[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 67 (Wednesday, May 16, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H2259-H2265]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CONCERN OVER ENERGY POLICY IN AMERICA
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 3, 2001, the very patient gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Duncan)
is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight because people all over this
Nation are concerned because they see their utility bills going way up
with gas prices possibly heading to $3 a gallon, according to many
articles. All of this is happening at a time that other prices are
going up. Our economy has been slowing for almost a year now, the
dot.coms have taken a dive, and many major corporations have laid off
thousands of people.
{time} 1930
These things are happening. Utility bills are going up; gas prices
are going up because of years of environmental extremism and actions by
the administration of former President Clinton all coming home to
roost.
For years now, we have had groups of environmental extremists all
over this country protesting and stopping or delaying for years anytime
anyone tried to drill for any oil, dig for any coal, cut any trees, or
produce any natural gas. This has helped extremely big business, which
has financed many of these groups, because it has driven thousands of
small and now even medium-sized businesses out of existence or forced
them to merge. In the late 1970s, I am told we had 157 small-coal
companies in east Tennessee. Now there are none. Federal mining
regulators opened an office in Knoxville, and the regulators and the
environmentalists drove all of the coal companies out of business. The
same thing has happened to small logging companies all over this
country. I have read and heard that many small communities have been
devastated.
Today, in the Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment, we
heard testimony about a proposal for 400 pages of new regulations by
the EPA on the runoff from animal feeding operations. All of the
witnesses told us that this would drive many more small farmers out of
business and lead to much more concentration by the big giants in the
agriculture industry. Those on the left are always telling us they are
for the little guy; but when they create this big government that
[[Page H2260]]
comes down with all of these rules and regulations and red tape, it
first drives out the small guys, and then it gets the medium-sized
people, and it ends up destroying jobs and driving up prices. And who
ends up getting hurt? The lower-income and the working people and the
middle-income people of this country.
We are going to talk tonight, Mr. Speaker, about its effect on
several different industries; and I am pleased to be joined here
tonight by one of my best friends here in the House and one of the most
respected Members of Congress, the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Lewis).
I would like to yield to him at this time for any opening comments that
he wishes to make.
Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for
yielding.
The gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) is totally correct, Mr.
Speaker. We have an energy crisis in this country today because for the
most part it is self-imposed because of the extreme views of some
people in this country about the environment.
Now, of course, no one is opposed to clean air, clean water, safe
working conditions. We all want those things. But there has to be some
common sense applied when we deal in these areas. We need some good
scientific data; we need cost analyses, risk assessment, due process
built into what we do concerning our environment and how it relates to
our economy and to our energy.
As the gentleman just stated, this has cost our economy, it has cost
the working people in this country thousands upon thousands of jobs.
Since 1990, as a matter of fact, more than 100,000 jobs have been lost
due to lower domestic oil and gas exploration and production. And then
we can multiply that probably several times over when we look at all of
the other industries, the timber industry, the coal industry. If we
look at what has happened, we certainly, I think, have seen a self-
imposed energy crisis; and it now is affecting our economy, costing
more jobs. Every time someone pulls up to a gas pump today and they see
$2 per gallon gas and every time they get their electric bill and every
time they get their gas bill or home heating oil bill, that has an
effect on our economy and on the ability of my constituents and
citizens across this land on the bottom line, how are they going to
make ends meet.
I yield back to my friend.
Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. Let me just say this.
What we are talking about here tonight is the hope that we can get some
balance and moderation brought back into our environmental policies.
I voted for the toughest clean air law in the world, and I voted for
the toughest clean water law in the world, and I voted to require
double hulls on oil tankers and for higher grazing fees on our Federal
lands and the Tongas Timber Reform Act, and so many environmental laws
I probably could not even count them all, and I am sure the gentleman
from Kentucky has as well. But some of these groups keep having to
raise the bar and are demanding more and more and more, or their
contributions dry up. So I really think that all of this is about
money.
One of the subcommittees on which I serve is the Subcommittee on
Forests, and I was told by the staff of that subcommittee that in the
mid-1980s, Congress passed a law saying that we would not cut more than
80 percent of the new growth in the national forests, and the
environmentalists wanted that law. Today, we are cutting less than one-
seventh of the new growth, less than 14 percent of the new growth, and
that at a time when the amount of forest land in this country has been
going way up. Yes, I said, way up.
I have been reading, and I am almost through with Bill Bryson's very
fine book called ``A Walk in the Woods,'' about hiking the Appalachian
Trail. At one point in the book he mentions that New England in 1850
was only 30 percent forest and 70 percent open farmland. Today he
writes, New England is 70 percent in forest land. In my own State of
Tennessee, according to the Knoxville News Sentinel, in 1950 it was 36
percent forests. Now 50 percent of Tennessee is now made up of forests.
Yet left-wing environmentalists have so successfully brainwashed many
young people and children that I am sure if I went into any school and
asked them if the number of trees had gone way up or way down in the
last 50 or 100 or even 150 years, almost all of the children would say
way down, when the truth is exactly the opposite.
The Subcommittee on Forests in early 1998 had a hearing in which we
were told that 39 million acres of forest land in the western part of
the country was in immediate danger of catastrophic forest fires,
because when we cut less than 3 billion board feet, and to somebody who
does not know anything about it, 3 billion board feet probably sounds
like a lot, but as I said earlier, that is less than one-seventh of the
new growth in our national forests, much less what is already there.
But we are cutting less than half of the dead and dying trees.
So those dead trees which we cannot even get to to remove, once
again, because of the extremism that we have had in some of these
environmental policies, the fuel buildup on the floor of the forest has
led to this great danger of forest fires, and we were warned about that
in our subcommittee by our subcommittee in early 1998 and again in
2000. So then what happened? Last summer we saw 7 million acres out
West burn, $10 billion worth of damage. Yet, if the gentleman from
Kentucky (Mr. Lewis) or I went into one of our national forests and
burned or cut down one tree, we would probably be arrested.
So what happens when we will not let anybody cut any trees? The price
of lumber goes up, houses cost more, furniture costs more, every
product made of paper costs more; and once again, as I mentioned
earlier, we devastate these logging communities. So what happens? We
destroy jobs; we drive up prices. And who do we hurt? The poor and the
lower-income and the middle-income people.
I remember a few years ago reading that the average member of the
Sierra Club has an income of more than four times higher than the
average American. Maybe some of these rich people in the Sierra Club
are not hurt if gas prices go to $3 a gallon or if the utility bills
are doubled or if the prices go up on timber and everything else; but a
lot of middle-income, millions of middle-income and lower-income people
are hurt when all of those jobs are destroyed and the prices go up on
everything.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield back to my friend for any comments
he wishes to make at this time.
Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for
yielding. As the gentleman from Tennessee just mentioned, why are we in
this mess? What has caused this energy crisis? What has caused the
problems dealing with our timberland?
Well, it is because there are those who have stood in the way of
progress in this country and they have stood in the way of doing the
right thing in defending some extreme point of view.
When we look at the energy crisis that we are facing today, the
question is, How did we get into this mess? Well, number one, there
have been no major oil refineries built in 30 years. There are 36
refineries that have been shut down since 1992. The refineries that we
have now are operating at the highest level that they probably can, but
current gasoline inventories are below the average level. What we have
cannot create enough gasoline. It is a matter of the law of supply and
demand. There is not enough supply for the demand in this country
today.
In 1992, our U.S. oil production, or since 1992, our U.S. oil
production is down 17 percent, but our consumption is up 14 percent.
And nearly 60 percent of our oil is imported.
So here we are. We are dependent on foreign oil. We cannot get enough
oil, and if we were able to get enough oil at this point, we do not
have the refinery capacity to produce the gasoline. So it does not take
too much reasoning to figure out the problem we are in here. We just do
not have enough supply for the demand, and it is hurting our Nation. It
is causing some real problems. As the gentleman just said, it is
hurting the people that our workers, our middle class, our poor,
because they depend on the ability for low-priced fuel. We are going to
see more problems.
What is the answer? I guess that is the question, What is the answer?
Well, we have a great supply of oil in Alaska. We have great supplies
of oil off of our shores; and with the technology that
[[Page H2261]]
we have today, we have the technology to go in and get those oil
reserves without hurting the environment.
Mr. Speaker, this is the problem. We have come a long way since the
1970s in producing technology that protects the environment, but allows
us to have the energy resources we need to keep our economy moving in
the right direction. But there are those that are extreme, the extreme
environmentalists. They do not want to use the technologies. They do
not want to do anything. They want to make sure that not one renewable
resource like a tree is touched; they do not want to go in the
direction of common sense. They want to stake out these extreme
positions and stand there.
The sad part about it, there are many here in Washington that want to
support that extreme point of view, and they do not want to do what we
have to do, and that is go after the resources we have and use those
resources, the oil, the coal, and the natural gas. I yield back to the
gentleman.
Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. I think the gentleman
is exactly right. When we cut fewer and fewer trees, we destroy jobs
and we drive up prices, as I said, for homes and furniture and every
type of paper product. When we restrict and cut back and eliminate coal
companies and coal production, we drive up utility bills and drive up
costs for businesses that have to be passed on to the consumer for
every type of product, and we destroy more jobs.
When we close half of the oil refineries, as we have done since 1980,
and we sign, as President Clinton did, orders to not allow oil drilling
in Alaska, and 80 percent of our offshore capabilities, we drive up the
price for oil and gas and destroy more jobs. When we sign, as President
Clinton did just before he left office, an order locking up 213
trillion cubic feet of natural gas, we drive up utility bills and
destroy prices. For anyone who wants more information on this lockup of
natural gas, they can read last month's Consumers' Research Magazine
and the article by Rider from USA Today in which he said that President
Clinton locked up 213 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Mr. Speaker,
then what happens? People's utility bills all over the country go way
up.
I have the mayor of Engelwood, Tennessee, a small town in my
district, who comes to me and tells me that he has senior citizens who
are having to choose between eating or paying their utility bills. Once
again, I say who we hurt with this environmental extremism is not these
wealthy environmentalists; but we hurt the poor and the lower-income
and the working people because we destroy jobs and drive up prices, and
it hurts those lower-income people, and now even middle-income people
who are becoming very concerned about how these bills are going up.
{time} 1945
But the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Lewis) mentioned the oil
situation.
Last September 25, long before the current administration came in,
the Washington Post National Weekly Edition had a cover story headline
which said, ``Will rising oil prices kill the boom?''
I can tell the Members that Aviation Daily reported last December
that 12 airlines went into bankruptcy last year, mainly due to higher-
than-expected oil prices. The Air Transport Association told me, and I
chaired for the last 6 years the Subcommittee on Aviation so this was
of special interest to me, they told me that each one penny interest in
jet fuel cost the industry as a whole $200 million. So if oil prices go
up, airline tickets have to go up. Then more people are forced onto our
much less safe highways, the trucking industry is hurt, agriculture is
hurt, and almost everything is hurt. Then, as the Washington Post asked
on its cover, ``Will rising oil prices kill the boom?''
As the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Lewis) said, and I think he has
some additional information, we have all of this oil. We have so much
oil. I heard one radio report saying oil is the second most plentiful
liquid today, after salt water, and we have hundreds of years of
supplies if we did not have these extreme groups keeping us from
getting to it.
Vice President Cheney gave us a briefing this morning. He said that
today well over half of our oil is having to be imported, and that by
the year 2020, it is going to be two-thirds of our oil, and we are
going to be even more subject to being held hostage by OPEC and some of
these other foreign countries.
Now, the U.S. Geologic Survey tells us that we have I think it is 16
billion barrels of oil in one little tiny place, on the coastal plain
of Alaska. I can tell the Members, I have been up there twice. I have
been twice to Prudhoe Bay.
The first time was about 6 years ago, and I had a man in the
Anchorage Airport who I told where I was going, and he said, well, if
you see anything up there taller than 2 feet, it was put there
yesterday by a man.
Some of these groups show this false, almost Nazi-like propaganda
showing trees and mountains and so forth. The Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge is 19.8 million acres. It is so big we almost cannot comprehend
it. It is 35 times the size of the Great Smokies, a big part of which
are in my district.
We have between 9 million and 10 million visitors a year to the Great
Smokies. Time Magazine reported a couple of months ago that last year
the entire Arctic National Wildlife Refuge had 1,000 visitors, because
there are no roads or paths, and it is dangerous for most people to go
up there.
We could drill on about 2,000 acres out of that 19.8 million acres
and potentially get up to 16 billion barrels of oil, which is equal to
30 years of Saudi oil. We could do it in an environmentally safe way.
Yet, we cannot do it. The votes are not there because of environmental
extremists who put out all this false propaganda, so people see their
gas prices going up and potentially going up much higher.
I yield to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Lewis) because he has
more information about the ANWR.
Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. Mr. Speaker, as the gentleman knows, the
information that is put out by some of these extreme groups says that
this is pristine forest and a beautiful landscape, and it is the last
great frontier.
I have a picture of the area that would be drilled. Like the
gentleman said, it is 2,000 acres. It would be about the size of Dulles
Airport where the drilling would take place. With the technology that
we have today, there would be no harm done to the environment. Here is
a picture of that pristine, beautiful landscape. It looks like the
moon. There is nothing there. It is amazing.
If we look at some of these other areas, yes, they are beautiful
landscapes, but this is the coastal plain, ANWR, where the drilling
would be done. I think there has been some false information put out
about what that area looks like and the damage that would be done to
wildlife.
The efforts that would be put in place there to get that 30-year
supply of oil would certainly, with the technology we have today, would
certainly do no harm to that environment.
What would this mean to American workers if we go after that oil, if
we start to work on our own domestic supplies for energy? I was reading
in the Washington Times yesterday that the energy plan that the
President is talking about would call for building between 1,300 and
1,900 new power plants and spending $150 billion on new pipelines and
transmission facilities, creating millions of jobs for carpenters plus
energy, electrical, and construction and operation and maintenance
workers all over this land. It would create a lot of jobs to get us
back, really, to where we need to go for our energy supply in this
country.
But if we do not, if we do not go after what we have that God has
blessed this Nation with, then there are going to be a lot more jobs
lost because of this extreme view. And I think, yes, here in Congress
we should, in a bipartisan way, come together and work for the good of
the American people and not let this be a political football.
But there are already those, our friends across the aisle, that are
saying the way out of this mess would be to conserve our energy. Well,
we would have a tough time conserving our way out of our energy crisis
at this point, especially when we are about 1,900 utility power plants
behind, we are depending on 60 percent of our oil from foreign sources,
and we still do not have
[[Page H2262]]
enough. We do not have enough refineries.
Yes, we can do some more conservation, but the bottom line is, we
have to go after the supply to meet the demand for this country and
meet the needs of our economy for the 21st century.
Mr. DUNCAN. I thank the gentleman, once again, he is exactly right on
target.
Mr. Speaker, as I said earlier, we are simply trying to say that we
hope to bring back some moderation and balance to our environmental
policies, instead of allowing environmental extremists to control all
of these things.
It is like I have seen cartoons showing hundreds of oil wells in that
Arctic wildlife refuge. That is totally false, because today the
technology is such, as the gentleman mentioned, that we could put one
oil well and go out 4 and 5 miles in any direction, so the footprint on
the land is hardly anything at all.
They said the people who opposed the original Alaska pipeline, and
thank goodness we have that or we would have been in trouble years ago,
they said it would kill off the caribou. At that time they say there
were between 5,000 and 6,000 caribou. Now there are over 30,000
caribou. So all of this can be done in an environmentally safe way.
As I said earlier, the coastal plain, which is 1.5 million acres, and
as I said, I have been there twice, and most of these people who are
against this have never even been there, there is not a tree or bush up
there. It is a frozen tundra, as they call it. As the gentleman from
Kentucky (Mr. Lewis) said, it looks like a moonscape.
I was up there in August. Both times I was there in August it was
brown with little puddles of oil seeping up. Most of the year it is
covered by snow and ice. Yet, these groups show these pictures of the
mountains and trees where nobody has ever advocated drilling for oil.
As I said earlier, I have noticed over the years that most of these
extreme environmentalists seem to come from wealthy or very upper-
income families. As I said before, maybe they are not hurt if utility
bills double or gas prices go way up, but millions of people are hurt
and millions more are going to be hurt even worse if we do not start
getting some order, moderation, and balance back into our environmental
policies.
The Sierra Club and some of these other environmental groups have
gone so far to the left now they make even socialists look
conservative. Some of these radical environmentalists, some proudly
call themselves ecoterrorists, seem to want to shut this country down
economically.
They seem not to realize that the worst pollution in the world has
occurred in the Communist and socialist nations because their economies
do not generate enough income to do the good things for the environment
that all of us want to do, so they protest any time anyone wants to dig
for any coal or drill for any oil or cut any trees or produce any
natural gas.
Then these coal companies and timber companies and oil refineries and
small natural gas producers that are run out of business can no longer
hire accountants and salespeople and lawyers and blue collar workers,
and people wonder why their college graduate children or grandchildren
cannot find jobs, cannot find good jobs and have to work in
restaurants, as many college students are working today, and why they
have to go to graduate school.
Mr. Speaker, this is really all about money. Environmental groups
have to continually tell us how bad everything is or their
contributions will dry up. Many of their contributions, as I have said,
come from extremely big businesses, which are really the only ones
which benefit when all of these small- and medium-sized businesses are
forced out of business or forced to merge.
Also, they are big enough to get the huge Federal contracts with
obscene markups to do the environmental cleanup that is demanded by the
same groups that they fund.
It is amazing, I think, when these liberals and left-wingers and
environmental extremists claim to be the friend of the little guy,
because they are the best friends that extremely big business has. But
almost everything they do ends up hurting the poor and lower-income
people, and very small businesses and small farms. Jobs are destroyed
and prices go up. More and more jobs are forced to go to other
countries.
Some groups, of course, receive contributions from foreign oil
companies and people connected to OPEC or foreign shipping companies.
There are many large foreign companies, and even some large U.S.
companies that benefit greatly and make huge money if we have to import
more oil, or more of other products, for that matter. It is all about
money.
That is what the Kyoto agreement is all about, for instance, because
the U.S. relied on a free enterprise-free market economy with small
government until recent years. The U.S. now purchases 25 percent of the
world's goods, though we have just slightly over 4 percent of the
world's population. Many countries are jealous of this, and believe
they could take more of our jobs and income if we had to reduce our
energy use by 30 percent, as the Kyoto agreement would require.
The Kyoto agreement excludes such large polluters as Mexico and China
and more than 125 other countries. This treaty would devastate our
economy, and we should all praise President Bush for not caving in to
the demands of extremists and going along with such a potentially
harmful agreement.
Some people who support the Kyoto agreement and oppose any type of
coal or oil or lumber or natural gas production in this country know
that their policies would be very harmful to the U.S. economically, and
yet they do these things anyway.
I yield to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Lewis) for any comments
he wishes to make.
Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. Speaking of the Kyoto treaty, I was in China a
few years ago. I was in Sian, China. The smog, coal, smoke in that city
was so bad that the people, the citizens of that city, had to wear like
surgical masks. We could not see for the pollution. In the Kyoto
treaty, it is my understanding that they were exempt from the
environmental restraints that we would have been placing ourselves
under. That did not make a lot of sense to me.
We have done a good job in this country with technology, we have done
some good things with our environment, and new technology and
reasonable regulations can make increased consumption of our energy
supplies possible and continue to decrease pollution. But there has to
be, again, some common sense built into it.
In Kentucky, I can use Kentucky as a good example, through clean coal
technology, we use a lot of coal in our utilities, and we have the
lowest or I think probably the second- or third-lowest rates for our
electric utility bills of any State in the Nation. But through coal
technology, we have really reduced emissions, and in fact, it is almost
as clean now as the natural gas being used in other utility companies.
So with clean coal technologies, we have been able to increase coal
by 195 percent over the last 30 years, while cutting coal air emissions
by one-third. So we have a 300-year supply of coal, and we have done
the right things in being able to use that energy source, but no one
wants to reward that. They want to take it even to a greater extreme
and say, basically, no coal, no oil; we are going to have to move on to
some alternative energy sources that will not meet the demand that we
have today.
Again, it comes back to getting rid of the extremism and getting into
a scientific-based commonsense approach to how we are going to deal
with our energy supply in this country.
{time} 2000
We are blessed and we need to use those blessings to benefit our
population here in this country. I think it is certainly time that we
start looking at the handwriting on the wall and today start turning
the situation around.
I think you can compare the situation in Kentucky and California. We
have new power plants coming online. We have the energy. We have low-
cost energy, so we could do that across this country, but we have to
start.
Mr. Speaker, 1,300 or 1,900 new power plants over the next 20 years
to just get us to the supply we are going to need in order to provide
the electricity for this country, if anything, stands in our way and
that does not make sense. We are hurting our economy, and we are
[[Page H2263]]
hurting the working people in this country.
Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, and he is exactly
right. I mentioned the briefing that Vice President Cheney gave us this
morning. We were not given all the details, but President Bush, among
other things, I am told, is going to announce in his energy plan
tomorrow $2 billion for clean coal technology.
The President is not going to announce any tax breaks for big oil
companies or big gas companies, but he is going to advocate tax breaks
or incentives for alternative energy sources and for renewable energy
sources. Yet he still will be attacked on it, I am sure.
The gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Lewis) mentioned the Kyoto
agreement. The global climate information project said that, quote, So
while the U.S. cuts energy use by more than 30 percent, most U.N.
countries get a free ride. Because U.S. energy prices will rise,
American products could be more expensive at home and less competitive
overseas. That will slow down our economic growth and cost American
jobs, all for a treaty that will produce little or no environmental
benefit.
One thing it would do for sure is speed up the transfer of wealth and
jobs from this Nation to underdeveloped countries.
I can tell you unless you can reduce your standard of living by 30
percent overnight, which very few people in this country would want to
do, and no one should want to do, no one should have to do because we
do not have to, if we can just get a little moderation and balance back
into our environmental policies instead of following the extremist
groups that have power far beyond their numbers.
As I mentioned earlier, some of these people I think know that this
Kyoto agreement would devastate our economy, and yet they do not
believe they should think of themselves as Americans first and
foremost, but they should consider themselves as citizens of the world.
They think things like national borders and patriotism are old-
fashioned anachronisms totally out of date and out of place in our
sophisticated, globalized world economy of today.
I know Strobe Talbott who roomed with former President Clinton in
Oxford and who was one of his main advisors. He wrote this: He said
within the next 100 years, nationhood as we know it will be obsolete.
All States will recognize a single global authority.
He may be right, but I certainly hope not.
I want to read to you what nationally syndicated columnist Georgie
Anne Geyer wrote recently about those individuals and multinational
corporations that she referred to as globalizers. First, they came and
took away Main Street and all that meant in terms of the individual and
the community and of small businesses who supported the Fourth of July
parades, the Girl Scouts and the old folks home. Finally, they took
away American industries and corporations. They could have headquarters
anywhere in the world. They were proud not to belong to any archaic
nation-state. Who, after all, really believed anymore? This, always
said with such a patronizing smile in such old things. In between, they
managed to denigrate patriotism, citizenship, environmental
protectionism, labor, including child labor, human rights protection,
and all that made for an American society.
As I said earlier, these extreme policies that we have been going to
have hurt for many years and are hurting now the small companies, and
now even the medium-sized companies and driving them out of business
and hurting what I do not like to refer to as the little guy, but that
is the most accurate way you can portray it.
I have always heard that what happens in California is soon headed to
the rest of the Nation. We better hope not, because people in
California wonder why their utility bills have gone up so much. And
once again, these environmental extremists have made sure that no power
plants were built in many years there.
So while demand was going up, capacity was not keeping up. The
brownouts and blackouts of recent weeks were inevitable.
The national news a few weeks ago showed scenes of California farmers
dumping out huge amounts of milk because processing plants had to shut
down because of lack of power. So people all over the country will see
milk prices go higher.
As I said repeatedly tonight, we just need to get some balance and
moderation back into some of these policies so we do not drive up the
prices and hurt the poor and the lower-income and the working people of
this country.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Lewis).
Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for
yielding to me. Here are the people who are being hurt by these high
energy prices. The gentleman just mentioned the dairy farmers in
California having to pour the milk out because they cannot run their
operation, keep the milk without the electricity. But farmers are doing
their spring planning, an expense that they have to bear for diesel
fuel and for gasoline. Those costs are really cutting into, really, a
very much shrinking margin that they have to deal with anyway.
In fact, most of our farmers today, with the prices of grain, are
fighting a losing battle. Then when you add these fuel prices on top of
that, it is just a disaster for them.
The gentleman mentioned the low-income people. They cannot possibly
afford these high energy costs, yet back when this started to happen in
the winter, when the costs of heating oil and the costs of natural gas
to heat their homes, some people were getting these enormous bills,
they could not even afford to make their house payments because of the
fuel bills that they were having to come up with.
Of course, we all know about the $2-per-gallon gasoline. That is
projected to get worse through the summer. This just is not fair. It is
not right because of a small group that have had their way for the last
30 years. Now they have put us in a situation where our people, the
citizens of this country, are not being able to enjoy the fruits of
their labor.
The economy has been running in a magnificent way, but it is in
danger of putting the brakes on the success that we have seen for the
last, goodness, 20 years in this country of prospering and growth in
our economy in ways that we may not have ever imagined.
But now we are facing a situation where we could have some problems.
We do not have to. We have the resources, and we have the supply, so we
need to go after it. Yes, there are going to be some long-term efforts
that we are going to have to make, but there are some things that we
can do now.
We can start to remove some of the regulations that are causing some
problems in getting our energy sources.
Mr. DUNCAN. The gentleman is exactly right, and that is the sad
thing. We have plenty of oil, plenty of coal, plenty of natural gas,
plenty of timber; as I said, much more timber than we had 50 or even
100 years ago. We have got plentiful supplies.
As the gentleman said, God has blessed this Nation greatly, and yet
to stop everything and shut this country down economically just would
devastate, first, the poorest people in this country. Yet some of these
people who know that it would shut us down and would harm us greatly
economically, they feel justified at times because of a misguided
belief that we are all destroying the world because of global warming.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to just mention that for a moment. I have a
report of Sallie Baliunas, who is a senior staff astrophysicist at the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and deputy director of the
Mount Wilson Observatory. In 1991, Discover Magazine profiled her as
one of America's outstanding women scientists.
She received her master's and Ph.D. degrees in astrophysics from
Harvard University. She put out a very detailed report. I would be glad
to provide copies of it to any Member who wishes, or staff member who
needs it, but she says this global warming scare assumes that human
emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are the dominant
driving force in recent and probably future climate changes.
Yet surface temperature records indicate that the world is warmed
only about 0.5 degrees centigrade during the last 100 years, roughly
half of the amount predicted by the computer models on which warming
scenarios are
[[Page H2264]]
based. Moreover, at least half the warming observed during the 20th
century occurred before 1940, while most of the increase in greenhouse
gas concentrations occurred after 1940.
That suggests that of the observed warming, mankind is responsible
for only about one-tenth or two-tenths of a degree. It further suggests
that future temperature increases due to industrial activity during the
next century are likely to be extremely modest.
I could come here tonight armed with all kinds of reports that say
the exact same thing, and even that the very, very small amount of
global warming that has occurred has actually helped us increase crop
production and helped alleviate starvation in many parts of the world.
The gentleman started off earlier tonight and said we need to have
some sound science behind some of these policies. We have not had that,
and we have not had cost-benefit analysis on some of these things, so
we have ended up following many policies that have been very costly and
very harmful to this country.
Once again, as I say, maybe they have helped a few extremely big
businesses, because much of their competition has been driven out of
existence; but it should be of great concern to all Americans,
particularly those who are concerned and upset about these higher
utility bills and higher gas bills and higher prices on everything
else, because all of this is hitting at a time when it is becoming more
and more difficult for many middle-income people to meet some of these
bills.
I have said before that extremely big government really only helps
extremely big business and the bureaucrats who work for the government.
Extremely big government is really good at only one thing. That is
wiping out the middle class.
Mr. Speaker, I can tell my colleagues that every place in the world
where the people have allowed their governments to get too big, the
middle class has been wiped out, and you end up with a few elitists at
the top and a huge underclass.
The great thing about the United States of America is that we have
kept our government relatively small in comparison to other countries,
and therefore we have had few people at the top and few at the bottom
and a huge middle class.
I also can tell my colleagues, you can never satisfy government's
appetite for money or land. If we gave every agency and department up
here twice what we are giving them, they would be happy for maybe a few
weeks or a few months, but then they would come back to us crying about
a shortfall in funding.
I also want to mention something about government's appetite for
land, because that ties into private property. It certainly ties into
these economic problems. But I will yield to the gentleman from
Kentucky (Mr. Lewis).
Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for
yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I would love to know the numbers. How many jobs have
been lost? How many jobs has this movement cost the workers in this
country? How many automobile workers? How many construction workers?
How many miners? How many timber workers? How many laborers have lost
jobs because of this very extreme position on the environment? It has
to be thousands upon thousands, upon thousands of jobs that have been
lost.
More are going to be lost if this energy crisis takes our economy in
the wrong direction. I think with what we are seeing today with the
slowdown, it is a direct result of this energy crisis, of the costs of
energy. You cannot have $2-a-gallon gasoline and the costs of oil and
the costs of natural gas without it affecting the economy.
I think that we are seeing a direct result of the energy costs. How
many more jobs will it cost? It is the working people that are going to
be hurt. It is those folks that get up every day and go out to work and
they have to provide for their families. They pull up to the gas
station and, gosh, there is $2-a-gallon gasoline, and it could be
getting worse.
{time} 2015
I think this is what is happening because of this self-imposed energy
crisis. But this can be turned around. Yes, there is no short-term
solution. But in the long-term, this can be turned around, and it can
provide a lot of employment for a lot of people in this country.
So I think we certainly have to be good stewards. We have to use good
science. We have to make sure that we continue on the path of keeping
our environment clean and sound. But we have the technology to be able
to use our resources and to make sure that the people in this country
are able to live their lives to the best that they can live. To have
anything at this point to stand in the way of that, I think, would be a
tragedy, especially when there was no real need for it to happen.
Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, I could not agree with the gentleman from
Kentucky more. He is exactly right. Last year, we had the largest or
biggest trade deficit in our history. I think it was $350 billion.
Every leading economist tells us that we lose conservatively 20,000
jobs per billion, which means we lost 7 million jobs to other countries
last year; and much of it was because of these extreme policies that we
have been following in recent years that have forced more companies to
go to other countries and take some of our best jobs.
Once again, as I said earlier, then I have many parents and
grandparents coming to me bringing their college-age kids, good-looking
kids with good grades, but they cannot find the good jobs that used to
be out there. So they end up, even while they work on master's degrees
or something, and then they are still going to have trouble finding
these jobs.
I know last year The Washington Times had a big story about the glut
of Ph.D.s that we have, and so many people even with the advanced
degrees are having trouble finding jobs.
But there is one last thing that I want to get into because it has
been a great concern of mine for the last 2 or 3 years. Private
property is one of the foundation stones of our prosperity. Once again,
some of these extreme environmental groups want the government to take
over all of the land.
There is something called the Wildlands Project that I read about in
The Washington Post that would require 50 percent of the land now in
private ownership to be taken over by the government. If people do not
think that theirs will ever be taken over by the government, they
should look around at every place in this country and all the land that
has been taken over. It has happened all around my area of east
Tennessee.
I can tell my colleagues that today the Federal Government owns or
controls over 30 percent of the land in this country. State and local
governments and quasi-governmental agencies control or own another 20
percent. So half the land is in some type of public ownership.
Then government keeps placing more and more restrictions on what can
be done with the land that remains in private hands. In fact, I was
told by the Home Builders Association a few years ago that, if the
wetlands regulations were strictly enforced, over 60 percent of the
developable land that is out there right now would be off limits. So
what does that do? That drives up the prices for homes. So we have
young families that, in past years would have been able to afford a
home, now they cannot afford a very important part of the American
dream.
What happens, too, people developed subdivisions in the 1950s and
1960s with big yards. Now developers, the land costs are so high
because so little land can be developed that they have to put homes on
quarter-acre lots or one-third acre lots. They have to jam more and
more people into closer and closer quarters, and so people get this
crowded feeling. It really adds to this urban sprawl problem that these
environmental extremists are always attacking. Yes, they are the very
ones that are causing it.
I can tell my colleagues, private property, while most people do not
think about it, it is one of the main things that helped create the
prosperity of this country. It is one of the great foundation stones,
knowledge of our freedom, but of the prosperity that we have had in
this country.
Any one who does not understand this, I wish they would read a book
called The Noblest Triumph, Property and Prosperity Through the Ages by
[[Page H2265]]
Tom Bethell. The whole book is important, but a couple of brief
excerpts. He wrote, ``Leon Trotsky, a leading Communist, long ago
pointed out that where there is no private ownership, individuals can
be bent to the will of the state under threat of starvation. The Nobel
Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman has said that `You cannot have
a free society without private property' . . . Recent immigrants have
been delighted to find that you can buy property in the United States
without paying bribes.
``The call for secure property rights in Third World countries today
is not an attempt to help the rich. It is not the property of those who
have access to Swiss bank accounts that needs to be protected. It is
the small and insecure possessions of the poor.
``This key point was well understood (by) Pope Leo XIII (who) wrote
that the 'fundamental principle of Socialism, which would make all
possessions public property, is to be utterly rejected because it
injures the very ones whom it seeks to help.' ''
What we have been saying all night here tonight is some of these
liberals and left wingers claim to be the friend of the little guy, yet
all of these things that they do end up hurting the small businesses
and the small farmers and the little guy most of all.
Over the years, when private property has been taken by government,
it most often has been taken from lower- and middle-income people and
from poor or small farmers. So it is like all these industrial parks
that are created. We do not need any more industrial parks in this
country. We take land from poor farmers and then turn it over to these
big multinational corporations for free or very reduced costs.
Then when we have all of these Federal projects, agencies in my area,
for instance, have taken twice the amount of land that they needed to
take for their project. It has been a very sad thing to see. But if we
allow more and more land to be taken, then we are going to ultimately
destroy the freedom that we have in this country and the prosperity
that we have in this country. It will be a sad day if we continue to
allow that to happen.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Lewis) for
any final comments that he wishes to make.
Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for
yielding to me. There has been a lot of polling data over the years;
and the question is, would you prefer clean water as opposed to more
oil exploration or clean air as opposed to more increased utility power
companies? When one asks that question, of course we all want clean
air. We all want clean water. We all want safe working conditions.
But the question should have been asked, do you want to be able to
have your automobile? Do you want to be able to have reasonable prices
for your energy? Do you want to have the living standards and
conditions that you are used to? Do you want running water in your
home? Do you want to be able to flip a switch and get the lights to
come on? The American people want that.
I think as we are seeing in California today, they are in danger of
losing the ability to flip a switch and have their electricity. They
are in danger of having hot water because they do not have their hot
water tanks generating heat.
So there is going to be some dire consequences to the extreme
position that these environmentalists have taken over the last many
years and put the American people in a very tough situation if this
continues.
That is why we need to start turning it around now. Yes, continue to
work very hard to use the technology and to create new technologies to
make sure that, yes, when we explore and when we drill for oil, that
the environment is protected; yes, that when we use coal, that it is
burned cleanly and efficiently so that the environment is protected
like it is being done now, natural gas, so forth.
Yes, we want those things. But these extremists, they have a Walden
Pond mentality. They want to go out by Walden Pond and give up all,
evidently, the conveniences that our forefathers have provided for us,
that my father worked hard to provide for his family and on back. They
want, for some reason, to think that that is evil to be able to have
the standard of living that we have today because it is going to
destroy planet Earth.
Well, the reality is that we are not going to destroy planet Earth.
We do have the technology. We do have the opportunities to provide the
energy resources that the people of this country need and do it in the
right way, the environmentally correct way. But get rid of the
extremism and make sure that we are not going to sacrifice the workers
of this country and their jobs and take away from their families.
Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, let me just say very quickly in summing up.
One example that I wanted to mention was President Bush has been hit
real hard on the arsenic in the water, yet one water district in
Illinois said, if we went to those unrealistic standards that former
President Clinton advocated, their water bills would have to go up $72
a month.
So what we are saying is we need some balance and moderation brought
back into our environmental policies. We cannot keep going along with
wealthy environmental extremists who are not hurt when water bills go
up $40 or $50 a month or gas prices go up to $3 a gallon or utility
bills double. But millions of people throughout this country are hurt
if we have to do all of that.
We do not need to shut this country down economically and continue to
hurt worse the poor and the lower-income and the working people and the
middle-income in this country by forcing more jobs to leave to go to
other countries and forcing people to reduce their standard of living
by at least a third, as some of these policies would mean, because it
is totally unnecessary. Then we would not be able to do the good things
for the environment that we all want to do.
So we just need some balance and moderation brought back into these
environmental policies.
I thank the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Lewis), my friend, for
taking time out from his busy schedule to be with me here tonight to
discuss these very important issues.
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