[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 53 (Monday, March 30, 2009)]
[House]
[Page H4105]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      HOPE FOR ENERGY INDEPENDENCE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Inglis) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. INGLIS. Madam Speaker, today I read another one of these hopeful 
statements. It's the hope from some folks that say we want energy 
independence with increased development of all of our natural 
resources, including renewable energy sources such as wind and solar.
  What I trust my colleagues here are beginning to notice is that hope 
is not a strategy. And when you hear somebody, or a group of us, or 
outside group saying that we hope we can get to renewable energy 
resources, what we really need to say to them is, so how do you get 
there? What is the strategy? What is the strategy beyond just hope?
  Well, for me, the path is laid out in sound economic principles. If 
you have a price signal that causes entrepreneurs and investors to see 
how they might get married along some point of a projection of cost, 
such that they could see where it is that they could take out the 
incumbent technology, then you have a strategy. Up until then, you just 
have some hope.
  So, Madam Speaker, the thing that I hope we see is that, if we take 
the incumbent technology, in the case of transportation, which is 
gasoline, and start attaching its externalities to it, basically 
internalizing the externals and saying, okay, gasoline, bear the full 
weight of your cost; in other words, bear the weight of the national 
security risks that we're running by being dependent on a region of the 
world that doesn't like us very much. Bear the environmental 
consequences, and then let's compare to some other possibilities.
  Today I had the opportunity to meet with some folks that are looking 
at electric vehicles. Those are fairly attractive in today's market, 
but not as attractive as they were at $4 a gallon. Today gas is 
somewhere around two. But I'm here to predict for my colleagues that we 
will be dealing with $4 a gallon gasoline before too much longer. 
Within the next couple of years, as the economy takes off, I think we 
can expect to be back at $4 a gallon. At that point, of course, this 
electric car company will be far more competitive.
  So we could just wait and be jerked around, essentially, by OPEC and 
the problems of a constrained supply and an increasing demand, which 
means that the price may gyrate very rapidly. Or we can plan our way 
toward energy security with a solid plan that's an actual strategy 
rather than just a hope. And that hope, that strategy that I hope we 
will pursue to basically say, get something better than cap-and-trade. 
Cap-and-trade, by itself, is an enormous tax increase in the midst of a 
recession. It's also trusting Wall Street to do maybe derivatives in 
carbon credits when they didn't do so well with derivatives in home 
mortgages.
  So, rather than doing that, what if we reduce taxes somewhere else, 
say, in payroll, and then increase taxes or, for the first time, placed 
a tax on carbon dioxide?
  The result would be no net increase to government, no increase in 
taxation but, rather, a swap of taxation, moving from one source of 
taxes, payroll, to another, carbon dioxide. If we do that, and lay it 
out on a curve where entrepreneurs and investors can see the price 
signals that are being sent, then we can have a real strategy, one 
that's not based on hope, but one that's based on sound economics.
  Madam Speaker, I hope that's what we get to in this debate.

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