[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 72 (Tuesday, May 12, 2009)]
[House]
[Page H5452]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    TRIPLE PLAY OF AMERICAN CENTURY

  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, it is interesting to see and troubling to 
see gas prices rising again. I have talked to several colleagues here 
tonight in fact about gas prices going up. I noticed today on the Wal-
Mart sign in Travelers Rest, South Carolina, that the price has gone up 
here recently. But I am here to say, Madam Speaker, that gas at $2 a 
gallon or so is a sleeper cell waiting to detonate in the United 
States. I am also here to predict for you that within 2 years, I will 
make the bold prediction, within 2 years gas will once again be $4 a 
gallon. So the question is: What do we do about that? Do we wait for it 
to happen and just sit here and assume that we have to absorb that kind 
of hit, gas at $4 a gallon, or do we start taking action now to prepare 
for the energy security of the United States?
  Madam Speaker, I hear a lot of our colleagues saying we need to do 
other things. We need to, for example, in the case of electricity 
generation, we need to do nuclear. I think it is a great way to make 
electricity. But the problem is there are some economic challenges 
there. Others say let's move away from gasoline and move towards 
alternatives. But there is a problem there. There are economic 
barriers, and the economic barriers are in both of those cases the 
liquid transportation fuel; and in electricity generation, the 
challenge is that the incumbent technologies have some freebies that 
they get. And as long as those freebies continue to distort the 
marketplace, the free market system, as long as those distortions are 
there, we won't move to alternatives for gasoline. We won't move to 
alternatives to coal. What we will do is just stick with the incumbent 
technologies. As long as the incumbent technologies get these freebies, 
and economists call them negative externalities. They are basically bad 
things that come with those products that aren't recognized by the 
market, and as a result the market doesn't respond.
  So, for example, take the national security risk that we run by being 
dependent on gasoline, on oil. Right now on the Straits of Hormuz we 
have some very heavy metal going up and down the Straits of Hormuz 
protecting a supply line of a product that we must have because we are 
dependent, we are addicts, addicted to oil.
  If you attributed some of those costs to the price per gallon of 
gasoline, it wouldn't be the $2.09 that I saw on the marquee in 
Travelers Rest, South Carolina, today; it would be a lot higher than 
that. If there were proper cost accounting, if you will, and that were 
really attributed to the price of gasoline, right now we would be 
moving more rapidly toward alternatives.
  We would be having plug-in hybrids coming very quickly to the market. 
We would be having the Chevy Volt make its way to the market. We would 
be having hydrogen coming much closer and faster than it is coming now.
  Madam Speaker, we have to figure out a way to change the underlying 
economics because I believe the solution here is not us in Washington 
coming up with grant programs and maybe doling out some money here and 
there, but rather in harnessing the power of American free enterprise, 
entrepreneurship, to deliver these solutions. The way that they are 
delivered is if we come together as a Nation and say listen, no more 
freebies, no more of these negative externalities that are unrecognized 
because as long as they are unrecognized, there is a market distortion. 
We attach those to the prices of the products, and I think the way to 
do that, by the way, is a revenue-neutral carbon tax where you reduce 
taxes elsewhere, say on payroll, and in an equal amount impose a 
transparent tax on carbon.
  The result would be no additional take of tax revenue to the 
government; but rather, a price signal to the marketplace that says the 
incumbent technologies aren't going to get their freebies any more. If 
they are not going to have their freebies, then those of us who have 
alternatives can make a buck selling them.
  When that happens, Madam Speaker, we will change American energy 
dependence on the Middle East and we will be able to say to them we 
just don't need you like we used to. We can improve the national 
security of the United States, we can create jobs with those new 
technologies, and we can clean up the air. It is the triple play of 
this American century. Madam Speaker, I say let's get about it.

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