[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 55 (Thursday, April 16, 2015)]
[House]
[Pages H2298-H2301]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            THE WAR ON COAL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2015, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Woodall) is recognized 
for the remainder of the hour as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate you making time to be down 
here with me today.
  Mr. Speaker, I am down here to talk about the war on coal. And when I 
say ``the war on coal,'' people think of that as if we can actually go 
and attack a natural resource. I am not worried about attacking natural 
resources. I am worried about the impact it has on American families. 
In particular, I am worried about the impact it has on families in my 
district in Georgia.
  Mr. Speaker, you can't see this chart, but it is a chart that 
represents section 111(d). It is the language that the President used 
to create his new carbon emission targets. I am not saying that 
Congress passed a law to do this, because Congress didn't pass a law. 
The President just decided he was going to do it. I am not saying that 
the House and the Senate got together and debated it, because we didn't 
get together and debate it. The President just decided this was the way 
it was going to be.
  It is 292 words that were already in statute. The President has 
turned it into a 130-page regulation that he is implementing on the 
country--hundreds more pages of technical support documents going 
behind that. This is what President Obama's constitutional law 
professor had to say.
  Again, this is a regulation that the President, Mr. Speaker, is 
implementing without any action of Congress whatsoever.

                              {time}  1315

  Laurence Tribe, the Harvard law professor who was President Obama's 
constitutional law professor, said this in December of last year: ``To 
justify the Clean Power Plan''--the President's energy plan--``the EPA 
has brazenly rewritten the history of on obscure section of the 1970 
Clean Air Act''--that is these 292 words I talked about--``passed by 
Congress in 1970.''
  Professor Tribe goes on to say: ``Frustration with congressional 
inaction cannot justify throwing the Constitution overboard to rescue 
this lawless EPA proposal.''
  Mr. Speaker, a Clean Air Act passed in 1970--and I will get into some 
charts that show the successes we have had of previous Clean Air Acts 
in 1970, 1990. The President wants to do things differently than the 
law of the land allows, and he is frustrated, as described by Professor 
Tribe, that Congress refuses to do what the President wants us to do.
  I am going to talk about why it is we don't want to do what the 
President wants us to do. We don't want to do it because it is 
destructive to the American economy and it is destructive to American 
families. We don't want to do what the President wants to do. The 
President hasn't come up here to lobby Congress to try to get Congress 
to do what the President wants us to do.
  The President, to quote Professor Tribe, is ``throwing the 
Constitution overboard to rescue this lawless EPA proposal.''
  We will come back to Professor Tribe. I want to talk about it in 
terms of my constituency, Mr. Speaker. I am right there in kind of the 
northeastern Atlanta suburbs there. It is only two counties, Mr. 
Speaker, but they are two of the fastest growing counties in the State 
of Georgia. They have also just been named two of the healthiest 
counties in the State of Georgia.
  This is what we are talking about in Georgia. This is our Georgia 
Public Service Commission, that group of elected officials in charge of 
keeping energy prices affordable for Georgia families, that group that 
is tasked with keeping energy supplies reliable in Georgia, that group 
that is tasked with regulating energy in the State of Georgia.
  It is not the EPA; it is not President Obama. It is the Georgia 
Public Service Commission. They say this about the President's rule:

       This rule will be unduly burdensome on Georgians, placing 
     upward pressure on electricity rates, an outcome that is not 
     acceptable to our organization or the citizens that we serve.

  These are not Republicans and Democrats, Mr. Speaker. These are folks 
who are concerned, literally, about how families are able to keep the 
lights on. How do you keep the lights on? We talk about getting the 
mortgage paid. We talk about getting the car note paid. How do you keep 
the lights on? The Georgia Public Service Commission is concerned about 
the burden of this new rule.
  The Clean Power Plan--that is what the President calls his plan--has 
nothing to do with clean power. It has to do with a war on America's 
energy security.
  He says this:

       The Clean Power Plan is illegal, unfair, and unwise.

  That is Georgia's attorney general. That is the one elected official 
in Georgia that is tasked with enforcing the laws of the land as they 
exist in Georgia, a statewide elected office. He calls this plan 
illegal, unfair, and unwise.
  It is not just President Obama's constitutional law professor, 
Laurence Tribe, calling it unconstitutional. We hear it from our 
Georgia State attorney general as well.
  This is from one of our power suppliers in Georgia. You may think of 
power suppliers, Well, of course, they want to pollute. That is what 
those big energy companies do--nonsense.
  Oglethorpe Power is the group that supplies power to all of the 
electric co-ops in the State. Mr. Speaker, I know you have electric co-
ops in your State, as I do in mine. These are citizen-owned utilities. 
These are citizen-owned companies that make sure the lights stay on.
  Oglethorpe Power provides the power to those citizen-owned groups. 
This is not some big investor-owned utility. This isn't some dirty 
power producer. This is the group of citizens that represents every 
single one of us in the State of Georgia who receive our power in this 
way.
  This is what Oglethorpe Power says:

       Consequently, there is substantial probability bordering on 
     certainty that Oglethorpe Power will suffer economic injury 
     if the EPA finalizes the proposal in its current form or in 
     any substantially similar form.

  Mr. Speaker, it is a bad idea to do it because Congress wasn't 
involved in it. It is a bad idea, as Professor Tribe suggests, to do it 
because the Constitution

[[Page H2299]]

doesn't allow. It is a bad idea, as Georgia's attorney general says, 
because it is unfair and it is unwise and it is unlawful.
  It is a bad idea to do it, as Oglethorpe Power says, because it is 
going to burden every single American family, particularly these 
Georgia families that Oglethorpe Power serves, if that goes into 
effect.
  Mr. Speaker, who is going to get hit the hardest? I will just use my 
State of Georgia because I get so tired on this House floor of pitting 
one group of folks against another.
  There is that part of me, Mr. Speaker, that remembers when President 
Obama was first running for office, and he promised to be the President 
that had the most transparent administration in American history, and 
he promised to be a uniter, bringing America together, as we have not 
heretofore been together in recent times.
  That is not what I see, Mr. Speaker. What I see is division. What I 
see are politics of division each and every day, so often along 
economic lines.
  I would argue what is the right metric is not how much money you make 
in a day. It is how much money you are able to make tomorrow. The 
opportunity is the metric on which we ought to measure. Do you have 
opportunity for tomorrow? Do you have choices that you can make to make 
your life better?

  Quoting an energy economist who testified before the Energy and 
Commerce Committee just this week, Mr. Speaker, he said this:

       Lower-income groups will bear the burden of higher energy 
     costs imposed by the EPA's plan but will be among the least 
     likely to invest in or benefit from the energy efficiency 
     programs that the proposed rule envisions.

  I want you to think about that. The President has big plans in this 
unlawful rule, this unconstitutional rule, this undebated rule; but he 
has big plans.
  It is twofold. Number one, he is going to get American families to 
invest in energy-efficient products in their home which, in theory, Mr. 
Speaker, if I am using less electricity in my home, I am going to be 
spending less money on that electricity.
  The President's plan is if I can get families to have more efficient 
products in their home, I can drive up the cost of electricity to the 
home, but families are still going to be out about the same amount of 
money. That is not the way the economists see it, Mr. Speaker.
  Look at families with their aftertax income of less than $10,000 a 
year. Now, that is not altogether uncommon in the great State of 
Georgia, and certainly, those are the folks who already have a tough 
time keeping the lights on.
  Thirty percent or more of their income, on average, is dedicated to 
energy costs. Thirty percent or more of everything that family has is 
dedicated to paying their energy costs. This rule proposes to run those 
costs up dramatically.
  Now, you move up to folks who are making aftertax incomes higher than 
$50,000, Mr. Speaker, and you are down below 5 percent of their income 
that they are spending on energy costs.
  The folks who can handle an increased rise in energy prices are also 
going to be those folks who invest in the more energy-efficient system. 
It is those folks who are trapped at the bottom of the income ladder, 
who don't have those opportunities to invest in more energy-efficient 
products, who are going to be hit the hardest by rising energy prices.
  Mr. Speaker, there is not a man or woman in my District--700,000 
strong--who doesn't want to see clean air, but the President's rule 
isn't about clean air. It is about picking winners and losers in energy 
production. The President doesn't like coal. He doesn't like coal 
miners. He doesn't like coal processors. He don't like coal power plant 
operators.
  This isn't about clean air. It is about coal. Is going to have an 
economic impact on constituents in my District.
  Mr. Speaker, let me go back to the words that folks use. This is the 
Georgia Chamber of Commerce. They obviously have an obligation to grow 
the economy in Georgia.
  Let me just tell you that you can't pay taxes if you don't have a 
job, right? It is an essential point of basic government economics. You 
need people to work. You need people to be successful because, if they 
are not successful, they cannot pay their taxes.
  The Georgia Chamber of Commerce is dedicated to success in our part 
of the world. They say:

       EPA's regulations will impose billions of dollars in costs 
     on the United States--and Georgia's--economy but fail to 
     meaningfully reduce CO2 emissions on a global 
     scale.
       If EPA adopts policies that substantially increase the cost 
     of energy, thereby decreasing the competitiveness of the 
     United States, investments and emissions will be sent to 
     other, less efficient countries with higher CO2 
     emission intensities.
       As a result, overly restrictive and costly United States 
     policies to reduce emissions will not only be offset around 
     the globe, but could actually result in a net increase.

  I want you to think about that, Mr. Speaker. I want you to think 
about that. We just had this conversation in respect to the Keystone 
pipeline. The President vetoed bipartisan language passed in this 
House, passed in the Senate, to build the Keystone pipeline.
  This pipeline has been in the approval process for longer than it 
took to build the entire Hoover Dam. The entire Hoover Dam, start to 
finish, was built faster than we can even get an approval. This law 
wasn't to mandate the building of the pipeline. This law was to mandate 
that the approval process come to conclusion.
  The process still hasn't come to a conclusion--the President won't do 
it--as if, if America decides not to build the Keystone pipeline, oil 
will not be harvested in the independent nation of Canada--nonsense.
  Canada didn't ask us whether or not they should bring the oil out of 
the ground. They asked us to help them get the oil to market. They are 
America's largest trading partner.
  They said: America, will you help us with this pipeline?
  The answer should have been: Absolutely, yes.
  If not yes, perhaps the answer could be no; but, instead of a yes or 
no, we had 7 years of delay.
  Well, that oil is going to come out of the ground. It is going to be 
shipped to a port in Canada. It is going to be shipped overseas to 
China. I promise you it is not going to reduce emissions. It is going 
to increase emissions because they are not going to process it in China 
as responsibly as we process it here.
  What is the President asking of us? We are talking about how this is 
going to raise the cost of producing goods.
  Again, just in Georgia, between 2005 and 2012--the last 7 years, Mr. 
Speaker--we have reduced carbon emissions in Georgia by 33 percent. The 
President's targets have Georgia needing another 44 percent in 
reductions by 2030--44 percent.
  According to the Georgia Environmental Protection Division--again, 
these aren't the folks who are in charge of polluting the air; these 
are the folks who are in charge of protecting the air, our Georgia EPD, 
which is our equivalent of the EPA. They are tough on polluters; they 
are tough on folks who don't want to be good corporate citizens.

  They say, ``The CPP''--this is the President's proposal--``does not 
provide flexibility to Georgia. In fact, the CPP is inflexible and 
punitive to States that have taken early action.''
  I want you to think about that. If you were sitting around doing 
nothing; if you didn't come from two of the healthiest counties in the 
country, as I do, Mr. Speaker; if you weren't worried about protecting 
the planet, about our stewardship responsibilities to the Earth; if you 
weren't worried about any of those things, the President is going to 
set some targets for you.
  Again, these are the unlawful, unwise, constitutional targets, but he 
is going to set some targets for you that you need to achieve. If you 
have been working, as we have in Georgia, to do the right thing ahead 
of time, he is still setting those targets for you, giving you no 
credit for the good things you have done in the past, asking you to do 
even more in the future.
  It is not going to be economically feasible. Georgia, number six in 
the Nation, is being asked to do the most by the White House in this 
unwise, unlawful, unconstitutional rulemaking.
  Let's talk about the dollars and cents that are required here. For 
the Nation, Mr. Speaker, we are talking about between $360 billion and 
$480 billion to implement the President's proposal--

[[Page H2300]]

again, the unlawful, unwise, unconstitutional proposal--but the 
President's proposal, $360 billion to $480 billion.
  According to the economic projections, Mr. Speaker, that is going to 
be about a 12 or 13 percent increase in electricity prices across the 
country--a 12 or 13 percent increase in utility prices, electricity 
prices, across the country.
  Now, in Georgia, that translates into about $400 a year. We have a 
pretty mild climate in the great State of Georgia, but it is about $400 
a year per family. In my District, Mr. Speaker, it is about $94 million 
a year.
  You put all of my constituents together, all those folks who are the 
boss of the Seventh District of Georgia together, we are talking about 
almost $100 million lost to implement the President's plan, Mr. 
Speaker.

                              {time}  1330

  Now, my question is, for what?
  My folks are responsible folks, Mr. Speaker. They are dedicated to 
their stewardship responsibilities. They are dedicated to doing the 
right thing for the right reasons.
  We are not a district where we try to figure out who is to blame. We 
are a district where we try to figure out how to fix it. How do you fix 
it?
  But the current worldwide carbon emissions--again, this isn't about 
clean air. This is about carbon dioxide in the air. Carbon dioxide is 
in the air. It is a natural part of the air. It is a required part of 
the air.
  Carbon dioxide emissions across the country, Mr. Speaker, across the 
world, rather, if we talk about developed nations, we generally talk 
about the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the 
OECD.
  Carbon emissions of those developed nations, Mr. Speaker, are 
projected to be relatively flat for the two-generational future. Two 
generations from now, still flat. You are not seeing those increase.
  You look at non-OECD nations, Mr. Speaker, those emissions are 
projected to double, and then triple.
  From 1990, when we passed the Clean Air Act, you see level emissions 
coming from both OECD and non-OECD nations. About 2000, Mr. Speaker, 
you begin to see those lines diverge, and there is no expectation that 
non-OECD nations are going to change their carbon dioxide emissions.
  There is a funny thing about the Earth, Mr. Speaker: we are all in 
this together. I don't know if you have reflected on that. There is no 
escaping this big ball of rock that we are all floating through space 
on. We are in this together. We will succeed or we will fail together.
  For the price tag of $400 per American family, for the price tag of 
$100 million a year, just in my one congressional district, Mr. 
Speaker, for the price tag of more than $400 billion a year--that is 
about 10 percent of everything we spend in this country, about 10 
percent of the Federal budget--is the cost of implementing the 
President's unwise and unlawful regulation.
  And what we get for that, Mr. Speaker, what we get for that 
investment of American treasure, what we get for disadvantaging 
American businesses relative to foreign businesses, what we get for 
raising the costs of American products so that other products around 
the globe can be cheaper, what we get for that--golly, Mr. Speaker, I 
don't know if you can even see it--is this little bitty red line in 
terms of carbon reductions.
  What I have charted here, Mr. Speaker, are metric tons of carbon 
being produced, carbon dioxide being produced around the globe. This is 
the entire globe here.
  I have 1990, I have 2010, I have 2020, I have 2030.
  The benefit of disadvantaging American workers, the benefit of 
disadvantaging American manufacturers, the benefit of raising prices 
for every single American family is that the amount of carbon produced 
on the entire planet will drop the distance of this little bitty red 
line.
  Mr. Speaker, I don't think you can see it. Now that is 2020. 2030, 
perhaps the line gets visible enough to see. It is virtually nothing. 
Virtually nothing.
  The President talks about this unwise, unlawful, unconstitutional 
proposal as if it is designed to save the world. It is not. It is not 
designed to save the world. It is not designed to reduce carbon 
emissions around the globe. It is designed to put coal out of business 
in America.
  We are the Saudi Arabia of coal, Mr. Speaker. We have coal. We have 
clean coal. We have coal.
  Now, if we pulled up the charts of the Energy Information 
Administration, they are not going to tell you that coal production in 
America is going to go to zero. It is not. It is falling off 
dramatically. We are putting coal mining families out of business in 
record numbers.
  If you go into coal mining country, Mr. Speaker, it used to be all 
Democrats, all the time. You know, there is not one Member of this 
Chamber from the Democratic Party that represents coal country today 
because coal miners threw every one of them out, not because they, as 
individuals, were bad Members, Mr. Speaker, but because the President 
was driving those individual families out of business.
  Those families said, We are doing honorable work. We are doing lawful 
work. We work hard for a living, and we are providing a national 
service.
  They are absolutely right.
  $500 billion annually in American treasure for virtually no reduction 
in carbon around the globe.
  Now, if we were actually going to talk about clean air, Mr. Speaker, 
and I wish we would. I wish we would get out of the business of picking 
winners and losers and talk about clean air. I wish we would get out of 
the business of having an ax to grind about energy producers and get to 
talking about clean air.
  If we were going to talk about clean air we would talk about things 
like NOX and SOX. That is nitrogen oxide, sulfur 
oxide, Mr. Speaker, NOX and SOX.
  We passed the Clean Air Act of 1990--and I will remind you, Mr. 
Speaker, that was a Republican President and a Democratic Congress--
that bipartisan legislation where the President just didn't decide what 
he wanted to do; he came to Congress and worked with Congress to craft 
the law. It went after what at that time was so frequently referred to 
as acid rain, Mr. Speaker.
  You would get this nitrogen oxide, this sulfur oxide in the air. It 
would come out of the air when it rained. It had an impact around the 
country. NOX and SOX we went after in the Clean 
Air Act Amendments of 1990.
  The dark green line represents the sulfur, the yellow line represents 
the nitrogen. 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2010, 2011, and 2012.
  We came together as a nation, Mr. Speaker. We targeted these 
pollutants in the air, and we changed the way we produced power in this 
country. We didn't abolish coal; we made it cleaner coal. We didn't 
abolish electric power coming from these big power plants; we changed 
the way the scrubbers and the smokestacks worked, and we positively 
impacted air quality in this country.

  We didn't pass the Clean Air Act of 1990 because we had an ax to 
grind; we passed the Clean Air Act of 1990 because we had a problem to 
solve. And as you can see by this chart, we solved it. We didn't just 
spend money to feel better about it; we solved it. We weren't just 
trying to pick winners and losers; we were trying to solve a problem.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to quote the Associated Press. They are talking 
about coal in this country, talking about the President's rule, talking 
about carbon production. They say this--they say it is leaving this 
Nation's shores, but not the planet. The fossil fuel trade which has 
soared under President Obama soared because we have had record 
exploration going on on private land.
  As you know, Mr. Speaker, the President has completely eliminated 
exploration on public lands. Those permits are not going out the door. 
Private exploration has soared under President Obama's administration.
  They said this fossil fuel trade threatens to undermine his strategy, 
the President's strategy to reduce the gases blamed for global warming.
  It also reveals a little-discussed side effect of countries acting 
alone on a global issues. As the U.S. tries to set a global example by 
reducing demand for fossil fuels at home, American energy companies are 
sending more dirty fuel than ever to other parts of the world, exports 
worth billions of dollars each year.
  Let me go back, Mr. Speaker. When we were working together, when we

[[Page H2301]]

were working together in Congress, working together with the 
administration, we changed the way we produced energy. We changed the 
way we burned this coal to drastically reduce the pollutants coming 
from that coal.
  In a classic example of Federal overreach, Mr. Speaker, again, acting 
alone, unlawful, unwise, and unconstitutional, the President has said, 
I want to do more. And in doing more, according to the AP, which is no 
conservative defender, in doing more, what the President is doing is 
telling these energy companies, Don't try to do better; don't try to be 
cleaner. We are going to put you out of business in America, so bring 
these products out of the ground and ship them overseas.
  Mr. Speaker, where do you think our overseas competitors rank in 
terms of reducing these pollutants? Where do you think? Where do you 
think India ranks? Where do you think China ranks? Where do you think 
these nations competing with American workers rank?
  Do you think they are producing it as cleanly as we were in 2012? 
Maybe you think they are a little worse like they were in 2000. Maybe 
you think they are as bad as when we started way back in 1990.
  Nonsense. They are way back here off the chart altogether.
  If you believe in a stewardship responsibility to the planet, if you 
believe we have a multigenerational obligation to care for our 
environment, then you know that only nations with a robust economy have 
a robust environmental protection program.
  You think about that, Mr. Speaker. You will not find a single nation 
living in poverty that has advanced environmental protections. You 
can't afford to care about the environment if you can't keep the lights 
on. You can't afford to care about the environment if you can't feed 
your families.
  We do both in this country, Mr. Speaker. In the name of protecting 
the environment, the President is forcing these natural resources 
overseas, which has the combined negative effect of polluting the 
planet to a greater degree and making American workers competitive to a 
lesser degree.
  You are shipping cheap energy overseas, which makes that 
manufacturing more productive. You are raising energy prices in 
America, which makes our manufacturing less productive.
  Mr. Speaker, I am all about making a difference. I am all about 
solving a problem.
  The President wants to spend half a trillion dollars, more than 10 
percent of what we spend in this country every year, focused solely, 
solely, solely, on reducing carbon emissions by the size of this line 
that you can't even see.
  And the people who are going to pay the price for that, literally, 
the price, are going to be American citizens with higher energy bills 
and American workers with fewer job opportunities.
  We have two models that we can choose from, Mr. Speaker. We can 
choose from the model that we used in the Clean Air Act of 1990, where 
we came together in a bipartisan way, and we solved a problem together. 
We identified the problem, we solved the problem, and we have 
measurable results.
  Or we can go it alone--and by alone, I don't mean America going it 
alone. I mean the administration and the EPA going it alone--unlawful, 
unwise, unconstitutional, spend a half a trillion dollars more than the 
size of our budget deficit this year, making us less competitive, 
trapping more American families in poverty, to achieve absolutely no 
result at all.
  Mr. Speaker, I will end where I began, an obscure section, section 
11(d), 292 words that were never intended to allow the President to do 
what the President is doing; where the President's own constitutional 
law professor, Laurence Tribe, says the President's desires cannot 
justify throwing the Constitution overboard to rescue this 130-page 
proposal; this 130-page proposal which promises to do virtually nothing 
to change global emissions but promises to disadvantage the American 
economy in a global economy.
  Mr. Speaker, we can solve our energy challenges. We can find energy 
independence in this country, energy security in this country. We can 
solve our environmental stewardship responsibilities. We are doing 
things cleaner and better today than we ever have, and we will continue 
to do so.

                              {time}  1345

  Mr. Speaker, the value of divided government, as it is today; the 
value of folks who hold different ideas, as we do today. Two ends of 
Pennsylvania Avenue, Mr. Speaker: the President and the Democratic 
Party on one end, and Republicans and Congress on the other. The value 
of that divided government is that it allows us to do the big things, 
the big and necessary things. If it is all Republicans or all 
Democrats, folks just tend to try to jam their own ideas through, 
whether America likes it or not. That is not the way to build a 
stronger nation. Divided government requires--not just allows, but 
requires--that we come together to solve problems. Every time the 
President goes it alone, every time Congress goes it alone, we miss an 
opportunity to come together and solve a problem.
  To justify the clean power plan, the President's power plan, the EPA 
has brazenly rewritten the history of an obscure section of the 1970 
Clean Air Act. Frustration with congressional inaction cannot justify 
throwing the Constitution overboard to rescue this lawless EPA 
proposal.
  We have an opportunity to do better, Mr. Speaker; and more 
importantly, we have the ability, with the men and women in this 
Chamber, Mr. Speaker--the men and women who serve this entire 
institution, this entire Nation, good men and women on both sides of 
the aisle who care about American workers and who care about the 
American economy and who care about not just America's environment, but 
the global environment--we can come together, and we can do better. But 
this proposal by the President is not it.
  Mr. Speaker, I hope you will help me to encourage all of our 
colleagues to reject this proposal, to rein in this overreach, and then 
to work together to do those things that matter to our constituents--
our bosses back home.
  With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________