[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 34 (Wednesday, March 14, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H911-H912]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   NEW ADMINISTRATION IS NOT SERIOUS ABOUT ADDRESSING GLOBAL CLIMATE 
                                CHANGES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Gilchrest). Under a previous order of 
the House, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) is recognized for 
5 minutes.
  Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I, as a Democrat, have an admission to make. 
I have come before the House to admit that I was fooled into believing 
that the new administration was actually serious about doing something 
about global climate change. I was fooled into having hopes that this 
administration would abide by its promises to show some leadership to 
do something about carbon dioxide, which is polluting our atmosphere 
and warming our planet.
  I had those hopes until yesterday. I want to tell my colleagues why I 
had those hopes. The new director of the Environmental Protection 
Agency, former Governor Christie Todd Whitman, said last week that she 
wanted to work to do something to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from 
our polluting plants. A few weeks ago, the Secretary of the Treasury 
said that he believed that this was a serious problem, that it needed 
to be addressed, and the government could no longer afford to ignore 
it.
  The President of the United States last September told the American 
people and promised the American people that, if elected President of 
the United States, he would work to curtail carbon dioxide emissions 
from our power

[[Page H912]]

generating plants in this country. A promise, a pledge, a commitment 
that yesterday was sadly broken when he bowed down to the oil and gas 
industry and said he was not going to lift a finger to reduce these 
CO2 emissions, to reduce the pollution that is coming out of 
our plants.
  I was fooled, and I am greatly disappointed. But I have not given up, 
and the reason I have not given up is because I believe that there are 
good Members on both sides of the aisle in this Chamber who are willing 
to show some leadership in moving forward on climate change issues.
  I am just alerting Members of the House to this fact that I do not 
think we can look to leadership from the White House on this after 
yesterday's stunning reneging on a promise to the American people, and 
that we need to show some leadership.
  I am telling the House this because, if we are going to have action 
by the Federal Government of doing something about the climate change 
problem in this country, we in the House are going to need to get out 
in front of this issue.
  I know there are Members on both sides of the aisle who are willing 
to do this. The gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Gilchrest), who is in the 
chair today, has shown a recognition and some leadership in this 
regard.
  To do this, I am urging my fellow Members to do a few things: first, 
to join our Global Climate Change Caucus, a bipartisan group of Members 
who are committed to finding common sense and workable means of 
reducing climate change emissions.
  Second, I would ask our Members during this tax cut debate that is 
going on that, no matter what happens in the tax cut, we devote a 
portion of it to creating incentives for efficient clean energy sources 
of new technology, wind, solar, fuel cell technology; to bring those 
technologies to market-based prices; and to use this tax cut debate in 
a meaningful way on an environmental basis.
  I ask Members to join the bipartisan group that is working to try to 
fashion some package of tax cuts that can help these new technologies 
become a market base so that we can put them in our homes and our 
houses.
  I ask Members to cosponsor a bill I have called the Home Energy 
Generation Act that will allow one when one puts a solar panel on one's 
home to sell one's excess power back to one's utility and have one's 
meter run backwards so one gets a credit.
  There are a lot of things we can do, but I am urging Members of the 
House to come to the forefront and be leaders because there is going to 
be a vacuum, unfortunately, out of the White House.
  Let me tell my colleagues another thing very disturbing that happened 
yesterday. The President of the United States, when he decided to 
ignore the explicit promise to the American people on this 
CO2 emission issue, said the reason he did so was because he 
was concerned about prices of electricity going up.
  Well, frankly, that is a surprise to us because, for the last 2 
months, we have been asking the President of the United States to do 
something about electrical prices in the West, and he has refused to do 
anything about it.
  We have asked him to adopt a short-term wholesale price cap, to have 
a circuit breaker to reduce these extraordinary price increases that we 
are having on the western United States right now. He has refused to 
even consider it.
  We let the greatest transfer of wealth from the western United States 
to generators of electricity since Bonnie and Clyde roamed the prairies 
because of these huge run-ups in prices, unprecedented, unjustified, 
and unreasonable. By the way, this is not just me talking. Our own 
FERC, the Federal Energy Regulation Commission, under the Bush 
administration made a finding that these prices were unreasonable, 
unconscionable. I think unconscionable is my language, but at least 
they said unreasonable.
  Despite that finding, the administration has refused to lift a finger 
to limit these extraordinary increases in electrical rates. We believe 
we are going to ask the administration, we have been asking for 2 
months to do that.
  Let me tell my colleagues why that is so dangerous, Mr. Speaker. I am 
going to read from the Wall Street Journal article in yesterday's 
paper, which I will now summarize. We have the possibility of losing 
43,000 jobs, this the State of Washington alone, if the administration 
does not work with this Congress in a bipartisan fashion to adopt 
wholesale price caps. I hope all my Members will join me in this 
effort.

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