[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 42 (Tuesday, March 30, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H1723-H1729]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
U.S. ENERGY POLICY MEANS LOWER PRICES AND MORE JOBS
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Bishop of Utah). Under the Speaker's
announced policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr.
Beauprez) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority
leader.
Mr. BEAUPREZ. Mr. Speaker, I would like to spend a portion of my time
talking about the situation that has been rapidly developing of late, a
situation that sometimes is called outsourcing or offshoring, whatever
one's term might happen to be. The definition seems to be very much the
same, though: sending American jobs to foreign countries.
Now, some of our friends on the other side of the aisle seem
particularly eager to make this subject a central one for the next, oh,
about 7 months. I relish that opportunity. I relish the opportunity to
also have that debate. To quote their presumptive Presidential nominee,
I would say, ``bring it on.''
Our friends on the other side of the aisle are unwittingly the
biggest proponents of this very problem that they highlight:
outsourcing, offshoring. What I mean by that, Mr. Speaker, is that by
their opposition to a comprehensive national energy policy, they create
and nurture an environment that is, in fact, hostile to job creation.
The very thing that they say they are critical of, they are fostering a
hostile environment toward job creation. Corporate greed is not
responsible for outsourcing; anti-energy, anti-job policies are
responsible.
Since 2001, Mr. Speaker, this House, this body has passed
comprehensive energy legislation three times, led by Republicans. The
other body has repeatedly failed to follow suit and, as a result, our
Nation has no energy policy today. The ramifications of this lack of
national energy policy are absolutely staggering.
Mr. Speaker, let me itemize. Gasoline prices have increased 30
percent. U.S. imports of oil have increased 10 percent. The price of
crude oil has increased 65 percent. The cost of natural gas has
increased 92 percent. And according to the United States Department of
Commerce, America loses 12,389 jobs for every $1 billion spent on
imported oil.
Let me repeat. These are not my numbers; this is from the United
States Department of Commerce. America loses 12,389 jobs for every $1
billion spent on imported oil. That means, based on today's current
prices, that we are offshoring, outsourcing 1.7 million jobs every
year.
Mr. Speaker, the House passed an energy bill in this 108th Congress.
It is estimated that that energy bill would produce 838,500 new good-
paying American jobs. It has a great deal of incentives for cleaner
fuels, renewable energy, and tough environmental standards. That bill
would lessen our dependence on foreign sources of energy and strengthen
our economic and national security and independence. The U.S. has
always been a leader when it comes to the steady increase of better-
paying jobs and improved standards of living. That is why we consume,
yes, we consume 25 percent of the world's energy; but we create 33
percent of the world's economic output.
Mr. Speaker, it is developing countries around the entire planet that
covet our economic system and our economic output, our ability to
produce not only goods and services, but the jobs that produce the
goods and services. That is why people look to the United States of
America as that shining city on a hill, that vision of something
better. And in order to achieve that, developing nations worldwide
struggle to develop an energy system that is the very foundation of
these United States of America, the jobs we create, and the economic
output that we enjoy.
Mr. Speaker, one-third of the total economic output of the world is
produced by the United States of America, but we are at risk today. We
are at risk because of not a faulty, not a weak, but a nonexistent
national energy policy. What America needs right now is an affordable,
reliable, and safe supply of energy to strengthen our economic and
national security and to help create good-paying jobs. Mr. Speaker, it
is time for the entire Congress to do their job and get a national
energy bill passed.
Mr. Speaker, I am joined tonight by one of my colleagues, a classmate
of mine, the distinguished gentleman from the State of New Mexico (Mr.
Pearce). The gentleman from New Mexico has spent most of his life
before he came to Congress very, very close to this issue of energy.
Coming from New Mexico and the West, he is intimately familiar with the
issues of energy resources, energy production, energy utilization. It
is my pleasure to yield to the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Pearce).
Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, and I appreciate him
bringing this very critical issue to the American public tonight.
[[Page H1724]]
Our friends on the other side of the aisle continue to complain about
the jobs being driven out of this country as if it is the President's
fault. The gentleman from Colorado, my friend, has adequately described
the problems of a failure to pass the energy policy through the entire
House as a source of great difficulty in this Nation. There are two
things, Mr. Speaker, that we must provide to keep our way of life, to
keep our standard of living in this country. Those two things are food
and energy. If we ever ship all of those requirements overseas, this
Nation will find itself undergoing a change in the lifestyles and the
abundance which we have been treated to and which we have become
accustomed to.
This Nation has been blessed with abundant natural resources,
including natural gas and other fossil fuels. Almost all of the natural
gas used in the United States comes from inside the United States,
comes from domestic sources. Natural gas provides a cheap and plentiful
source of fuel for home heating and, more importantly, manufacturing
facilities, particularly the chemical industry. The chemical industry
uses natural gas as a fuel and also as a raw material in the production
of its products. Those products include plastics, fertilizers, and many
of the other products that we find and use daily. Today, the United
States has the highest natural gas price of any industrialized nation.
It costs the equivalent of $10 per gallon of gasoline. Most people do
not know what they pay per thousand cubic feet of gas, but it equates
to $10 per gallon in gasoline, and one can imagine the stress that
industries are undergoing.
Sadly, this increase in price has contributed to higher home-heating
costs and the loss of thousands of American jobs, including jobs in my
home district in New Mexico. Throughout the United States, chemical
manufacturers have lost an estimated 78,000 jobs since natural gas
prices began to rise in 2000. These 78,000 jobs lost in one industry,
the chemical industry, the chemical manufacturers, have been lost to
manufacturing facilities in the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and South
America. Why do those jobs move overseas? Because our domestic supplies
have been interrupted to the point that our prices in this country for
natural gas are in the $5 to $8 range. Typically in this country, $2 is
the range for natural gas.
We had a briefing in the Committee on Transportation last year which
showed us that the price of natural gas here in this country is between
$5 and $8. Overseas in Russia and overseas in Africa, the price is 50
cents and 70 cents respectively. When we are paying 10 to 20 times more
for natural gas in this country as other countries, the economics will
eventually take hold and companies will move infrastructure out of this
country.
What happened to cause the gas prices to increase so dramatically?
First, there are two conflicting domestic policies. Number one, the
U.S. adopted a policy in the 1990s encouraging the use of natural gas
as the fuel of choice to burn in power plants to generate electrical
power, even though we have abundant domestic coal resources. Natural
gas was the clean fuel, the fuel of choice; and it was mandated by the
Federal Government. The increased U.S. restrictions on oil and gas,
however, the restrictions to production of natural gas on public lands
has caused the supply to decrease, while the demand is increasing.
Those two conflicting domestic policies have combined to force jobs
offshore into other countries.
Mr. Speaker, we cannot long sustain the loss of these jobs because of
conflicting policies and because of the special interests who would
drive our jobs overseas.
{time} 1945
In 2000, Americans consumed about 23 trillion cubic feet of natural
gas, almost 23 percent of the energy used. The U.S. Energy Information
Agency forecasts that by 2020 domestic natural gas demand will increase
by more than 60 percent, to between 32 and 35 trillion cubic feet.
Much of the U.S. current production is coming from mature fields. Gas
supplies from these fields are declining at about 29 percent per year.
A mature field is one where the gas has been produced out of oil to the
point that the down-hold pressures do not force the gas to the surface
in the same quantities as used to occur. It is a naturally occurring
phenomenon that you are able to gather in so much gas from one well
before you have to drill another well.
We find these declining production curves to be a major threat to the
price of natural gas in America and, therefore, a continued impediment
to creating jobs in this country.
We often hear from our friends about the failure to create jobs, and
they themselves are standing arm in arm with the groups who would limit
the production of our natural gas which would get the cost of the
natural gas to a point where our industries would become competitive
again. Most of the promising new oil fields and gas fields in the U.S.
are on public lands: the Rocky Mountains, Alaska, and the outer
continental shelf. These areas are in the Rocky Mountain regions and
Colorado and New Mexico.
Mr. Speaker, if we as a Nation choose not to access our own natural
resources, with our high standards for compliance with our
environmental laws and regulations, we deliberately reduce our economic
security and reduce the opportunities for continued leadership in
resource development, manufacturing, and technological advancement;
and, at the same time, we deny our fellow citizens the opportunity for
high-paying, family-wage jobs with good benefits.
We do not even bring up in this discussion the additional risk to
national security. It is time my colleagues and I take the bull by the
horns and fix our Federal land use policies so we can access our
abundant natural resources for the benefit of all Americans. Why do we
need to do this? People in the southern district of New Mexico
understand why.
Mr. Speaker, the reason we need to do that is that our standard of
living is at stake. Also, the number of jobs that are created in this
country are at stake. But even more importantly, the ability to pay for
our utilities is at stake.
People on fixed incomes are facing the price increases that my
colleague from Colorado has mentioned to us already. We are facing
tremendous increases in the price of gas, in the price of electricity,
in the price of heating our homes and cooling our homes. Lest we
forget, last year in the heat wave in Europe more than 10,000 people
died from that. This is a matter of life and death as well as the
future of our economic engine that powers this country.
Mr. Speaker, families spend about 5 percent of income on energy, but
for many low income and minority families nearly half of everything
they earn is spent on energy. Price increases will be a crushing blow
for many, Mr. Speaker. Many people in my district are forced to choose
between essentials of heat and food. While we have soaring natural gas
prices, the cost is carried by the consumer.
Consumers pay more for goods that are produced with natural gas.
These goods, I have mentioned before, include fertilizer, which is a
key component in the food production.
We get to the unhappy state where the supply of natural gas can
scarcely meet demand in two ways: First, it is an effort to make our
air cleaner, which is an admirable condition. Many electricity
producers and factories have switched to natural gas. But this switch
has caused the demand to increase to such a point that the prices are
now making our industries non-competitive with overseas markets.
Mr. Speaker, if we are to do anything about the loss of jobs and the
failure to create jobs, we must begin to have a balanced approach to
our policy of accessing public lands. Our balanced approach would say
that, yes, we can be environmentally friendly while we develop our
resources.
It has been proven in Alaska, that State we saw the concerns about
the tundra there in Alaska along Prudhoe Bay. We found that what
producing companies did was drilled in the wintertime. They built ice
pads and ice roads. When the well was drilled, they did no damage. Then
when the spring came, the thaw came, those ice pads and ice roads
disappeared to leave just the hole in the ground and the producing
wellhead.
Since our way of life is at stake, since our entire economic engine
is
[[Page H1725]]
powered by affordable energy, Mr. Speaker, it is past time for us to
begin to discuss and begin to solve the ways that we access our public
lands.
Mr. Speaker, I have more comments, but I will yield back to the
gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Beauprez). I thank him for bringing this
important discussion to the floor of the House.
Mr. BEAUPREZ. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr.
Pearce) for a very intelligent and concise presentation.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield to the distinguished gentleman
from Illinois (Mr. Shimkus). The Congressman serves on the Committee on
Energy and Commerce, quite appropriate for our subject matter tonight.
Mr. SHIMKUS. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the kind words from my
colleague from Colorado Mr. Beauprez.
I am here to talk about a subject that is just critical. We just have
to get down to, really, the brass tacks. It is really hard for me to
understand.
I hope my colleague from New Mexico stays around because maybe we can
get involved in a debate and discussion on the multitude of issues.
This energy bill took in numerous committee work from the Committee
on Energy and Commerce, to the Committee on Resources, to the Committee
on Ways and Means, the Committee on Agriculture had a part in it, the
Committee on House Administration had provisions, the Committee on
Science had provisions. This is one of the few times that you have a
comprehensive national energy bill and plan.
And we are there. We are so close, I could almost taste the finish
line. Because the critical nature is readily evident to all of us. It
is amazing that when you have the highest gasoline prices that many of
us have ever seen and you definitely have the highest natural gas
prices that anyone has seen, to huge blackouts in the Northeast,
millions of people without power, why cannot we move an energy bill?
Why cannot we have a vote and then a passage of a plan that would bring
some security, some safety, some reliability to the energy markets and
the energy industry and the folks that want to conserve?
There are actually great conservation provisions in this energy bill.
We worked at great length to make sure that all stakeholders were
involved in the debate. It was a free and open debate, taking many
hours in the Committee on Commerce, late into the night, open,
amendments passed, amendments defeated. The bill brought before the
floor, the bill passed overwhelmingly in the House. The conference
committee did its work, brought the bill back to the House and had
another good vote on the conference side, and now we are held hostage
by a minority in the other body.
It is unfortunate because unless we act on legislation, unless we
have the public policy debate on energy, on where we want to be in the
future, then we are going to see the same type of activities that we
are seeing today.
And, of course, in this political season, the opposition would love
to see no energy bill. It is hypocritical to complain about the high
cost of gasoline when you voted no on the energy bill. It is
hypocritical to talk about the loss of manufacturing jobs in this
country when you voted against an energy bill. It is hypocritical to
continue to spout the same rhetoric when our grid goes unchanged, new
investments not flowing to protect the grid, ensuring that if we make
no changes a risk of future blackouts could be in the foreseeable
future.
I am at a loss for words sometimes in the way we operate here. I love
the institution, I love the ability to come on the floor, to have great
debates on public policy, but eventually you have to move on. A
majority has to speak its will and especially in the needs that were
addressed earlier on energy. It is so vital to our economy. It is so
vital to our national security. It is so vital for the things that we
take for granted.
I remember reading an analysis of our use of electricity in our homes
and power tools and all the neat little gadgets we have. The average
citizen, because of our ability of using electricity and machines and
technology, it is like we have 340 servants. The stuff that we are able
to do because of the use of electricity and machines would be similar
to having many, many servants doing our every whim.
That is part of the reason why we have prospered so greatly in this
country, because we are willing to take risks, we are willing to take
capital, put it at risk, hoping to get a return. And when we want the
economy to move forward, when we want job creation, when we want to
keep manufacturing, one of the major costs in the manufacturing is the
energy cost.
But yet we are hamstrung, I think, because of political calculations
on an upcoming election that we do not want to see improvement in the
economy, that we do not want to see job creation, that we want to
complain about no security on our electricity grid. We still want to
see higher costs for natural gas. We want to see high gas prices.
They want to blame this administration, the only administration that
has brought a comprehensive energy bill before the legislative body and
the House and the Senate has been vetted and voted on. Again, very
hypocritical and embarrassing to my point of view.
As we continue to focus on the manufacturing jobs, I find some relief
in the debate that there is a difference between the payroll survey and
the household survey on jobs and job creation. But, having said that,
even though the numbers are better, the job loss statistics are only
based upon payrolls.
So in my district in southern Illinois, there are a lot of farmers.
They are self-employed. They are not counted on the payroll surveys
because they are self-employed. So in all these jobs statistics they
are not there, because they are not salaried.
But we do know that the manufacturing economy is stressed. If we want
to ensure that we have job creation, we are going to move a highway
bill. I think it is going to be a good bill. It is going to bring,
obviously, leveraging dollars from the Federal Government and State
governments to be able to build roads and infrastructure; and we want
that.
Listen to what the Department of Commerce says about job creation in
this energy bill. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, America
loses 12,389 jobs for every billion we spend on energy imports. And, of
course, we spend a lot on energy imports. At today's oil prices that
means America is sending more than 1.7 million jobs overseas for oil
every year.
We have oil in this country. We have it, as we talked about before,
in ANWR. We have it on the continental shelf. Illinois is the tenth
leading oil-producing state. A lot of people do not know that. A lot of
our wells are marginal wells. They take energy to get the crude oil out
of the ground. We have a gusher that was hit about a year and a half
ago.
It is new technology. It drills underneath a wildlife preserve. It is
producing for us a million barrels a year, which is a pretty good add
toward meeting the demands that we have here.
{time} 2000
It is not going to solve our problems. We are still going to have
needs for export, but we do have great natural gas reserves in this
country. We have got enough, and I am continuing to look at my friend
on the Committee on Resources because they deal with this all the time,
to meet our natural gas demands for 25 years, if we would just get
access to them; and this is all not natural wildlife refuges in
pristine areas. It is Bureau of Land Management scrub land. It is
nothing that we even need to worry about other than it is the Federal
Government's land, and we cannot even permit ourselves to go and look
for natural gas reserves. Again, it just boggles your mind.
An estimated 85,000 jobs have been lost by the U.S. chemical makers
since natural gas prices began to rise in mid-2000. If we cannot get
natural gas at an affordable price, more and more the production
facilities will be forced to pack up and leave the country.
One of our problems in this whole fuel debate is we have not built a
new refinery in 25 years in this country, and we have a Balkanized fuel
market, which means we have specific fuels for specific reasons.
I always tell the story, I fly into St. Louis. I am a St. Louis
metropolitan Member of Congress. I live over in Illinois, and my
hometown is Collinsville, but if I were to fly in and we get picked
[[Page H1726]]
up, I would have to go to the northern part of my district, the State
capital of Springfield, and I would have to gas up the car before I
took the drive. Well, the gas that I put in in Missouri would be
different than the gas, regular unleaded, would be different than the
gas in my hometown of Collinsville which is only 30 minutes from the
airport, which would be different from the gas in Springfield,
Illinois, regular unleaded, only 90 miles north. Three different blends
of fuel in less than a 200-mile area.
Now, when people ask why are we having a gas crisis, I will tell you
one reason is we cannot move product from point A to point B because it
is not the proper mix for a proper region. You know what the energy
bill does? It addresses this. There are 48 different fuel mixes in this
country, and it tries to pare them down to five. It still says you need
different fuels for different regions; but let us get realistic and say
five regionally, that way you can move product when the supply and
demand equation goes wacky. It is a great provision. It probably would
have been helpful in this time of our energy needs.
The energy bill will help create or maintain over 156,000 full-time
and part-time jobs in my home State of Illinois. That is how important
this energy bill is for me, just my parochial interest, as a Member
from Illinois.
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has repeatedly testified that
energy prices are the single greatest threat to job creation and the
continued growth of an otherwise burgeoning economy; but instead of
getting a national energy policy, the people of America wait. They see
energy prices rising higher and higher. They see jobs in manufacturing
disappear because a plant closes due to high energy prices. They see us
sending billions of dollars to foreign countries to buy oil. What they
do not see is an energy bill.
The House passed the energy bill conference report, and we are still
waiting, obviously, for the other body to at least do something. It is
time for Congress to send an energy bill to the President that will
create and maintain needed jobs across this country.
This is an important debate, and I applaud my colleague for
organizing this Special Order because in the public policy arena, I
mean, we have to be in the arena. We have to be debating the major
issues of our time that not only affect us for the next election cycle,
but really this is a comprehensive energy plan that will affect our
children and our grandchildren.
So I applaud my colleague from Colorado. I hope to stay around for a
few minutes and maybe can add based upon what other things are
mentioned or added, but I really appreciate that.
Mr. BEAUPREZ. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments;
and a couple of things that he said sparked a little bit of my memory,
if I might.
I know that in Illinois, of course, there is a tremendous amount of
agriculture, a lot of farmers. That is what I spent most of my life in
is a farm family; and a few months back, as you were preparing to take
up this energy bill, I held a hearing in my district back in Colorado
in Golden, and we had a gentleman at that hearing who is a potato
farmer from an area of Colorado, southern Colorado, high mountain
plateau, called the San Luis Valley; and he grows some pretty high-
quality potatoes down there.
Like a lot of farmers, though, he struggles with ever-shrinking
margins, and every year they try to get a little more efficient and try
to squeeze just a little bit more out of the land and their operation
and still make a living.
He told me something that I thought was profound and probably a fact
that goes unnoticed by most everyone. He went through his operating
overhead, all of the costs on an annual basis it takes for him to
operate his potato farm. Thirty-five percent of his operating overhead
is energy-related, not just the fuel that he puts in his equipment,
gasoline, diesel, but the energy to run. We are a pretty arid State. So
you have got to irrigate, to run the electric motors to pump the water
for the sprinklers to irrigate with. Obviously, the chemicals he
fertilizes with are produced from natural gas primarily, 35 percent of
his overhead.
Now go to that gentleman and tell him that gas prices are going to go
up 30 percent or more, natural gas is going to go up 92 percent, so his
electric bill is going up dramatically and see what he has to say.
When we talk about these rising energy prices affecting jobs, it is
real. It is as real as it gets, and having been in business most all of
my life until I came to Congress this past year, and being a community
banker, I came in contact with businessperson after businessperson, and
there is only so much they can do, so much more efficient you can get.
At some point, you throw up your hands and say I am done.
So when we are saying tonight that the lack of an energy policy, as I
stated earlier, it is not a weak one, it is not a short-term one. It is
no energy policy this Congress has failed to pass. It is extremely
real, and blaming the President, as the other side of the aisle likes
to do night after night, day after day for this outsourcing of jobs
situation, we need to look inward.
I will say again, the reason that we are losing jobs in America, we
need to look at the people that are promoting higher taxes and higher
regulation that render us less competitive and the people that have
refused to give this country a commonsense, sane, straightforward
energy policy that would allow us to have affordable, predictable,
sustainable supplies of energy, domestically produced energy. That is
where we need to look. That is the problem.
I thank the gentleman. I was thinking of back to that hearing that I
had in Colorado on natural gas, and there are statistics and numbers
out there to boggle the mind, but one that stuck with me from that
hearing was relative to natural gas, which I know the gentleman from
New Mexico (Mr. Pearce) is close to, is that we have enough natural gas
in this country just under Federal land, nonpark, nonwilderness Federal
land for 100 million homes for 157 years. That is a staggering amount.
Natural gas prices, at least back in my hometown, are nearly double
right now. Somebody said, well, we have a storage problem. Somebody
else responded, yeah, we have got a storage problem. It is all stored
under Federal land, that is our problem.
As my colleague, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Shimkus), just
pointed out, we get in the way. So I would be pleased to, once again,
yield to the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Pearce) on this critical
subject.
Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I think my friend from Colorado (Mr.
Beauprez) is like I am, a business owner. He understands that you just
do not create jobs out of thin air, and you do not do it without good
thoughts and good resources.
The gentleman from Illinois adequately pointed out that it is
hypocritical of our friends on the other side of the aisle to talk
night after night about the failure to pass an energy policy when it is
the other side of the aisle that is blocking that energy bill from
being passed.
The environmental extremists who stop production of oil and natural
gas are the ones who are responsible. The process for drilling a
natural gas well on public land is to file an application for permit to
drill, an APD, and that process simply goes in for review, and when it
is reviewed, the application is either given or denied.
What happens is that the extremists will file a lawsuit, and many
times that application simply dies right there without ever even a
hearing, and by the way, they have limited access. The extremists have
limited access to over a trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the
Rocky Mountain regions.
Now, then, sometimes the cooperation between the extremists and the
government groups has gotten just a little bit too close and friendly.
In a recent case that the media has not done a very good job of
covering, three BLM employees in Wisconsin were convicted of
racketeering, conspiring to keep people from drilling on public
property. It is going to be very interesting to see how other employees
in the Federal Government begin to respond to that conviction,
understanding that their actions sometimes are simply extortion.
I have constituents of mine who report that Federal employees will
tell them no, no, you really do not have a problem, but your case would
go much easier if you would contribute to, say, this archaeological
study that our office is doing. If you gave a check of
[[Page H1727]]
$25,000, maybe things will go easier. When I was out flying over the
Salt River project, one group held hostage that project for a $25
million contribution into this extremist environmental fund.
Mr. Speaker, those are the things that are driving jobs offshore,
that hostility to business and the development of energy. The most
heartbreaking story, Mr. Speaker, that I have seen here in Congress
occurred in the Committee on Resources about a month ago. Members of
the union came in, the union that deals with workers who cut timber and
who create the pulp wood and paper. Those union employees were talking
about the loss of their jobs in that industry and were heartbroken by
the fact that they were going to lose the wages that their families
depended on, and they are good, good living-wage jobs.
The Members on the other side of the aisle said, oh, but you do not
understand, you can get a job in the hospitality business. I am sorry,
but the unions and Republicans do not often match up. The unions and
the other side of the aisle do the most, and it was their friends
telling them you could lose these high-paying jobs in the timber
industry and you can get a job working at the hotels. The union
representatives literally spit back at them across the table the words,
We do not want your hospitality jobs; we want our jobs in the timber
industry.
What a heartbreaking thing. I began to do research on that, and I am
pleased to show a chart tonight. I am not pleased to show the chart
tonight. I am horrified to show the chart tonight that describes the
loss of pulp and paper mills and plants throughout this country.
The dots on this chart represent the mill closures and employee
layoffs from 1989 through 2003. The blue dots with Xs are mills that
have been closed, and the red dots list the number of employees that
have been laid off during the past 16 years. The small blue dots
represent the remaining operating U.S. mills and plants.
Since 1997, the forest products industry has lost more than 120,000
family-wage jobs and closed more than 220 plants. While there are many
factors that contribute to these mill closures and the loss of family-
wage jobs, several issues stand out.
Number one is the lack of access to timber resources on the Federal
lands that have been brought about through the Endangered Species Act,
the roadless rule, and the lawsuits filed by the anti-development
environmental extremists. Access to timber resources results in lack of
raw materials needed by the mills to produce their products.
{time} 2015
High natural gas prices, and we have discussed why we have high
natural gas prices, are also driven by misguided environmental
policies. During the 1990s, the U.S. environmental policy encouraged
the use of natural gas for the generation of electricity as a clean
alternative to the coal-fired plants. However, during this same time
and continuing through the present, area prospectives for oil and gas
production have been put off limits to exploration and development.
This includes almost all of the outer continental shelf offshore gas
production, portions of the gulf, and a significant part of the Rocky
Mountain natural gas resources.
America gets more than 85 percent of the natural gas we use from
domestic production. These conflicting policies have driven natural gas
prices to historic highs, above $5.50 per thousand cubic feet, the
highest natural gas prices of all the industrialized nations. This
makes the United States less competitive and is outsourcing our
manufacturing industries, including the production of forest products.
Our misguided environmental policies are directly responsible for the
loss of the majority of family-wage jobs in the forest products
industry. In 1990, almost 12 billion board feet of timber were
harvested from the Federal estate. That is 12 billion in 1990. Today,
we harvest 2 billion board feet of timber from the Federal estate. Our
national forest resources are allowed to lie fallow, to build up
excessive fuels. They are subject to overgrowth, they are subject to
disease, and they are subject to fire.
We are finding that the wildfires are going to destroy our forests
before we ever cut them. When the fire races across the top of our
forests, killing these mature trees, it only makes sense to go in and
harvest the charred timber. But, instead, the extremists will file
injunctions, they will file lawsuits to slow the process down.
Recently, in my district, we had a large forest fire. Before the
timber could be cut, the value of the timber had lost 60 percent of its
value because of delays created by the extremists who said it is better
not to ever touch one tree than to cut these charred stumps that were
left and had valuable timber in them.
Mr. Speaker, our watersheds are completely dependent on the quality
and the character of our healthy forests, but also an entire industry
is dependent on the way that we manage those resources. In this
landscape, my constituents are asked to forego a development project
that would provide family-wage employment so that a passerby's view is
not spoiled. The same passerby expects my constituents to live with the
charred remains of timber that could have provided feedstock for a
local mill, that could be made into 2-by-4s for a neighbor's home, that
could be paper used by a local school or business, a lovely piece of
furniture to be passed into the next generation, or it could be used to
make a young woman's high school prom dress.
If we as a Nation choose not to access our own natural resources,
with our high standards for compliance and with our environmental laws
and regulations, we deliberately reduce our economic security and
reduce the opportunities for continued leadership in resource
development, manufacturing, and technology. We deny our Federal
citizens the opportunity for high-paying, family-wage jobs with good
benefits. We also risk our national security.
Mr. Speaker, on the second chart, and I would show it briefly, it has
a picture of a mill that is being closed; and much like the Vietnam
wall, the names of the casualties are listed down below in black. Those
names go on and on, 220 of those that have closed. I have got the
closings here in a document that is 25 pages, with 35 mill closures on
each page.
There are mills that have been closed in Alabama. Over 300 jobs lost
at another plant in Alabama, at Cusa Pines. Here is one where 450 jobs
were lost in Mobile, Alabama. Another 500 jobs lost in Mobile, Alabama.
Camden, Arkansas, lost 600 jobs to these policies. We go page after
page after page, California, Florida. St. Mary's, Georgia, lost 800
jobs in one mill closing. Page after page. Illinois lost many, many
jobs to mill closings because of the misguided attempts of
environmentalists to block every single tree from being cut. We have
Louisiana with mill closings, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, and
Michigan. State after State, 25 pages, 35 mills per page. When we get
to Oregon, we have page after page after page of mill closings in
Oregon, 100, 180 jobs.
This information is readily available to those in this body who would
want to access it, but the disappointing thing is that our friends do
not want reality in the debate about where jobs are lost and why they
are lost. They simply are looking for their agenda to be carried out at
all cost.
My friend from Illinois adequately characterized it as hypocritical.
The job loss, the pain in the States and the rural areas of this
country are borne by individuals who have to live with the policies
that are implemented in our courts and in our regulations that face our
businesses as they try to make a profit in the hostile environment that
is created in this country.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Beauprez) for
organizing this, and if I have an opportunity, I will have further
comments to make. I thank the gentleman.
Mr. BEAUPREZ. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend. He brings up a number
of very clear points.
I think the gentleman from Illinois mentioned 1.7 million, the
estimated number of jobs we have lost because of our dependence on
foreign energy sources, primarily oil. It is absolutely tragic. And the
gentleman from New Mexico highlighted some of the extreme, radical
environmental concerns and efforts that have restricted our energy
development and energy production in this country.
[[Page H1728]]
One would think, Mr. Speaker, that a few wake-up calls would be
enough to get Congress' attention. Electricity blackouts. The big
blackout in the Northeast. We had rolling blackouts even out in
my neighborhood. The skyrocketing prices we are going through right
now.
I submit to you, Mr. Speaker, that just as we are concerned about
taxes in this Chamber, the information that my colleague from New
Mexico just pointed out, those are taxes, too, the most painful kind of
taxes. When your job goes away, that is 100 percent tax. When the cost
of production goes up, that is a tax as well; and it eliminates jobs.
When businesses become less and less and less competitive and finally
close their doors, that is a very real tax on the business, on the
employees that work there and on the community that depended on it.
How many wake-up calls do we need? Well, our environmentalist friends
apparently believe many more, because they still cause us to not have
an energy policy in this country. They seem, in fact, to oppose all
forms of energy. A few years ago, they were the ones telling us to use
more natural gas. Why? Because it is more affordable, and it is
abundantly available. But it is those same people who are now telling
us no to natural gas. They have caused us to limit production right
here in this very country where we have enormous resources.
So it is no to clean-burning natural gas; no to hydroelectric energy;
no to clean coal energy; no to new outer continental shelf gas and oil
exploration; no to more energy exploration in Alaska; no to more energy
exploration in the inner mountain west, my home; no to more electricity
transmission lines; no to more power plants; no to more energy
pipelines; no to ANWR, and I would like to return to that; no to
liquified natural gas ports; no to offshore wind energy farms, even
renewables; and no to onshore wind energy farms.
The environmentalists seem to have two policies: one, BANANA, build
absolutely nothing anywhere near anything; or NOPE, not on planet
Earth. Now that is some energy policy for a Nation, again, Mr. Speaker,
that produces 33 percent of the world's economic output. And, yes, we
consume 25 percent of the world's energy. That is how we produce that
economic output.
I would like to yield some of the remaining time that we have to the
gentleman from Illinois once again. Again, he serves on the Committee
on Energy and Commerce and should have quite a little bit of insight on
this issue.
Mr. SHIMKUS. Again, I thank my colleague, Mr. Speaker. Actually, he
has mentioned some of the things that I probably should have mentioned,
being a little more parochial. I am so passionate about this because
for southern Illinois this bill is the best bill I think we will ever
see coming across the pike.
And why would I say that? First of all, if you looked at a geological
map of what is called the Illinois coal basin, it in essence is the
entire State of Illinois, with the exception of Chicago and the
suburbs. It actually bleeds over into Indiana, and it bleeds over into
Kentucky. It has as much energy resources there, 250 years of Btu
burning capability, as Saudi Arabia has oil. Why will we not have
access and use of those energy issues?
Illinois is also a highly nuclearized State. We have 11 operating
nuclear facilities in the State of Illinois. As my colleague from
Colorado said, nuclear power is, as far as emission-wise, there are no
emissions, but of course we have concerns with individuals.
I want the public to understand base load generating, which is the
everyday needs for electricity, just to run the lights on average the
whole year, and then peak load generating, which is the times where you
really need additional electricity, and that is best met with natural
gas, where you can turn it on and turn it off. But base load generating
is those standard fuels that we have used for many, many years:
hydroelectric, coal, and nuclear power. They have to be part of a
national energy policy, and in our bill they are, they remain, and that
will help us have safety and security in the energy markets for years
to come.
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for again managing this
hour on energy.
Mr. BEAUPREZ. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman.
I would like, Mr. Speaker, in the time that is remaining, to return
to the issue of ANWR.
Now it is estimated that, if we were able to construct the natural
gas pipeline that has been proposed from ANWR down to the lower 48
States, not only would we dramatically increase our availability of
natural gas to the lower 48 but we would create more than 400,000,
400,000 direct and indirect jobs from that one pipeline alone.
Now let us talk about ANWR just briefly. This is a map that points
out the entire State of Alaska on the far side of the chart. For scale,
you see in gold the area known as ANWR, the Arctic National Wildlife
Reserve; and you see that it is roughly the size of the State of South
Carolina. The area we are talking about, and this is the entire Arctic
Natural Wildlife Reserve, ANWR, the area we are talking about is not
the entire reserve but just the coastal plane. In fact, in the coastal
plane, only the little area in red. It may or may not be that location,
but that is the 2,000 acres within the bill that is limited for
production. Just that one spot.
{time} 2030
I am told that if you thought of it in terms of a very large room, it
would be like a postage stamp in the corner. I visited this site last
August. I wanted to see it for myself. I flew up. I flew to Prudhoe Bay
here. I flew over to this village of Kaktovik right here. About 270
Eskimos live there. I visited with the president of this entire Eskimo
corporation. Think of it as an Indian tribe, if you will, these few
hundred that live in this region; and we talked about this.
This is as flat as flat gets. It is as flat literally as a table top.
We asked him, What about drilling? What about exploring and producing
in ANWR? What should we do? He says, drill it. I said, Really? He said,
Yeah, drill it. One of my colleagues that was there with me said, But
what about the caribou? This gentleman had already mentioned that they
still hunt the whales and they fish in the frozen sea. They hunt the
animals, including the caribou, for survival. What about the caribou?
He said, What do you mean? He said, Wouldn't we scare them off? He
looked at him and he said, We hunt them and kill them and they come
back every year. What part of this don't you get?
It is pretty obvious, Mr. Speaker, that the people that depend on
this area, that have the most at stake, in fact, their very lives at
stake, their survival, their way of life are saying, drill it. This is
the kind of insane environmental policy, people that have nothing to do
with this area, have never seen this area, are thousands and thousands
of miles from this area, are prohibiting the people that do live there,
that do have a vested interest, that care about it the most, from
reaping the benefits of it. That is insane environmental and insane
energy policy.
Mr. Speaker, we could go on for hours on this subject. It has
negatively impacted this Nation long enough, and it is time that it
stop.
I yield to the gentleman from New Mexico for a closing minute or two.
Unfortunately, we need to bring this hour to an end.
Mr. PEARCE. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
(Mr. PEARCE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. PEARCE. We will do more on this same subject at another time. In
the closing minutes, let me talk about the hostility that we find
against business in this country. Behre Dolbear publishes an annual
survey entitled ``Ranking Countries For Mineral Investments.'' This
survey ranks the 25 countries with the largest mining industries and/or
the most significant mining industry potential. To establish the annual
rankings, the survey considers seven criteria that influence
investments by the mining industry in each of those 25 countries. These
criteria include economic systems, political systems, social issues,
permit issues, corruption, currency stability, and tax regimes. A
review of each country relative to each of the above criteria is
performed, using the general assumption that a technically viable
mining operation is being considered in that country. The countries are
then
[[Page H1729]]
given a ranking from 1 to 10 in each category, with 10 being the most
favorable.
Recently in 2004 the USA scored well in economic systems and currency
stability, et cetera; but it had a dismal ranking in the category of
permit issues. This ranking is based on the time and expense required
to get permits, not on stringency of regulations. In 2004, the U.S. had
a numerical score of 4. That score puts the U.S. 19th out of 25
countries. The U.S. ranks below Peru, Ghana, Colombia, South Africa,
Argentina, Canada, Brazil, Namibia and Bolivia. Only seven countries
rank below the U.S.
Keep in mind that this is an improvement, that the Bush
administration has made progress because previously under President
Clinton, we had a 2 ranking. The U.S. was tied for 24th out of 25
countries with Indonesia. Just why does the U.S. have to have such a
low rank in permit issues?
Mr. Speaker, we have covered tonight the many, many reasons that jobs
are moving offshore in America while our industries are being
decimated, why manufacturing is being sent overseas and our friends,
while talking about it, continue to be a part of the problem. I thank
the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Beauprez) and the gentleman from
Illinois (Mr. Shimkus) for allowing me to participate in this Special
Order.
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