[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 188 (Tuesday, October 26, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7357-S7358]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                            Energy Policies

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, after failing to pass any radical climate 
proposals this year, it appears our colleagues across the aisle are in 
a panic mode. The reason is, later this week, President Biden will be 
traveling to Glasgow, along with a dozen or more U.S. officials and 
Members of Congress, for a U.N. climate summit, and it looks like they 
are going to show up empty-handed.
  The President has talked a big game when it comes to climate change. 
On the campaign trail, he promised that the electric sector would be 
carbon pollution-free by 2035. He committed to building 1.5 million 
energy-efficient homes and public housing units, and he said the United 
States would transition from oil and gas.
  Of course, he will be long gone from office, so he will never be held 
accountable for these projections, even if they miss by a mile, which I 
predict they will. But the fact is he has failed to make good on his 
promises to fundamentally transform the energy landscape in America, 
and I would suggest that that is for a very good reason.
  Policies that drive up costs for the American people, hurt our energy 
security, and enrich our adversaries don't typically get a lot of 
traction here in the U.S. Congress.
  Two-and-a-half years ago, we saw a great example of how unpopular 
these policies were when the pie-in-the-sky Green New Deal came to the 
Senate floor for a vote. Not a single Senator voted for that bill. Even 
the Members who introduced it were too afraid to vote yes because of 
the blowback.
  But now that our Democratic colleagues control all levers of the 
Federal Government, afraid of their radical base, their calculus seems 
to have changed, so they are trying to jam these radical policies into 
the multitrillion-dollar tax-and-spending spree bill, otherwise known 
as reconciliation.
  Despite working on this bill for months and only needing Democrat 
support to get it to the President's desk, our Democratic colleagues 
are still struggling to reach an agreement among themselves. But now 
that President Biden has a deadline and he wants to look good in front 
of other world leaders in Glasgow, it is, apparently, crunch time.
  But they have a problem: no bill has even been written or even seen 
the light of day. There is a steady stream of reporting about which 
outrageous policies are in and which are out, but none of us have seen 
a bill--we haven't seen it in writing--if it exists at all.
  Based on reporting, though, massive tax hikes on the energy sector 
appear to be in the mix. Energy companies would pay higher taxes on 
income earned in the global marketplace and be subjected to the double 
taxation of their foreign incomes. And we know that when producers have 
higher overhead because of the higher tax burden, they don't absorb 
that; they pass it along to consumers in terms of higher prices.
  Our Democratic colleagues want to also add a Superfund excise tax, 
which would force energy companies to pay more on every barrel of crude 
oil that is sold. Tax hikes on oil and gas companies won't increase the 
output of renewables, and renewables only accounted for 20 percent of 
the electricity generation last year while natural gas accounted for 
double that.
  That is why, in my State, we believe in the all-of-the-above 
approach--all forms of energy--knowing that the Sun doesn't always 
shine and the wind doesn't always blow. We found out last year, because 
of extremely cold weather, we couldn't even put natural gas in the 
pipeline because we didn't have the electricity to run the compressors, 
and so it was--no pun intended--a perfect storm.
  What we learned from that experience--and I think what we should all 
learn--is that renewables have their place. They are important, and 
their role is growing, but you have to have a reliable base load of 
energy, which renewables cannot supply. The only outcome of these tax 
hikes will be to drive up costs for working families and send more 
business to foreign energy producers.
  I remember recently that President Biden, in looking at the high 
price of gasoline--which has gone up dramatically--looked to OPEC--the 
Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries--led by Saudi Arabia 
and Russia, and asked them to produce more oil.
  Well, how about American energy producers and the jobs that go along 
with that and the pipelines that move that oil and gas safely around 
the country?
  He is OK with Nord Stream 2, which is a Russian gas pipeline over in 
Europe; but when it comes to the Keystone XL Pipeline here in America, 
``shut her down'' is his attitude.

[[Page S7358]]

  Massive tax increases aren't the only provisions that seem to have 
survived negotiations, the best we can tell from the reporting. 
Handouts to wealthy Americans to buy electric vehicles appears to be 
safe. Talk about socialism for rich people. These aren't cars that 
average working families can afford to buy. They are, roughly, double 
or more expensive than regular cars operating on an internal combustion 
engine. Nevertheless, this bill, apparently, will provide for $12,500 
in tax credits for electric vehicle purchases--again, for some of the 
most expensive cars in the marketplace.
  So, for those people working for a living, who cannot afford to buy 
these expensive electric vehicles even with this very generous tax 
credit, they are going to be asked to subsidize the purchase of these 
vehicles by wealthy Americans who don't need the tax credit or the 
subsidy coming from hard-working American families.
  This subsidy isn't only set up to reward buyers purchasing American-
made vehicles; you can still receive a taxpayer handout even if the 
vehicle is completely or substantially made overseas, in countries like 
China.
  On top of that, a bigger tax credit is available to electric cars 
built in union shops. Well, maybe union-built vehicles are somehow more 
green than other electric vehicles. I doubt that. Or maybe it is a 
favor doled out to a favored interest group by our friends across the 
aisle. That seems like the more likely conclusion.

  While electric vehicles don't use gasoline, they still require a lot 
of energy to run. Our colleagues don't, apparently, know where 
electricity needed to run these vehicles comes from. Well, I will tell 
them. It comes from coal; it comes from natural gas; it comes from 
renewables; it comes from hydropower and nuclear power or some mixture 
of all of those. Yet these are the very energy sources they say they 
are seeking to avoid by incentivizing more use of electric vehicles.
  Well, if Democrats raise taxes on companies that produce natural gas, 
which accounts for 40 percent of our electricity production, what is 
the plan to power the fleet of taxpayer-subsidized electric vehicles?
  Renewables don't generate enough energy to power our country today, 
let alone the amount we need to charge millions of new electric 
vehicles. Still, the Democrats are eager to push America toward 
renewables and punish those who don't jump on board.
  One of the most controversial parts of the Democrats' energy push 
appears to be in peril, if you can believe the reporting. Again, none 
of us have seen this. We just know what we read. That program is known 
as the Clean Electricity Performance Program, or the CEPP. This program 
would reward utility companies that already use renewable electricity 
sources and punish those that do not.
  So, if you are wondering how that switch would go, just look at some 
of the energy policies out West, in California. That State made an 
aggressive push to transition to push 100-percent renewables by 2030, 
but as I said, renewable energy is not always reliable energy, and it 
certainly isn't affordable energy. In recent years, California has 
implemented rolling blackouts to ration limited energy supplies during 
the hot summer months; and, on average, Californians pay twice as much 
as Texans for electricity. That is where those higher prices go--they 
get passed on to the consumer. Twice as much is the cost of electricity 
in California as compared to Texas.
  So imagine what would happen if every utility company across the 
country were forced to use only renewable sources.
  Last month, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's Commissioner 
testified before the Senate, and he said this proposal would be an ``H 
bomb'' for electricity markets. It would blow it up.
  Our colleague, Senator Manchin, from West Virginia, has said he won't 
support this proposal; and good for him, but other Democrats have not 
given up yet.
  President Biden recently insisted ``nothing has been formally agreed 
to.''
  Again, this whole process is opaque to Republicans because we haven't 
been invited to the table or welcomed to the table to try to come up 
with a bipartisan policy. Our Democratic colleagues have insisted they 
want to do this all on their own because they know only then will they 
be able to come up, presumably, with something that will appease the 
most radical elements of their political base, and if they negotiated 
with the Republicans, they wouldn't be able to do that because we would 
have to negotiate toward the center rather than on the fringes of 
political ideology.
  Despite the fact that these policies that I have mentioned would 
radically transform the energy landscape and drive up costs to 
consumers and hurt our energy security, our colleagues are rushing--
rushing--to reach a deal before the President is wheels up to Europe. 
Forget sound public policy; President Biden wants a new talking point 
at the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland.
  This rush job comes at a time when energy prices are already 
skyrocketing. Talk about inflation. Gasoline is up more than 55 percent 
from a year ago. With winter fast approaching, heating bills, including 
heating oil that many Northern States use, are expected to rise as much 
as 54 percent from last year. This is really an invisible tax on 
people, where the value of your dollar that you earn is diminished by 
the increase in cost--54 percent over last year for heating bills in 
the northern part of our country. Well, it is all across the country, 
but it is, obviously, needed more there than in my part of the country.
  Of course, these aren't the only higher prices that families are 
facing. Inflation continues to pummel the American people, putting a 
tight squeeze on family budgets. For seniors, for veterans, and others 
who operate on fixed incomes, those price hikes are a threat to their 
livelihoods. There could not be a more dangerous or costly time to wage 
war on American energy. No family should have to choose between buying 
groceries and turning on the heat in the wintertime.
  President Biden is eager to put a show on in Glasgow and impress 
world leaders with dubious commitments that he can't keep, but these 
measures have the potential to inflict real and lasting harm on the 
American people.
  I am not opposed to renewable energy, electric vehicles, or efforts 
to preserve our greatest natural resources for future generations. I 
support efforts to capture carbon and sequester it. All of these 
policies need to strike a delicate balance based on prudence, based on 
science, and based on logic, not based on some ideology about the way 
that you wish the world was; it is how the world is.
  Democrats want to force the American people to pay more for less 
reliable energy and endanger our own energy security to meet these 
arbitrary net zero deadlines. As I said, they are rushing to meet a 
deadline so that President Biden can have a good applause line in 
Glasgow.
  This is just the latest example of how the reckless tax-and-spending 
spree is not helping the American people at all but, rather, it is 
about forcing Democrats' vision on every city, State, and family in the 
country.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Markey). The Senator from Connecticut.