[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 41 (Tuesday, March 8, 2022)]
[House]
[Pages H1370-H1371]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    THE MATH IS THE MATH IS THE MATH

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 2021, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. 
Schweikert) until 10 p.m.
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Madam Speaker, we have a bit of the tyranny of the 
clock, as you know, so I am going to try to do this somewhat rapidly.
  There has been a lot of speechifying today. I am frustrated because I 
don't have an elegant or delicate way to say this, but people keep 
making crap up. Let's actually walk through some basic math so we 
understand something.
  Does anyone here have any memory of last fall when a number of us 
were coming behind these microphones getting ready to talk about the 
winter that was coming. Do you remember the discussion of about how 
high the power bills, the heating bills were going to be? It is because 
fuel prices--hydrocarbon prices--didn't just go up because of the 
Russian invasion.
  If you look at the charts, this began functionally when the left took 
power. It really began in 2018 and really took off when they had 
unified control. It didn't just happen. As a matter of fact, there is a 
number of charts out there and futures contracts that were basically 
saying the prices you are seeing today at the gas pump--they just 
showed up about 6 months early--that that is actually where we were 
going because consumption and supply wasn't keeping up because of what 
we have done to ourselves.
  You see it already. Do you not remember last October and September 
crossing $6 on natural gas? It was already coming at us and it was our 
own fault. How does this craziness happen? We keep getting folks coming 
behind the microphone and saying: It is because of the Keystone 
pipeline; it is a little bit. It is because of some of the drilling 
bans; it is a little bit.
  It is mostly because over, particularly this last year, but also 
going back when the left took power after the 2018 election, they 
basically started to threaten capital markets. If you are a company and 
you invest in hydrocarbons, I think the SEC should look into you. If 
you're CalPERS or a pension fund and you invest in hydrocarbons, we are 
going to look down

[[Page H1371]]

upon that. As a matter of fact, we are going encourage universities and 
other pension funds no more investing in hydrocarbons.
  What did you think was going to happen? When you actually see this 
frustration and the absolute distorted rhetoric coming from the White 
House--well, there are 9,000 drilling permits out there. I think most 
of America already understand that is lunacy; you get a permit, you 
find out if there are any hydrocarbons in the ground. But how do you go 
to capital markets and get any money to stick that straw in the ground? 
This continued.
  Over and over, the Biden administration's executive orders missed the 
mark. It was actually talking about the Treasury coming at anyone that 
is putting capital markets into hydrocarbons. Understand what you are 
paying at the gas pump, what you are paying to heat your house. You 
voted for this.
  If you voted for the left, if you voted for them in 2018, if you 
voted for them in 2020, you voted for this. You voted for that price 
because this is what they promised us. Do you remember the discussions 
here, the debates here? We are going to make it so you can't raise 
money to finance a pipeline, to finance new hydrocarbon extractions, to 
finance natural gas.
  What is so ironic about this--just quote after quote after quote. 
Pension systems and others--the idea was strangle hydrocarbon 
extraction, oil and gas, and make it so they don't have the capital to 
open up new wells, to invest in more efficiencies. The left actually 
got what they wanted.
  Are they now willing to admit that they got what they wanted there? 
We are now seeing $5 gasoline. You see the price of natural gas. Guess 
what, congratulations, we burned 23 percent more coal last year because 
they made natural gas so expensive; we moved from one fuel source that 
was dramatically cleaner than coal, but you raised the price so high. 
Remember, power generation is regulated. Power plant after power plant 
after power plant around America moved back to coal.
  So now you have the brain trust in the administration saying things 
like: Well, go buy an electric car. Except that electric car is going 
to be powered by coal because the dramatically cleaner burning fuel of 
natural gas you have just made really expensive.
  A couple of months ago we came here to the floor and talked about 
natural gas and the concerns the left has said over it--well, what 
about methane--showing them some breakthroughs of really inexpensive 
ways to capture that methane.
  There is a rational argument there. Methane is a 9-1, but has only 
now a shorter half life of what is considered to be a greenhouse gas. 
Instead of saying, hey, we are going to look for technologies that deal 
with the problem there, the left's opinion is, well, let's wipe them 
out because those who invest in green energy finance and write checks 
to Democrats. The green mafia basically owns the Democrat Party.

  Then you go look at other absurdities that is Democrat policy. I am 
sorry I had to grab an older slide. Do you realize the amount of 
baseload nuclear we have in this country that is going off line? You do 
realize over this 10-year period the United States is going to get 
dirtier? This is even before the left functionally raised the price of 
natural gas so much that power plants moved back to coal.
  We are moving so much clean baseload nuclear off the grid that it 
doesn't even offset every bit of photovoltaic and wind we have put on 
the grid.
  We give lots of pretty speeches here. We do lots of virtue signaling, 
but the math is the math is the math. The virtue signaling creating 
policy has actually raised more greenhouse gases. Look what Germany did 
by shutting down its baseload nuclear. They now burn massive amounts of 
coal. They got dirtier.
  You have heard speech after speech here today about how much we 
despise Putin, but we also know his propaganda wing absolutely 
supported the left's movement to strangle these hydrocarbons. This is 
what you get when you make crappy policy. It didn't happen overnight. 
It is going to take us years to fix this mess.
  Can I beg the Democrats: Stop hurting people. Stop making the poor 
poorer. Stop crushing the middle class. Come back to sensibility. Guess 
what, there might be a bonus there, and that is all the coal that is 
being burnt, all the dirty imports, you would actually get a benefit of 
the greenhouse gases, but you got to come back and do math again.
  Madam Speaker, I think I am up against my time and I yield back the 
balance of my time.

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