[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 82 (Wednesday, June 3, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H6132-H6138]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    CONTROL CARBON AND CONTROL LIFE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop) is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that opportunity and 
the opportunity of being here. As somebody who is old, I remember the 
good old days when we still had vinyl albums. If I wanted to buy a 
song, I had to buy the entire stupid record. Today, my kids tell me 
they have these neat things called ``iPods'' in which, if they want a 
song, all they have to do is download a song. They get to pick exactly 
what they want to.
  I'm in one of those situations where I go in a supermarket and I 
realize I can stand in that aisle and I have literally hundreds of 
cereals from which to choose. Or if I want to watch a movie, Netflix 
has thousands of options for me to choose from. There are millions of 
songs I could download. There are even 34 types of Eggo waffles. Our 
entire life is run with options and choices by American people.
  In fact, the only segment of our life in which the concept of options 
seems to have dissipated is with the government, because the government 
is still here to pick winners and losers and decide how I will or will 
not live my lifestyle. The government is still here to try to go back 
to those halcyon days of the Carter administration where the government 
told you where to put your thermostat, how fast to drive and on which 
days you could or could not get gasoline for your car. It is a 
lifestyle that happens to be there.
  We are dealing with a situation which may be, in essence, one of the 
biggest lifestyle changers we have ever had in this world with cap-and-
trade, because we are talking about carbon policy. As was written in 
2007, controlling carbon is a bureaucrat's dream. If you can control 
carbon, you can control life.
  One of the fears I have right now is that we are moving into an area 
in which, instead of giving Americans options on how to live and how to 
produce and how to go forward with their lives, we are starting to tell 
them how to live their lives, because the government is the one that is 
going to be picking winners and losers.
  We are going to be talking about energy. We are going to be talking 
about cap-and-trade tonight, the implications of cap-and-trade and the 
tax policies of cap-and-trade, with the idea that what we should be 
trying to do, as a government, is giving people choices and options to 
let them choose how they live rather than having the government be the 
one to pick out who is going to win, who is going to lose and how we 
will proceed.

                              {time}  1730

  I've been joined by several of my friends here tonight. I appreciate 
their service to this Nation as a Member of Congress. I'd like to turn 
some time over to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Broun) who is on the 
floor right now, even though his committee is still meeting in a 
markup. But I'd like him to have the opportunity of taking as much time 
as he wishes to consume so he can get back to his other work, which is 
trying to keep the Science Committee on the right track in their 
particular markup.
  Mr. Broun.
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. I thank my good friend, Mr. Bishop from Utah, 
for yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today in very strong opposition to the Waxman-
Markey cap-and-tax boondoggle. That's what it is. It's a boondoggle. 
This energy tax is the largest tax increase in American history, an 
estimate of almost $2 trillion tax increase. It will probably cost 
every family, it's estimated to cost every single family, rich, poor 
and in between, over $3,100 for every family in additional energy costs 
and will drive millions of good-paying American jobs overseas.
  In fact, I have several plants in my district in northeast Georgia 
that have told me that, if this onerous bill passes, they'll have to 
lock the door. And those manufacturing jobs will go overseas because 
they cannot afford to pay this high energy tax. It will devastate their 
business, and we'll lose jobs.
  This is an outrageous tax on every family that drives a car, who buys 
American products, or even flips on their light switch when they come 
home. So that means you, it means every single family in this country 
is going to pay over $3,100 per family for this increased energy tax.
  Senior citizens, the poor, the unemployed will be hit hardest by this 
tax increase, as experts agree that they spend a greater proportion of 
what money that they have, their income, on energy consumption and on 
products that have high energy consumption and, thus, will have higher 
costs for those goods and services. In fact, it's going to raise the 
cost of every single product, every single service in this country, 
because of this outrageous energy tax.
  This is a time when we should be promoting policies that stimulate 
our economy and not tear it down. Various studies suggest that as many 
as 7 million jobs will be lost. In fact, our President has held forth 
as a paradigm the country of Spain that put in an energy tax similar to 
this one and about the green jobs that were created there.
  We just talked to a man who serves in their legislature in Spain, and 
for every single green job produced in Spain, they lost 2.2 additional 
jobs. So they had a net loss of 1.2 jobs for every job that was 
created.
  It's not right. It's not in the best interest of our Nation. Make no 
mistake that the Democrats' airtight tax-and-cap will suffocate 
America's small business, and it will strangle America's respiratory 
system, the free enterprise system.
  My colleagues on the other side of the aisle will claim that that 
tax-and-cap will help clean up the environment. However, this doesn't 
seem like it's even about the environment or about global warming 
anymore. This has turned into a revenue generator, a revenue generator 
for Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, for their radical agenda that includes 
socialized medicine. And, in fact, the President said, if we don't pass 
this, that he's not going to have the funds to force this socialized 
medicine system that he's proposing down the throats of the American 
people. It's a socialized medicine system that's going to take your 
health decisions from you and your doctor and put it in the hands of 
Washington bureaucrats.

[[Page H6133]]

That's why they want this tax-and-cap, as I call it, bill passed, so 
that they can afford, have the money to grow this huge socialized 
health care system that's going to destroy the quality of health care.
  Fortunately, Republicans have offered an alternative, an alternative 
to this unaffordable energy tax. We believe you can clean up the 
environment. We can clean up the environment. We must be good stewards 
of the environment. We can clean up the environment. We can keep jobs 
and keep money in peoples' pockets all at the same time.
  Our solutions include American energy, American energy produced by 
American workers to create American jobs. Our all-of-the-above energy 
plan brings us closer to energy independence, which is critical for our 
own national security. It encourages greater efficiency. It encourages 
conservation. It promotes the use of alternative fuels, and it will 
lower gasoline prices. Lower gasoline prices.
  This cap-and-tax bill isn't the only disguise we've seen here lately. 
In the last hundred-plus days we've seen the following: We've seen a 
nonstimulus stimulus package. We've seen secretive bills in what was 
supposed to be an open and transparent Congress, and we've seen bigger 
government creating trillion dollar commitments versus fiscal 
responsibility. In fact, what we have seen is downright fiscal 
irresponsibility.
  So far this year, Washington Democrats have forced taxpayers to pay 
for the following: A $1 trillion stimulus spending bill; a nonstimulus 
bill that, in spite of the administration's repeated attempts to spin 
it in a positive light, is riddled with waste and inefficiency on 
projects such as a skateboard park in Rhode Island, a new auxiliary 
runway at Representative John Murtha's airport for no one. It's even 
worse than the bridge to nowhere, an airport for no one in 
Pennsylvania. And even checks have been sent to deceased people who've 
been deceased for many years in Maryland, and who knows wherever else 
in this country those checks have been sent.
  We've seen a 400-plus billion dollar omnibus bill, a spending bill 
loaded with more than 9,000 unscrutinized earmarks. We've seen a budget 
that adds a staggering $13 trillion to the debt. It doubles our 
national debt over the next 5 years and triples it over the next 10. 
Triples our debt. Who's going to pay for that? It's stealing our 
grandchildren's future because they're going to have to pick up the 
bill.

  We've seen a $50 billion check written in financial aid to General 
Motors, which seems to have only brought a bankruptcy filing. And it's 
only June the 3rd.
  The sad fact is that this administration has added more debt than 
every single President combined, from George Washington all the way 
through George W. Bush. We hear it here on the floor all the time that 
our financial problems were caused by George Bush, but we've created, 
we're creating, more debt in the next 5 years, listen, people, more 
debt in the next 5 years than every single President from George 
Washington through George W. Bush all combined created. This eclipsed, 
in less than 5 months, what it's taken more than 230 years to 
establish. And now they're calling for the largest tax increase in 
American history.
  Enough is enough. I urge the American people to stand up and say 
``no.'' No more of these policies that will create more and more debt 
and will actually bring down our economy even worse than it is today. 
And it will steal our children's and grandchildren's future.
  We must say ``no'' to our Representatives and Senators in this 
Congress to oppose the Waxman-Markey cap-and-tax or, as I call it, tax-
and-cap legislation, and we need to begin to return to some fiscal 
responsibility here in Washington, D.C.
  Republicans have offered, over and over again, multiple alternatives, 
multiple alternatives, but the Speaker has been an obstructionist. 
She's obstructed every effort to get to this floor the proposals that 
the Republicans have brought. She's blocked every effort that we have 
had for all of these proposals to stimulate our economy, to solve our 
energy crisis, to put America back on the right track economically, to 
solve the housing crisis in America.
  We've proposed solutions, commonsense, market-based solutions that 
would not have cost American jobs, would not increase taxes, would not 
have stolen our grandchildren's future. And the American people need to 
stand up and say ``yes'' to all these other proposals, and say ``no'' 
to Waxman-Markey, ``no'' to the course that this administration and the 
leadership in this House and over in the Senate are taking us, because 
it's going to bring financial ruin to America if we don't.
  So it's up to the American people to say ``no'' to your Congressman, 
say ``no'' to your two U.S. Senators to this tax-and-trade or cap-and-
tax or tax-and-cap legislation that's going to ruin America, cost 
American jobs, and it's going to be a tremendous financial burden on 
you and your family. So say ``no'' and resist this as we are here on 
the Republican side in the U.S. House of Representatives.
  I thank my colleague for yielding, and I applaud all your efforts to 
bring forth our proposals to the American public, the proposals that 
make sense economically. And I thank you, Mr. Bishop. You're doing a 
great job, and I applaud that.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Well, I appreciate the gentleman from Georgia 
being able to join us in the middle of his committee markup, and I 
appreciate him being here and talking about simply some of the major 
problems that would take place with this overall system that may be 
here. It's one of the reality checks that we have to deal with is why, 
indeed, are we going to do this kind of an approach.
  I happen to think that one of the reasons why we're marching down 
this path right now, so rapidly marching down this path, is simply 
because the government promised to do something, and the something that 
they decided to do is a cap-and-trade or cap-and-tax policy, which 
simply means to put government pressure on the business community to 
try and lower their amount of CO2 emissions by putting, 
insisting they put economic pressure on them so that right now, to try 
and get those caps exceeded, they have to buy some kind of credit, and 
then put the economic pressure on them to change over to a new way of 
doing business.
  Both of those costs, both the cost of buying the cap-and-trade 
process right now as well as the change, will be passed on to the 
consumer. So the consumer basically gets hit both ways, two times, once 
going and once coming in this process at the same time; because the 
consumer basically has, all of our life is surrounded in some way by a 
fossil fuel economy, and the consumer, therefore, has to have a life 
change at the same time the business is having a life change.
  Now, I don't care how you want to try and spin this, as a new way of 
living or whatever it is, this is going to be the opportunity to change 
lifestyles based on bureaucratic decisions. And it will be, as the 
gentleman from Georgia just said, a concept of a tax on people. For the 
rich amongst us, this new tax is going to be an annoyance. For poor 
people, where 50 percent of their income has to go to energy choices, 
this tax is going to be the difference between being able to have a 
luxury like Hamburger Helper that night. This is not going to be fairly 
distributed throughout society.
  In fact, you'll notice, I think the gentleman from Ohio is here to 
talk to us in just a moment, and his area is going to be even more 
severely hit than some of the other parts of this country.
  And what it will be, though, is a windfall profit tax for the 
government. As the gentleman from Georgia said, this 400-plus billion 
dollars we're talking about does not go into improving our lifestyle or 
does not go into coming up with alternative energy sources. It goes to 
the government, pure and simple.
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Sure, be happy to.
  Mr. BROUN of Georgia. I just want to bring out a point that you were 
talking about what it's going to do. Let me tell you something that it 
won't do, and you may want to talk about this, too. It's not going to 
solve the global warming problem. In fact, they don't talk about global 
warming here in America anymore in the government. They talk

[[Page H6134]]

about climate change. And why? The reason they don't talk about global 
warming anymore is because we've had global cooling for almost a decade 
now, global cooling.

                              {time}  1745

  And the experts say that if we marginally reduce the carbon emissions 
like this bill proposes, it's going to be less than one degree of 
improvement in the global temperatures. In fact, it's only a smidgen of 
the total carbon put out throughout history that we're going to be 
affecting. So it's not going to accomplish the thing that they're 
trying to sell it on, and that's affecting climate change. It's all 
about getting more money, more money for a socialistic government 
that's going to control people's lives. And that's what it's all about. 
The socialized medicine and care for this steamroller of socialism that 
they're trying to shove down the throats of the American people, and 
we've got to stop it.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I appreciate the comments of the gentleman from 
Georgia as well. I want to concur in the last part of what he did say 
very clearly that this is going to be a tax, it's going to be a 
windfall for money for the government, not necessarily to go back into 
this issue but for the government.
  The Washington Post simply said that the proposals will require a 
wholesale transformation in the Nation's economy and society. One of 
our former colleagues who is now in the Senate, he said, cap-and-trade 
is the most significant proposal of our time. Friends of the Earth 
published way back in 2007, The concept of a climate change response 
must have at its heart a redistribution of wealth and resources. Alan 
Greenspan said cap-and-trade systems, or carbon taxes, are likely to be 
popular only until real people lose real jobs as their consequence.
  There is no effective way to meaningfully reduce emissions without 
negatively impacting a large part of our economy.
  Now, there's a couple of reality checks that I want to deal with 
today. And I'm joined by two of my good colleagues, one, the gentleman 
from Ohio, and also the gentleman from Louisiana, who are going to talk 
about some of the problems that we presently have; and especially the 
gentleman from Ohio because his area is going to be hit perhaps as hard 
as anyone in this unfair distribution of income. It's going to be a 
byproduct of this approach.
  With that, Mr. Speaker, I will be glad to yield as much time as he 
may consume to the gentleman from Ohio who can tell us what's going to 
be happening in his backyard.
  Mr. LATTA. I appreciate the gentleman for yielding.
  Ohio and Indiana are going to be especially hard hit under the cap-
and-tax, cap-and-trade system. I think it's important to start off with 
what the President said last year, Under my plan of cap-and-trade 
system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. That will cost 
money. They will pass that money on to the consumers.
  And I tell you, my friend, that's what scares me. As the gentleman 
from Utah was just saying, pointing out the amount of money that's 
going to be collected under the system is absolutely scary.
  Ohio, Indiana. I would like to point a few of these out.
  I represent in Ohio the 5th Congressional District, the largest 
manufacturing district in the State, also the largest agricultural 
district in the State of Ohio. And when we're talking about cap-and-
trade, cap-and-tax back home, it has businesses and farmers scared. Why 
is that?
  The Heritage Foundation, not too long ago, put together what they 
call this manufacturing vulnerability index. It takes how many 
manufacturing jobs that you have in your district and also with the 
type of energy mostly that your State uses--in our case, and also if 
you look at Indiana, Ohio is at 87.2 percent coal while Indiana is at 
94.2 percent coal.
  The problem with it, as you see, we have a very high vulnerability. 
When you take these numbers and go across--a lot of times when you were 
in school you wanted to be at the top, when you were playing sports you 
wanted to be at the top. This is one chart you don't want to be at the 
top of. The Ohio 5th Congressional District ranks number three in the 
most vulnerable districts in the State of Ohio when it comes under the 
cap-and-tax, cap-and-trade notion.
  What's happening right now? We've been in a tough recession. Again, 
being the largest manufacturing district in the State of Ohio, we're 
suffering. And fortunately when the announcements were made from 
General Motors yesterday, we did not lose our General Motors plant, but 
just nearby in the 4th Congressional District, they are going to be 
closing. But a lot of my people work in those plants.
  So what does this mean? One of my counties right now, which is right 
in the corner of Indiana, Michigan and Ohio, it's the highest 
unemployment rate in the State of Ohio. Williams County. Over 16 
percent. You have hardworking men and women up there that want to go to 
a job every day; but because of this recession that we're in, they're 
not getting to a job.
  What we gotta do is we've got to get these people back to work. But 
the thing is--that's already been mentioned by my friend in Georgia--
it's going to be very difficult to retain, expand and create new jobs 
if we're in a situation where we're not going be able to compete around 
the world. How is that?
  If you look at these numbers right here with Indiana and Ohio, if you 
tip this down to the 20th Congressional District that's going to be hit 
by cap-and-tax, 16 of those districts are from Ohio and Indiana. It's 
not very enviable when Indiana and Ohio split eight each in the 
vulnerability of our jobs into the future under cap-and-tax. And it's 
going to be very difficult for businesses to survive.
  Every week when I get home, I try to be in my district at a plant or 
in a business. And not too long ago, I was in another factory--and 
these factories are all pretty much holding on to what they got. It 
might be that they're not able to go out there and keep people 
employed. So a lot of them are doing, you know, if we cut back and cut 
back the number of hours people are working, if management takes a cut, 
if they try to do anything in-house and not do any contracting out, 
what happens is they're trying to hold on to the jobs they got.
  However, there are a lot of factories in my district that are working 
5, 6 days a week. Now they've got people working four 10-hour-shift 
days. The problem with that is people aren't working overtime. They're 
not getting money to put in the bank. They're not getting more money 
out there because--in my district I have the largest washing machine 
plant in the world. In a good year, they're producing over 6 million 
washing machines. We can produce anything in northwest, north central 
Ohio when it comes on the automotive side. But, again, these companies 
are hurting.
  You have got companies out there that supply the auto plants and if 
you're in tier 2 or tier 3, you're in trouble. They say, Well, it's 
going to be rationalized--I think the term was down the street--that 
we're going to have to rationalize what's going to happen to these. A 
good term for that is ``you're out of business.'' Where are these 
people going to go? We've got a domino effect that's going to be 
happening. But this domino effect is going to be happening more rapidly 
if these companies cannot afford power.
  Again, in Ohio, 87.2 percent of our power is coal generated. Indiana, 
again, is 94.2. So we can't have that going on because when we're 
talking about these numbers, we're talking about a catastrophe in the 
making.
  I just wanted to show this chart. Again, this is the top eight 
districts in the State of Ohio. They're going to be affected by cap-
and-tax. I would like to show you the bottom eight.
  Well, as we start down the list, that being as least affected with a 
manufacturing vulnerability index ranking of only 3.2 percent is Mr. 
Waxman's district. When you go down to Speaker Pelosi's district it 
only gets down to a 2.2. And, again, we're talking about Ohio and 
Indiana, districts in the 100 percent, the 98 percent range.
  Out in California they're using a lot of nuclear; they're using a lot 
of natural gas. So these areas in the country aren't going to be hit.
  People say, back home, Bob, who's asking for this? We're in a 
catastrophe

[[Page H6135]]

here in the Midwest. Who's asking for this?
  If you look at a map, go from California to Oregon to Washington, you 
know these are very low vulnerability with these States. You go from 
the east coast, very low vulnerability. Not a lot of manufacturing, not 
a lot of coal.
  So when you look at this, who's getting hit the hardest? The Midwest. 
Those States that are the industrial heartland of America, those men 
and women who get up every day, pack that lunch box and get to work are 
the ones that are going to be affected.
  And as the gentleman mentioned from Georgia, what's going to happen?
  Well, if we can't manufacture cheaply in the United States and 
compete against the rest of the world--and the rest of the world today 
is China, India and that area--what are they going to be doing about 
it? There is some talk around here and at the White House, We're going 
to go over and talk to the Chinese and say we would like you to cap 
your emissions. That's what all of this is about, capping carbon 
emissions. There is not one person in this Chamber that would say that 
they want to have pollution. But we have to manufacture in a way that 
can be done that we can compete. When you're looking at these numbers, 
it's going to hurt the Midwest.
  But what happened when the Chinese were questioned about the whole 
notion of what are we going to do about cap-and-tax, especially when it 
comes to China? China's philosophy is this--and it was a quote that was 
in the Washington Times not too long ago. Their minister said this: You 
don't understand the problem. We only produce it. You consume it. If 
you hadn't consumed it, we wouldn't have produced it. So you pay any of 
the tax that might come from this.
  They don't want to get involved in it. They are not going to get 
involved in it. So what we're putting around the legs of the 
manufacturing in the United States is a ball and chain. We're saying, 
Okay, we're going to throw you in a hundred feet of water and you 
better start swimming somehow. That's what this Congress is advocating, 
and it can't be done because America cannot compete under those 
standards.
  We have got to be on an equal playing field with the rest of the 
world. If we don't have that, we're going to be in a situation where 
American jobs are going to be lost to overseas.
  I said about my district, I have some of the highest unemployment in 
the State of Ohio. Again, high manufacturing, and we cannot afford to 
be in a situation where we have this type of situation where we're 
going to be hurting the heartland of America under this policy. And as 
I mentioned, we've got businesses out there hanging on by their 
fingertips and all we've got to do is put this chain around them and 
they're not going to be able to survive into the future.
  A lot of things are being advocated when you're talking about carbon 
capture and sequestration. That technology, in a lot of cases, is not 
even available and it's untested. And we're telling businesses we're 
going to have to be doing some of this into the future. Impossible.
  Businesses out there, they're going to say, How are we going to do 
this? Some of the businesses out there that are owned by multinationals 
across Ohio and the Midwest--you know, I've had some companies tell me, 
We don't have to be in Ohio. We don't have to be in the United States. 
We can go over to our Pacific Rim countries and produce the product and 
bring it back to the United States probably at a cheaper rate than you 
can do it right here in the United States. And they're saying that, but 
they want to stay here; but if we do this, if this cap-and-tax gets 
passed, America is going to suffer, America is going to lose jobs.
  And when you look at some of these numbers that the Heritage 
Foundation has brought forward, they're looking at by the year 2035, 
it's reducing the aggregate gross domestic product by $9.6 trillion. 
Destroy 1.1 million jobs per year on average with the peak years seeing 
unemployment rise by over 2.479 million jobs.
  Again, as has been mentioned by my friend in Georgia, increasing the 
average American cost of living by 2035, $4,300. Where are Americans 
going to come up with this money?
  If you are getting cut back on your hours right now at your plant, 
you're not going to have additional dollars, and then we're going to 
have the Federal Government mandating these things. There are not going 
to be any Federal dollars.
  Raising electricity rates by 90 percent. Again, when you look at this 
vulnerability, you look at the Midwest. You look at the companies that 
are out there that have to have that base load capacity every day to 
turn those machines on to keep America running. They are not going to 
be able to do it. Pass this bill and that's what you're going to get.
  We're going to see gasoline prices rise by 74 percent. Right now, 
you're looking at gas increasing. It was really nice for a while there 
this past year when we were looking at about $1.63 gasoline in 
northwest Ohio. Well, the other day when I got gas before I came back 
to Washington, it was $2.52. And people were saying to me at those gas 
pumps, When is it going to stop?
  I say, if you pass this bill, you're going to watch gasoline prices 
skyrocket. Eighty percent of everything that is brought into Ohio in 
goods is brought in by truck. So, again, those prices are going to go 
up.
  Agricultural prices are going to go up because the fuel that's needed 
to make the fertilizer, the fuel for the tractors to make sure that you 
can harvest, all of these things are going to go up. The drying of the 
grain. All prices are going up. Again, when these numbers that they're 
talking about how can you come up with $4,300, when you look at your 
electricity, your gasoline--you go right down the line--the food you 
put on the table, these prices are going to go up.
  Raise residential national gas prices by 55 percent. And then 
increase the inflation-adjusted Federal debt by 26 percent or $29,150 
additional Federal debt per person again after adjusting for inflation.

                              {time}  1800

  We can't afford this. We cannot afford this, and we can't have this 
happen.
  But my friends let me tell you, there's not one person that's not for 
clean energy, and here the Americans want something, and the Republican 
Party has come up in this House with a strategy.
  And last week during the break, several of us were in Pittsburgh and 
Indiana and California stressing the need to make sure that we have 
this nuclear being stressed. There's a nuclear power plant in 
California that supplies 10 percent of that State's needs, and the last 
time we've even been able to site a new plant in this country was 1977.
  So we can do it in this country by just having what we've got, by 
making sure we use our clean coal technology, to use nuclear. Get out 
there, get the oil, the natural gas, we use the hydro, the geothermal, 
and then of course on all the others. We have the wind, the solar, the 
ethanol, the biodiesel. We can do it, but we've got to have an all-of-
the-above policy, but we cannot go with this cap-and-tax because, 
again, it's a jobs killer for America, and I thank the gentleman for 
yielding.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I appreciate the gentleman from Ohio for talking 
about some of the realities that happen to be there. I hate to say 
this, but sometimes we need to make a reality check on this entire 
issue of what the goal is. When we are told the goal is to have an 80 
percent reduction in CO2 by the year 2050, what does that 
really mean for us?
  In my own State of Utah, we have a yearly output of approximately 66 
million tons of CO2 per year and a population of 2.6 
million. Now, if you simply do the math, to reach that goal that 
everyone says we have to reach, we would have to go down to 2.2-tons of 
CO2 emitted every year in the State of Utah. The last time 
that happened, I hate to admit this, but Brigham Young hadn't even 
arrived. If you want to do the kind of math that it takes to reach that 
goal in the United States, the Pilgrims weren't here yet on Plymouth 
Rock.
  One of the things that we have to reconcile is that, look, there are 
6.2 billion people in the world. Two billion of those people have never 
flipped on a switch because they have never had electricity. To reach 
the kind of goals that we're talking about here, we have to insist that 
those 2 billion people

[[Page H6136]]

never have to experience things like lights and flat screen TVs and 
computers that we all take for granted and live with; that they don't 
have to have adequate food free of bugs because, I'm sorry, the 
fertilizer is fossil fuels; and they don't have to have clothes which 
are made of fossil fuels. My pen is a fossil fuel. Everything in the 
emergency room except for the steel is a fossil fuel. We make 
composites for aircraft to make them lighter and more efficient right 
now. You get on plane; you are riding on gas. All those things are 
there, and we have this schizophrenic idea that we want to get rid of 
fossil fuels, at the same time it is our lifestyle, without recognizing 
what it is.
  Back in the 1970s, we had a specific term in there and that's when we 
came up with the idea that these are alternative fuels. What we really 
should be saying is they are supplemental fuels, because I hate to say 
this, but one-sixth of one percent of the energy we use today comes 
from wind and solar. If you try to do a PowerPoint presentation of a 
pie chart, all you get is a little thin line because it can't get 
smaller than that little thin line.
  And after 30 years and $20 billion of the United States Government 
trying to expand wind and solar, we are still at one-sixth of one 
percent. The President wants to double that, which I applaud him for. 
Actually, the last 3 years of the Bush administration, we doubled the 
amount of wind and solar power we were using, but all that does is take 
us from one-sixth of 1 percent down to one-third of 1 percent. So that 
line is only a little bit wider.
  Now, if you have a coal or a gas-fired power plant that puts out 
1,000 megawatts of power, it takes about 40 acres of ground to do that, 
40 acres. To accomplish that same power output with wind, you would 
take 500 windmills that would require 30,000 acres to accomplish that. 
The Denver Post had this wonderful article about this great solar plant 
in an area in Denver that was putting out 8.2 million megawatts. To 
accomplish what that one coal-fired plant would put out, you would have 
to have 250 of those miracle plants covering 20,000 acres.
  In my home State we have a new geotherm plant, which is great, puts 
out 14 million megawatts of power. We take 10- to 20,000 every year 
just to keep up with the grid.
  So what we have to do as we're talking about all these issues is come 
up with some kind of realism that the bottom line is the wind does not 
always blow and the sun doesn't always shine, and we have yet to come 
up with a way of capturing wind and solar power, let alone the capacity 
for moving those. We have a reality check before we go marching down 
this path of where we're going.
  I want the gentleman from Louisiana who is here, who has been 
involved in these issues, has signed one of the early bills that deals 
with one of the potential solutions to this, especially to talk about 
some other options out there because what we, once again, need to do is 
we have to be able to give the American people choices and options, not 
have the Federal Government telling them what to do.
  So I yield to the gentleman from Louisiana.
  Mr. FLEMING. I thank the gentleman from Utah, and I, too, feel very 
privileged, Mr. Speaker, to have been a cosponsor on the no-cost 
stimulus energy plan that my friend from Utah was also a sponsor of, 
and it would have provided tremendous utilization of the potential 
energy we have, but of course, it never made it to the floor.
  As a good segue into really what I want to talk about is my local 
district, I just want to reiterate what we discussed this evening, and 
we also talked about it last night, that this cap-and-tax program has 
been tried before. We've been 10 years down this pathway with Spain. 
Representatives from Spain came and spoke with us about this, and they 
said that the net of all that has been is they've lost companies, 
they've lost jobs, their unemployment rate is now 17.5 percent, and 
their energy costs are skyrocketing, which of course prophetically even 
our own President, President Obama, made the comment in January 2008 
that utility costs, electrical costs, home costs of energy will 
skyrocket if this bill is passed.
  What I want to talk about for a moment, Mr. Speaker, is the 
Haynesville shale. I'm from the fourth district of Louisiana. This is 
the northwestern corner of Louisiana, and 3 years ago no one had ever 
heard of the Haynesville shale. In fact, the whole idea of shale 
formation, that is, a rock formation that holds like a porous sponge 
deposits of natural gas, something that was barely heard of even 4 
years ago, and today, we're finding that in the case of the Haynesville 
shale, it is perhaps the largest natural gas find in this hemisphere.
  And hopefully, the camera will pick this map up, but you see the 
area, and it borders, of course, several parishes in Louisiana and then 
also counties in Texas. As you can see, it covers a wide swath of area, 
and so this represents a tremendous opportunity for the State 
of Louisiana and also parts of the State of Texas.

  So I just want to tell you something about the impact. We're talking 
about 234 trillion cubic feet of natural gas production potential. This 
could be a source of energy for many years to come for this country, 
and remember that natural gas is a very clean form of fossil fuel. It 
produces significantly less carbon dioxide than say coal, and yet 
there's forces out there that would like to stop the drilling for 
natural gas in the Haynesville shale. We're even going to have hearings 
tomorrow talking about the manufacturing process and potentially issues 
having to do with the environment with that. But let me tell you about 
what we also can lose if we lose the ability to extract natural gas 
just in my district.
  A 2008 study was done, and it showed that $4.5 billion was pumped 
into the Louisiana economy in that year. It created $3.9 billion in 
household earnings. The greatest impact on indirect household earnings 
was experienced by workers in the mining sector, with new household 
earnings of $193 million in 2008. It created over $30 million in new 
earnings in separate sectors; $56.7 million in health care; management, 
$46 million. On and on and on, many millions of dollars. It's creating 
cash into the local economy in my district. And as a result of this, 
our unemployment rate is much lower than that of the east of the 
country, and our economy's doing very well. Real estate is doing very 
well. On that, we've created many jobs. Large impacts were felt with 
5,229 jobs in the utility sector; health care, 3,496 jobs.
  Conservative estimates report that State and local tax revenues 
increased by $153.3 million in 2008. Some parishes reported a 300 
percent increase in sales tax.
  So as you can see, Mr. Speaker, the Haynesville shale is just 
starting, and yet it is creating a tremendous impact on the economy of 
my district. So, if we continue down this cap-and-tax road, not only 
are we going to lose what we have but potentially lose what we're going 
to have.
  In the 2010 budget of President Obama on this same subject, we're 
looking at a potential loss of $80 billion in tax incentives for oil 
and natural gas businesses, and this impacts small companies. The 
majority of oil and gas companies in my district are small companies. 
They're mom-and-pop businesses, and that is the backbone of our 
economy. We're not talking about Shell Oil. We're not talking about 
Exxon. We're talking about local, Joe Smith kinds of businesses.
  Independent oilmen and women in northeast Louisiana rely on these 
incentives to reinvest their capital in these companies. This is caused 
by the loss of depletion allowance and the writeoff of intangible 
drilling costs. It will also broaden our dependence foreign oil; of 
course, the thing that we used to talk about when gas was $4 a gallon 
and soon we're going to be talking about that again.
  Well, in closing, I just want to say, Mr. Speaker, that we cannot tax 
and spend our way out of growing our economy. In a time of recession, 
the best way to encourage an economic turnaround is to preserve jobs. 
The State, instead of flowing money into the economy, as we've tried 
with this stimulus plan, which, estimates are, only 6 percent of the 
money is even in the economy, we may actually be pulling out of this 
recession as we speak.
  Without the development of natural gas plays like the Haynesville 
shale, without increased exploration in ANWR, the Outer Continental 
Shelf,

[[Page H6137]]

without the tax incentives that I just mentioned, without these things 
we're going to see our economy, even if it put pulls out of this, level 
off.
  We can have our cake and eat it, too, Mr. Speaker. We don't have to 
destroy our economy and clean up our environment at the same time. We 
can be good, responsible tenders of our environment. We can be good 
stewards of our environment without destroying our economy in the 
process.
  Someday perhaps we will be able to use some of these technologies. 
Perhaps we can use solar, maybe wind, but at this point, my friend from 
Utah says it's 1.6 percent of production, and we're going to have a lot 
of breakthroughs to make it go much higher than that. But until that 
time, there's a lot we can do with the technologies we have, 
technologies that are coming online, and that's not even mentioning 
nuclear power which many countries, particularly in Europe, are way 
ahead of us on.
  But we can do a lot to solve our problems without throwing our 
economy into the dumpster, as Spain has.
  So with that I want to thank my friend from Utah for his time, his 
many great efforts with this. I appreciate his leadership on this 
subject.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I appreciate very much the gentleman from 
Louisiana joining us and talking about other kinds of options that are 
out there for the American people. The reality has always been that 
reliable and affordable energy has been the great liberator of mankind. 
It has improved our lifestyle. It has allowed those who are poor to 
escape that kind of poverty.
  One of the things we cannot do is allow us to restrain ourselves so 
that that does not happen. As we said before, if you're rich, all this 
stuff could be an annoyance. If you're poor, it's a life-and-death 
decision, and as one wag simply said, never underestimate the ability 
of Congress to offer nonsolutions to problems that may or may not 
exist. We may be looking at that right now, but I appreciate especially 
the fact that there are other options out there that need to be 
explored because this is not the only answer and the only solution.
  With that, I'd like to yield to our good friend from Indiana who has 
spoken often on these particular topics and these issues, in fact, is 
organizing an effort to explore other options that America needs and 
recently took those conversations on the road to actually hear from 
Americans. I yield to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence).
  (Mr. PENCE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. PENCE. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, I come before this Chamber today at a time when millions 
of American families are hurting. I just spent time home in Indiana, 
heard from small business owners and family farmers that are struggling 
to make it through these difficult times. And they know, and I heard 
not only in Indiana but in Pennsylvania and in California as House 
Republicans traveled this Nation to take our case against the Democrats 
cap-and-trade proposal.

                              {time}  1815

  I heard from those Americans one simple message, and that is: The 
last thing we should do during a difficult recession is pass a national 
energy tax on every working family, small business owner, and family 
farm in this country. But, Mr. Speaker, that's precisely what the House 
Democrats are preparing to do.
  Just before the break, virtually along party lines, House Democrats 
reported out of their committee the so-called cap-and-trade 
legislation, which is better understood as a cap-and-tax legislation. 
My colleague, Fred Upton from Michigan, says it will cap growth and 
trade jobs. And the truth is it will have just that effect.
  According to a study done by MIT, divided by the number of households 
in this country, if the Democrats' cap-and-trade legislation becomes 
law, the energy costs of the average American household would rise by 
more than $3,000 per year. According to some independent estimates as 
well, if their legislation became law, various studies suggest 1.8 
million to 7 million jobs could be lost in this country.
  Why on Earth, at a time when this Congress ought to be coming 
together with bipartisan solutions to bring relief to small business 
owners, to American manufacturing, a time when we see the government 
reaching deeper and deeper into our financial sector, offering one 
bailout after another to one business after another, why on Earth would 
we heap more weight on the backs of Americans and on the back of this 
American economy in the form of a national energy tax?
  But I rise today, Mr. Speaker, to say with authority that's precisely 
what Democrats are planning to do.
  I pull out a device that helps me keep up with the news here. And I 
will quote, for the sake of attribution, a story published this 
afternoon at about 5 o'clock in Roll Call, because as we returned to 
Washington, D.C., there was a great deal of talk, Mr. Speaker, that we 
were moving on to health care reform for the summer. The majority in 
Congress wasn't talking any more about a national energy tax. They 
weren't talking any more about cap-and-trade. The focus was health 
care. The President of the United States gave a speech saying that it's 
a time for health care reform, and that should be the focus.
  But I have got to tell you, I used to play a little bit of basketball 
back in Indiana. There was something called a head fake. You know, when 
you got the ball and you want to go this way, you put your head that 
way and you make the guy follow, and then you go this way.
  I had this feeling it was a bit of a head fake, that in fact liberals 
here in Washington, D.C., were not going to relent in their drive to 
pass a national energy tax and the cap-and-trade legislation. And it 
turns out, according to Roll Call, I might just be right.
  An article filed by Steven Dennis of the Roll Call staff reports 
that, ``Speaker Nancy Pelosi is kick-starting the movement on the 
controversial climate change bill, setting a deadline of June 19 for 
committee action in the Ways and Means Committee.''
  The Speaker of the United States House of Representatives has told 
the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee that they have until 
2 weeks from this Friday, according to Roll Call, to have that bill out 
of committee. And it could very well be on the floor of this Congress 
before we break for the 4th of July.
  So I think the American people have a right to know what's in this 
bill. They have a right to understand how this national energy tax, 
under the guise of climate change legislation, is going to result in an 
increase in their home utility costs, an increase in the costs of 
gasoline at the pump, an increase in the cost of virtually every good 
we buy, because of course energy is an input cost on virtually all the 
goods and services that we use in our daily lives. It's going to 
increase the cost of businesses. And I rise, of course, with a 
particular interest in this.
  As we heard from the Governor of the State of Indiana, Mitch Daniels, 
last week, that because the cap-and-trade legislation essentially puts 
the heaviest burden on those States that draw the majority of their 
electricity from coal-burning power plants, the truth is that, rightly 
understood, this cap-and-trade legislation amounts to an economic 
declaration of war on the Midwest by liberals here in Washington, D.C., 
and it must be opposed.
  I mean, in the State of Indiana, our households, when we flip the 
light switch, we draw about more than 90 percent of our electrical 
energy from coal-burning power plants. Very similar in Michigan, very 
similar in Ohio. That may well be why the Heritage Foundation recently 
estimated that States like Indiana and Ohio and Michigan will be the 
hardest hit States.
  We had testimony last week from representatives of Richmond Power and 
Light in Richmond, Indiana. They testified at a public hearing that we 
held in my home State capital of Indianapolis, and they said that their 
utility rates in Richmond, Indiana, a city that I represent, their home 
utility rates would go up by 25 to 40 percent if cap-and-trade 
legislation became law.
  We have got to come clean with the American people about the reality 
of this national energy tax. The American people have a right to know 
that this Democratic majority is preparing to pass legislation that 
will increase the cost of doing business, increase the

[[Page H6138]]

cost of their household budget, and they're preparing to do that in 
name of environmental priority and climate change legislation at 
precisely the time that American working families, small business 
owners, and family farmers can least afford it.
  So I commend the gentleman from Utah. I commend him for his 
extraordinary and visionary leadership on issues involving energy. But 
I pledge this: That as chairman of the House Republican Conference, as 
one of those tasked with the American Energy Solutions Group on which 
my colleagues have the privilege of serving, we are going to make the 
fight in the weeks ahead against this national energy tax and, to the 
gentleman's point, we're going to offer a Republican alternative in the 
American Energy Act that will lessen our dependence on foreign oil, 
make a commitment to wind and solar and nuclear energy, make a 
commitment to new, cleaner technologies, more fuel efficiency. But it 
will not include a national energy tax that will drive this economy 
further down during these difficult days.
  I yield back.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I appreciate the gentleman from Indiana giving us 
what I think is not necessarily bright news, but good news to realize 
that the cap-and-tax approach or the cap-and-trade policy is not the 
only one that's out there. There are other options.
  The gentleman from Louisiana and I have joined with Senator Vitter on 
what is called the No Cost Stimulus Bill that solves this problem in a 
different approach. The Republican Study Committee and the Western 
Caucus have joined with H.R. 2300, which solves this problem with an 
alternative approach that provides American energy and American jobs 
without the harmful side effects.
  I just went this afternoon to the National Center for Policy 
Analysis. They presented 10--they call it 10 cool global warming 
policies--but 10 specific ideas or concepts, many of them that we have 
incorporated in some of those other bills that would help our situation 
without having to impose a tax that hurts the poorest of our people.
  Now I am pleased to yield to my good friend from Texas, someone who 
is, I think, the most fascinating speaker I have a chance to listen to, 
the last few minutes that we have on this particular issue at this time 
tonight to try and summarize once again that where we're going, 
hopefully we can avoid the pitfalls, and there are other options than 
what we have simply seen placed before us so far.
  I yield as much time as he may consume to the gentleman from Texas 
(Mr. Gohmert).
  Mr. GOHMERT. I appreciate your yielding. I don't think there's 
anybody who brings more clarity to the issues of energy than my friend 
from Utah, Mr. Bishop. I sure do appreciate the clarity he brings.
  But when we talk about this cap-and-tax-away-jobs bill that's 
apparently going to be coming rather quickly upon us, you need to look 
at the reasons being given as to why we have to have this cap-and-tax-
away-jobs bill, why we have got to get rid of more jobs, cost more 
Americans more money when they don't have it. And we're told it's 
because of the carbon dioxide out there and that it's creating global 
warming.
  Well, have you noticed we're not calling it global warming anymore? 
Now we're calling it climate change. And you wonder why have they 
started calling it climate change. Well, you start looking at some of 
the scientific data that's coming out and they're realizing, you know 
what, this planet may be cooling instead of warming. It may be starting 
on a cooling cycle instead of warming.
  So, since we have millions and millions and millions of dollars being 
made by scaring people about global warming, in case it is cooling, 
maybe we better change the name to climate change. That way we're going 
to keep the money coming in either way, because we're scaring people.
  It's climate change, no matter which way it's going--warming, 
cooling. In fact, I saw an article that indicated, you know what, we 
have been saying that carbon dioxide is trapping the heat and warming 
the planet, but we may be wrong about that. It may be that the carbon 
dioxide is creating a shield and causing the Sun's rays to bounce off 
and, therefore, cooling the planet.
  That way, they can have it either way. If it's warming the planet, 
then it's catastrophe and we need to pass all kinds of laws to tax 
people, put business out of the U.S., and go to other countries. And if 
it's cooling, we will have it that way, too. Keep the money flowing in.
  In our Natural Resources Committee, we have talked about the polar 
bears. I have seen that deeply touching commercial where this mama bear 
with the cub, it looks like they're dying out there. Maybe they are. 
But what we have heard in our committee is that 20 years ago we know 
for sure there were less than 12,000 polar bears. And we know today, 
for sure, there are at least 25,000 polar bears in the world. They have 
more than doubled in 20 years.
  But somebody is making a lot of money by telling people the polar 
bears are all dying, so give us money, take away American jobs, send 
them around the planet, and we will be better for it. Well, they will 
because they're going to have bigger houses. And I don't begrudge Al 
Gore having that wonderful house and using all that energy, but he just 
shouldn't make the middle class of America pay more for their energy 
and cause the loss of their jobs in the name of helping the planet. It 
doesn't help anybody but him and people like him that are out there 
scaring folks.
  We have talked about the jobs that would be created in ANWR. You open 
ANWR, a million new jobs across America. You open the Outer Continental 
Shelf to drilling, another 1.1 million or 2 million jobs in America. 
The President can finally keep his promise; instead of losing more 
jobs, we'd have more jobs coming into America instead of going out.
  That's why we don't need a cap-and-tax-away-jobs in America. We need 
to produce more of our own. And I mean everything. We're talking about 
wind. We're talking solar.
  I have a bill for a prize for somebody that comes up with a way to 
store electrical energy in megawatt form for more than 30 days. Solar 
could be our answer to the future. But for right now, it's carbon-based 
energy. And it will keep jobs in America, bring them back.
  But, for goodness sake, let's don't hurt the middle class in America 
any more than they're already being hurt.
  I appreciate so much my friend from Utah. And with that, I will yield 
back to him.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I appreciate the gentleman from Texas. It is one 
of those things that we live in a new iPod generation in which in all 
our lives we are given options and choices. In this particular area, it 
is not the time for the government to now establish who wins, who 
loses, what is our only path.
  We still have to provide our people with options so that they can 
live and expand their lives the way they deem best. That's the 
important part here.
  I want to emphasize there are options out there on the table that the 
Republican Party is presenting. Those options need to be heard and 
explored because they lead us to a proper goal and an easier pattern.
  With that, we yield back the balance of whatever time is left.

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