[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 87 (Tuesday, June 18, 2013)]
[House]
[Page H3696]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     ALL-OF-THE-ABOVE ENERGY POLICY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Illinois (Mr. Shimkus) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SHIMKUS. Mr. Speaker, it is great to come down on the floor to 
just take a few minutes to talk about energy policy in this country. 
Republicans on this side and many of my friends across the aisle, we do 
believe and speak about an all-of-the-above energy strategy. That means 
``all of the above.''
  First, and the Speaker would not be surprised that I would come down 
and talk about nuclear power and how that, in the whole line of the 
processing of the fuel to the electricity production, they are good-
paying jobs. There are challenges we have to overcome, which is the 
high level of nuclear waste, the spent nuclear fuel, and the location 
for that, because that is a cost burden on the industry until we get 
that solved as we promised.
  Another major important energy production for us is coal. I come from 
southern Illinois. There are a lot of coal mines there, and electricity 
is generated by coal. It is low-cost fuel, and it provides great jobs 
for our coal miners, and it also creates high-paying jobs in rural 
America for the power plants in remote locations.
  The Governor of the State of Illinois just signed what they're 
claiming to be the most intense and precise fracking bill in the 
Nation, which will allow us to look for, locate, and recover, through 
the fracking process, we believe, crude oil to the extent of which we 
haven't seen since World War II, which also will ease our reliance on 
imported crude oil.
  Also part of this debate is the renewal portfolio debate, and some of 
that would be wind and solar. But don't forget the agriculture input 
through the RFS, which would be biodiesel, whether that is by soybeans 
or by reformulated cooking oil or beef tallow, or the ethanol debate, 
whether that is a cellulosic, the future generation of ethanol 
production, or the corn-based ethanol production as it is.
  It's a great time in the energy debate in this country because we're 
now at a point where we are demanding less and producing more, which 
would allow us then to at least stabilize and hopefully lower our 
prices while we then continue to become, now, an energy exporter.
  We're in a hearing today in the Energy and Power Subcommittee to talk 
about exporting coal and exporting liquified natural gas. That will be 
revenue and jobs to this great country. For many of us, we haven't seen 
times like this in a long time, and it's up to us in the public policy 
arena to make sure that we don't mess it up by increasing regulatory 
demands and other hurdles which will inhibit the entrepreneurs and the 
risk-takers from taking advantage of this great opportunity.

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