[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 46 (Tuesday, March 20, 2012)]
[House]
[Pages H1394-H1395]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   USING USA ENERGY TO MEET OUR NEEDS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania (Mr. Murphy) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. MURPHY of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, when GenOn announced it 
would close its coal-fired power plant in Elrama, in my district in 
southwestern Pennsylvania, my community didn't just lose the 50 
remaining jobs; it also lost a vital component to economic growth: 
affordable energy.
  We should be cleaning up, not shutting down these power plants, but 
new regulations aimed squarely at coal, oil, and natural gas are making 
it harder for families to get by, for manufacturers to prosper, and 
making it more difficult for our country to become energy independent.
  The Elrama plant is one of 57 nationwide slated to close because of a 
multitude of costly and unworkable EPA rules set to take effect over 
the next 5 years. Already utilities are preparing to retire almost 10 
percent of coal power in the country. That's 25 megawatts of energy 
that supports 18.8 million homes.
  That lost capacity, which is five times greater than what the EPA 
predicted it would be, is why the North American Electric Reliability 
Corporation is warning of blackouts and service disruptions.
  The EPA's new coal regulations will cost the economy $184 billion and 
1.4 million jobs in mining, transportation, manufacturing, and power 
generation. Of course, the expense will be passed along to consumers. 
Families in my State could see about $400 more a year in their electric 
bills.
  And it begs the question, is the President trying to make good on his 
promise to bankrupt utilities that use coal?
  These new costs would come at a time when higher oil prices already 
mean families are paying $2,400 more per year for gasoline than they 
were just 3 years ago. And if gasoline approaches $5 a gallon, the 
average family will pay over $3,000 more per year. That's a couple of 
months worth of groceries, or college loans, or payments on a new car.
  Unfortunately, instead of increasing oil supplies to bring down 
prices, domestic oil production on Federal lands has fallen 13 percent 
in the last year. The President said we have only 2 percent of the 
world's proven reserves, conveniently overlooking the technically 
recoverable oil that is under lock and key in the gulf and the shale 
oil States. We have more oil reserves--800 billion barrels--than Saudi 
Arabia.
  By the way, that means for a family that makes less than $10,000 a 
year, they'll be spending 81 percent of their income on energy. For a 
family that makes between $10,000 and $30,000 a year, they'll be 
spending 24 percent of their income on energy.
  And for every dollar of gasoline, 76 cents is tied up in crude oil. 
To bring down the price of gas, we don't need higher taxes on oil 
companies or penalties on speculators. What we need to do is send 
signals to the world that the United States is serious about using 
North American energy. We can start with building the Keystone 
pipeline.
  Now, many of my colleagues argue that we can count on plentiful 
natural gas to replace the demand for coal and oil. But while deposits 
are being unlocked from the Marcellus shale and the Utica shales with 
new fracturing technologies, natural gas is also threatened with costly 
overregulation. Eight different Federal agencies are there to stop it. 
The EPA, the Departments of the Interior, Energy, Transportation, and 
Agriculture, the Centers for Disease Control, the Army Corps of 
Engineers, and the Securities and Exchange Commission are all working 
on new regulatory burdens.
  One national energy organization predicts an EPA natural gas 
regulation for well sites specifically written to combat ``global 
warming'' will cut shale gas drilling by between 31 and 52 percent. 
That means higher energy bills to heat our homes.
  With our know-how and resources in coal, natural gas and nuclear, 
America

[[Page H1395]]

can still become an energy-independent Nation. That's why I introduced 
an all-of-the-above energy plan that wouldn't raise taxes, borrow from 
China, or buy from OPEC. The Infrastructure Jobs and Energy 
Independence Act, or H.R. 1861, expands safe offshore oil and gas 
exploration, creates over a million new jobs annually, and launches $8 
trillion in economic output. It dedicates a portion of its up to $3.7 
trillion in new Federal oil and gas revenues for investments in 
rebuilding our aging infrastructure, power generation, and grid 
modernization, and helps put us on a path to energy independence.
  And rather than shutting down coal-fired power plants, my bill 
invests in the kind of cutting-edge technology being developed at the 
National Energy Technology Laboratory to clean up coal.
  So we can either continue to build the wealth of OPEC countries that 
use our money to fund terrorism, nuclear weapons, and unfriendly 
policies, or build jobs here at home with energy independence. We can 
let OPEC pick the winners and losers, or make the USA the winners 
again. I choose the USA.
  We have the energy resources to unleash prosperity, but first and 
only if the Federal Government gets out of the way. The Federal 
Government should be a partner in prosperity, not build bureaucracies 
and barriers to stop our energy independence and hurt the American 
family.

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