[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 30 (Wednesday, February 15, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H1765]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                              {time}  1115
            TURN THE LIGHTS OUT AT THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

  (Mr. TIAHRT asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Speaker, I am heading up one of four teams of the 
freshman class which was initiated to carry on the work of many who 
preceded us here in Congress, in an effort to reduce four Government 
bureaucracies: Department of Education, Department of Commerce, 
Department of HUD, and Department of Energy.
  Mr. Speaker, the Department of Energy is a gas guzzler. Back in the 
early 1970's the Government imposed price controls and allocation 
controls, and that contributed to developing a crisis, and the beltway 
solution here was to come with another bureaucracy, the Department of 
Energy.
  Since then, the Reagan administration eliminated the price controls 
and removed the crisis. Now it is time to turn the lights out on the 
Department of Energy.
  You can see from the chart I have here that the Department of Energy 
has reinvented itself so that now 60 percent of it is a bomb factory. 
Only 20 percent is related to energy.
  Once started, it is hard to eliminate a bureaucracy, but we are 
working with former secretary Don Hodele and others in Congress because 
we have a new Congress now, a new voice from the people that wants to 
downsize the Government.
  Our President has talked about downsizing and privatizing, but the 
Department of Energy has actually increased its budget. Now it is time 
to tighten the belt and trade in this gas guzzler for a more efficient 
model.

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