 
sort of thing. But that is on top of other subsidies. So the--
there is already--there is an immediate economic benefit from 
the--just having the physical factory here, even if it is 
assembling things that are all coming from China.
    In the same sense, because they can count as a minority 
partner, when you start talking about foreign entity of concern 
issues, if they are a minority partner, and Ford is officially 
the majority owner, does that qualify as foreign entity of 
concern? I would be willing to bet that the Treasury is going 
to read that as broadly as possible.
    So--and again, the--when we talk about critical minerals 
and mining, there is no requirements that those actually come 
from the United States. Those can be produced by affiliates of 
the Chinese company brought from China, or shipped from their 
mines in Indonesia or Congo through China, and eventually make 
it to here.
    So we get a--this is what I mentioned about there is a 
facade of domestic production of these things, but everything 
going on in the background, the entire supply chain, is still 
controlled by the China, Chinese companies, and, ultimately, 
the Chinese Government.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Yes, the Chinese Government is 
populating off of our green tax credits from the Inflation 
Reduction Act.
    Mr. Ginn, the Inflation Reduction Act is at the heart of 
the tax credits we are talking about today. That bill was sold 
to the American public as a plan to do just that, bring down 
inflation by reducing our deficit. You recently penned a report 
looking at the cost of the Inflation Reduction Act, and 
specifically these tax subsidies. The projected costs to the 
American taxpayers have skyrocketed. To what do you attribute 
this increase, and how high could these costs go?
    Mr. GINN. Mr. Chairman, you are right. This--we recently 
looked at some of the data that is coming out, the latest 
information that wouldn't have been available last year when 
CBO was doing their estimates on the number of EV vehicles that 
are being produced.
    I mean, if you give tax breaks--incentives matter, right? 
And so you start to do more production along those lines 
compared with others.
    Also, some of the new Treasury guidance that has come out 
along the lines of what was in the Inflation Reduction Act, a 
combination of those things has contributed to an increasing 
cost of those EV tax credits for battery cells and modules. CBO 
initially estimated it to be $30.6 billion last year. There is 
a range of estimates now, but if you look at the $45 tax credit 
that goes for these electric vehicle batteries, the higher end 
along with the increasing number of them, there is a 100--that 
would be $196.5 billion, which is a 540 percent increase 
compared to--or a higher amount compared to what CBO estimated 
just last year. And that is given some assumptions. And so it 
could be even higher than that, depending on how many 
vehicles--or batteries are being produced, how many vehicles 
are sold, things of that nature.
    And again, as has been mentioned earlier, a lot of this is 
going to upper-income folks, big businesses, and that sort of 
thing, at the same time not doing much to reduce inflationary 
pressures in the economy.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Thank you. I now recognize the 
acting ranking member, Ms. Chu, for any questions.
    Ms. CHU. Mr. Beachy, the IRA includes entirely new 
requirements in the tax code for domestic content, which 
incentivizes companies to onshore manufacturing of clean energy 
technology like solar panels, wind turbines, and electric 
vehicle batteries, just to name a few. How will this help the 
U.S. economy?
    Mr. BEACHY. Thank you. I appreciate the question.
    The first way it will help the U.S. economy is good jobs. 
You know, decades of bad policy saw the outsourcing of 
factories as good for efficiency. That logic was dead wrong. 
Workers lost a primary source of high-paying union jobs, 
communities lost tax revenue, and our nation lost the 
industrial base that is the backbone of most modern economies.
    Now, I mentioned that the law's manufacturing investments 
alone are projected to create at least 900,000 good jobs over 
the next decade. Job quality matters just as much as job 
quantity, of course. And it is important to note that 
manufacturing jobs tend to pay better, have better benefits, 
and better access to unions than on average, particularly for 
workers without a four-year degree.
    The second way that this would support our economy is these 
investments could help us to build a more equitable economy 
specifically by redressing the economic and racial inequality 
that has been fed by manufacturing job losses. You know, 
manufacturing job losses were actually concentrated among low-
income communities and communities of color, particularly among 
Black workers. If we grow clean manufacturing in a targeted 
manner, it can help to reverse these trends as part of a 
broader strategy to build a more just economy.
    The third thing I will name is energy security. You know, 
we need more reliable supply chains for energy security, which 
is a critical component of economic security. I had mentioned 
that, you know, the pandemic has taught us much here, and the 
need to have a local supply of essential goods is just as true 
for clean energy as it was for N95 masks.
    In short, you know, we should not expose our clean energy 
future to shipping bottlenecks and geopolitical conflicts. You 
know, that--those are three ways, essentially, that the IRA's 
manufacturing investments alone could support a stronger and 
fairer economy.
    Ms. CHU. Mr. Beachy, you mentioned that this will help 
those economies in communities that are low-income and 
communities of color. These environmental justice communities 
are more prone to flooding, extreme heat, and air pollution, 
and it is our responsibility to ensure that they experience the 
economic benefits of the clean energy transition.
    Can you expand on the ways that the IRA is supporting 
communities impacted by environmental, economic, and racial 
injustice?
    Mr. BEACHY. Yes, thank you.
    I want to first make clear that we do not speak on behalf 
of any environmental justice groups. They speak for themselves. 
But we have been happy to support their leadership in this 
domain.
    You know, the Biden Administration created the Justice40 
Initiative to help dismantle the structural racism in our 
society, and ensure that investments such as those from the IRA 
go to the most hard-hit communities. That includes 
disadvantaged communities, and--which is a broad category. It 
includes communities that have been enduring disproportionate 
air and water pollution and environmental injustice; 
communities that have been enduring disproportionate risks from 
flooding and storms and droughts, as you named; communities 
that have been experiencing economic insecurity, low-income, 
higher unemployment due to deindustrialization and divestment; 
and of course, structural racism that is interwoven through 
each of these burdens.
    The application of Justice40 to the investments in the 
Inflation Reduction Act is--sometimes it has explicit set-
asides for disadvantaged communities, and in other cases we see 
the Biden Administration putting forth guidance showing that 
the projects will be prioritized to the extent that they invest 
in these hard-hit communities.
    Ms. CHU. And can you also say a few words about the IRA's 
requirements for prevailing wages and apprenticeships? How will 
these increased wages strengthen the clean energy transition?
    Mr. BEACHY. Yes, it is critical to pair these investments 
in our clean energy future with high-road jobs. Clean energy is 
clearly the energy of the future. We want to make sure that the 
jobs in clean energy are also the jobs of the future. That 
requires that they be prevailing wage--prevailing wage 
standards be met, as well as apprenticeship programs. To get 
the full value of the tax credit, solar and wind developers 
simply have to pay their workers well, and they have to ensure 
pathways to longstanding careers that can sustain families.
    That is--for the first time in our history, we are tying 
clean energy to high-quality job standards.
    Ms. CHU. Thank you, I yield back.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. I now recognize Mr. Buchanan 
from Florida.
    Mr. BUCHANAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, a critical hearing. 
And I want to thank all our witnesses.
    Everybody wants to take a different tack, and I want to 
focus a little bit on the spending, because we got the debt 
ceiling, and what is really taking place here where we have got 
an estimate of $275 billion, and it ends up--they are 
claiming--Wall Street Journal and others are claiming it could 
be $1.3 trillion.
    You look at the last 20 years, frankly, we have--our 
taxes--basically, spending has gone up $20 trillion in 20 
years. So there is plenty of blame to go wrong. But I am 
talking about being competitive. It also--your balance sheet, 
we are getting weaker and weaker as a nation.
    I would like to--Mr. Ginn, what is your thoughts? Just in 
terms of the fact that we get an estimate, it is a trillion 
over. As a business guy for a lot of years, it seems like you 
need to cap it. If you want to do 250 or 300, pick a number, 
you cap it. When the money runs out, it runs out. But in this 
case, it runs on, and it could run on $1.32 trillion, but it is 
going to add to the deficit and make us a weaker nation.
    Mr. GINN. Thank you, Mr. Buchanan. You are correct, 
Congressman. This is a massive amount of spending that has been 
going on for a number of years now.
    If you look at the last 20 years, the national debt has 
increased by $18.5 trillion. And if we had just matched 
something like population growth plus inflation, sort of a 
spending limit type of rule that even Colorado and many other 
states have, the increase in the debt would only have been $500 
billion. So it would have been an $18 trillion swing in the 
direction that is positive for taxpayers in the process, 
because this debt matters. This debt has got to be paid back at 
some point. We are paying higher and higher interest on that 
debt as the overnight lending rate between banks set by the 
Federal Reserve is at five percent. It could continue to go up, 
given inflation is also elevated.
    And so I think that these things are going to continue to 
have a larger and larger cost And if something like the 
Inflation Reduction Act, around $300 billion, can go up to $1.2 
trillion in such a short period of time, we need to have a 
better handle of that----
    Mr. BUCHANAN. Let me real quick----
    Mr. GINN. Yes, sir.
    Mr. BUCHANAN. This year interest is going to be on the debt 
$400 trillion; 10 years, $1.2 trillion. It will be bigger than 
our budget for national defense.
    Mr. GINN. Yes, sir.
    Mr. BUCHANAN. Mr. Horn, let me ask you. In terms of looking 
at trade, it seems like we are not even on the field, we are 
not in the stand. I have been to Africa multiple times. You see 
the Chinese are very active and engaged, building roads and 
bridges and, of course, doing all the mining and other things 
that they are doing.
    What is your sense in terms of where we are at from a trade 
standpoint, and are we competing at all with the Chinese and 
other countries?
    But I look at primarily the Chinese and what they are doing 
with a billion people in Africa.
    Mr. HORN. That is a great point, Congressman. We are not in 
the game and we need to get in the game.
    The reality is that the Chinese, the Russians, other 
countries are making great strides forward by taking advantage 
of these massive resources throughout the globe.
    The United States used to be the leader in this space. This 
was an area that we dominated and led the world in until we 
started offshoring it in the 1990s. And we have continued to do 
that since. We have the capability to lead the world again in 
this space, not only by developing resources abroad, but by 
processing them and exporting them from our own shores, as 
well, too.
    Mr. BUCHANAN. And let me just mention I am confident we 
have the companies and the capacity and potential leadership, 
but we have got to get in the game, and we are not in the game. 
We are not on the field. And I am very concerned about that. 
Nobody wants to spend any more money, but that is probably a 
pretty good investment. We have got a lot of people that are on 
the ground, but we have got to make sure we are committed to 
trade and competing. And I think, if we compete, we can be 
competitive, but we are not.
    Mr. Stein, what is your thought in terms of the trade 
aspect, in terms of where we are at compared to the Chinese and 
others, in terms of what is going on in trade?
    Mr. STEIN. Well, part of what the Chinese have done is a 
very deliberate policy, and it is driven by state, state-backed 
organizations and state-backed banks. And they have given out 
loans, and they have bought mines, they have built processing 
facilities. Even countries that have tried to--like Indonesia--
tried to increase the amount of nickel processing that actually 
goes on domestically in order to improve their own trade 
balance, well, Chinese companies have come in and built a bunch 
of processing facilities that they own, and that product is 
then shipped on to China to be used.
    So they--this is a very active and conscious, state-driven 
policy all over the world to get access to these minerals to 
control their processing. And it is very much a forward-
looking, centrally-planned system.
    So--and it is something that, you know, as a free market, 
more free market country in the United States, we don't think 
that way. Our--you know, individual companies might do long-
term planning, but this is part of why this is dangerous to 
increase reliance on some of these----
    Mr. BUCHANAN. Yes. Let me just close and just say that I 
know we can compete with a lot of countries--Japan, China, 
everybody else--but we have got to get back on the playing 
field in an aggressive way. And we have got a lot of capacity, 
a lot of great people, but we don't have the leadership, for 
whatever reason, in this area, this space.
    Thank you, and I yield back.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. The gentleman from California, 
Mr. Thompson, is recognized.
    Mr. THOMPSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the 
witnesses for being here today.
    You know, Mr. Chairman, I really seriously thank you for 
calling today's hearing. It is not every day that the minority 
gets such a generous opportunity to talk about all the good 
work that we have done.
    I would like to start by making a simple point of 
comparison. In the last Congress Democrats on this committee 
advanced legislation, the Green Act, which ultimately served as 
the climate portion of the Inflation Reduction Act. It was the 
biggest investment in fighting climate change in our country's 
history.
    That bill was specifically drafted to incentivize the use 
of domestically-manufactured goods. It includes very clear 
incentives for companies to use steel, iron, and other 
manufactured products sourced from right here in the United 
States. It includes very clear requirements that, to access 
these tax credits, companies must pay good wages. Credits for 
solar energy, wind energy, geothermal energy for fuel cells, 
for hydropower, to maximize any of these credits companies have 
to use domestically-produced materials and pay domestic workers 
a good wage.
    On the other hand, the last time the Republicans were in 
charge their sole legislative accomplishment was the 2017 
Republican tax act/giveaway. It did not distinguish at all 
between the U.S. and Chinese businesses. In fact, according to 
JCT, foreign investors, including the Chinese Sovereign Wealth 
Fund, got a $345 billion tax cut.
    And on top of that, because my Republican colleagues are 
completely unwilling to pay the debts they racked up when they 
slashed taxes for the very, very rich and for corporations, the 
majority's first markup of this Congress was a debt 
prioritization bill that prioritized--wait for this--the 
Chinese bondholders.
    So just to recap, Democrats' signature bill invests in 
clean energy, directly boosts domestic manufacturing and energy 
production, moves us away from fossil fuels, and creates jobs 
here at home, while paying down $300 billion of our debt. The 
Republicans' signature bill in 2017 was fully available to 
Chinese companies and investors, added over $2 trillion to the 
debt, and primarily benefited very rich people and big 
corporations. And your first bill of this Congress prioritized 
Chinese debtors over America's seniors.
    The contrast is pretty clear to me, and I appreciate the 
chance to lay that out for the American people.
    Mr. Beachy, in your opening statement you said Americans 
shouldn't have to choose between good jobs and a livable 
climate and a fair economy. I agree with you 100 percent. Could 
you please talk a little more about how the incentives in the 
Inflation Reduction Act will create good-paying jobs for 
American workers?
    Mr. BEACHY. Absolutely, thank you for the question. So I 
just mentioned that--and when it comes to clean energy 
deployment, the bill explicitly makes ties--the expansion of 
clean energy deployment--to high road labor standards for the 
first time in U.S. history. You know, for far too long we have 
seen a discrepancy in the quality of jobs between the clean 
energy sector and the traditional energy sectors. This bill, 
this law, the IRA, aims to close that gap.
    Again, wind and solar developers, it makes good business 
sense for them to take advantage of the higher tax credit by 
ensuring there is a prevailing wage for workers and high road 
apprenticeship programs to ensure a pathway to sustainable 
careers.
    In addition, for the manufacturing sector, $50 billion 
being invested in our--in manufacturing to really turn the tide 
of de-industrialization that we have seen in recent decades.
    Again, manufacturing jobs tend to offer higher wages, 
better benefits, and increased access to unions. So this is 
really an about-face for--to decades of policy that have 
ignored and left many workers behind.
    Mr. THOMPSON. Thank you very much.
    I just want to add, Mr. Turner, I read some of the things 
that you have posted online, talking about how there is no 
climate crisis, it is all communism. You know, just this week I 
have met with two oil companies, two major ag interests, one of 
which was grape growers from my area, and the shellfish 
growers, all of whom told me of deep concerns they have with 
climate change and everything that they are doing to having to 
deal with that. I don't think any of these people are 
communists. And I think saying something like this is pretty 
outrageous.
    I yield back.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Thank you, Mr. Thompson. For 
the record, I want to clarify a statement that you made. The 
very first piece of legislation that passed out of this 
committee was the Protecting Taxpayers and Victims of 
Unemployment Fraud.
    With that, Mr. Smith is recognized.
    Mr. SMITH of Nebraska. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Certainly, thank you to our witnesses for your engagement 
here today. I think it is important that we hear from all of 
you, even with mixed viewpoints. I think that that can be very 
healthy.
    I certainly appreciated the emphasis, Mr. Ginn, of your 
testimony on the ways the Biden Administration has 
exponentially grown the cost of the Inflation Act by ignoring, 
straight-up ignoring both the plain language of the bill, as 
well as the intent of its authors.
    I don't agree much with much of what is in the IRA, the so-
called IRA. There is nothing new there for anyone. But I do 
want to point out, however, that Senator Manchin has been 
extremely clear about his intent in negotiating the critical 
mineral requirements for the so-called Clean Vehicle Credit. 
That bill says critical minerals must be sourced in the U.S. or 
from a trade agreement partner, or recycled in North America. I 
appreciate that a number of my Democrat colleagues on this dais 
have expressed similar concerns about the Biden 
Administration's efforts to undermine that.
    Trade agreements are negotiated using trade promotion 
authority, and they are enacted through legislation passed by 
Congress and signed by the President. These critical mineral 
agreements fail to meet the standard, while giving away their 
largest benefit access to U.S. tax credits, while accruing no 
new benefits for American manufacturers or consumers. I would 
say workers are hurt in that process, as well. Every time the 
Biden Administration takes administrative action like expanding 
the scope of these tax credits through critical mineral 
agreements, it increases the cost of that legislation. To state 
the obvious, that increased spending does not reduce inflation. 
In fact, it increases it.
    Mr. Ginn, you covered some of my concerns about the Biden 
Administration's expansive view of trade agreements in your 
testimony. I appreciate that. The size of the economies, let me 
say, that the Administration is negotiating with in these 
critical minerals agreements--for example, UK, EU, and Japan--
have a combined GDP of more than $25 trillion, far outweighing 
the size of the economies of the countries we actually 
currently have comprehensive, true comprehensive trade 
agreements with. Those 20 countries have a combined GDP of just 
under $10 billion.
    From those numbers alone, I would assume the cost of the 
credits flowing out to other countries would vastly increase. 
Mr. Ginn, can you speak to that?
    Mr. GINN. Thank you, Congressman, and I think you are 
right. Part of this is going to other countries, especially 
with the new rules that are being put out, and going to 
countries that don't need these sort of benefits. I think this 
is something that we should ultimately be looking at. If it is 
really an inflation reduction act, you have got to look at 
reducing the debt, reducing how much we are spending at the end 
of the day, because, otherwise, this just increases the debt, 
crowds out the private sector, is inflated away, and it reduces 
our purchasing power in the process.
    And at the same time that we are benefiting, you know, 
other countries and things of that nature, that is a huge 
trade-off for the American people as a whole, and I think it is 
another downside of the Inflation Reduction Act.
    Mr. SMITH of Nebraska. Thank you. I have concerns that, 
even though I think there were probably some good intentions 
with the legislation that was passed last year--of course, I 
certainly maintain my objection--but some of those good 
intentions as they are applied to, as we heard, over 100 
programs, intentionally going against what market forces there 
might be or market-based dynamics, whether it is wages, input 
costs, or even the output impacts, I just have concerns that 
there can be great intentions, but as has happened all too 
often around this place, actual results are sometimes opposite 
to what the intentions were. That is the foundation of my 
concerns.
    And I hope that we can have the discussions we need to have 
to address the fact that, fiscally, this legislation is getting 
away from us. And I would hope that there is either an 
explanation of how we can rein that in with a strategy to do 
so, or certainly, I would hope, some acknowledgment that at 
least we need to have the conversations to do something 
legislatively to take a stronger, more fiscally responsible 
position.
    Thank you. I yield back.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Mr. Larson is recognized.
    Mr. LARSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to 
associate myself with the remarks of Mr. Thompson, and also 
start by asking Mr. Beachy and thanking you and all of our 
witnesses for your testimony.
    But, Mr. Beachy, are you a card-carrying member of the 
Communist Party, or is the BlueGreen Alliance aligned with the 
Communist Party? Is the Sierra Club, are they aligned, to your 
knowledge, with the Communist Party?
    Mr. BEACHY. I appreciate the question, sir. No.
    Mr. LARSON. Well, thank you for that. And Mr. Beachy, Mr. 
Thompson was talking about a couple of points, but the 
Inflation Reduction Act, what is your estimate in terms of the 
jobs that the Inflation Reduction Act will create?
    Mr. BEACHY. So it is not our estimate. We actually 
commissioned a proper economic analysis from the Political 
Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts.
    Mr. LARSON. Well, let me ask you before you go any further, 
are they a communist organization?
    Mr. BEACHY. Thank you for clarifying. They are not.
    Their analysis shows that, over the next decade, the 
climate and clean energy investments in this law would create 
over nine million good jobs, and that is across sectors. I 
mentioned the 900,000 for manufacturing. There is actually 
about five million jobs that would be created in clean energy, 
thanks to the rapid expansion of clean energy deployment fueled 
by this bill. There is jobs to retrofit buildings to make them 
more energy efficient and healthier for residents. There is 
jobs to restore and protect our lands and build the resilience 
of our communities. There is jobs in agriculture for rural 
communities.
    The expanse of this bill reflects the fact that we have to 
restructure the economy to meet the challenges of climate, 
jobs, and justice. And in so doing we are creating over nine 
million good jobs.
    Mr. LARSON. Thank you, Mr. Beachy.
    And let me say that I think that China does represent a 
threat, and one that should be taken seriously, and that, 
hopefully, in a bipartisan fashion, that we can focus on this.
    I appreciated Mr. Horn's comments in terms of focusing on 
the industries of the future that we need to be investing in, 
and investing in it so that we regain our position that we have 
lost over decades. That will require Americans pulling together 
and making sure that we are making the kind of investments that 
will create 12 million new jobs and have unemployment at its 
current lowest level in 50 years.
    More needs to be done, especially on the investment side in 
the industries of the future. And with that, Mr. Chairman, I 
yield back my time.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Mr. Schweikert is recognized.
    Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I am going to 
direct this one to Mr. Stein, just because for some of us there 
is more than just the scale of industrial policy and the 
arrogance of Washington thinking. We understand what the next 
technological breakthrough is because, you know, we are all so 
brilliant up here.
    But, Mr. Stein, I live in the desert. I live outside 
Phoenix. We actually have an excess of power every afternoon. 
So our, actually, power rates crash to almost zero, because we 
produce excess photovoltaic, particularly in the summer months. 
But then this thing called the sun goes down, and we are still 
running our air conditioners.
    So a project we are working on--and it is bipartisan, you 
know, with my delegation--is we have all these lakes up and 
through this really rugged mountain territory just outside 
Phoenix, and we are going to pump water up when power is 
basically free up on top of the cliff, and then run it back 
down. So water is a battery.
    But the way the Orwellian-named Inflation Reduction Act 
definitions in--what is it, 42, and is it 40--also 48--does my 
hydro battery actually count as a battery under their 
definitions?
    Mr. STEIN. Well, not for the Battery Tax Credit in 
particular. It is the--it is chemical batteries that are--that 
count as----
    Mr. SCHWEIKERT. So it is not the elegance of what is 
storage and green, it was almost the elegance of, hey, we are 
going to give money to our favorite friends in industry.
    Mr. STEIN. Right. It is subsidizing an industry, yes.
    Mr. SCHWEIKERT. So back to--just another thing that has 
just driven me crazy is our brothers and sisters on the left 
promised us, hey, here is what these things are going to cost. 
And I would be willing to work with them saying, okay, can we 
hold everyone to our commitments? But we all see the 
information coming out. And yes, I couldn't do this without 
boards. So let's take a look.
    The cost estimates on the battery production credits when 
this piece of legislation was moved, our brothers and sisters 
on the left told us it would be $30.6 billion. That is what 
CBO--that is what we were told. We are now seeing estimates 
that it has as high as $196.5 billion. Would you be willing to 
take it back to what you told us it would be, what we told the 
American people it would be?
    So let's actually take a look at wind. The cost estimate on 
wind was going to be $11.2 billion. Now we are actually seeing 
that the scoring of the actual language--not what we were told, 
not what the American people were told, but what is now 64--
excuse me, $68.4 billion--and look, whether you want to do 
Credit Suisse, which, actually, I am not sure I would use, 
considering they are pretty much gone now. But Goldman actually 
came back and said, hey, it is not like $280 billion of 
handouts to big green corporations; it may be $1.2 trillion.
    Okay. Are you willing to actually put it back to the--at 
least cap it at that 280, which you told the American people 
and told us? Or do we actually say, well, Goldman is saying 
that the actual language, when scored out, is $1.2 trillion?
    Do I have anyone on the panel who has an expertise on 
explaining what happened here?
    Why are we now seeing four times the exposure to the 
American taxpayers?
    But can you imagine the distortive effects?
    And the last bit of my rambling is I know most of us 
probably showed up at our basic economics class. We have seen 
the numbers of how many Americans intend to buy electric 
vehicles. We are now going to give these huge subsidies, mostly 
to the very wealthy. And it is not actually changing, really, 
the number of people who intend to buy electric vehicles. We 
chose to subsidize something people were already going to do. 
We didn't, like, say--put in definitions saying, hey, we are 
going to focus on the research for iron air batteries, which 
could be done with all domestic, no foreign--you know, isn't 
this--be nice if you were actually concerned about a domestic 
product. Instead, we produced massive subsidies for very 
wealthy people for something they were already going to do. It 
is just the absurdity of what we are dealing with.
    So thank you for tolerating me, Mr. Chairman, but I feel 
better getting that off my chest.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Thank you.
    Mr. Blumenauer, you are recognized.
    Mr. BLUMENAUER. And it is important. We want you to feel 
better. [Laughter.]
    Mr. BLUMENAUER. You know, some of us, we are of a 
generation--in fact, this show is still being shown around the 
country, where Rocky and Bullwinkle--there was a feature that 
had Mr. Peabody and his boy, Sherman, and they had a wayback 
machine. And I am listening to the chairman describe what is 
wrong with what we did, and I am having a moment where I feel 
like I am in that wayback machine, because what the chairman 
said attacking it was almost exactly what some of us were 
saying six years ago for the Republican tax bill, only it was 
more generous to foreign companies, and the American people got 
less back, and it was concentrated at those who needed it the 
least.
    I am concerned about being trapped in the wayback machine. 
I started the week being concerned for the speaker, who was 
before the New York Stock Exchange sort of describing how we 
are going to dodge the bullet on dealing with the debt ceiling. 
And the poor guy could not explain what the Republican proposal 
is, because what he had to commit to be elected speaker was 
various things that don't pencil out.
    And so we are kind of lurching towards a potential crisis 
here. We are ignoring some of the very tangible results that 
have taken place during the Biden Administration. We are 
currently at a situation where the recent inflation is 2.7 
percent, the lowest that it has been in more than 2 years. The 
consumer price index increases have been the lowest since May 
2021, at 5 percent. Gas prices have dropped 17.4 percent since 
the spike that was occasioned by the invasion of Russia into 
Ukraine. We have record labor participation. And some of my 
most conservative concerns--friends are concerned about who is 
not working anymore. Labor participation is at its highest 
level in years. And in terms of the unemployment, it is the 
lowest that it has been in 40 years. And Black unemployment is 
now the lowest that it has been in history.
    I don't think the Biden economic proposals and management 
is a train wreck. Instead, it is very clear that this is 
working. It is not done yet. There are things that we want to 
do, things that we have put in place in the transition to a 
green economy, creating millions of jobs, some of which we are 
seeing in a number of the constituencies of my Republican 
friends. This is working.
    And I don't think any amount of going back into the wayback 
machine, ignoring--actually, that wasn't fair because the 
Republican bill actually included provisions that would have 
dramatically scaled back wind energy investment in their 
original bill, and had to be embarrassed by the committee to 
taking it out so that it really didn't wreck the proposals that 
we had going forward.
    I hope that we can move forward.
    I think it was you, Mr. Horn, that said something about 
responsible budgeting. I am all in favor of it. I hope that we 
will get an actual proposal from what the Republicans are going 
to do with their budget, what they are going to cut, how they 
reconcile it, and match it with the President and what we will 
do, and have an honest conversation instead of appearing in 
press statements, smoke and mirrors, and going back in the 
wayback machine. I don't think that gets us anywhere, and the 
American people deserve better.
    I appreciate your tolerance for my walk down memory lane. 
It was quite jarring as we started the committee. I--to quote 
Mr. Schweikert, I feel better getting that off my chest, and 
you can use my speech anytime.
    Thank you very much, and I yield back.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. We always want everyone to feel 
better in our committee. So thank you, Mr. Blumenauer. 
[Laughter.]
    Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mission accomplished.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. That is good.
    According to a new analysis from the Coalition for a 
Prosperous America, I would like to submit to the record the 
Chinese Communist Party is likely to receive a windfall of $125 
billion from these credits, which is more than half of what 
China plans to spend on their military this year.
    [The information follows:]

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    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Mr. Wenstrup is recognized.
    Mr. WENSTRUP. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Thank you all for being here today. You know, one of the 
things we hear about today is the crisis, the climate crisis, 
and there is a crisis, especially if you have been a victim of 
a drought or a fire or a hurricane. They all kill people. They 
all destroy lives. Science is real.
    Something to consider. You know, we use sunblock. Why? To 
prevent skin cancer from over-exposure to the sun. Yet at the 
same time, we need vitamin D. It is very important to our 
health, both situations. And, you know, I might be able to 
prescribe for someone a medication that would kill the virus or 
bacteria that is within you, but if it kills you too, it 
doesn't do much good.
    I would--will want to submit to the record an article here 
from the NOAA, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric 
Administration that is entitled, ``Study Reducing Human-Caused 
Air Pollution in North America and Europe Brings Surprise 
Result: More Hurricanes,'' a very scientific article from a 
Federal agency.

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    The point I am trying to make is you can over-prescribe 
sometimes, and we need to be careful about that. And if we 
over-prescribe to the point of killing people, it is a problem. 
And we need to take this very seriously.
    Look, I have solar panels, and I am on the grid. I drive a 
hybrid. All of these things. I am for all of the above. I am 
all for new technology. I am all for clean air, clean water. 
But science is real.
    And Mr. Beachy, you said win-win-win. It is not always a 
win, and this is clear evidence of that. If you look at what 
this says, what it says is where there has been too much 
diminished pollution, there is more hurricanes and more storms. 
Why? Because there is no longer a screen between the sun and 
the earth--warms the oceans, kicks it up, it does the same 
thing over the land. So you can over-prescribe and do more 
damage than good is the point I am trying to make.
    And let me just, you know, quote some things from this 
article. This is from 1980 to 2020. So without significant 
amounts of particulate pollution to reflect sunlight, the ocean 
absorbs more heat and warms faster. The decrease in pollution 
has led to a warming--global warming, right? Have we done it to 
ourselves?
    As I said, I am all for clean air, clean water, healthy 
people, especially as a physician. We have to take these types 
of things into consideration. It is creating more hurricanes 
and more storms. Here is a quote in the article: ``The ironic 
results suggest the necessity of careful policy decision-
making,'' which is what we do here. ``The ironic results 
suggest the necessity of careful policy decision-making in the 
future that considers the pros and cons of the multiple 
impacts.''
    We have to do that, so don't make this a religion, make it 
a science. And let's do what is right. Don't make it a 
political point, make it a scientific point. So Mr. Beachy, it 
is not a win-win-win, it is not. And the proof is here. Facts 
don't lie. And I suggest we be more careful. And maybe as a 
body here, we can work together scientifically to do things 
that are better for America.
    But my other grave concern in all of this is our dependence 
on an adversary. In so many ways our supply chains, our energy, 
everything else, we are going in the wrong direction. And I 
want to reiterate the national security risks that that brings.
    Mr. Horn, I know your military background. Thank you very 
much. Could you maybe relate to this committee some of your 
concerns about the national security risks that we take with 
some of these policies that are being promoted?
    Mr. HORN. I think we have to be realistic about the world 
that we live in. And when we look at state actors, adversaries 
across the world, they don't necessarily have our best 
interests in mind. There has been a number of articles that 
have come out just this week about the possibility of the 
People's Republic of China cutting off supply of a lot of these 
key materials which are needed not only for electrification and 
energy transfer, but defense critical uses, as well. We cannot 
afford to rely on them for our own capability to defend 
ourselves from them and others.
    Mr. WENSTRUP. And we end up feeding their military through 
our acquisitions.
    With that, I yield back.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Thank you. Mr. Pascrell is 
recognized.
    Mr. PASCRELL. Well, I think, Mr. Chairman, that this 
hearing is a farce.
    Let me start off very mildly. Republicans can't honestly 
attack the Inflation Reduction Act, so they are resorting to 
outright projection. The Inflation Reduction Act is the single 
largest investment--that is a critical word. When we spend 
money, the people's money, that is a qualifier. It must be an 
investment not just for the moment, but for the future. That is 
what investments are all about, whether you are in business or 
whether you are in government.
    So we are talking about manufacturing. We are talking about 
good union jobs, clean energy, and innovation. Read the law, 
what it says.
    Democrats passed historic bills last Congress protecting 
American industry and blocking benefits to Chinese communist 
companies. Look, last month we were socialist. This month we 
are communist. And I take exception to what you say and what 
you write. What do you think, you are going to scare us? What 
are we going to be next month? What is that hate speech going 
to bring? How does it instigate violence in this country? 
Communists, you write. We were the Greens at first. Really? I 
am not a communist. I am not a socialist. But that is what you 
said, sir. I respect your professionalism, but I don't respect 
any of your ideas that insult anybody on this side of the 
aisle, be it that side or this side.
    So Republicans overwhelmingly opposed our agenda, and 
certainly are no Mother Teresa on the Chinese Communist Party. 
Republicans left domestic protections out of the 2017 tax bill, 
nowhere to be found in that bill, and we are still discovering 
what was in that bill. I guess we didn't read it at first.
    The corporate tax breaks and offshore provisions were a 
boon to China. Read the bill.
    In 2018 Donald Trump vowed to protect a Chinese 
communications company from going bust after the party approved 
trademarks for a member of his family. In 2019 Donald Trump 
sold out on Hong Kong. Last week the leader of the Republican 
Party called the Chinese communist dictator the top of the line 
and a brilliant man. I never heard him say anything like that 
about somebody in this country, except that meets his 
ideological standards. So who in God's name do you think you 
are kidding? Where is the outrage? All we hear is silence on 
those things.
    The sad irony is the Democratic manufacturing agenda has 
benefited Republicans' own constituents. The Financial Times 
found that over 75 percent of the $204 billion in semiconductor 
and clean energy projects pledged since the Inflation Reduction 
Act, CHIPS Act have gone to GOP districts. Stop them. You don't 
want them? You didn't vote for them. But I bet you took a 
picture when I got some money, expand the business. How many of 
you took pictures with the infrastructure that voted no?
    Look, the jig is up. Certainly, don't listen to me. Listen 
to the polling that has been going on after everything you put 
before us and the people of this country. Republican districts. 
That is over 58,000 jobs for their communities. So you should 
be celebrating. Look at those districts that got plenty of 
benefits. But every Republican in Congress voted against the 
jobs bill from the Inflation Reduction Act, every one of them.
    Want to take on China? Let's do it. But we need genuine 
action, not another nonsensical hearing. And with that I yield 
back reluctantly, and I can assure you I have a lot more to say 
about what you have written and said. I hope I get that 
opportunity, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. TURNER. Mr. Chairman, may I respond to----
    Mr. PASCRELL. I yield back----
    Mr. TURNER [continuing]. Some of these comments, please?
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Go ahead.
    Mr. TURNER. Because I know they are all directed at me.
    At no point did I call anyone on this committee or any 
Member of Congress a communist, and I resent the fact that it 
is being implicated that I did.
    What I was talking about by saying the green agenda is 
communist in nature is this. We--I do not applaud this 
government, this Administration, this Congress sending 
government jobs----
    Mr. PASCRELL. It is your government.
    Mr. TURNER [continuing]. Sending our----
    Mr. PASCRELL. Just as much as it is mine.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Let gentleman respond to your 
accusations.
    Mr. PASCRELL. I am sorry?
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Go ahead, Mr. Turner.
    Mr. TURNER. I do not applaud sending American jobs overseas 
in the name of a green agenda. America used to be the second 
largest coal producer in the world. We are now fifth. Why? 
Because we have closed more than half of our coal jobs. World 
coal supply is going up. So what are we saying? We are saying 
we need more coal, but it is not going to come from America.
    I stood with Navajo elders in northwest New Mexico who 
looked at me and said in one of the most difficult 
conversations I have ever had, because we were fighting to keep 
that coal mine open, and he looked at me and said, ``This is 
what you White people do to us all the time. You sent us to 
this reservation. It wasn't our land, but you put us here. But 
we found coal. And with that coal we built the entire 
southwest. And now the green energy has come, and now you tell 
us no more coal, and you plunge us back into poverty.''
    I have stood with mayors----
    Ms. SANCHEZ. Mr. Chairman, regular order.
    Mr. TURNER [continuing]. In small towns of West Virginia, 
where they look at their entire city that has been----
    Ms. SANCHEZ. Mr. Chairman, regular order.
    Mr. TURNER [continuing]. Entire small town that has been 
decimated----
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. The gentleman has the floor. 
When any witness is ever attacked by one of these colleagues, I 
think that he needs the opportunity.
    So go ahead, Mr. Turner.
    Ms. SANCHEZ. Mr. Chairman, excuse me----
    Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Ms. SANCHEZ [continuing]. But I believe Mr. Pascrell said 
that his comments were not directed at any one person on the 
panel in particular.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. That is not how I saw it. Mr. 
Turner.
    Ms. SANCHEZ. Well, that is your opinion, but Mr. Pascrell--
--
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. You are not recognized, Ms. 
Sanchez.
    Mr. Turner, please finish.
    Mr. TURNER. Mr. Chairman, I think that----
    Ms. SANCHEZ. Okay, Mr. Chairman, thank you for running such 
a democratic process here in our democratic government.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. You are not recognized, Ms.----
    Mr. PASCRELL. [Inaudible] respond----
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri [continuing]. Sanchez.
    Mr. PASCRELL [continuing]. Mr. Chairman?
    Mr. TURNER. I have stood in small towns in West Virginia 
that used to be thriving, that had communities with little 
leagues and schools that were well funded that are all closed 
because we have sent their jobs overseas.
    There are billionaires who fund green groups in this 
country that invest in foreign coal, and they will tell you 
that they will be damned if a man in West Virginia works on a 
coal mine, but a nine-year-old girl in Malaysia or Indonesia or 
China they have absolutely no problem with.
    And so when I call the green movement communist in its 
nature, maybe that is being too gentle of a term. What it is 
doing to rural America, oil jobs, coal jobs, fracking jobs, no 
one is asking them how they are paying for gas, how they are 
paying for 30 percent prices in food, 15 percent prices in 
consumer goods. They are absolutely and categorically denied.
    And I respect the gentleman at the end of this table who is 
saying the jobs that will come, that will come. But the fact of 
the matter is the future is very different than the actual. 
Right now, rural American and rural American energy workers are 
struggling tremendously, and they are being ignored.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Thank you, Mr. Turner.
    Mr. PASCRELL. Mr. Chairman----
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Mr. Ferguson, you are 
recognized.
    Mr. PASCRELL [continuing]. May I respond, Mr. Chairman?
    Mr. FERGUSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    And, Mr. Turner, if I could just simply say amen to you. I 
am from a district that saw the devastation of a job market 
following NAFTA. We were home to the largest part of the 
textile industry prior to NAFTA. And because of decisions in 
D.C., we lost a generation of workers, and we plunged more 
people into poverty because of the insensitive nature of 
decisions that are made in Washington, D.C. Now we are doing it 
to more rural communities that are--that have been producing 
the energy that America needs. Your comments are spot on.
    Mr. Chairman, if I could submit for the record an article 
from the National Review, where John Kerry simply suggests--and 
it is reported--that oil workers laid off due to Biden policies 
should go make solar panels.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. So ordered.
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    Mr. FERGUSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Ladies and gentleman, that shows the insensitivity of 
people that are making these policy decisions. Where--what--
these people have grown up in these communities, they have 
built their lives there, they have built their families there, 
and now you are simply saying uproot and go move somewhere 
else. The devastation in our rural communities--we have way too 
many people on this dais that don't care about rural America 
because there aren't enough voters there to get them reelected, 
and they are completely out of touch with so many of the 
problems that we are facing.
    Washington, D.C. has done a hell of a job of turning rural 
America into an inner city. The two groups of people in this 
country that share the most in common all too often are rural 
America and the folks in the inner city: lack of economic 
opportunity, failing education, high drug use, high crime, and 
failing infrastructure. It is painful to watch our fellow 
Americans go through this.
    And while they are gutting our communities for policies 
like this that--promise of jobs that I promise you will never 
come back to this reservation that you described, it has taken 
a generation-and-a-half to get those jobs back in our district. 
And we have done it, and we have overcome Washington, D.C. in 
the great state of Georgia in the third district. But all the 
time that they are gutting our communities, 90 percent of these 
tax credits are going to the wealthiest corporations and to the 
wealthiest Americans, 90 percent of them going to companies 
that have over $1 billion in profit.
    So while my colleagues on the other side of the aisle talk 
about how important it is that corporate America pay its fair 
share, and they say it over here, they then turn around and 
give them the largest tax break that basically drives down to 
zero their tax rate. What in the heck are they talking about? 
Oh, we want them to pay, but we are going to give them a huge 
tax break and a huge subsidy. This is lunacy.
    And by the way, now we have under--you know, Joint Tax 
apparently underscored this thing so badly that now we are 
talking about over $1 trillion. So they want to raise taxes on 
one hand, and then they want to--almost $1 trillion in new 
taxes. Then they want to go ahead and give somebody a $1 
trillion tax break. The hypocrisy is stunning, if not 
nauseating.
    So I look at this and think to myself, why are we doing 
this? Why are we funding the Chinese Communist Party? The 
private investment firm CALT (sic) that is involved in 
automotive technology policy, the Chinese company, these tax 
credits through licensing could actually go to the Chinese 
Communist Party. This--these folks mean to do us harm, and they 
mean to take down America. We have a bipartisan committee 
looking at competitiveness with China. Why in the world would 
we send $1, $1 of U.S. taxpayer dollars to the Chinese 
Communist Party? It makes absolutely no sense.
    So when I look at these things, and I look at what they are 
doing, it is just mind boggling to me. We say that we want to 
fight China, yet we are going to fund China. We say that we 
want to help rural America, yet we gut rural America. We want 
major corporations to pay their fair share, and yet we are 
going to give them almost over $1 trillion in green energy tax 
credit to lower their tax liability. How else are you going to 
pay for all this other stuff if you are doing that? This makes 
no sense.
    I just wish that my colleagues on the other side of the 
aisle, many of them, would understand the lives that they are--
that they will ruin in rural America and in rural districts 
like mine. It is hard to watch.
    And Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Mr. Davis is recognized.
    Mr. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I too want to thank 
all of our witnesses.
    You know, my district is seriously impacted by structural 
racism. It contains many low-income communities, and certainly 
it has people of color. It also suffers from economic 
divestment, a lack of manufacturing opportunities when it used 
to be a manufacturing Mecca. Almost anything that you could 
think of was being developed in that area.
    Mr. Beachy, could you discuss how impactful the Inflation 
Reduction Act can be on dealing with communities like the ones 
that I serve?
    Mr. BEACHY. Absolutely. I appreciate the question, sir.
    When we talk about the loss of manufacturing jobs, 
sometimes there is a caricature that is presented, painting a 
picture as if it was only White workers who lost their jobs and 
suffered the economic impacts. Black workers were 
disproportionately impacted by the deindustrialization of the 
United States. Since the 1990s, Black manufacturing workers 
have lost 30--there has been a 30 percent drop in Black 
manufacturing employment. That is according to the Economic 
Policy Institute.
    The IRA aims to start turning the tide by reinvesting in 
the communities that have been the hardest hit. It does this 
by, for the first time, channeling billions of the people's 
money into high-paying, good manufacturing jobs. And as 
mentioned, this is not just theory. It is actually--the 
evidence is already being seen. In the first six months enough 
announcements of clean technology manufacturing to create 
100,000 jobs, many in the heartland.
    The critical premise of the IRA is that we do not have to 
choose between good jobs, economic, racial and environmental 
equity, and a livable climate. And it does this by choosing 
sectors of the economy that are strategically imperative for 
advancing each of these goals and fueling them. It is a welcome 
return of industrial policy that has been used in this country 
since the time of Alexander Hamilton. And by leveraging that 
policy now, workers like those in your district, communities 
like those in your district stand to gain from the benefits of 
higher wages, cleaner air, fewer climate-related impacts. In 
short, more jobs, a livable climate, and a more just economy.
    Mr. DAVIS. Let me just ask in comparison to the 
characterization of spending, would one call this spending, or 
would they more appropriately call it investment?
    Mr. BEACHY. It is absolutely investment, because there is a 
return on this investment. And that return is money in the 
pockets of manufacturing workers across this country that have 
been--that have seen their jobs go away. It is a return in the 
form of investments in communities that have seen their own 
economic base de-industrialized.
    I actually was born in the heart of West Virginia, in the 
middle of coal country. And for too long folks in this town 
have talked about energy transition and investing in hard-hit 
workers and communities. The IRA moves from words to action. 
There will not be fairness for workers that have been impacted 
by energy transition and communities that have been impacted by 
energy transition unless it is a deliberate policy choice.
    The IRA, for the first time, invests real money in the 
communities like the one I was born into. There is a $10 
billion pocket of money to spur more clean technology 
manufacturing; 4 billion of that is explicitly set aside for 
communities facing energy transition. This----
    Mr. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Mr. LaHood is recognized.
    Mr. LaHOOD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to thank 
our witnesses today for your valuable testimony here today.
    The Inflation Reduction Act, I think, is a great example 
for us here in Congress of why regular order is so important. 
Backroom deals, legislative texts thrown together at the last 
minute, and a lack of proper discussion and deliberation leads 
to all sorts of unintended consequences. Even Senator Manchin 
is seeing the effects of this kind of legislating as he got 
more of what he wanted out of it than anyone.
    One particular area of concern that I have and want to 
highlight, as some of my colleagues have already touched on, is 
the lack of safeguards that were put in place to prevent these 
tax incentives from being enjoyed by our adversaries. Well, 
what do I mean by that?
    In addition to serving on the Ways and Means Committee, I 
also serve on the Intelligence Committee and the newly-formed 
Select Committee on China, which is a bipartisan committee that 
we are addressing the malign activities of the CCP. As a part 
of that work on intel in the Select Committee on China, we 
learn every day about the growing threats from China. And the 
Inflation Reduction Act demonstrates how easy it is for us to 
literally let them in through the front door.
    Before I get to my questions, Mr. Chairman, I would like to 
ask for unanimous consent to enter into the record this Fox 
News article dated February 20th, 2023, entitled, ``CCP-Backed 
Tech Companies are Poised to Cash In on Biden's Climate Bill, 
National Security Experts Warn.''
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Without objection.
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    Mr. LaHOOD. Thank you.
    Mr. Horn, you were actually quoted in this article, so I 
will begin with you as I direct my questions. Can you talk 
about the China 2025 initiative, and how aspects of the IRA 
play right into CCP's efforts to gain advantage over the United 
States as it relates to our allies?
    Mr. HORN. Absolutely, and thank you for the question.
    I think, before I answer just briefly, I want to state a 
couple of things that I think everyone in this country 
hopefully can agree upon, which is that the Chinese Communist 
Party and the Russian Federation engage in practices that are 
not only bad, in my opinion, for their own people, but are 
dangerous to partner with, certainly for the United States or 
any of our allies.
    And so when we look at what the CCP is doing, I think that 
it should serve as a threat to all of our interests everywhere. 
They have been relatively overt in terms of what their plans 
are for expansion and suppression of U.S. and other potential 
competitive interests around the globe and as they expand.
    What they have also telegraphed that we have failed to 
properly acknowledge and react to is that they are planning to 
use our own actions against us. They are planning to use our 
government funding, our universities, our infrastructure, 
anything that is exploitable against us in any means possible.
    So when we look at aspirations of technological 
development, I don't think there is anyone out there that would 
disagree that we want to see technological development, 
economic growth, commercial development, and economic activity. 
But we have to be careful, as we look at driving catalysts to 
drive U.S. industry and U.S. innovation, that we don't open 
ourselves to a Trojan horse to come in and work against us 
because the CCP is an expert at doing this. They know exactly 
how to exploit what we do. They have been doing it for decades, 
and their plan is to suppress us and prevent us from being a 
competitor to their world domination.
    I say again, their world domination is their goal. And if 
we look at how they are exploiting and mistreating their own 
people, they wish to do that to the entire world. And if we 
allow loopholes without the proper oversight and enforcement, 
we enable them to do so.
    Mr. LaHOOD. Thank you for that, Mr. Horn.
    I think one of my frustrations with the IRA is the Federal 
Government putting their thumbs on the scale as it relates to 
certain industries, and subsidizing those. Just to follow up on 
that, when--can you share on how these types of incentives that 
are made part of the IRA actually prevent U.S. alternatives and 
competing companies from growing and thriving domestically?
    Mr. HORN. I will give an example to try and put it into 
context. So in the rare earth industry, there are, unbeknownst 
to a lot of people, several U.S. alternatives that are actually 
not as far from coming online as people would realize. However, 
they stand a threat to the global hegemony and monopoly that 
the Chinese Communist Party has on the industry, and they will 
do everything possible to prevent those options from coming 
online, from price fluctuation, flooding the market, everything 
measurable.
    So when the resources that are designed to go to U.S. 
companies to allow them to compete on a fair stage with the 
Chinese Communist Party are diverted, it allows the Chinese 
Communist Party not only to take those funds, but to suppress 
any possible legitimate competition for a better service 
provider.
    Mr. LaHOOD. Thank you.
    I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Thank you. Mr. Estes is 
recognized.
    Mr. ESTES. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for 
our panelists for being here today.
    I know we have talked a lot about good tax policies, and I 
just wanted to highlight, you know, when the Tax Cuts and Jobs 
Act was passed in 2017, that was a good tax policy because it 
actually ended up in more jobs for minorities and people of 
color than had been in the previous decades. So it was so 
important to help get the economy growing, and it didn't pick 
and choose jobs for some people, and then doing away with jobs 
in other industries. And so that is why it is so important as 
we talk about issues like that in our hearing.
    One of the great misnomers of the--of last year's so-called 
Inflation Reduction Act--in fact, even C-SPAN titled the bill 
``Taxes, Health Care, and Climate Change'' on the screen when 
we were voting on the bill. It didn't reduce taxes, but it was 
full of special-interest Green New Deal provisions that are 
billions of dollars more expensive than initially proposed.
    The official CBO score for the so-called Inflation 
Reduction Act's energy and climate provisions was $391 billion 
over the 2022 to 2031 time period. However, because the EV tax 
credits are uncapped, that estimate is drastically low. An 
estimate by Credit Suisse is that--double the estimate at $800 
billion, and Goldman Sachs has provided an even grimmer outlook 
at $1.2 trillion.
    Mr. Chairman, I would like to submit for the record an 
article from the Wall Street Journal titled, ``The Real Cost of 
the Inflation Reduction Act Subsidies: $1.2 trillion.''
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Without objection.
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    Mr. ESTES. Thank you.
    Part of why the EV tax credits in the IRA would be so much 
more expensive than CBO has projected or predicted is because 
the Biden Administration has been working overtime to expand 
which foreign countries are eligible for the credit. 
Republicans and Democrats on this committee were recently told 
by the Administration that they have entered into a new trade 
deal with Japan under the guise of a critical minerals 
agreement, which conveniently allows Japan to qualify for EV 
tax credits paid for by the American taxpayers. The Biden 
Administration has been working overtime to expand eligibility 
for the EV tax credit for foreign countries, all without the 
approval of Congress.
    Mr. Stein, do you have any knowledge of the Biden 
Administration working with third-party groups on ways to get 
around congressional intent regarding eligibility rules for the 
EV tax credits contained in the IRA?
    Mr. STEIN. Well, that is actually a big problem. The way 
Treasury has been making these decisions and the IRS has been 
making these decisions has been behind closed doors. It is not 
clear who is lobbying them on these things. Certainly, there is 
big companies that are lobbying, but who they are all meeting 
with, that is not public information. We actually have been 
FOIAing Treasury to try and find out who is taking these 
meetings. But right now we don't really know.
    Mr. ESTES. So we have also seen the Biden Administration 
attack American energy production under the guise of climate 
conservation.
    I can tell you that the Kansans I represent are really the 
ones who care about conservation. The farmers, ranchers, and 
energy producers who work the land are caring for our natural 
resources. Instead, the--President Biden and my colleagues on 
the left have done everything they can to end hydrocarbons, 
decimating American energy production, and relying on dirtier 
fuel from foreign adversaries. The result has been higher costs 
for Americans, and that is even when President Biden admits 
that we will be continuing to use hydrocarbons for years to 
come into the future.
    Just last week the EPA announced their new emission 
standards, which will force Americans into more expensive 
vehicles that are simply impractical for families--rural 
Kansans and Americans who aren't in areas with access to EV 
charging stations, or that have to drive long periods of time.
    In the same time, adding these new EVs will put a greater 
strain on our energy grid, weakening American energy 
production, and strengthening the world's largest battery 
producer, China.
    Mr. Stein, can you help my colleagues understand the 
detrimental impact of strengthening China by forcing Americans 
to buy electric vehicles?
    Mr. STEIN. So we have seen--we have already seen examples 
just in California, I think last year, when they were having 
wildfire and electricity shortage issues, and they said, 
``People, don't charge your electric vehicles in order to 
protect the grid.'' So the problem is that, if you are having 
problems with the electricity grid and your cars also run on 
the electricity grid, then you don't have that redundancy that 
you have if you can get in your car and get away from the 
wildfire, for instance.
    And so it ultimately--the--making a greener grid, it 
becomes more fragile to begin with. That is the problem that 
California is already facing. Texas is facing the same problem. 
But then you increase the load on the grid, too, by adding--
trying to add all your transportation onto the grid. It is only 
compounding that weakness that you have created.
    Mr. ESTES. Yes, that is why it is so important to have a 
strong base load, even to support the sustainable energy that 
we produce. So thank you all.
    And I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Thank you. Ms. Sanchez is 
recognized.
    Ms. SANCHEZ. Yes, I am just--wow. I have heard a lot of 
talk from my colleagues today about standing up to China, and I 
will just say that talk is cheap, but making generational 
investments to reshore good-paying jobs and create supply 
chains within the United States and making those investments, 
that is not cheap. And rebuilding our infrastructure and 
modernizing our energy systems to keep our economy competitive 
with China, that is not cheap either.
    But when my colleagues on the other side of the aisle talk 
tough on China, sadly, their talk is cheap. Most of them were 
here to spend more than $2 trillion on a tax windfall that 
overwhelmingly benefited the wealthiest in this country and 
multinational corporations. And the Republican tax scam didn't 
do one single thing, nothing to prevent foreign individuals and 
businesses from reaping the benefits of that windfall.
    Mr. Beachy, it hasn't been even a year since we passed the 
Inflation Reduction Act, but there are clear differences in the 
results of the IRA and the 2017 tax scam. Can you tell us just 
briefly what are some of the results that we have seen from the 
IRA so far?
    Mr. BEACHY. I am happy to. So I mentioned at the top that 
in the first six months of the--since President Biden signed 
the IRA we saw companies announce clean technology 
manufacturing investments. That totaled about $90 billion. And 
those investments will take place in 31 states, and they will 
create about 100,000 jobs. That is due--according to a report 
by Climate Power.
    Ms. SANCHEZ. So we are already seeing early investments 
because of the IRA, and aren't those investments designed to 
pay dividends over time for American workers, as well?
    Mr. BEACHY. Indeed, they are.
    Ms. SANCHEZ. Can you talk a little bit just briefly about 
how the prevailing wage, and apprenticeship, domestic content, 
and assembly requirements across the IRA's credits work 
together to create good-paying, union jobs here in the United 
States and keep them here?
    And can you also answer whether these kinds of jobs that 
they are creating would be available for workers who are 
transitioning out of traditional energy sectors?
    Mr. BEACHY. Yes, I appreciate the question.
    On--so first is the actual deployment of solar and wind 
power. You know, the IRA invests a historic amount to deploy 
more clean energy to meet our climate goals. But for the first 
time, critically, it pairs those investments with the high road 
labor standards of prevailing wage and apprenticeship programs 
to ensure that clean energy workers can enjoy family-sustaining 
jobs.
    In the same time, the IRA includes, like, as you noticed, 
as you mentioned, the domestic content bonus, which creates a 
demand pool paired with all of the supply push investments for 
clean domestic manufacturing of the nuts and bolts of clean 
energy, everything from EV batteries to solar panels and all 
their component parts, wind and all of its component parts. 
That is a durable investment because those jobs will be around 
for a long time. Smart industrial policy means investing in the 
technologies of the future, and that is what we are doing.
    Ms. SANCHEZ. I appreciate that because we don't use gas 
lamps to light our homes anymore. We use energy-efficient light 
bulbs, and we must progress. So traditional energy sectors may 
have job losses, but there are jobs that are being created. And 
it is not crazy to think that perhaps they can transition into 
some of the new jobs that are being created.
    Mr. BEACHY. I mentioned that the policy takes seriously 
that the fairness for workers and communities impacted by 
technology shifts won't just happen organically. It has to be a 
deliberate policy choice. I mentioned the $4 billion investment 
for clean manufacturing in coal communities.
    In addition, there is a bonus credit to encourage solar and 
wind developers to invest in hard-hit energy-transition 
communities across the country.
    There is an additional program that will have $250 billion 
in loan authority to retool existing energy infrastructure for 
new purposes, providing an opportunity for economic development 
in some of the hardest-hit regions in the country by the energy 
transition.
    Ms. SANCHEZ. I appreciate that.
    Mr. Stein, I just want to make you aware that in the IRA 
hybrid cars also count. And so hybrid cars which run on 
gasoline can also be a cheaper alternative for families that 
can't afford purely electric cars.
    Mr. Ginn, I just want to be clear that the 2017 Republican 
tax scam bill cut taxes across the board to a rate lower than 
anybody was even asking for, with no restrictions to prevent 
foreign corporations from getting a tax cut. Did the 2017 tax 
scam bill do anything at least to make sure that those foreign 
corporations spent their tax windfall on building U.S. 
manufacturing facilities with good-paying jobs?
    Mr. GINN. I am not sure about that specific provision, but 
I do know that there were trillions of dollars that were sent 
back, repatriated from other countries back to the United 
States, along with more----
    Ms. SANCHEZ. No, the question was whether or not the bill 
did anything to make sure that foreign companies who got this 
big tax windfall had to reinvest that in building U.S. 
manufacturing facilities with good-paying union jobs.
    Mr. GINN. I was not a part of those discussions, and so I 
am not advised.
    Ms. SANCHEZ. I will take that as a no, and I yield back my 
time.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Thank you.
    For my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who 
continue to disregard the Tax Cut and Jobs Act and what it did 
for hardworking Americans, today under the Tax Cut and Jobs Act 
a family of 4 who make $64,000 or less will pay 0 in Federal 
taxes. And in a congressional district with the median 
household of $50,000 a year that I represent, that is a 
substantial tax cut for working class--hard-working-class 
families. And that is the fact, and that needs to be in the 
record.
    Mr. Smucker, you are recognized.
    Mr. SMUCKER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding today's 
hearing.
    It really is important that we revisit the true cost of the 
Inflation Act. And I know many of my colleagues have raised the 
new $1.2 trillion price tag of the tax credits in the Inflation 
Act, but I also want to draw attention to another area that was 
just mentioned about the true cost of these credits.
    The inflation--the IRA is chock full of requirements to 
utilize unionized labor, prevailing wage mandates, and union 
apprenticeship ratios. And I would never--I respect labor 
unions and the choice that workers have to participate in a 
labor union, but in my district and across the country, as 
well, about 90 percent of our workers have chosen not to be 
part of a labor union. And in that regard, this policy is 
discriminatory against most of the workers in my district, in 
addition to increasing costs when we limit competition only to 
union companies.
    I want to also mention two things that were brought up in 
the hearing. One was labor force participation rate. I think 
Mr. Blumenauer brought this up, and he mentioned that we are at 
record highs. And I would like to submit for the record, Mr. 
Chairman, a chart posted by the Saint Louis Fed, if I can do 
so.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. So ordered.
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    Mr. SMUCKER. This chart shows that, just prior to the 
pandemic, February 2020 labor participation rate was at 63.3 
percent, and the latest, March 2023, it was 62.6 percent. But--
so still not at pre-pandemic participation rates. Very 
important. And--but it shows that Democrat policies have failed 
to have workers return to the workforce in the numbers they 
were prior to COVID. That has a lot of different policy 
impacts.
    And one additional thing. Social Security was mentioned, 
and Democrats are fond of saying that Republicans are taking 
actions that would hurt the beneficiaries of Social Security. I 
want to remind people listening that the Biden Administration 
recognizes that within 9 years the trust fund will be 
insolvent, which would result in individuals relying on Social 
Security getting about 80 percent of their total benefits that 
are owed to them. And they have chosen in their budget to not 
address that in any way, no policy proposals that would fix 
Social Security to ensure that we can keep the promises that 
were made to people relying on Social Security.
    We talked a lot--and, Mr. Turner, I appreciated some of 
your comments. You talked about the impact of the policies on 
rural Americans. Certainly I am seeing the impact of rising gas 
prices on people all across my district. I have had individuals 
talk to me saying they have had to make tough decisions about 
buying food or gasoline. And interestingly, President Biden has 
characterized our rising gas prices as--an ``incredible 
transition'' is what he called it. Interior Secretary Deb 
Haaland refused to say gas prices were too high when prices had 
surpassed $6 per gallon in some parts of the U.S. It really 
appears that driving prices higher on traditional energy may be 
intentional on the part of those who want to see us move to 
renewable energy faster than the market would allow for.
    Do you think that is true? Do you think this is 
intentional, that this Administration wants to see higher gas 
prices that are hurting American people?
    Mr. TURNER. Yes, Congressman, thank you for the question. 
Absolutely, it is intentional because fossil fuels are very, 
very popular in America. And even if people may use them as a 
pejorative, Americans love the fossil fuel economy that it has 
created. They love the convenience. They love the comfort. It 
is the reason why millions of people, legally and illegally, 
are trying to get into this country, because fossil fuels have 
made us an incredible country.
    To make fossil fuels unpopular----
    Mr. SMUCKER. I am going to stop you, because----
    Mr. TURNER [continuing]. You have to make them expensive.
    Mr. SMUCKER [continuing]. I am running out of time. Thank 
you. I think the case can be made this is intentional on the 
part of the Administration to see higher gas prices, and the 
impact on the American people is devastating.
    Mr. Ginn, you talked about industrial policy, government 
picking winners and losers, and we certainly see that in the 
IRA. Talk a little more about the impacts of that. How does 
that affect--you talked about the importance of economic 
growth. I could not agree more, but how does industrial policy 
impact economic growth?
    Mr. GINN. It simply crowds out other, more productive 
purposes that were chosen by the marketplace compared with 
government planning or the use of taxpayer dollars for propping 
up specific industries or businesses overall. But that should 
be done based on profitability, not based on the taxpayer's 
dime.
    Mr. SMUCKER. Thank you.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Mr. Hern is recognized.
    Mr. HERN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing 
today.
    My main concern is that the Democrats don't understand the 
monster they have created. Goldman Sachs's new $1.2 trillion 
score of this bill should scare every single American, 
regardless of party. I fear that there has been an over-
subsidization of a market that is not capable of producing the 
intended result.
    I know it is hard for some in Congress to wrap their heads 
around $1.2 trillion, but that kind of subsidization involves 
massive global input to produce the needed output, and it is 
concerning that Democrats didn't understand what would have 
happened when you unleashed this type of impact on the 
marketplace.
    To think that the Chinese Communist Party would not benefit 
from this poorly-formed policy is both naive and foolish, 
especially in the highly-integrated global marketplace that we 
see today.
    I see a lot of talking about both sides of our mouth from 
the Administration and my Democrat colleagues. My Democrat 
colleagues say that they want to drive energy costs down and 
look for cleaner solutions. Guess what? I do, too. But to spend 
$1.2 trillion in taxpayer money to fund green energy while also 
attacking the oil and natural gas industry will only drive 
energy costs up. The unintended consequences of these actions 
will have consequences that far outweigh the pros.
    Driving investment out of less expensive, reliable, 
traditional energy into expensive renewables will further drive 
up costs, creating energy poverty across this great nation. 
Time and time again, this Administration has put the cart 
before the horse on extreme policy without thinking about the 
unintended consequences. It will be a tough road ahead. And I 
beg to question how will my Democrat colleagues explain to 
their voters why energy prices go up drastically in the next 
decade due to poor decision-making here in this committee.
    Ronald Reagan once said, ``If you want more of something, 
subsidize it; if you want less of something, tax it.'' We do 
not know what the true American consumption of renewable energy 
is. An unprecedented $1.2 trillion in subsidies for renewable 
energy both--is both reckless and wasteful. This 
Administration, with the help of Congress, has created an 
apocalyptic market distortion in our energy markets that will 
have a devastating effect on the American people who rely on 
less expensive traditional energy.
    Mr. Ginn, I, like every Republican that I know, is an all-
of-the-above energy supply individual representative here in 
Congress. I believe that there is a place in the market for 
renewables to compete on a level playing field with the 
traditional energy sources. That being said, can you tell us 
what the unintended consequences of the IRA are in respect to 
the unprecedented subsidization of green energy, and what the 
means of the economics of the energy industry are and the 
provisions in the IRA inflationary (sic)?
    Mr. GINN. Yes, sir. Thank you for the question, and you are 
right. You are putting your thumb on the scale more towards 
renewable, unreliable sources of energy over a longer period of 
time. And there should be a level playing field for all energy 
sources to whatever is going to be profitable. That means it is 
best for the American people and the process, as well.
    And so this sort of industrial policy does not allow for 
there to be more economic growth, prosperity. And there is a 
lot of talk today about, well, there will be a transition. The 
transitions are best based on market forces, not based on 
government direction and mandates. That is taken straight out 
of what communist countries like China do, not what America 
should do, based on free market capitalism that is the best 
path to let people prosper. We need to get back on that path, 
and this is what the Inflation Reduction Act leads us more 
towards, the direction of the economy instead of letting 
markets work.
    Mr. HERN. Thank you.
    Mr. Stein, what do these massive subsidies mean for our 
energy costs and our grid security as these hand-picked winners 
in the IRA are untested as reliable sources?
    Mr. STEIN. Well, that is a key, is reliability. Ultimately, 
unreliable sources increase costs to the electricity grid as a 
whole. And that is the key, that wind and solar look very cheap 
at the specific turbine because when the wind blows it is very 
cheap. But grid-wide, you have to pay more for transmission, 
you have to build extra wind turbines for backup, you have to 
build gas plants for backup. There is--the overall cost to the 
grid increases electricity costs, and you see that around the 
world. You see that in California, you have seen that in 
Germany, in Denmark, in parts of Australia. Higher--the 
renewables penetration means higher----
    Mr. HERN. Mr. Stein, if I may--and thank you so much for 
your response, but I want to give a great example of that. The 
largest--we think of Google being a green company. Their 
largest or near-largest data server farm in the world sits 25 
miles to the east of Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1,000 yards from a gas-
fired/coal-fired energy production facility. And when asked why 
they are there, they need reliable energy, reliable energy.
    So for all the talk that my colleagues across the aisle are 
talking about, this is not reliable energy. The fossil fuel 
industry has always provided that, and will continue to do so.
    Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Mr. Higgins is recognized.
    Mr. HIGGINS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    The United States, according to a study out of Brown 
University, spent $6.2 trillion in 3 Middle East wars in the 
past 20 years. The Middle East is made up of 17 countries. It 
has a population of about 480 million people, all in. And if 
you were to take oil off the table, the entirety of the Middle 
East has an economy equal to Finland. We lost 7,000 American 
soldiers in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, again, because of our 
addiction to oil. So the oil age won't end because we run out 
of oil. The oil age will end when we find a better, more 
efficient way to power everything, including automobiles, a way 
to power them that is quicker, quieter, and eventually cheaper.
    There has been a lot of talk here about jobs and the 
economy. Let's talk about jobs and the economy. Fortune 
Magazine, January 11th, 2001: ``Trump to leave office with the 
worst jobs record since Herbert Hoover. The number of employed 
Americans fell by 3 million during the Trump time in office, 
including the loss of 300,000 manufacturing jobs.'' Don't 
lecture me on job creation, particularly in the manufacturing 
industry. Fortune Magazine.
    Bloomberg Analytics, February 23rd, 2023: ``Biden 
Administration, 12 million jobs created in 14 months.'' To 
quote them, ``Biden is on track to be the greatest jobs-
producing President in the history of the country,'' 12 million 
jobs in 14 months, including 800,000 new manufacturing jobs. 
Unemployment, 3.4 percent, the lowest unemployment rate in 54 
years. Inflation forecasted--it is high now, it is over 5 
percent--at 2.5 percent at this time next year, consistent with 
historical trends as it relates to inflation.
    The Inflation Reduction Act, probably misnamed, but it did 
provide incentives not only for American manufacturers, but 
also American citizens to bring the cost of electric vehicles 
to parity with gas-powered vehicles. This is beginning to turn 
a trend that we are 15 years late in addressing.
    You know, China, we need to be tough on China. They cheat 
on their currency, they steal our intellectual property, they 
treat their people poorly, they treat their environment poorly. 
But we need to be tougher on ourselves about China. All of the 
rare earth minerals that go into manufacturing batteries, most 
of them are in Africa. China spent $1 trillion in 
infrastructure investment not to help the people of Africa, but 
to allow them to exploit the continent of Africa so that they 
could control all of the rare earth minerals. China now refines 
68 percent of the world's nickel, 40 percent of the copper, 59 
percent of lithium, 74 percent of cobalt.
    So the Inflation Reduction Act is an effort to encourage 
domestic manufacturing of electric vehicles, and we have a long 
way to go. It is not solving the problem right away, but it 
represents a beginning. Mr. Beachy, you have talked about the 
Inflation Reduction Act in terms of jobs, in terms of economic 
development. But also could you talk briefly on the efforts to 
make electric vehicles more affordable for Americans, but also 
incentivizing domestic manufacturing of those electric 
vehicles?
    Mr. BEACHY. Absolutely. Thank you for the question.
    So there are historic tax credits available for the 
manufacture of electric vehicles, and making those vehicles 
more affordable at the same time. It is critical to pair those 
two goals together, swift deployment and good manufacturing 
jobs making the component parts. The $7,500 tax credit will 
make electric vehicles more affordable, and the use tax credit 
will make them $4,000 cheaper for your average family.
    Meanwhile, though, it invests--those tax credits are built 
to make sure that those component parts are made here, and that 
is critical for jobs. It is also critical for our clean energy 
goals and our climate goals. You know, when one country 
produces the vast majority of the supply of a critical energy 
good in the world, we should treat it as the same way we treat 
a corporate monopoly. We should not pin our climate goals on 
hope that the world's monopoly producers maintain prices low 
forever.
    The IRA responds to that problem by investing in the clean 
manufacturing of the technologies of the future here, including 
electric vehicles, solar panels, wind turbines, et cetera. That 
is as good for our jobs goals as it is for our climate goals.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Mrs. Miller is recognized.
    Mrs. MILLER. Thank you, Chairman Smith, and thank you all 
for being here today.
    Last year Republicans were united in warning the Democrats 
that their out-of-control spending was going to come back to 
bite the American people. And that is certainly the case with 
the spending that has gone on, the so-called Inflation 
Reduction Act, which has ballooned in cost, empowered the Biden 
Administration to ignore Congress, and most of all, it 
supercharges the inflation crisis that the American people were 
already bearing.
    The bill was portrayed as a promise to help our struggling 
economy, but as soon as it was forced through Congress in the 
backroom deals, the truth came out. Instead of a bill to help 
the middle-class Americans, the IRA is welfare for billionaire-
dollar businesses, handouts to well-connected Democrat donors, 
and tax breaks for luxuries for the upper class to enjoy.
    My constituents in West Virginia will pay the price for 
liberal elitists to feel self-righteous for buying an electric 
vehicle that contains parts made with child and slave labor, 
and is sourced directly from the Chinese Communist Party.
    Everyday Americans will also pay the price through higher 
electricity prices because the IRA increased the already 
perverse incentives to produce less power for more expensive 
means.
    When we have such abundant natural resources, we must ask 
why radical liberals are picking winners and losers in the 
process, trying to tax us back into the Dark Ages.
    Mr. Turner, I represent the major energy-producing state of 
West Virginia. We are the second-largest producer of coal in 
the United States, and an important producer of natural gas and 
oil. I want to thank you for your comments, because our coal 
communities applaud you for standing up for them in Washington, 
D.C. Washington, D.C. tends to denigrate those people as 
insignificant. I know what bad policies from Washington, D.C. 
do. I have a county in my state, in my district, that has gone 
from 100,000 people down to 14. We understand bad policy is bad 
policy.
    The Inflation Reduction Act creates incentives for 
unreliable electricity sources, namely wind and solar. While 
renewables can play an important role powering the grid, they 
fail to provide affordable baseload power that is essential for 
our families, our businesses, and our emergency services.
    Most wind and solar products are not made in the United 
States, while our traditional energy is sourced from states 
like mine. What will the impact be on rural communities if 
these credits are not repealed?
    Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Congresswoman. These jobs will 
continue to move overseas. Like I said earlier, we are still 
producing more coal than ever before. Estimates for coal 
production and--coal consumption, excuse me--are continuing to 
go higher. But America's share of that pie is just getting 
smaller. West Virginia's share of that pie is getting smaller. 
These tax credits will go to companies that just produce coal 
in India, in China, in Malaysia.
    So my question is, if we still need coal and we are 
admitting we need coal--solar panels are made with coal, all 
these wind turbines are made with coal. EVs require coal. So if 
we need coal, why can it not be American coal? Why is it green 
to send the coal jobs to a foreign country, and then plunge 
communities like the great communities in West Virginia, plunge 
them into poverty, claiming that we are somehow protecting the 
environment? It makes no sense. Not only are West Virginia's 
environmental standards far superior than anything you would 
see in Southeast Asia, but the jobs and the tax revenue stay in 
your community, as well.
    Mrs. MILLER. You are exactly right. Thank you so much.
    Mr. Horn, before President Biden's Treasury Department 
announced the rules regarding the Electric Vehicle Tax Credit, 
which clearly ignores the intent of Congress, I led a letter 
with several of my Ways and Means colleagues warning the 
Treasury of major concerns with Ford's partnership with China's 
largest battery manufacturer, CATL. I would like to submit that 
letter for the record.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. So ordered.
    [The information follows:]

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    Mrs. MILLER. Can you detail the national security risks of 
these types of partnerships with CCP companies, as well as the 
broader risks that come from continuing the U.S. reliance on 
China for our EV batteries and critical minerals?
    Mr. HORN. Congresswoman, I cannot overstate the complexity 
and the ability to work around us that the Chinese Communist 
Party has. They will continue to exploit every loophole. So 
when they see an opportunity to use a Trojan Horse approach to 
get a Chinese state-subsidized company in--partnered with an 
American company, it is nothing short of an infection by a 
foreign body.
    Mrs. MILLER. Thank you.
    I yield back.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Mr. Murphy is recognized.
    Mr. MURPHY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Gosh, I think in every committee on this Capitol Hill we 
are talking about China, China, China. We are at war with 
China. Let's just call it that way. They are trying to destroy 
our way of life. They have balloons. They are--viruses, they 
are--everything. They are stealing our intellectual capital, 
everything.
    Let me try to be non-partisan here, and point out three 
points I think everybody would agree with. My Democratic 
colleagues, maybe they will look at the film.
    Number one is a clean environment. We all want that, right? 
Okay.
    Number two, where--everybody is against slave labor. We 
talk about it horribly in our country 150 years ago. It 
shouldn't happen.
    Number three, we want to cut CO2 emissions, correct?
    We can all agree on those things. But let's actually dive 
down on those.
    A clean environment. Why would my Democratic colleagues 
want to promote the destruction of the earth in mining policies 
in countries that it is much dirtier, absolutely poorer for the 
environment, rather than the U.S.? Perplexing, beyond my 
understanding.
    Two, slave labor. In the pursuit of the moral authority or 
the moral high ground of saying I feel better about my EV, we 
are having--we are promoting child labor in the Congo, but it 
is okay, we are just not going to talk about that.
    And then, third, CO2 emissions. So we want to pretend we 
are doing great for the world with our EV vehicles, when China, 
to feed our appetite for energy, clean energy, is now growing 
two coal plants a week--a week--and we are exporting that to 
them. So we are making our small little incremental change 
here, and we are blowing it out on the other side of the world. 
So in actuality, it doesn't mean a damn thing.
    So let me offer a suggestion. Oliver Stone, you know, that 
Hollywood guy, he and I are just buddies. He and I agree on 
something: clean energy. It is called nuclear power. That 
satisfies every single thing here: we are not giving jobs to 
China; we are not throwing money to China; we are not using 
slave labor; it gives us a clean environment, and no CO2 
emissions. So why don't we gather around that? So I know that 
is a little bit off topic. It helps with the environmentalists. 
It stops funding communist China.
    And I actually have a question for Mr. Beachy.
    You said the Sierra Club was not happy with the CCP, 
correct?
    Mr. BEACHY. I said they were not a communist. That is 
correct.
    Mr. MURPHY. Okay. Would they be happy--are they happy with 
the fact that China is now producing two coal plants a week to 
feed our appetite for clean energy?
    Mr. BEACHY. No, they absolutely would not. And that is why 
they support global engagement so as to reduce emissions across 
the world.
    Mr. MURPHY. Okay. I mean, I just think it is--we are 
blinding ourselves. We are not understanding, one, that China 
wants to take over the world, and we are feeding them for it.
    And by the way, they don't give a damn about climate. They 
are not doing anything about climate because they are pushing, 
pushing, pushing coal.
    Anyway, I just don't get it, guys. Come on, wake up, and 
let's get to the table. The United States is literally giving 
our competitive advantage away to China as they race to cheat 
American companies.
    Mr.--I am sorry here, I am just a little--I just can't 
believe sometimes. You all, wake up.
    Mr. Horn, you served under the former President Trump 
during a time when the U.S. became the global energy 
superpower. Can you describe how our energy security and energy 
affordability have changed since this President Biden took 
office?
    Mr. HORN. Well, Congressman, I want to say that I think 
there has been attempts by both presidents to try and combat 
communist Chinese policy and the CCP. I think a lot of it comes 
down to what we are talking about in this hearing, which is 
moving beyond intent to actual execution and impact of policy.
    The problem that we have currently with looking at some of 
the loopholes in the Inflation Reduction Act is that it 
basically plays to the Chinese Communist Party's ability to 
work our own policy against us----
    Mr. MURPHY. Absolutely.
    Mr. HORN [continuing]. And exploit loopholes. To quote what 
you said about them wanting to take over the world, that is 
absolutely their priority, and they have clearly stated it. And 
we have given them a variety of tools for them to do that with 
Federal support if we don't look to close those loopholes and 
to close those workarounds.
    And I would say just one final piece on this. The ultimate 
tragedy here is that there are a plethora of American 
opportunities and American projects that can actually move the 
ball forward on this front, on other energy fronts, as well. 
You referenced nuclear. That is a separate subject, but there 
is obviously massive amounts of American opportunity in the 
mineral space there, as well. All we have to do is unleash our 
own capabilities, and the market will correct this itself.
    Mr. MURPHY. Absolutely. And I think we can do it in America 
cleaner, absolutely cleaner. We are not feeding our world's 
greatest adversary, and we are creating our own American jobs. 
It is not that hard. We just have to wake up and understand 
that we have somebody--a country on the other side of the world 
that wants to see our demise, and we are feeding them with our 
own pursuit of clean energy, when we could be doing it at home.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will yield back.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Ms. Sewell is recognized.
    Ms. SEWELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    As we work to create a more equitable economy emerging from 
the pandemic, we must look to addressing climate change within 
our tax jurisdiction, and the impact it will have on all 
communities across America. Use of the Tax code to allow for 
the expansion of section 45Q is just one example of sound 
bipartisan policy that will allow for future large-scale carbon 
capture and sequestration projects to develop over the next 
decade.
    I am proud that my bill, Carbon Capture and Sequestration 
Expansion Act, was incorporated last year into the Inflation 
Reduction Act, but there is still much work to be done.
    It is no secret that air quality measurements over the last 
three decades show that low-income communities of color face 
some of the worst pollution rates. This has been proven through 
science, and ignoring such facts will continue to lead to an 
array of life-shortening health outcomes for many in my 
communities. It is for this reason that I am serving as the 
Democratic lead sponsor on the Carbon Capture and Utilization 
Parity Act this Congress. Working with Congressman Schweikert, 
our bill works to establish parity between 45Q carbon capture 
tax credits for sequestration, while at the same time support 
using captured carbon in the creation of products to reduce 
emissions.
    In other words, we can make communities healthier, and 
simultaneously establish good-paying jobs.
    Earlier this year, Climate Power released a study which 
compiled investment announcements made by the private sector 
companies along with the anticipated job creation such 
investments would make. And it showed that lots and lots of 
jobs will be created. In my home state of Alabama alone, 
projections show $1.3 billion worth of outside investment 
coming to the state, resulting in over 1,200 new jobs. These 
manufacturing investments serve as a great starting point in 
addressing racial inequality related to income in Alabama. But 
like our tax code, there is still much work to be done.
    Last Congress I had the distinct honor and privilege of 
being co-chair of the Ways and Means Racial Equity Initiative. 
Our two years of work further highlighted why many in the 
African American community have known for years, and that is 
that the loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States has 
disproportionately affected people of color.
    My question is to you, Mr. Beachy. With my remaining time, 
can you further elaborate on the research that you and your 
colleagues have conducted at BlueGreen Alliance on how U.S. 
investments within the IRA have the ability to create a new 
workforce in places like Alabama and in communities like the 
ones I serve?
    Mr. BEACHY. I am happy to. So I already mentioned that 
there is over $50 billion of investments in clean manufacturing 
in this bill, which is truly historic, offering an opportunity 
to rebuild solid manufacturing jobs and our nation's industrial 
base at the same time, while better equipping us to have more 
reliable supply chains for clean technology needs.
    It is also true that a lot of the investments in the IRA 
are dedicated to reducing the kinds of emissions you spoke to. 
Industrial emissions I will just name. There is a new $6 
billion program created at the Department of Energy to slash 
industrial emissions from steel, cement, and aluminum 
facilities while making these facilities more competitive. I 
mean, these are facilities that produce the backbone of our 
economy, materials that go into all of our infrastructure and 
our clean technology.
    I mentioned that solar panels are 85 percent aluminum. 
There is also a lot of steel that goes into our wind and solar. 
And so we have to produce these materials more cleanly. Right 
now they are in--many of them are made in China with a much 
higher degree of climate pollution. What the IRA proposes is to 
make those materials here, and that $6 billion is invested not 
only to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that come out of 
those facilities, but the air pollution, as well, that 
disproportionately impacts Black folks and communities of color 
and other low-income communities.
    Meanwhile, that will invest in good paying jobs in these 
same facilities, including in your home state of Alabama and in 
many others across the country.
    Ms. SEWELL. Thank you, and I yield back the balance of my 
time.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Mr. Kustoff is recognized.
    Mr. KUSTOFF. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for calling 
today's hearing, and thank you for the witnesses for appearing 
today.
    Dr. Ginn, if I could, with you and some of these figures 
have been cited previously, but if I can--and I may be covering 
ground that was covered, but maybe a little bit more in detail. 
So when the CBO issued its forecast, and they--their number was 
391 billion, we have heard about Goldman Sachs, that they see 
the total cost of the green credits as exceeding a trillion, 
and we have talked about Credit Suisse. If I can, to you, 
somebody who has been in OMB and Budget, how did they get it so 
wrong? Where is the disconnect?
    Mr. GINN. Congressman, it is a great question, and it is 
one that I think is kind of a common problem when we score some 
of these, or they score some of these at CBO without looking at 
dynamic effects, and they look more at the static analysis.
    Whenever you throw this kind of money at particular 
things--this being EV batteries--what do you get? You get more 
of it, and on the back of taxpayers.
    And one thing that I have heard quite a bit today is that 
this is an investment for the future. But government can't 
invest. Government only spends other people's money. It is not 
their money to invest at the end of the day. That money should 
be in the private sector, where you can allocate resources 
better along the way.
    And so whenever you are looking at what the CBO did, there 
is a lot of new data that has come out since they made these 
estimates last year, 381 billion--or sorry, the $30 billion. 
That was the overall amount, but the $30 billion here, just for 
the EV batteries. That new information, the number of batteries 
that are being built, and some of the changes that have been 
made at Treasury since then, the rules that have been put in 
place, that has increased the cost dramatically to where--
closer to the $200 billion mark, almost 7 times greater than 
what they estimated last year.
    Mr. KUSTOFF. You may be saying this; I am going to ask this 
in a different way. In theory, if this were being scored today 
based on what we know, based on some of the things you just 
talked about, obviously, it wouldn't be 391 billion.
    Mr. GINN. Correct.
    Mr. KUSTOFF. Okay. It might be a number closer to what 
Goldman Sachs has concluded.
    Mr. GINN. I believe so. Yes, sir. And that is one reason 
why, you know, we are looking at Americans for Tax Reform to 
have this re-estimated based on the latest information that is 
available, potentially even having a pause of some of this that 
is going out there.
    I mean, something needs to be looked at because this was 
sold as an amount to the American people. And the amount that 
is actually going out the door of their tax dollars, it is all 
adding to the national debt, interest on the national debt and 
so forth, is not that amount anymore. And so we need to have a 
close look at these dollars.
    Mr. KUSTOFF. All right. So let's assume there is another 
review, whether it is ATR or whomever, CBO came out with a 
different number, and the number came back along the lines of, 
again, what Goldman has talked about and Credit Suisse. What 
remedy or remedies should Congress look at?
    Mr. GINN. Congressman, it is another great question. I 
mean, this is currently the law of the land. So, you know, you 
have to look at that and say, okay, should we pass another law 
that starts to strip some of this out with these tax credits, 
EV tax credits, or something along those lines?
    I think it will need to be some form of a legal change 
along those lines.
    Mr. KUSTOFF. Thank you. If I could just briefly, I want to 
read you a portion from a Forbes magazine article dated 
February 24th of this year. ``Chinese companies in the green 
energy space are allowed Federal tax incentives and other 
benefits to the tune of millions of dollars, thanks to the 
Inflation Reduction Act passed by Congress and signed into law 
by President Biden last year. If you are making solar panels or 
EV car batteries, the government will help you. This--that 
includes China's companies. From tariffs to product dumping and 
commercial lawsuits, solar is the one China sector under 
constant pressure from U.S. trade law, yet the U.S. taxpayer 
will subsidize them anyway.''
    Number one, do you think that is accurate, Dr. Ginn?
    And two, if it is, who are the biggest losers under the 
Inflation Reduction Act?
    Mr. GINN. Congressman, the benefits certainly went more 
towards upper-income folks, larger businesses. They are the 
ones that are benefiting from the Inflation Reduction Act. It 
is not the families. I mean, they are getting hit hard by this 
of increased inflation.
    I mean, I think this is a misnomer. It is still called the 
Inflation Reduction Act, but it is contributing to more 
inflation, increasing the debt, and things of that nature. And 
it is also counter to economic growth. In fact, it--maybe it 
should be called the Inflation Recession Act, because that is 
ultimately what we are getting from it.
    Mr. KUSTOFF. Thank you.
    My time is expired. I yield back.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Mr. Arrington is recognized.
    Mr. ARRINGTON. Thank you, Chairman.
    Thank you, panelists. I am especially delighted that we 
have a Red Raider-trained, I think, engineer here. And so I 
know I can trust your numbers, Mr. Ginn.
    Mr. GINN. Economist, not engineer, but economist. Thank 
you, sir. Wreck 'em.
    Mr. ARRINGTON. Wreck 'em. Look, I am the Budget chairman, 
and my perspective may be a little different than some of my 
colleagues. I want to talk about the overselling of the so-
called Inflation Reduction Act. Hopefully, we can all agree 
that was false advertisement, and it is misleading the American 
people with respect to the outcomes.
    Secondly, the underscoring of the so-called Inflation 
Reduction Act and the impact on our nation's financial health, 
which is in serious decline, and what our children will inherit 
in terms of the amassing debt, or what I call deferred tax on 
our children as a result of passing the IRA under certain cost 
assumptions or budget assumptions.
    Today the debt for this great country is 25 percent larger 
than the entire economy of the United States, the largest 
economy in the world. Two years under this Administration and 
my Democrat colleagues, $10 trillion in spending, 6 trillion of 
which was deficit spending adding to the national debt in a 
volume we have never experienced in the history of this 
country.
    CBO projects it will add $20 trillion more, based on 
current policy. They say we will double the annual deficit. 
They say we would triple the interest payments. In 10 years we 
will be paying a trillion and a half. But in February--and this 
was--the last time they revised their numbers was May of 2022, 
but in February of this year they said we have to upwardly 
revise the projections of the cumulative deficit based on the 
policies of this Administration and the cost of those policies, 
along with the interest costs, which I would submit are soaring 
because of the spending-induced inflation. They had to revise 
in just several months the cumulative deficit by $3 trillion, 
based on spending and interest costs, $3 trillion.
    This bill that was advertised as a deficit reducer, not a 
deficit increase, was included--$400 billion of climate-related 
policies, mainly tax-related; 100 billion in expansion of 
government subsidies for health care.
    I would submit to you that the pay-fors that CBO scored to 
give this a deficit reduction number of 155 billion, they 
were--some of them were total gimmicks. Others you could debate 
whether they were a gimmick, like the IRS and $80 billion and 
87 billion in IRS agents. But there was a rebate rule that 
never went into effect from the previous Administration that 
would have cost 122 billion, according to CBO. Never 
implemented. That was just a cost on a piece of paper if you 
implemented. That was used to supposedly offset the cost of 
IRA.
    So I don't even believe it was cost neutral. Certainly, I 
don't believe it was going to reduce the deficit even before 
this conversation. Now we are talking about this underscore of 
tax credits for green industry, batteries, solar, electric 
vehicles. We could be talking, Mr. Ginn, Dr. Ginn, about 
hundreds of billions of dollars more on the debt and this 
unsustainable trajectory, and the potential of a debt crisis 
for this country, and the enormous recklessness and the burden 
we are putting on our children.
    Dr. Ginn, is it hundreds of billions? Is what I am saying 
jiving with your economic analysis?
    Mr. GINN. Congressman, yes, it is. I mean, I think this 
will be hundreds of billions of dollars added to the national 
debt.
    There were a lot of gimmicks that were in there with CBO's 
estimates. Some of them weren't out for a 10-year budget window 
that they were looking at, what those cost estimates were going 
to be. I remember, you know, if we had done something like that 
in the Trump Administration, we would have heard that a lot in 
the media, and we haven't heard any of that going on within 
this so-called Inflation reduction Act now.
    Mr. ARRINGTON. Thank you, and I yield back.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Thank you. Ms. DelBene is 
recognized.
    Ms. DelBENE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you 
everyone, for being here today.
    Some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle can't 
even agree that we are in a climate crisis, so I guess it is 
not surprising that they are holding this hearing attacking the 
single most important Federal investment we have made in 
fighting climate change.
    It is critically important to me that we ensure a livable 
planet for future generations, and that is why I worked so hard 
with my Democratic colleagues last Congress to enact the 
Inflation Reduction Act. And through the IRA, we are investing 
in American goods and American jobs. And the benefits from 
these investments are already having a tangible impact on 
families in our communities.
    Mr. Beachy, thank you for sharing your expertise with us 
today. In passing the Inflation Reduction Act Democrats sought 
to address climate change, create jobs, and advance equity. And 
I wondered if you could explain how it is possible for a single 
set of investments to achieve all of these three goals.
    Mr. BEACHY. Thank you, I appreciate the question. A single 
set of investments achieving multiple of our society's largest 
goals is the secret sauce of industrial policy.
    After decades in which industrial policy was seen as a 
four-letter word, we have the IRA offering a historic course 
correction by investing in industries that are strategically 
imperative not only for our climate action, but also for a more 
just and thriving economy, and this rebirth of U.S. industrial 
policy is really long overdue.
    I can name one example. There are a lot of examples in the 
law that talk about how that--show how we can achieve climate 
jobs and justice goals at the same time. One is the program I 
just named in response to Congresswoman Sewell's question, a $6 
billion investment in clean manufacturing. The guidance 
recently came out from the Department of Energy for this 
program, suggesting that the businesses that will be 
prioritized for receiving Federal investments to make our 
aluminum, steel, and cement more cost competitive and cleaner 
will be those companies who not only reduce their greenhouse 
gas emissions, but also cut local pollution, including air 
pollution, also engage meaningfully with community groups and 
unions, also create high-quality jobs, also sign community 
benefit agreements to ensure that local communities and workers 
are getting real health, economic, and environmental benefits 
from those investments.
    Now, that might seem like a very long checklist, but the 
secret here is that those are mutually reinforcing criteria, 
offering potential for overlapping wins. And when we see 
opportunities for win-wins, seizing them is simply smart 
strategy. As one example, 60 percent of our unionized steel and 
aluminum plants in this country, all of which are very high 
greenhouse gas emitters, are also located in disadvantaged 
communities, the communities that have been hardest hit by the 
unjust status quo. Investing in those facilities offers a win-
win-win opportunity for cutting a major source of greenhouse 
gases, for investing in good, high-paying union jobs, and for 
redressing historical injustices. That is one example.
    Ms. DelBENE. Thank you. You know, this has been critical 
legislation. And unfortunately, we have seen ongoing efforts by 
my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to repeal all or 
some of the Inflation Reduction Act, and most recently through 
the polluters over people act last month.
    You talked about some of the investments that have already 
been announced as a result of the Inflation Reduction Act, and 
the impact its potential repeal could have on our climate 
goals, the American energy industry, and jobs, and on energy 
prices for American families. Can you talk about what the 
impact would be if the legislation was repealed?
    Mr. BEACHY. Well, we certainly don't see repeal in the 
offing, because voters don't tend to reject job-creating 
proposals. Voters don't tend to reject proposals that allow 
them to breathe clean air. Voters don't tend to reject 
proposals that allow us to make the technologies of the future. 
Those tend to be popular.
    And I would--if we look at the numbers just so far, I 
mentioned that--the report that--in the first six months, new 
investment announcements will create over 100,000 manufacturing 
jobs. I mean, those are spread across the country. You know, 
20,000 of those jobs are in Kansas; 16,000 in Georgia; 11,000 
in Tennessee; another 11,000 in Arizona. I do not think voters 
will reject that job creation.
    Ms. DelBENE. Thank you, and thank you, Mr. Chairman. I 
yield back.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Mr. Fitzpatrick.
    Mr. FITZPATRICK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think the 
sooner off that we all start rejecting this false narrative 
that you have to choose between energy independence and 
environmental preservation, the better off we are going to be. 
That is not a mutually exclusive choice. You can accomplish 
both. I am a huge conservationist, a huge environmentalist. 
However, I voted against the Inflation Reduction Act for the 
very reason that many of my colleagues here are offering up, 
that you can't ignore the impacts of dealing with a nation like 
China has negative impacts on our environment.
    I will ask, I suppose, Mr. Ginn. Is it not common knowledge 
that auto manufacturers that qualify for the EV production tax 
credit can claim the credit, even if they license their 
technology directly from Chinese companies?
    Mr. GINN. I believe that is correct, Congressman. I--
something else that I think was mentioned earlier, too, is a 
lot of these tax credits are going to financial institutions. 
And so why are we continuing to prop up different areas of our 
economy? It doesn't make sense, and especially if some of that 
is going to places like China or others that haven't been very 
friendly with us for a while.
    Mr. FITZPATRICK. And they are--China is dominating the 
battery manufacturing market. According to the International 
Energy Agency--this was last year or two years ago, rather, the 
most recent year they have data for--China produced about 75 
percent of the world's lithium ion batteries. That is compared 
to 7 percent produced by the United States, 75 percent to 7 
percent. And yet my reading of the Inflation Reduction Act, 
which I believe is accurate, will only continue to help these 
Chinese battery manufacturers benefit through the collection of 
royalty payments that are funded by the American taxpayer.
    And yet, inexplicably, the Administration proceeds full 
steam ahead on implementing these troubling provisions of the 
IRA. And it is the troubling provisions that we are zooming in 
on here, which, in turn, financially benefits Chinese 
companies, rather than focusing on protecting, promoting, and 
growing American manufacturers here at home, where we have fair 
labor standards, where we have environmental protections, which 
they have neither of in communist China.
    My last question, Mr. Ginn. What is--if you could, just 
opine or provide your reaction to the issue that I am raising: 
Chinese battery manufacturers profiting off of the U.S. 
taxpayers?
    Mr. GINN. Congressman, it is an unfortunate situation that 
shouldn't exist. It should not be on the back of taxpayers, 
especially with our fiscal crisis the way that it is right now. 
I mean, I think that is the largest threat that we have right 
now, moving forward and what that is going to mean to not only 
us and our grandkids, and yet we are funding communist China 
and others through the process of the EV batteries.
    What happens to the lithium whenever these batteries are 
done? That is a whole other environmental issue that is going 
on.
    What about the particulate matter that has been on the 
decline for many years in the United States, along with CO2 
emissions going down in the United States, compared with a lot 
of these other countries? And you are contributing to them 
building more in countries that, as has been mentioned here 
before, that do not have the same sort of environmental rules 
and regulations and just cleanliness like we have that is also 
provided by systems that are more based on free market 
capitalism, and not by government direction, socialism.
    Mr. FITZPATRICK. How would these lithium ion batteries be 
disposed?
    Mr. GINN. Great question. I don't have all the details on 
that one, but it is not pretty, from what I understand. It is 
not something that actually degrades like other types of--there 
are issues there. Yes.
    Mr. FITZPATRICK. Okay. Mr. Chairman, I yield back. Thank 
you.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Mr. Steube.
    Mr. STEUBE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    President Trump said, ``I don't want American--America to 
be energy independent. I want America to be energy dominant.'' 
To accomplish this, Trump lifted drilling restrictions, sped up 
fossil fuel production, gave the green light to domestic 
pipelines, blocked extreme environmental regulations, and 
reduced reliance on foreign oil. The U.S. was producing more 
oil than we were consuming, and producing more oil than Russia 
and Arab nations.
    Once Biden took office, we went from energy independence to 
energy dependence. Biden reversed almost all of Trump's 
policies by focusing on climate change, wind and solar power, 
and electric vehicles. After Biden's action, gasoline prices 
rose more than $5 a gallon, which was a direct result of his 
green energy policies.
    A Goldman Sachs report projects that green subsidies in the 
Inflation Reduction Act will cost $1.2 trillion, more than 3 
times what my Democratic colleagues claimed.
    The Wall Street Journal stated the Inflation Reduction Act 
may go down as one of the greatest confidence tricks on 
taxpayers in history. And my colleague, Mr. Estes, put that 
article into the Record.
    The Congressional Budget Office forecasted the Inflation 
Reduction Act's energy and climate provisions would cost 391 
billion between 2022 and 2031. This appears to be a huge under-
estimate. By Goldman's estimate, the Inflation Reduction Act 
tax credits will cost tens to hundreds of billions more than 
CBO estimated over 10 years. The forecast misses include 
electric vehicles, green energy manufacturing, renewable 
electric--electricity production, energy efficiency, hydrogen, 
biofuels, and carbon capture.
    Biden's disastrous climate policies and his environmental, 
social, and governance standards are crippling the United 
States economy.
    Mr. Turner, can you elaborate on these statistics and its 
effect on the U.S. economy?
    Mr. TURNER. Congressman, thank you for the question. You 
absolutely nailed it, especially when it comes to oil and gas 
production.
    You know, for years we heard this talking point, 9,000 
leases, 9,000 leases. How come they are not using the 9,000 
leases? Well, the Willow Project was a wonderful example of 
that, and I am glad the Biden Administration gave approval for 
this huge oil and gas lease in Alaska's North Slope. I have 
been to Willow several times. I will be back in a couple of 
months.
    But that was an example of one of the 9,000 leases that 
still requires government cooperation. And we don't have 
government cooperation from this Administration. For every one 
Willow, there are hundreds and hundreds of other companies 
waiting just to produce oil and gas. And instead, the Biden 
Administration makes deals with Venezuela. We make deals with 
OPEC. The President himself goes to Saudi Arabia to ask for 
oil.
    I just want to know why the American oil and gas workers 
have to suffer, while we look to other countries, some of them 
hostile, for our energy needs.
    Mr. STEUBE. Thank you for that. I agree with you 100 
percent.
    In 2018 the USTR, as part of an investigation under section 
301, concluded that China engages in forced technology, 
transfer theft of U.S. IP and trade secrets, discriminatory and 
non-market licensing practices, and state-funded strategic 
acquisitions of U.S. assets. USTR then imposed tariffs on an 
estimated $370 billion worth of U.S. imports from China. China 
countered with tariffs on 110 billion worth of U.S. products. 
Most tariffs remain in effect today. China's imports from 2020 
and 2021 fell below its commitment to buy at least $502 billion 
of U.S. goods and services over 2 years. In 2021, China's 
global exports grew by 30 percent over 2020. Its exports to the 
United States grew by 28 percent over 2020. China is pressing 
the USTR to lift U.S. tariffs, while sustaining its concerning 
practices.
    Mr. Stein, what actions are needed to address China's 
trade, coercion, and efforts to sidestep U.S. policies?
    Mr. STEIN. I think that is--it has to work at multiple 
levels. Like, there is--certainly, there is opportunities 
through the WTA and through retaliatory tariffs to approach 
these things.
    There is also legal mechanisms. There--Chinese companies 
invest in the United States, and we don't have to let them do 
so if they are not competing fairly in their home countries or 
even in third-party countries.
    Mr. STEUBE. Many of my Republican colleagues have expressed 
concern about the irregularities in economic ties, U.S. ties to 
PRC firms violating human rights and China's practices that may 
force or unfairly incentivize the transfer of U.S. technology 
and data to China. These issues are evolving into broader 
concerns about U.S. competitiveness and national security.
    Mr. Horn, can you provide types of Chinese threats and/or 
national security implications with green credit access?
    Mr. HORN. Congressman, any time we allow Chinese subsidized 
or owned entities into the United States, we have to assume 
that they are not only stealing IP. They are collecting 
intelligence, and they are finding ways to use every piece of 
our system against us.
    Mr. STEUBE. My time is expired. Thank you for--the 
witnesses for being here today.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Mr. Evans.
    Mr. EVANS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Rather than promoting fossil fuel and the aggressive 
pursuit of deregulation, I stand with my Democratic colleagues 
and understand that we must continue investing in a more 
substantial future. This is the best approach to revitalizing 
communities and neighborhoods in Pennsylvania and across the 
country.
    So far, the Inflation Reduction Act has invested--are 
working to revitalize communities across the country. The 
Inflation Reduction Act green tax credit are helping address 
climate change by supporting renewable energy technology. These 
green investments carry domestic content requirements that will 
strengthen U.S. manufacturing in our nation chains. These green 
investments also help prevailing wages and the apprenticeship 
requirements that will support our American workers' need.
    Mr. Beachy, how can you, with the Inflation Reduction Act, 
help address environmental justice that has hurt communities of 
color and low-income neighborhoods?
    Mr. BEACHY. Thank you for the question. I appreciate it. I 
mentioned before that we, of course, do not speak on behalf of 
environmental justice groups, but we gladly partner with them 
as they are leading on making sure these investments do support 
communities that have endured decades of environmental 
injustice.
    There is the Justice40 Initiative, which says that at least 
40 percent of the benefits from these investments need to go to 
the communities that have been hard hit by years of 
disproportionate exposure to air pollution, water pollution, 
and other environmental hazards. That applies across a whole 
slew of programs.
    Then there are specific programs that offer very specific 
benefits to communities that have endured environmental 
injustice, economic injustice, and racial injustice. One of 
them, for example, the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which has 
about $7 billion designated for competitive grants, 
specifically for low-income and disadvantaged communities, 
for--with a priority for, like, community solar and other 
investments. There is another 8 billion in there for financial 
and technical assistance for these same communities.
    Another program, Environmental and Climate Justice Block 
Grants. For the first time, the government is investing real 
money in communities that are disproportionately exposed to 
both environmental injustice and climate impacts by providing 
block grants for communities to decide how they can best spend 
these investments. They can invest this money in reducing air 
pollution, in remediation of toxic sites, as well as 
investments in low emissions technologies that will support 
both jobs, clean air, and a livable climate.
    Mr. EVANS. I would like to ask you a follow-up. We know 
that a lot of Inflation Reduction Act subsidies go to business 
initially. But Mr. Beachy, how can workers and communities 
secure economic and environmental benefits of the Inflation 
Reduction Act?
    Mr. BEACHY. Yes, it is a great question. So as an example, 
many of the investments I have been talking about in clean 
manufacturing will go first to businesses. At the same time, 
the Biden Administration has been making clear that the 
businesses that will be prioritized for these investments are 
those that sign--that partner with unions and ensure high road 
jobs, and also that sign community benefits agreements with 
both workers and communities.
    And what community benefits are, they are legally binding 
agreements between the company and the local workers and local 
communities to ensure tangible economic, health, and 
environmental benefits on the ground, both for the workers 
inside the factory and for the communities living outside the 
factory.
    You know, we have existing examples of these community 
benefits agreements. They can include local hire provisions, 
targeted hire for workers of color, for women, for other under-
represented workers. They can include community--business 
investments into a community controlled fund, reductions in air 
pollution, higher labor standards. It is, at the end of the 
day, a binding legal agreement that puts communities and 
workers in the driver's seat of determining the path of these 
investments, and it is actually being attached to many of these 
investments that are going to businesses.
    Mr. EVANS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back the 
balance of my time.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Ms. Tenney is recognized.
    Ms. TENNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the 
witnesses today.
    I have heard it said by my colleagues across the aisle 
that--I just call it the Inflation Act and the Green New Deal, 
because that is what it was touted as, even before it was 
signed into law--represents an attempt at industrial policy. If 
so, I think it is a pretty poor attempt. The truth is this 
isn't industrial policy, it is ideological policy.
    The industrial policy would be bipartisan, and this was not 
a bipartisan act, which is why we are trying to fix this today. 
It would be well thought out. It would be the--have proper 
safeguards in place to ensure adversaries did not benefit. 
Well, we know that didn't happen. So the Democrats failed on 
all three fronts.
    Perhaps the most concerning of all is China will reap 
significant rewards from the Inflation Act Green New Deal, as I 
call it. Foreign entities of concern, including those 
controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, will receive 
billions of U.S. tax dollars under this giveaway program. It is 
difficult to imagine anything more irresponsible than forcing 
U.S. taxpayers to foot the bill for subsidies flowing directly 
to those controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.
    On top of that, the Biden Administration is hard at work 
creating additional loopholes that will benefit foreign 
companies at the expense of workers here in America. Instead, 
America should be working to become energy independent, not 
rewarding bad actors like China, as you have heard my 
colleagues talk about: intellectual property theft, spy 
balloons, TikTok.
    And industrial policy is fundamentally about using policy 
to encourage investment in critical sectors of our economy. 
This has been done successfully in the past, and I think that 
we all would support and advocate for some kind of targeted 
industrial policy that puts American industry and, yes, 
American workers first.
    This is something both Republicans and Democrats should be 
able to support, and it is what many of my constituents in the 
rural Rust Belt region of upstate New York care about. And we 
are an area that was basically, you know, the beginning of 
everything. The Empire State has become the exodus state. 
Everyone has left, they have gone to Asia, they have gone to 
China. And China is benefiting from our bad policies. And right 
now, as a state, we face among the highest tax and regulatory 
burdens in the country. And we are--we have been saddled and 
our taxpayers are being saddled with giving up and propping up 
the government of the Chinese Communist Party with their tax 
dollars.
    And for their--you know, for industrial policy to be 
successful, it should be thoughtfully developed, carefully 
implemented, and, most importantly, it should be unified. The 
Inflation Act Green New Deal, as I call it, failed on all these 
fronts.
    And it was a rushed piece of legislation that wasn't well 
understood by anyone at the time, which all of my colleagues 
have pointed out, the almost 1.2 trillion potentially, as 
stated by Goldman Sachs, and the costs, including many of those 
responsible for drafting it, which is why it was a one-size-
fits-all and one-party-dominated bill.
    We are already seeing the negative effects, as pointed out 
by my colleagues. The Joint Committee on Taxation scored it at 
271 billion. We have seen beautiful charts showing all that, 
unfortunately for us, and likely a real dynamic scoring of 1 
trillion. And it is no surprise that this has been a mess, 
based on the way it was put through.
    So my question--and I come from an area where we are facing 
catastrophic changes in energy policy that will destroy the 
economy of upstate New York. My district, the New York 24, is 
the largest agricultural district in the northeast, the largest 
dairy district. We have very harsh winters. We have a wonderful 
soil and water conditions, and a very short growing season. And 
I wanted to just give my first question to Mr. Turner.
    You talked about agricultural policy. Can you give us--just 
quickly, because I am using up my time--how the Chinese 
Communist Party's dominance in the supply chains will further 
be cemented by the Inflation Reduction Green New Deal, and how 
it will affect my rural communities in upstate New York, who we 
depend on for our economic strength?
    Mr. TURNER. It is a wonderful question, Congresswoman--and 
I say this often on social media, and I know my social media is 
well followed on this committee--but people who have a farm 
like I do, you cannot find farm equipment that is hardly not 
made in China. Giving China subsidies for more, this just puts 
all of our farmers at an enormous disadvantage.
    We have raised the cost of energy to the point that 
fertilizers are more expensive. Your constituents would know, 
as I would, hay was $7 a bale 2 years ago. I paid 11.75 at the 
beginning of this winter, right? I don't get any of those 
additional benefits when I sell my cattle. I just have to eat 
those costs.
    So all these benefits going to China are weakening American 
rural communities, farm communities, and energy communities.
    Ms. TENNEY. Thank you so much.
    And I just want to ask Mr. Stein, will the green credits in 
the Inflation Act Green New Deal actually make us energy 
independent?
    And how could we lower our energy costs?
    And I am running out of time, so----
    Mr. STEIN. Yes. Well, clearly, it is not going to make us 
energy independent. We are actually going to increase our 
dependence on China for the supplies of a lot of these things. 
So we are actually eliminating our current near-independent 
security that we have from our domestic resources, and 
changing--we are actually making--so the Inflation Act would 
make us less secure, as far as energy goes, certainly.
    Ms. TENNEY. Thank you.
    I am out of time. I yield back.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Mrs. Fischbach.
    Mrs. FISCHBACH. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the 
opportunity.
    And thank you to all of the witnesses today. I appreciate 
it, and I know it is a long haul by the time you get to the 
bottom.
    But, you know, as we have discussed today, the so-called 
Reflation Reduction--or Inflation Reduction Act appeared to 
create incentives for domestic critical mineral production and 
domestic manufacturing. Yet instead of bolstering the American 
economy, the Biden Administration, as my--as many of my 
colleagues have pointed out, has created carve-outs and 
loopholes to continue our reliance on foreign countries and 
foreign companies.
    I am especially concerned with the Biden Administration 
entering into the critical mineral agreements with Japan, while 
at the same time continues to attack proposed copper and nickel 
mines located in my home state of Minnesota.
    Mr. Horn, is it backwards to create tax incentives for 
domestic critical minerals without having a regulatory process 
that allows for the development of the domestic critical 
minerals?
    Mr. HORN. Congresswoman, it is a very difficult situation 
to try and fix all at once. And while I think there is a role 
for allied partnerships and for trade, I think we have to 
prioritize what we have in this country, primarily.
    And when you look at the geology and the massive amount of 
resources inside the United States, you know, we could surpass 
our own internal demand very easily. Obviously, the great state 
of Minnesota has incredible battery material wealth, and it 
could be harvested and developed, refined, in my opinion, 
cleaner and in a more environmentally sound and responsible 
manner than anywhere else on the planet. But it comes with 
challenges.
    And realistically, especially when you are dealing with 
public land or other government-regulated entities, it is 
difficult to find ways forward with the projects. I see 
projects every day, I talk to investors. And the scariest thing 
that any investor will hear is that a project is on public 
land, to be quite frank.
    So while we should look to have trade agreements that 
expand abilities to work with our allies--you know, I have seen 
a lot of U.S.-Canadian collaboration, for example, that I think 
is fundamentally necessary, especially when it comes to defense 
industrial policy--we have to put the primary focus on doing 
the work here in the United States to create the jobs that we 
have referenced, to use the cleanest, most technologically-
advanced procedures, and to once again demonstrate to the world 
the right way to actually bring about this technological 
revolution.
    Mrs. FISCHBACH. Thank you, Mr. Horn. And I will just add, 
you know, if we want to become independent, we need to make 
sure that we are using all of those resources, and that we do 
it in a responsible manner, you know, making sure that we are 
addressing that, and that the regulatory process is reasonable 
when we do start to move towards using our own.
    And also, I have serious concerns about the electric 
vehicle tax credits that were expanded in that--in--again, in 
the so-called Inflation Reduction Act. At the time when 
Americans saw their grocery budgets at an all-time high due to 
record inflation, Democrats spent billions of dollars on tax 
credits that benefit the wealthiest Americans. In fact, a JCT 
report in 2016 found that among individual taxpayers 78 percent 
of the EV tax credits claimed were by filers with an adjusted 
gross income of $100,000 or more.
    So we have--already know that the wealthiest earners would 
benefit the most from this tax credit. And now, because of the 
Biden tax--Biden Treasury Department is implementing this bill, 
we are learning that China will be a significant beneficiary. 
And I know that we have talked about this, but I represent--Mr. 
Ginn, I represent a very rural district in Minnesota, and the 
median household income of my district is less than $65,000 a 
year. That just came out the other day. But if Chinese 
companies are allowed to access these tax credits--this is an 
easy one, I think--but who will benefit more from the Inflation 
Reduction Act, Chinese companies or my constituents?
    Mr. GINN. Congressman, it is a good question, and I believe 
it is the Chinese, but also a lot of big businesses here. 
Financial companies are also getting a lot of these from the 
equity that is built into the tax credits. And so very little 
of it will trickle down, if you will, to the rural areas to 
benefit them.
    Mrs. FISCHBACH. And thank you, Mr. Ginn. I think they will 
continue to experience those issues with inflation in their 
grocery costs without seeing any of the benefits of this so-
called Inflation Reduction Act. So thank you.
    And with that I yield back.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Thank you.
    Mr. Beyer.
    Mr. TURNER. Mr. Chair, may I have one quick moment to 
address something the congresswoman said?
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Very quick.
    Mr. TURNER. Because I think it is very important. Thank 
you, sir.
    From Minnesota, the two largest copper deposits found in 
American soil are Minnesota and Alaska. This Administration is 
pushing electric vehicles. Fine. Their standards last week, 
pushed by the EPA, want two-thirds of electric vehicles to be 
EVs. The average EV has 60 to 80 pounds of copper. So they are 
saying we need copper, and yet the same Administration that is 
pushing us to use EVs and copper is denying us the permission 
to open copper mines in America.
    So that is not a sane policy. And if you are a miner in 
these two areas that you said are rural and need the jobs, you 
have to scratch your head and say, where is the sound policy 
coming when it comes to this issue?
    Mrs. FISCHBACH. And thank you, Mr. Turner. You put a bow on 
it. Thank you.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Thank you, Mr. Beyer. You are 
recognized now.
    Mr. BEYER. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. And I really 
want to thank the witnesses for your testimonies, and I really 
have learned a lot from your answers, and to my Republican 
friends, too.
    And I want to address one thing that has come up again and 
again, which is the impact of the last 40 years on rural 
America. I don't want to over-simplify, but for the sake of the 
five minutes, you know, impact number one was globalization and 
the free trade agreements. We had CAFTA and NAFTA under 
Clinton; we had KORUS under George Bush; we had USMCA under 
Donald Trump; and many others along the way. And add to that 
technology, because I have been visiting manufacturing firms 
for 50 years, and 50 years ago there were a lot of people in 
them, and now there are very few people in them because the 
impact of technology.
    So that is part one, which is why, even though we struggle 
with it, you know, President Biden's commitment to a worker-
centered trade policy was trying to reconcile our commitment to 
global trade with the fact that we have to defend American jobs 
at the same time.
    And the second half is what has happened to fossil fuels, 
specifically coal. I was lieutenant governor of Virginia for 
eight years, so I spent nine-and-a-half years going to the coal 
fields. And even 40 years ago, it was really tough. The coal 
companies were going broke. They moved to longwall mining, 
which eliminated lots of jobs. The coal companies that existed 
couldn't pay for the health care and the retirement benefits. 
And we spent--and then climate change comes along, and we have 
the trade-off between protecting those coal miners, whom we 
love, and protecting the planet and all the people who live 
everywhere else who were, you know, really hurt by it. And that 
is not easy.
    And we have struggled with it for a long, long time, trying 
to figure out how do we bring rural America back.
    The easiest throwaway is broadband, which we are all 
committed to, but it is much more than that--and education, 
which we are all committed to.
    Mr. Beachy, what is in the IRA that would actually help 
rural America adapt to the world we live in today?
    Mr. BEACHY. I appreciate the question. Let me first concur 
with the deleterious effects of our trade agreements under the 
status quo under both Republican and Democratic 
administrations. We have seen trade agreements that have 
incentivized the outsourcing of our manufacturing to countries 
with lower labor and environmental standards, contributing both 
to job loss here and greater climate pollution.
    That actually--under-reported element of that is that when 
the most emissions-intensive factories in the world produce the 
steel and aluminum of the world, it means an increase in global 
industrial emissions. And the IRA aims to fix that by investing 
in clean manufacturing of bedrock materials like aluminum, 
steel, and cement in this country.
    To your question of hard-hit communities, I named earlier 
that there is a--I come from West Virginia. I take this 
question very seriously, as do many. And up until now, it has 
been a lot of talk. The IRA recognizes one essential truth, 
which is that while there has been a lot of hand-waving in the 
past, assuming that technological shifts will just naturally 
take care of workers and communities, we know that is 
absolutely not the case. Some communities and some workers are 
indeed left behind when policy allows them to be left behind.
    The IRA takes a step in the right direction by dedicating 
funds--4 billion under a manufacturing program, a bonus tax 
credit for the wind and solar developments, a loan program 
worth $250 billion in loans--to specifically invest in energy 
transition communities to retool for the clean energy economy. 
And that is not--those aren't words. Those are actions, really, 
for the first time that we have seen in a long time.
    For the rest of rural America outside of energy 
communities, there is a $9.7 billion investment in rural 
electric cooperatives, allowing for rural communities to switch 
to clean energy not only for the benefits for clean air and 
climate, but also for the benefits for jobs and economic 
development in those communities.
    There is investments for farmers to be able to increase 
their energy efficiency, cut down their energy bills.
    There is investments that are going throughout the 
heartland right now. I mentioned that, of the 100,000 jobs that 
were documented in just the first 6 months since President 
Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, we have a lot of 
them--in fact, the largest numbers--are in rural states. My dad 
is from Kansas. The largest number of jobs we have seen created 
to date under new investments under--since the IRA was signed 
is in Kansas, 20,000 jobs.
    Mr. BEYER. You used up all my time, but I am grateful, 
because you did a great job laying out all the positive things 
that have happened, and much more that we need to do.
    I believe West Virginia is still 50th out of 50 states in 
per capita or family income. We would like it to be middle of 
the pack, and we will keep investing in it.
    With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Mr. Moore recognized.
    Mr. MOORE of Utah. Thank you, Chairman.
    Gentlemen, thank you. Thank you for sitting through this 
and answering questions. Sometimes the five minutes goes by and 
you don't get to answer any questions. That is the way this 
place works. But welcome to the U.S. House of Representatives, 
a lovely place of constant contradiction.
    Just today we have seen--not related to this, but, you 
know, we saw an argument about, you know, we cannot default. So 
one side of the aisle says we can't default, and the other side 
of the aisle says we absolutely cannot default, so let's do a 
bill that ensures that we pay our bonded indebtedness to our 
creditors. And then the other side will say, well, you just 
want to pay our creditors only, or certain creditors more. 
Like, it is just this constant back-and-forth. And I actually 
relate that as an example to what we are dealing with here with 
respect to trying to embrace an all-of-the-above approach 
energy process, right?
    I have never been against, you know, the concept of 
building an all-of-the-above approach, right? And a lot of the 
things in the Inflation Reduction Act were trying to get to 
that. But the lead person on this--and President Biden, when he 
stands in front of the entire country and says, well, yes, we 
will need oil and gas for 10 more years, like, I don't--I have 
never seen any type of predictions that can say that we can 
meet our energy demands with just 10 more years of oil and gas. 
I just met with a renewable gas organization that we are--that 
are digging into this issue, and talking about all the amazing 
benefits that we get from natural gas.
    And so, again, H.R. 1 becomes this debate. Personally, I 
hope that in this split government situation we are able to 
find an opportunity from--permitting reform. I believe there 
are several Democrats, many Democrats, that would be open to 
the concept of permitting reform, because it is stymying 
anything that they are doing on renewable technology. We can't 
even build transmission lines because of NEPA and the archaic 
version of how we go about that regulation.
    And so with that, Mr. Horn, I kind of wanted to just hear 
your thoughts on the ability to meet these demands. If there is 
such a motivation to produce solar panels, wind turbines, 
batteries, EVs, transformers, do we have the regulatory 
environment to produce the material needed for that 
domestically?
    Mr. HORN. Congressman, the regulatory environment is not 
easy to work with, to state the obvious. What I would say is we 
have the resource and technological capability to not only meet 
our own demand, but to export to the remainder of the globe if 
we were to unleash those resources.
    What I do believe is that there can be a truly bipartisan 
agreement on common-sense regulatory reform that really looks 
to prioritize what is best not only for industry, for jobs, for 
possibly exploitable populations, but for the environment, as 
well. Because I think when you actually contrast, you know, to 
the earlier example, a copper mine in Minnesota with slave 
child labor in Congo that is being propped up artificially by 
our largest adversary, there is really no question as to which 
of those is preferential for all of our goals.
    So I would say there needs to be a hard look at regulatory 
reform in terms of opening up U.S. resources. And if we do 
that, we can once again lead the world in this space like we 
did prior to the 1990s.
    Mr. MOORE of Utah. Mr. Stein, it is easy to see why using 
American minerals helps American companies. It is easy to see 
why it could help produce some of this technology that so many 
people want to embrace. What about the consumers?
    How does it--can you describe how it will help consumers to 
embrace American-made or American-produced minerals more?
    Mr. STEIN. Well, I think, ultimately, consumers are 
American citizens who get those jobs, and those communities, 
the funds that go into those communities, that helps consumers 
to purchase those products.
    So I mean--and ultimately, the sorts of efficiencies that 
we might look for to ultimately lower prices for some of these 
things like EVs that are still very expensive, that sort of 
innovation might happen in the United States in a capitalist, 
you know, economy, but if it was allowed for the market itself 
to actually take that action. This is part of the problem when 
you have government subsidies creating things. They prop up 
existing technologies, existing ways of doing things because 
companies chase the money instead of innovating and looking for 
the next big thing, something that might actually lower costs.
    Mr. MOORE of Utah. Thank you. And I will just quickly make 
a comment to Mr. Turner.
    Your comment earlier about the 9,000 leases is something I 
have dug into. I have actually put legislation that would 
require a specific timeline and process that you need to follow 
for things that are, like, are existing.
    So the Biden Administration says, okay, we are going to 
stop doing it entirely, Federal lands, secretarial order, all 
that stuff. And then, oh, but we have all these leases 
available, and then the slow-playing happens. And that is the 
most fundamentally difficult thing for our industry to actually 
navigate, and I think it is one of the most disingenuous 
things. So I appreciate you highlighting it.
    And if the leases are available, well, then let's embrace 
it. Let's continue to do it. But then it is more of the slow-
playing and the constant--you know, all the roadblocks that get 
put in the way, and we are left with an impossible environment 
to navigate. So thank you.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Mrs. Steel is recognized.
    Mrs. STEEL. Thank you, all the witnesses, today, and thank 
you, Chairman Smith, for hosting this hearing.
    It should be alarming to all of us that Chinese Communist 
Party now develops a majority of the world's nickel, cobalt, 
lithium, graphite, and manganese, and rare earth minerals. 
Manufacturers need these raw materials to produce the clean 
energy future. But the United States has tied its own hands 
with restrictions that make it impossible to access our own 
natural resources.
    The Inflation Reduction Act has forced our allies to make 
difficult decisions about investments in the United States, and 
many are being forced out of the United States market because 
the Administration has not included a realistic transition 
period for implementation.
    Mr. Turner, we have heard today about significant 
investments being made and jobs created to be able to claim the 
tax credits available through IRA. But how can this growth be 
sustainable if we are missing the first step, having the 
natural resources available to continue to produce the products 
American and international customers need?
    Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Congresswoman. It is a wonderful 
point. It is the equivalent of celebrating the fact that we are 
opening up lemonade stands, but we don't have any lemons, 
right? And so saying we are going to have all this processing, 
manufacturing, very good. I want manufacturing in America. I 
want processing in America. But if the rare earths, if the 
metals, the minerals are all found in other countries, then how 
valuable, how sustainable is that manufacturing?
    And to highlight that, all of these metals, rare earths, 
metals, materials, et cetera, are found in America. As my 
colleague right to my left just said, we could sustain our own 
economy and export to our allies, if only we were allowed to 
unleash the fullness of our potential.
    Mrs. STEEL. Thank you for that. In California we have over 
1,000 applications to drilling in California. Twenty percent of 
the oil is actually coming from Russia. And since 1994, not 
even 1 permit were given out.
    So in my home state the California Air Resources Board last 
year approved a new rule that would require 100 percent of new 
light and medium-duty vehicles sold in--within California to be 
zero-emission vehicles by 2035. And now the EPA has announced 
that up to 60 percent of 2030 models and two-thirds of 2032 
models sold nationwide need to be zero emissions. California's 
electrical grid cannot provide enough electricity to power all 
these vehicles because we have rolling blackouts.
    Do you have any concerns that these progressive zero 
emissions proposals from the EPA and California Air Resources 
Board?
    Mr. TURNER. Yes, Congresswoman. And these goals are so far 
in the future--that is because they are absolutely not 
achievable. They are not achievable by market forces. They are 
not achievable by technological forces. And we do not have the 
grid infrastructure to have a ``electric vehicle fleet.'' And 
so that is why they are 5, 10, 15 years, because then it will 
be someone else's problem.
    A lot of what governments sometimes, sadly, does is create 
problems for future generations to deal with. And what--doing 
this is going to have huge market implications for the 
combustion engine vehicles. It is going to be a huge burden on 
rural and lower-income Americans, but it is also going to be a 
problem that future legislators and governors will have to deal 
with.
    Mrs. STEEL. Yes. How it is low-income families, that they 
can afford to buy those vehicles?
    The CCP has misreported its carbon emissions, and continues 
to open new coal plants. Yet the Inflation Reduction Act will 
pour American taxpayer dollars into their green companies. Can 
you explain how the CCP-backed companies will benefit from the 
taxpayer-funded credits, and can you share how this could make 
the CCP even more dominant in the supply chain?
    And we want to be dominating those supply chains. But as of 
now the CCP has been, and they are very aggressive about that.
    Mr. TURNER. I could definitely answer that, but I think Mr. 
Horn is more qualified, if that is okay with you.
    Mrs. STEEL. Sure, thank you.
    Mr. HORN. Thank you.
    It is really quite clear, unfortunately, that the CCP knows 
exactly what our playbook is. They know exactly how to exploit 
it, and we make it incredibly easy for them. So they have 
realized that they can essentially create a shell company or 
entity that meets whatever loose criteria we currently have, 
and completely exploit it, and crush any legitimate American 
competition in the process.
    Mrs. STEEL. Thank you for all those answers, and thank you 
for coming today.
    I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Thank you. Kind of what is 
going on in Michigan.
    Mr. Schneider?
    Mr. SCHNEIDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to thank 
the witnesses for being here today, for your patience, and 
sharing your perspectives.
    Mr. Horn, I appreciate your optimism, and I share your view 
that we would be well served by a bipartisan approach to 
addressing our challenges and pursuing our opportunities. I 
think it is also critical. I spent my whole career in business 
before coming to Congress doing strategy, planning for the long 
term. I know if we are going to be successful in leading the 
world in the next generation and the generation after that, we 
need to have a long view, but also with a sense of urgency.
    The Inflation Reduction Act made historical and critical 
investments in our country's future, both from a climate 
perspective and in our economy. Heeding scientists' warning, 
the Biden Administration in the 117th Congress set our country 
significantly down a path towards net zero emissions by 2050 
through the passage of the IRA and the Infrastructure 
Investment and Jobs Act.
    A study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory 
evaluated the impacts of these two laws and what they will have 
on our utility sector, and demonstrated that clean electricity, 
thanks to the efforts of the prior Congress, would represent as 
much as 90 percent of total generation in the next decade.
    I ask unanimous consent that this NREL report be submitted 
for the record.

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

    I have also heard from renewable energy companies in my 
district who, with assistance from the Illinois state 
legislature, have spent years making progress deploying 
renewable energy in our state, including more than $3 billion 
in solar development last year alone. We will see this progress 
rapidly increase as a result of the IRA.
    These historic investments, and the positive advancements 
and quality jobs that follow are directly at risk from the 
Republican political attempts to derail the IRA. According to 
the American Clean Power, in a mere 8 months since we passed 
the IRA, more than $150 billion in utility scale renewable 
energy projects have been announced. That investment is only 
going to continue growing.
    I could speak for hours here about the critical climate 
investments that the IRA will make, but what I want to talk 
about today is the tens of thousands of jobs that these 
investments are creating. The $150 billion of investment that I 
mentioned, that represents at least 18,800 jobs.
    Mr. Beachy, to that end, you mentioned in your testimony a 
report from the University of Massachusetts Amherst that shows 
the climate investments in the IRA will create more than nine 
million total jobs over the next decade.
    Yes, the IRA is the most historic Federal investment to 
combat climate crisis, but it is also a huge investment in 
domestic manufacturing and jobs in every state and every 
community. Can you expand how the IRA would improve workers' 
access to these high-quality jobs and clean energy sectors, and 
why it is so important?
    And beyond that, beyond the context of climate, how the IRA 
is fundamentally a jobs bill.
    Mr. BEACHY. I am happy to. Maybe I will start by breaking 
down that nine million a little bit.
    I mentioned already that five million of those nine million 
jobs will be going towards clean energy workers, which, for the 
first time, will be paid prevailing wages and offered 
apprenticeships that offer a pathway to middle-class careers. 
That is because, to take it full--to take advantage of the full 
extent of the tax credit, developers need to pay those wages 
and offer those apprenticeships.
    Clean manufacturing, 900,000 jobs; electric vehicles and 
clean transportation, 400,000 jobs; energy efficient homes and 
offices, another 900,000 jobs; environmental justice and 
climate resilience investments, 150,000 jobs; natural 
infrastructure, 600,000 jobs.
    You asked about pathways to these jobs. It is critical that 
apprenticeships are explicitly named as one of the criteria 
that developers need to meet in order to get the full extent of 
the tax credit, because apprenticeships provide an on-ramp to 
high-quality jobs, a pathway to the middle class, particularly 
for workers without a four-year degree. And really, for the 
first time, again, we are marrying investments with that 
pathway.
    Mr. SCHNEIDER. Great, thank you. Let me take a little bit 
further and ask about the consequences if IRA would be 
repealed, whether it is a debt ceiling proposal or otherwise 
removing the investments that the IRA is trying to promote, 
what would be the consequences of that?
    Mr. BEACHY. I mentioned earlier that I do not expect voters 
to reject good jobs or clean air or investment in clean 
technologies. I will just add to that.
    What it would essentially mean is ceding investments in the 
clean technologies of the future to those who are currently 
controlling those technologies. Much has been said today about 
the--that--the fact that there is such extreme concentration of 
manufacturing of clean technology in China. If that is the 
problem we are trying to solve for, we should try to invest in 
clean domestic manufacturing and clean technologies here at 
home. That is what IRA does.
    Mr. SCHNEIDER. Great, thank you.
    I am out of time. I yield back.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Ms. Van Duyne.
    Ms. VAN DUYNE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Last year Democrats provided hundreds of billions of 
dollars in green tax credits to benefit large corporations and 
Chinese-headquartered entities, even as American families, 
farmers, workers, and small businesses struggled under the 
weight and cost of increased cost of living under the Biden 
living crisis and broken supply chains.
    Democrats have prioritized their extremist climate agenda. 
And yet last year, when we passed a so-called--I love what you 
called it--not the Inflation Reduction Act, but the Inflation 
Recession Act, not only did they claim that the bill would be 
paid for, but they actually claimed it would reduce the deficit 
by over $300 million.
    We knew in 2019 that 83 percent of the credits were claimed 
by individuals making 6 figures and above. And last year 
Democrats decided that we needed to increase this credit even 
further. The electric vehicle tax credits will be a whopping 
$393 billion taxpayer subsidy. That is 28 times higher than the 
original estimate. And on top of that, we have seen analysis 
that the battery production of electric vehicle battery 
production credits projects a cost to taxpayers of over $196 
billion. That is a 542 percent increase from the law's original 
sticker price.
    This is sold as subsidizing an emergency? I am sorry, an 
emerging industry? But this bill was propping up an entire 
industry.
    Mr. Ginn, you have analyzed this bill and the credits on 
this bill. Can you talk about how these numbers got so 
inflated, and how this bill is even worse than we thought?
    Mr. GINN. Yes, Congresswoman, thank you. You know, a lot of 
it has to do with the changes that have happened just since 
last year.
    Whenever you incentivize something through these tax 
credits, you get more of them. And so there have been a lot 
more in projections of what the costs are going to be, or the 
building--the manufacturing of many of these vehicles, 
therefore the batteries. And so that has contributed to many 
more of the kilowatt hours--you know, the $45-per-kilowatt-hour 
of these batteries of what is being produced. Multiply that by 
the number of new vehicles that is expected.
    That is where you get the total amount of the $196.5 
billion compared to the $30 billion that was initially assumed, 
along with some of--like we mentioned earlier--some of the 
Treasury's rules and guidance that has been put out now that 
has changed the--fundamentally changed the calculations that 
were done last year. And that is one reason why we need to have 
these re-estimated, so we can know what the true cost is for 
taxpayers.
    Ms. VAN DUYNE. Thank you for that.
    Mr. Horn, do these EV credits actually increase or decrease 
our dependence on China?
    Mr. HORN. Without the proper amount of enforcement and 
oversight, they are currently actually making the problem 
worse, and emboldening the Chinese Communist Party.
    So what really needs to be done is closing all loopholes, 
avoiding any sort of workarounds or carve-outs, and truly 
prioritizing supporting the legitimate American opportunities 
that actually exist today and are not far from coming online 
into full-term production.
    Ms. VAN DUYNE. Thank you.
    The IRA tax credit or energy credit I have seen the most 
excitement for is the section 45 hydrogen production credit. 
The level of the credit as--per the IRA is based on a level of 
carbon intensity determined by life cycle analysis, and there 
is no reference to feedstock, fuel source in the text. So 
focusing on the end result, rather than the source, is the more 
tech-neutral approach. However, many environmental groups are 
hitting Treasury hard on this point, and trying to get any 
hydrogen produced with fossil fuel disqualified now from the 
credit.
    So given that most hydrogen is produced from natural gas, 
this would essentially nip the technology in the bud before it 
even starts. So once again, we are seeing Treasury put its 
finger on the scale and picking winners and losers. Mr. Stein, 
can you elaborate on how Treasury guidance could shut down 
hydrogen production before it even really begins?
    Mr. STEIN. Well, the key is what you mentioned about life 
cycle greenhouse gas analysis. That is really a bit of a made-
up science. You can decide that methane has a certain value for 
greenhouse gas life cycle analysis. You can decide land use has 
a certain value, and it is very easy to put your finger on the 
scale if you have got--if you have the ear of the Treasury 
officials that decide what counts as certain levels of 
emissions.
    And it is very simple to say, well, the--for instance, the 
natural gas production, you say that there is a certain amount 
of methane that is leaking throughout the system. We don't 
really know how much, but you say X amount, and that makes it 
not green enough to qualify for the credit.
    Ms. VAN DUYNE. So I am going to ask you, Mr. Turner. If you 
were in my position, what would your next step be?
    Mr. TURNER. Congresswoman, I would look to unleash the full 
potential of America's energy, and that includes all fossil 
fuels. That includes all mining. If we are going to have this 
green transition, and it is going to be forced by government, 
then we might as well take advantage of it with the jobs and 
the tax revenue here.
    My organization has put out numerous studies that show how 
California, Alaska have all of the metals and minerals 
necessary for this green transition, yet the same people 
pushing it are prohibiting us from opening up these mines. So I 
would just try to get some sanity in our energy policy and say, 
which one is it? Are we going to go green? Then let's do it 
with American ingenuity, American resources, and American jobs 
and tax revenue. Or are we going to support communist China? 
Because right now we seem to be doing both.
    Ms. VAN DUYNE. I appreciate that answer, and I yield back. 
Thank you.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Mr. Feenstra is recognized.
    Mr. FEENSTRA. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, 
witnesses, for all your testimony. I greatly appreciate it.
    [Chart]
    Mr. FEENSTRA. As you can see behind me, as my colleague, 
Ms. Van Duyne noted, the cost of the green tax credits far 
outreached the originally-projected amounts. Goldman Sachs 
noted that the advanced manufacturing credit will be about 193 
million. That is five times of what it was initially, what was 
noted by Joint Commission on Taxation.
    Electric vehicles is going to be about 393 billion, 
compared to 14 billion--again, noted by the Joint Commission on 
Taxation.
    I mean, this is dramatic. This is huge, especially when the 
CBO said, hey, the deficit would be cut by 238 billion. Well, 
if that is the case, then look at what is happening here. So 
all of a sudden, we no longer have a deficit, we have a 
dramatic increase.
    So, Mr. Ginn, the CBO budget and the economic outlook 
published in February of this year did not account for these 
revised costs of these new green energy credits. So are we 
likely to see deficit, debt, interest payments revised upward 
in the next CBO update as of this result?
    Mr. GINN. Congressman, if they take an accurate analysis of 
the updated data, the new Treasury guidance that is provided 
for IRA and the EV credits and everything else, it would 
certainly go up. Deficits would go up, debt would go up, 
interest payments would go up. And that is on top of already 
the expectation of an average of $2 trillion per year of 
deficits over the next decade.
    Mr. FEENSTRA. And how does that affect our economy?
    Mr. GINN. Yes, it is a huge cost on the economy. It burdens 
us, it slows down our growth. It is higher interest rates than 
we would otherwise have, higher mortgage rates, higher car loan 
rates, just kind of through the process. And then, of course, 
if the Federal Reserve prints it, which they probably will do 
some of that, you will see higher inflation than we are already 
having.
    I mean, some are saying we are having disinflation now, it 
has come off the peak from last year. But we still have five 
percent, the highest in multi-decades. And so I don't see that 
is--this is the bottom. There is still more to it, especially 
with these kind of costs down the road.
    Mr. FEENSTRA. Thank you, Mr. Ginn, and I agree with you 100 
percent. We are not at the bottom. We are literally not at the 
bottom, and we have a debt crisis right before us, and we have 
got to raise the debt ceiling.
    Why do we got to raise the debt ceiling? Because of this 
wild spending spree that has happened in the last two years by 
the Inflation Reduction Act and many other things. And we, the 
people, our taxpayers, we got to pay for this. Our families 
that have to go to the grocery store all the sudden are seeing 
an increase in eggs and you name it. They are seeing an 
increase in gas, right, because of this outlandish spending 
spree that is now affecting all of us.
    I want to change the topic and talk about the supply chain. 
You know, the Inflation Reduction Act, obviously, as we see on 
this bill--on this board--promoted tax credits for electric 
cars. All right. Now, think about this. All right. Tax credits 
for electric cars. The EPA also just mandated that 54 percent 
of all new vehicles by 2030 must be electric. All right. All 
right. So there is this thumb on the scale, the thumb on the 
scale that says, all right, we are going to have electric 
vehicles, all right?
    Side note, that really irritates me, because I am a 
biofuels guy, and they talk nothing about ethanol and 
biodiesel, which just infuriates me.
    But anyway, the Department of the Interior, all right, the 
Department of the Interior, what do they do? They ban mining in 
critical materials in public lands. Mr. Turner, you noted that, 
right? This is an oxymoron. All right, we want to do electric 
vehicles, but we are going to ban critical materials.
    And then the Department of Energy on the other side--all 
right, this is how dysfunctional this Administration is--the 
Department of Energy noted that 4 out of every 5 cars by 2050 
will still use liquid fuels. Well, how does this happen?
    This Administration is clueless.
    I want to ask Mr. Horn, and then I will ask Mr. Turner how 
does this affect our economy when we can't buy critical 
materials in the U.S., and we have got to go across to China to 
make this all happen?
    Mr. HORN. When we are forced to buy Chinese-produced 
commodities, materials, resources in general, it is always 
hurting American consumers and American manufacturers. And the 
biggest shame, just to reiterate, is that better alternatives 
exist inside the United States if we can simply get out of our 
own way.
    Mr. FEENSTRA. Thank you.
    Mr. Turner, you got 10 seconds.
    Mr. TURNER. Congressman, if I could leave the committee 
with one lasting point, it is this: We are not using fewer 
fossil fuels, we are just using them differently. So going 
green, EVs, wind, solar, whatever you want to call it, we are 
using as many and potentially more fossil fuels, we are just 
using them differently, and we are making it difficult to bring 
them from American markets.
    Mr. FEENSTRA. I agree 100 percent. Thank you for both of 
you noting that.
    And we are destroying our families because they cannot 
afford to buy groceries, they cannot afford to buy gasoline, 
all right, because of this crazy idea of they all have to have 
a $70,000 electric vehicle.
    Thank you, and I yield back.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Mr. Panetta is recognized.
    Mr. PANETTA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Gentlemen, thank you for being here as long as you have 
been. I appreciate all the information that you have provided.
    For the past few decades, I think it is clear that we have 
become dependent on China, unfortunately. And then you had a 
pandemic that definitely exposed our weak supply chains. And of 
course, we have the climate crisis. And so I do believe that we 
were left with no choice but to make such significant 
investments to show that we were serious about the direction as 
to where we want to go when it comes to our energy and 
decarbonization.
    But obviously, in order to do this, in order to make these 
advancements of what I will call an industrial policy, our 
permitting needs to be streamlined. Now, in order to meet many 
of the goals, the 2030 goals, we need to double our 
transmission line expansion. But to do that, it will take 
building massive amounts of new infrastructure on massive 
amounts of land that is often undeveloped.
    Now, currently, any approval of high voltage transmission 
lines across multiple states is onerous, it is litigious, and 
it is long, taking up to 10 years. Heck, it takes seven years 
to get a permit for an onshore wind farm and five years to get 
a permit for a solar farm.
    Now, what we have seen is that the permitting process has 
become the favored vehicle to block projects, and NEPA 
challenges make up the largest proportion of Federal climate 
change litigation in the U.S., taking years longer for 
implementation, and making it much more expensive.
    It is understandable, as you heard my colleague Blake Moore 
talk about, why there is bipartisan consensus that it takes too 
long to build things in the U.S., and the belief that the 
permitting process is broken. That is why permit reform is a 
hot topic in the 118th Congress right now, because without it 
we risk losing the investments that we want to make, especially 
with the IRA.
    Now, Republicans and Democrats have some ideas on reforms 
to permitting, such as standard timelines for environmental 
reviews; regional maps of areas for development, rather than 
the Endangered Species Act, on a case-by-case basis; empowering 
the Permitting Council to coordinate agencies; and giving the 
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission power to approve 
transmission lines. Obviously, these are big things that we 
have to do, though, in order to do big things, especially when 
it comes to our energy policy.
    Now, Mr. Beachy, don't you agree that we need to streamline 
our permitting?
    And if we do need to do that, how can we do it without 
undermining our environmental protections?
    Mr. BEACHY. Thank you for the question. I will start by 
saying it is--that I agree with the problem. It is certainly a 
problem, and one we must tackle.
    Before this Administration, we were facing several barriers 
to achieving our climate goals, while also rebuilding our 
manufacturing base, while also investing in hard-hit 
communities. And I have mentioned the lack of the lack of 
investments was certainly one of those problems, and the IRA 
stepped in to help fill that gap. It is not the only barrier 
that we face, and certainly I think it is widely recognized 
that permitting is a barrier.
    Our union and environmental partners are deep in 
discussions about the details of this right now. As you 
suggested, it is a hot topic. And the details matter immensely.
    What we do believe is that any infrastructure review must 
have ironclad commitments to uphold public participation and 
strong environmental review of those projects, no matter the 
project.
    We also believe that we must swiftly deploy all of this 
clean energy in our economy so as to meet our climate goals, 
but also so as to swiftly deliver real benefits to hard-hit 
workers and communities. Marrying those two will not be any 
easy task, which is why we are mired in the details right now.
    So I will just say it is a critical topic of conversation. 
I am very glad Congress is taking it on, and it is one that we 
are also actively pursuing.
    Mr. PANETTA. Good. And I look forward to continuing to have 
these types of conversations on this very tough topic. But it 
is something that does need to be done in order for us to take 
advantage of the authorization that we passed last Congress. 
And now it is time to actually get serious about the 
implementation. And in order to do that, I look forward to 
having these conversations.
    Thank you, thanks to all the witnesses.
    I yield back.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Ms. Malliotakis is recognized.
    Ms. MALLIOTAKIS. Thank you all for being here, and I want 
to thank the chairman for calling this hearing.
    You know, here we are, eight months later after this bill 
was jammed through--or a few months later since this bill was 
jammed through, and what we are finding now is this inflation 
act, as I would call it, really did create inflation. It was--
certainly put us in the situation we are right now, where we 
have a debt ceiling crisis. It has crushed American energy, as 
is evident by your testimonies today. And it has become a slush 
fund to benefit large corporations, not just the wealthiest 
corporations here, but also those in communist China.
    It is really interesting to hear my colleagues, who accuse 
Republicans of corporate welfare and giving out benefits to the 
rich, because they have spent hundreds of billions of dollars 
and provided benefits to companies where 90 percent of those 
companies benefiting have sales of over $1 billion. That is who 
they prioritized in this bill. Meanwhile, our constituents, 
working-class Americans, are suffering greatly. They are paying 
the price, both through taxes, through inflation, through high 
energy costs and what not.
    I want to talk about not just what this bill has done, and 
also what the President's anti-policies (sic) have done, but in 
my home state of New York, okay--and I fear that the country is 
going the way that New York has gone, and New York has closed a 
nuclear power plant, Indian Point, which provided 26 percent of 
the electricity for New York City. They are now denying permits 
for natural gas plants. They are banning gas vehicles, doing 
what California is doing. They want to mandate those EVs that 
people can't afford, because they are over $60,000 in costs. 
And they also now want to move towards banning stoves.
    And we are talking about communities across America, where 
60 percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck; 42 
percent of Americans say they have less than $1,000 in savings. 
And individually, they hold credit card debt record highs.
    I am left wondering how these green credits benefit 
Americans, the American people that we represent, people in 
Staten Island in Brooklyn who can't afford a 60,000, 70,000, 
$80,000 electric vehicle, while these big corporations doing 
business are receiving a windfall of their hard-earned money, 
taxpayer's hard-earned money.
    So I would like to start with you, Mr. Turner, because I 
think you are a New York City native, if I am not mistaken, and 
I would love to hear your thoughts on are these policies, both 
the Federal and the state that I mentioned, are these policies 
the reasons that my constituents are paying more for 
electricity and heat?
    Mr. TURNER. Congresswoman, thank you. Absolutely. The 
previous governor--and carried out by the current governor of 
New York--implemented a series of policies that dramatically 
increased the cost of electricity by eliminating coal, by 
eliminating nuclear. All what--the plans--again, the future 
plans--one day we will build solar, one day we will et cetera. 
But in the real time, the New Yorkers are suffering.
    Case in point: in 2019 of--the height of the summer heat, 
Mayor de Blasio was stuck with a grid that was faltering. And 
what did they do? They turned off some specific areas of the 
city to protect the overall integrity. What areas did they turn 
off? Brownsville, East New York, close to where I grew up in 
Queens, predominantly poor, predominantly African American 
neighborhoods. The Upper East Side was fine, Soho was fine, 
Tribeca was fine.
    So their policies, the very people they claim to care 
about, are the ones they hurt the most.
    Ms. MALLIOTAKIS. Yes, and they are also seeing high food 
prices as a result, high gas prices as a result. This is all a 
result of the Democrat policies that we are seeing on the state 
and Federal level.
    In the Department of Defense space, the specialty metals 
clause has required defense contractors and the suppliers to 
purchase cobalt-based alloys and steel products that have been 
exclusively produced here in the United States. Obviously, that 
is for security reasons. Dr. Horn, this is your, I think, area 
of expertise. Can you comment on that?
    And should we expand that special metals clause to preclude 
companies manufacturing with critical minerals outside of the 
U.S. or its partners from obtaining tax incentives or credits 
like this, so these jobs truly stay in the United States?
    Mr. HORN. Congresswoman, thank you for raising this point. 
I think it is the most ridiculous idea that we would have 
critical defense components that we would rely on our biggest 
adversary for, and give them the leverage that, were we to get 
into a strategic conflict, which is certainly possible when you 
have spy balloons and other things going on, where they would 
have the ability to shut it off completely. If we don't have 
the ability to source ourselves with these critical national 
security and defense components, we are unbelievably 
vulnerable.
    Ms. MALLIOTAKIS. I appreciate this. And I will just 
conclude, because I am out of time, by saying that this 
Administration talks about Made in America, and then they do 
the exact opposite thing. And sadly, what we are talking about 
today is just another example of that. And I am glad that you 
all are calling them out on it. Thank you.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Mr. Carey is recognized.
    Mr. CAREY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the 
witnesses. Interesting testimony. I read through them all.
    I want to point out a few facts, because those are tricky 
little things, aren't they?
    From 2005 to 2018, the United States reduced its emissions 
by 12 percent, reduced our emissions by 12 percent. The rest of 
the world increased their emissions by--guess what--25 percent.
    Now, part of the reason this happened--my dear colleague 
from Virginia pointed out what had happened to the coal 
industry. He is partially right. But what we saw was a rise in 
the use of natural gas to generate energy, so much so--because 
we can burn it very cleanly here in the United States--that my 
governor in the great state of Ohio, along with my colleagues 
in the house and senate, actually redefined natural gas as a 
green energy. So, it makes one wonder why we talk about all of 
these issues.
    And I pointed out at the last hearing--and I will say for 
all of you guys--China granted permits for over 106 gigawatts 
of capacity at 82 different sites across China. That is 
equivalent to starting two new coal plants a week. To put it 
another way, China has six times--six times--as many new plants 
that are being built than the rest of the world combined. It 
makes one wonder why this Administration has attacked the 
natural gas industry so much.
    I want to go on to a couple of things with--on the first 
day the President canceled the Keystone pipeline, which we all 
know drastically increased the price of gas. We know that. We 
also know that we have more energy reserves than any other 
country in the world, and we should be focused on exploring--
Mr. Turner, you brought this up--exploring our natural 
resources, along with our mineable materials. But instead, the 
Administration has been focused on promoting these expensive 
renewable energies, which basically is giving China free reign. 
So Republicans on our side have worked very hard with H.R. 1.
    I do want to highlight just a couple of things, because I 
thought it was important. When we were in West Virginia, we 
actually--I didn't get a chance to bring this up. This 
Administration has been in an all-out war or assault on 
regulations. So far, and according to The Wall Street Journal, 
this Administration has issued over 517 regulatory actions 
which are costing all of us $318 billion. At this point in the 
Obama Administration, it would be over 1 million--or 100 
billion. Another 311 Biden regs are in the pipeline that will 
cost another 200 billion; 23 of the 311 regs will cost a 
billion a piece.
    This doesn't create regulatory certainty. It creates 
regulatory terror, and it kills jobs. And we have gone out 
across this country under the chairman. We have been in West 
Virginia. We have been in Oklahoma. We are going to be in 
Georgia. And we are talking to energy producers, people that 
work in the oil and gas fields, people that work in the coal 
mining and mining industry. For every one mining job, there are 
four spin-off jobs, domestic jobs. For every one oil and gas 
job, there is another job that is related. This is what grows 
the American economy.
    We don't have a revenue problem in this country. We have a 
spending problem. And all the charts that have shown that--we 
have got to get back to basics, what works, what makes America, 
and let's get this country moving forward.
    I yield back the balance of my time, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman SMITH of Missouri. Thank you, Mr. Carey.
    I would like to thank all of our witnesses for your 
marathon hearing, and for being here.
    Please be advised that members have two weeks to submit 
written questions to be answered later in writing. Those 
questions and your answers will be made part of the formal 
hearing record.
    And with that, the committee stands adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 2:06 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
      

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