[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 119 (Tuesday, July 16, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4837-S4838]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                           Energy Innovation

  Mr. President, on another matter, this morning, the Energy and 
Natural Resources Committee held a hearing to consider numerous bills 
introduced to promote energy innovation in the United States. Breakneck 
changes in technology have fueled our economy, propelled our 
communications sector, and completely transformed each of our daily 
lives. Just this alone has done that. It is time to harness this 
ingenuity to revolutionize our energy sector. Smart policies can't 
prioritize only conservation, productivity, or economic power. We 
obviously need to strike the proper balance. You are not going to 
achieve that balance by imposing heavy-handed regulations and driving 
up costs for consumers.
  To put it another way, the Green New Deal will bankrupt our country 
and crush our innovation economy. Instead, we have to harness the power 
of the private sector and build partnerships to create real solutions.
  The NET Power plant in La Porte, TX, is a shining example of how 
public-private partnerships can drive next-generation energy solutions. 
NET Power has developed the first-of-its-kind power system that 
generates affordable, zero-emissions electricity from natural gas. 
Using their unique carbon capture technology, they have taken natural 
gas and made it emission-free.
  This technology is relatively young, and it is not ready to be scaled 
up yet at the national level. By investing in this type of research, I 
believe we can take serious strides to decreasing our carbon emissions.
  While renewable energy sources like wind, solar, hydropower, and 
biomass have come a long way in recent years, they are not alone 
sufficient to fuel our economy. As one witness said, the Sun doesn't 
always shine, and the wind doesn't always blow. So you need a baseload 
of electricity that has to be provided by other sources like natural 
gas powerplants like the one I saw.
  Last year, renewables accounted for 17 percent of our total energy 
sources. In Texas, as the Presiding Officer knows, we produced more 
electricity from wind turbines than any other State in the Nation. Yes, 
we are an oil and gas State, but we truly believe in the all-of-the-
above approach. Some people say that and don't really mean it, but we 
do it every day in Texas.
  While renewables account for 17 percent of our total energy sources, 
natural gas alone accounts for double that. Imagine if we could take 
natural gas, a plentiful energy source, inexpensive, and bring more 
projects like NET Power online. That is precisely why I introduced the 
LEADING Act with my colleagues, Senator Coons, Cassidy, and Sinema. 
This bill would incentivize research and development of carbon capture 
technology for natural gas and support energy innovation.
  This legislation was crafted with the understanding that reliable, 
affordable, and environmentally sound energy supplies are not mutually 
exclusive. You wouldn't know that sometimes by the rhetoric here in 
Washington.
  By incentivizing research into the development of new technologies, 
we can keep costs low for taxpayers, for seniors, for people on fixed 
incomes, while securing our place as a global leader in energy 
innovation. The goal of this legislation is to accelerate development 
and commercial application of natural gas carbon capture technologies. 
We should do this by requiring the Department of Energy to establish a 
program to develop cost-effective carbon capture technologies for 
natural gas power facilities.
  This legislation would also encourage partnerships with the National 
Laboratories, as well as universities and other research facilities to 
improve and strengthen our efforts. I am proud the LEADING Act passed 
the Energy and Natural Resources Committee this morning, and I hope we 
will have the opportunity to vote on this and other similar and related 
bills before the full Senate soon.
  We need smart energy policies that will strengthen our economy 
without bankrupting American families or turning the keys over to the 
central government to regulate our lives, to micromanage our lives. We 
don't need the Federal Government to tell us what to do. We need to 
follow the private sector and innovate our way to solve these problems, 
and that is exactly what the LEADING Act would do.
  When you implement policies that get government out of the way and 
let the experts do their job, you can be pro-energy, pro-innovation, 
pro-growth, and pro-environment.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.


                     50th Anniversary of Apollo 11

  Mr. JONES. Mr. President, today I rise in absolute awe--remain in 
awe--of what happened in this country and in this world 50 years ago 
this week, and I am still inspired by the events of our space program 
50 years ago.
  Fifty years ago today, Americans of all ages, in every corner of this 
great Nation and, in fact, all over the world, stopped what they were 
doing to watch in complete awe as Apollo 11 launched from Cape Kennedy, 
headed toward the Moon. It is unbelievable what we saw, what we 
witnessed, that entire week.
  It would be the first time that humans would set foot on a celestial 
body other than the Earth. We would step foot on the Moon, which had 
captured the imagination of the world since time began, trying to reach 
that big, round object in the sky. It was a remarkable feat, made 
possible by the sheer determination and grit of the American space 
program and all of those who participated in it.
  I was just a kid growing up in Alabama at the time. I lived just 2 or 
3 hours south of what was known as Rocket City in Huntsville, AL. It is 
still known as Rocket City because of all of the work at NASA and in 
our space program today. It was a thriving metropolis then and even 
more so today. That is where all of the rockets were built. That is 
where the engines, the powerful engines that drove the rockets into 
space, were built. They were tested in Huntsville, AL. If you go there 
today, most of those stands are still there. Some of them are about to 
be used again. Those Saturn V rockets, the most powerful rocket engines 
man had ever created, were built in Huntsville, AL. They were the 
engines that would propel man to the Moon.
  I was absolutely mesmerized--absolutely mesmerized--by all things 
involving the space program. I still am. I can remember so many times 
when my maternal grandfather, Oliver Wesson, whom I called Paw-Paw, and 
I would just sit for hours and watch and listen

[[Page S4838]]

to the commentaries. We would watch the liftoffs. We would watch the 
splashdowns. Some of my best memories as a kid were literally sitting 
in front of a TV set with my granddad, watching the heroes I saw, the 
heroes I wanted to be, and the heroes America wrapped their arms 
around. At the time, there was nothing--nothing--and maybe to some 
extent today--more that I wanted to do than to be an astronaut and to 
go into space. It sounds corny for an old man like me to say that, but 
it is absolutely true.
  Those astronauts, the original Mercury Seven astronauts, were heroes 
in every sense of the word. I admire their courage, not having a clue 
when they blasted off from Florida whether they would return safely. 
And we did lose astronauts along the way.
  I did so many things. I read. I studied. I watched. I read papers. A 
lot of papers in my grammar, junior high, and high schools were all 
written about the space program.
  I am a memorabilia collector, as many of you may know, including of 
autographed baseballs. I have a few autographed baseballs by some of 
the astronauts, but the ones I like most are the newspapers. From that 
time, I could see that everybody could sense something was special. 
From the time Apollo 11 took off from Cape Kennedy, and the headlines 
in the Birmingham News read ``Man Sets Foot in Heavens,'' to the time 
they splashed down, I collected and saved every one of those 
newspapers. They are still at home, and they are prized possessions.
  We watched every single launch. We knew every single name of every 
astronaut. We stood there with intense, mesmerizing attention to every 
moment of those launches.
  It was something that captivated this entire country. It was a 
unifying time. It was a unifying force at a time when America needed 
it--the 1960s. For Apollo 11 in 1969, it was a time when we needed that 
sense of collective pride. We needed that sense of unification. We had 
gone through tough times during the civil rights era. We had gone 
through and we were still in the midst of the Vietnam war and all that 
tore this country asunder. We saw all that happened in 1968. We saw the 
deaths of John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, but the 
space program was that one sense of pride.
  It didn't take a tragedy to unify America at that time. It took 
success. It took a build of what we do. It took our determination. It 
took knowing that we were the most patriotic, and, doggone, we were 
going to beat those Russians to the Moon. It sounds so corny these 
days, but it is absolutely the case. We were going to do it. It was 
going to be the United States of America, and, doggone, we did it.
  A lot has changed. Today, we are building on this legacy. We are 
still building on this legacy in space. We are building it in 
Huntsville, AL, and elsewhere with NASA, and we are going to continue 
to inspire a new generation--and more generations to come--of Alabamans 
and Americans, people all across this country, to help us reach even 
loftier heights.
  Yes, a lot has changed since 1969--50 years ago--but there is a 
reason that space flight and exploration of other worlds continue to 
capture our attention and to capture our imagination. It is because, at 
the end of the day, we are all dreamers. We always dream of those 
loftier heights. We always want to achieve. We always want to make this 
country great--consistently make this country great. We always want to 
reach for the stars, whether it is in our personal lives or whether it 
is collectively as a country. That is what we do. We are dreamers.
  Today, 50 years after the launch of Apollo--and on Saturday, we will 
celebrate 50 years of the actual steps on the lunar surface--we 
celebrate the achievement of a dream five decades ago, but a dream that 
started long, long before that, long before President Kennedy 
challenged America to put a man on the Moon.
  Looking back, 50 years ago was really just the beginning. It showed 
us that a true moonshot was possible, and, quite literally, it opened 
our world to new possibilities.
  Today, we are reaching for human spaceflight back to the Moon and to 
Mars. It is not just us; other countries are doing the same. We are 
looking for a return flight to the Moon for deeper exploration. We are 
receiving pictures from the farthest reaches of the galaxy, things we 
have never seen before. We have seen the surface. We have landed rovers 
on the Moon surface and have seen the pictures and have done the tests. 
It is just unbelievable. Who would have ever thought of this some 50, 
60 years ago when I was a kid?
  Today, we have a greater understanding of the universe around us and 
how we apply that knowledge to our own lives. We continue to reach for 
the stars.
  Yes, a lot has changed, but a lot hasn't. We still have divisions in 
this country. We still need that unifying voice. We still need that 
sense of pride that we can all--everybody--wrap our arms around.
  Today, we seem to be divided more than we were during the height of 
the Vietnam war. We seem to be divided over the very issues that my 
friend Senator Cornyn was talking about a moment ago with regard to 
immigration. We are divided over politics--a partisan divide. We are 
divided over gun violence. You name it; we are divided. So we need that 
unifying voice. We need something positive that we can all wrap our 
arms around.
  It is not just a holiday--and sometimes now, in today's world, 
unfortunately, even our holidays get divided. Even on our holidays, 
people go to their corners for political reasons, on both sides of the 
aisle. Make no mistake, folks, I am not casting a stone one way or 
another. I am casting it across this land. People are divided.
  We have to honor the visionaries of long ago, as well as the 
visionaries of today who think big, dream big, and give our Nation a 
collective sense of purpose and unity--a collective sense of unity and 
purpose--not a divisive sense of purpose for their own benefit but a 
collective sense of unity and purpose.
  We can honor those folks by setting aside all of the differences we 
see. We can honor those folks by not going to our corners every time a 
hot-button issue is mentioned either here on the floor of the Senate or 
in a tweet or in a Facebook post or in the national news. We can set 
that aside. We can set it aside by setting aside our differences.
  We honor folks by setting aside our differences today. We can honor 
those folks by remembering our collective pride and who we are as 
Americans, by making sure that all men and women are created equal and 
living up to the creed that we so proudly point to in the Declaration 
of Independence and the Constitution. We can do that again. We can 
honor these visionaries by coming together, reaching across the aisle 
and also reaching within our aisles to bring people together to talk 
about those things we can do together and with a sense of pride. We can 
do it by, once again, being the leader of the world and not trying to 
do everything alone but bringing our friends and allies to join us in 
these collective efforts to make us stronger.
  Yes, we owe those folks a great debt of gratitude for making America 
a leader in space, a leader in the world, and giving us all something 
to dream about. Let us now meet that challenge in a different way.
  Let us continue to explore space. Let us continue to reach for the 
stars, but let us dedicate ourselves to becoming that unified voice so 
that something we can all dream about is one America--one America--not 
a house divided but one America for everyone.
  Thank you.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, since it is getting close to shutting-
down time, I ask unanimous consent to finish my entire remarks. I 
promise the Presiding Officer I will not be too long.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.