[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 7 (Thursday, January 17, 2008)]
[House]
[Pages H344-H346]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 OPTIONS FOR STIMULATING THE U.S. ECONOMY THROUGH EFFICIENCY AND CLEAN 
                                 ENERGY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Yarmuth). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) 
is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I come to the House floor today to address 
the two issues that we have a chance to really move forward on, and 
that is the difficulties in our economy and the difficulties in our 
energy policy; and we think we have an opportunity, and I met this 
afternoon with a good number of my colleagues about how to do something 
about both, the slow-down in our economy and our need to rejuvenate our 
economy by adopting some new clean energy strategies for the country. 
We think this is an ideal opportunity for the House of Representatives 
to lead a short-term plan economically to help stimulate our economy, 
while at the same time directing our economy towards a clean energy 
future which can really grow jobs, millions of jobs in our country.
  What the group of my colleagues and I discussed is the hope that in 
our upcoming stimulus package, which is now under development, that our 
stimulus package can hew to the values set forth by Speaker Pelosi of 
being timely, targeted, and temporary. We think if we follow those 
three guidelines, we can do things to help our short-term clean energy 
revolution really take off in the United States.
  I have come to the floor to talk about that night, about some options 
that are available to us. We know that we want to make sure that our 
stimulus package is timely, that it in fact gets into the economy very 
quickly, because that is what we need. This is not something that can 
wait 5 years. We need to have a stimulus now. But we also need that 
stimulus to be targeted. This is not a moment where it would be wise 
for us to simply sort of spread butter across America very thinly in 
the hopes that somehow it will help the economy blossom.
  We need to target our strategies so that it will be really driving 
economic growth in the United States and, importantly, make sure that 
that economic growth takes place in the United States. It won't do us 
much good to just short of spread a thin layer of relief, because a lot 
of that would end up buying products from China, frankly.
  We want to look for targeted stimulus that will really help the 
growth in the American economy and create jobs in America. If we have a 
choice between two activities, one of which would be simply to allow 
buying retail products from China, and one which would really grow jobs 
in America, we should pick the latter.
  A group of my colleagues and myself want to make a proposal that will 
ensure that we target some of the stimulus into a clean energy future 
for America that really grows jobs in this country and doesn't simply 
buy retail products from China. So we are going to make a proposal that 
will suggest that we adopt some measures that in a very timely fashion 
can inject growth into the American economy this year and will ensure 
that we target that strategy to the development of clean energy jobs, 
and I want to talk about some of the things that can accomplish that in 
our stimulus package.
  The first thing that we will propose is a very down-to-Earth, 
extremely commonsense expansion of an existing program that helps low-
income Americans weatherize their homes. We currently have a program 
that is working very well, very efficient, and extremely popular to 
help Americans put in insulation, fill in cracks, get energy-efficient 
windows, essentially just quit wasting heat that filters out through 
the cracks of our homes. That right now is a $250 million program to 
help Americans do that.
  We suggest we boost that by $100 million this year in a program that 
can immediately put people to work. We know we have people that are 
losing their jobs today because the home construction industry is 
slowing down,

[[Page H345]]

something I am familiar with. My oldest son is in the home construction 
industry, and he is doing okay in Washington State, but we know in 
other areas, particularly, they have had a real slow-down in the home 
construction industry.
  We can put those people that are being laid off back to work in the 
home weatherization industry, and we can do that today if we boost the 
funding in the home weatherization industry. If we do that, and we have 
checked with the Department and it can easily accommodate another $100 
million right away so that we can get that work being done in the next 
several months.
  So we are proposing that we add $100 million. It sounds like a lot of 
money, but in the course of a 50 or $100 billion stimulus package, it 
is actually a very small amount of money. It can make a big difference 
for people to make their homes more weather efficient. They reduce 
their energy costs. At the same time, we are putting people back to 
work who are being laid of in the construction industry. This is really 
a golden opportunity for us. It's the first thing we'd propose.
  The second thing we'd like to propose is that we stop the 
hemorrhaging that is going on right now in the renewable energy 
industry. Now, we allowed, in a huge failure by our Congress, frankly, 
the lapse of some tax incentives which have created thousands of jobs 
in this country in the renewable energy industry. Those lapsed this 
past December, essentially. Any project that is not done this year 
would not be able to take advantage of them. We have projects right now 
that are just crying out for this tax relief as an incentive in the 
wind industry, in the solar energy industry, and several of the other 
renewable energy industries.
  Because those tax credits lapsed, and I just got off the phone this 
afternoon with a leader in the solar energy industry who told us we are 
already seeing a decline already in the number of orders for some of 
these renewable energy industry projects, and that is a terrible 
mistake at the very moment where we need to stimulate growth, and we 
know we need to do it in these advanced energy growth segments of our 
economy.
  So we would propose that we have a short-term, a 1-year extension of 
the production tax credit and the investment tax credit, which would 
allow these industries to again get on the growth track that they have 
been on with such great success. These industries are tremendously 
beneficial in creating jobs. They actually create twice as many jobs. 
For every $1 of economic growth, they create twice as many jobs. They 
are very, very labor intensive in growing these technologies.
  Now, it would be a terrible moment to allow us to go backwards in 
solar and wind and other associated technologies. The reason is we are 
just starting to lead the world in these technologies.
  Last Friday was the first commercial shipment of what we call thin 
cell photovoltaics by the Nano Solar Company in Palo Alto, California. 
Thin cell photovoltaics are extremely cost effective. It's a new type 
of photovoltaic cells. People are now familiar with the silicone-based 
cell. The thin cell photovoltaic cells, as its name suggests, it's 
thin, and it can be made with great cost advantages. The very first 
commercial sale in world history took place a week ago last Friday.
  So we hate to see these breakthroughs taking place and not see the 
possible expansion of their application. The very first permit for a 
wave power buoy, and we have buoys now that can generate electricity as 
they bob up and down in the waves, the very first permit off the 
Washington State coast was issued in the last two weeks to the Finavera 
Company, a company with offices in the Northwest.
  So at the moment we see these technologies, we'd hate to see a 
decline in the orders for these technologies taking place, which is now 
taking place because we allowed these production and investment tax 
credits to lapse. We should simply restore them and renew them for at 
least another year, short-term relief, and this is very timely if we do 
this, because if we do this, there's an immediate, an immediate demand 
by people when we know these tax credits will be available to go out 
and order these projects that get these jobs going, putting the pedal 
to the metal. You don't have to wait.
  The third thing we would propose is a renewal and partial extension 
of the solar tax credit for residential homes. That also expired, and 
it has been historically limited to $2,000. Frankly, it hasn't cut the 
mustard. It simply hasn't been enough to really get residential 
customers engaged to get going on ordering these products. If we simply 
renew that for 1 year, we recommend expanding it to $4,000 per 
consumer. If we do that, we are going to have an immediate burst of 
orders and at least continuation of the growth in orders in solar, as 
we have had historically.
  Fourth, we propose to essentially extend the otherwise lapsed 
consumer credit for solar for the same reasons that we just talked 
about. It just makes a lot of sense. Fifth, we'd suggest extending the 
expired energy efficient credit both for homes and commercial 
buildings. It makes no sense to have allowed these tax credits to 
expire. When they exist, they create this demand for the type of work 
we talked about in the weatherization program, only it's larger in its 
application, because this is not just low-income people. It's now the 
entire United States, folks who can take advantage of it. It creates a 
demand. It happens immediately, because once people know they are going 
to be able to have access to these tax credits, they can go out and 
make the orders right away to get this done.
  We also hope to propose a Green Fund proposal. Frankly, we are 
working on this right now to discuss how we can create ``green collar 
jobs'' in this country, and a ``green collar job'' proposal is 
something we think we ought to pursue.

                              {time}  1615

  We want to find a way to do that to make it timely.
  But as a package, these proposals as a package have the capacity to 
make sure that our stimulus package is targeted to something that is 
really going to get spent in America. Frankly, a lot of the other 
proposals out there are going to get spent buying retail products from 
China. You know, that is fair and Americans do that. But if we want to 
stimulate the economy, these proposals we have now proposed have the 
added advantage of spending money right here.
  This will happen immediately, and we know it works, because all of 
the things we have proposed have been tested. These are not avant-garde 
proposals. These are things we know that work because they have been in 
the field, we know the economic growth they have produced, we know they 
create jobs. The weatherization program is doing it today. The 
production investment tax credits for several years we know created 
great growth. The most rapidly growing part of the economy right now 
has been the wind turbine industry, and we hate to see that slow down, 
and the same can be said about the solar industry.
  So we simply want to continue apace the success we have had, and we 
are going to urge our colleagues to include at least a portion of our 
proposal in this package.
  We also want to note that we don't want to bust the bank on this. The 
proposals we have talked about, cumulatively, if this is a $100 billion 
stimulus package, this would be about 1 percent. We are proposing just 
maybe 1 percent of the package would include the provisions we have 
included. If it is $50 billion, it would be 2 percent. So the items we 
have suggested today are relatively modest portions of this package, 
but they are very important, because we are going to lose the momentum 
the United States is starting to develop as a world leader in clean 
technology.
  We have just started to gain that momentum. We don't want to give it 
up. It would be a shame to see these industries start to plateau just 
when they are on the growth curve of new technological development. 
That is not the American way. The American way is to innovate, to grow 
and have a confidence in our economy and our inventive talents. This is 
part and parcel of that, and in the spirit of the New Apollo Project, 
something I have been advocating for a long time, that we should have 
the same confidence that Kennedy had in the original Apollo project 
that took us to the moon, we ought to have

[[Page H346]]

the same confidence in a clean energy economy.
  I am not the only one talking about this. I was listening to Senator 
Clinton talk about this the other day in the Senate, about the need for 
an Apollo project. She has made some proposals about a stimulus package 
that are very similar to some of the ones we are proposing in the 
House. I think that is the right attitude we should have, because it is 
based on confidence.
  Her larger program for clean energy also tracks the New Apollo 
Project that I have proposed in the House that would really on a major 
league basis propose major investments in clean technology. She has 
proposed a major league weatherization program to weatherize 20 million 
homes, and that is the scale that we ought to be thinking about. She 
has proposed 55 mile per gallon standards for our cars, and a $50 
billion pool of funds to be financed by transferring some of the tax 
benefits that have been given to the oil and gas industry and put it 
back into the clean energy industry and create a multi-billion dollar 
fund for the research to expand this technology. That is the type of 
thing we need. We appreciate that going on in the Senate, and we are 
going to continue to push these ideas in the House.
  But let's start on the stimulus package. It is one small step for 
man, maybe not quite a giant leap for mankind, but it is commonsense 
for Americans that we do this. I appreciate my colleagues working with 
me, Lloyd Doggett, who has been a long time leader on this, Tom Udall 
and others. We are going to push this ball. We hope we are successful.

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