[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 80 (Wednesday, May 11, 2022)]
[House]
[Page H4810]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1115
                RAMIFICATIONS OF AMERICA'S ENERGY POLICY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California (Mr. LaMalfa) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, it is a fairly common phrase amongst 
truckers and other people that use things that if you have got it, a 
truck brought it. That is really very, very true in all of our lives 
because it underlines really the importance of diesel fuel to everybody 
and everything that we use.
  For example, a farmer doesn't get the seed, the fertilizer, the 
inputs unless a truck has brought that to their farm; they are bringing 
the fuel for the tractors, they are bringing the seed, they are 
bringing the fertilizer.
  Then when the farmer is done growing that, the truck hauls it away to 
the processing center. Then the processing center mills that rice, 
mills that wheat, turns that product into something that is then 
trucked to the store shelves, where you go get it.
  This ripples through all aspects of the things that we use, things 
that are produced in this country: By a miner, by a timber faller, what 
have you. There is a supply chain and an energy chain that runs all the 
way through. It is essential that we understand that at this time when 
the Biden administration is making it more and more difficult, nearly 
impossible to produce new petroleum products in this country.
  Instead, we are hell-bent on this direction of saying we are going to 
electrify everything. Okay. That sounds nice on its surface, but what 
is the real cost? What is the real effect?
  Electrifying all vehicles by X year, that is the goal. They are 
trying to push that in California. Well, in my home State of 
California, for example, we can hardly keep the lights on as it is.
  At the same time, they are trying to tear out dams, like up on the 
Klamath River, that produce hydroelectric power, which is 
CO2-free, since everybody is into that. They want to remove 
that. They are also scheduled to take out the nuclear power plant down 
near San Luis Obispo, which produces by itself 10 percent of the 
electricity that Californians use. One power plant, 10 percent. They 
want to just take that offline and make up 10 percent somehow by 
eliminating those two nuclear reactors.
  Now, thankfully, there are folks starting to look at that a little 
bit differently as the crisis becomes more and more obvious to more 
people in my home State of California, but energy across the country as 
well. My understanding is our Governor has finally woken up to the idea 
that maybe we need to keep Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant.
  And now the Energy Secretary in the Biden administration has looked 
at that a little bit, too. Maybe a little common sense will come around 
on shutting down that plant, and maybe we can apply that to 
hydroelectric plants since they seem to want to tear every dam out, 
whether it is in northern California or up in the State of Washington, 
at a time when electricity is becoming a bigger crunch in my home 
State.
  Indeed, they are constantly telling us, turn off the lights, turn up 
your cooling in the summer so your house is warmer. Don't run your 
appliances until 9 or 10 p.m. or way early in the morning. These are 
all nice steps we can take, but we have been put in this place because 
of lack of planning because of too much regulation on being able to 
generate more power.
  This all has its roots in what the Biden administration policy is by 
getting rid of the dams or making it so difficult through the FERC 
relicensing process. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission adds all 
these pieces that have nothing to do with generating power, making sure 
it is safe to do so. They have to deed away a piece of property for 
some environmental purpose or send kids to camp or something like that 
that has nothing to do with generating power. All it does is make your 
power more scarce or more expensive.
  But we are going to learn all these things, aren't we? As the 
government takes away power, takes away the ability to make power, the 
prices go up, and we have more blackouts. For crying out loud, because 
of our forestry policy or lack of, we can't trim the trees around the 
power lines like we need to in order to ensure the power can stay on 
all the time.
  What we have in California now is these so-called public safety power 
shutoffs if the wind blows because a tree branch might blow into a 
power line and cause an outage, which makes a great big fire; such as 
the Dixie fire we had last year in northern California, right under a 
million acres because a healthy looking tree fell into a power line. 
Now, they love to blame utilities on that, but really forest policy 
plays a major role in these blackouts and these fires.
  We have to do much more because if we want to have an energy policy, 
we want to have electricity that comes from somewhere, then we have to 
have the ability to transmit it safely, and not just shut it off like 
some Third World country because the wind blows. I mean, it is 
ridiculous.

  We need a petroleum policy in this country that continues to supply 
what we have and make our system, our supply chain work. It isn't 
working very well right now, because in my home State, $5.50 gasoline 
is common, $6 diesel is common. It wasn't that way just 1\1/2\ years 
ago, and it doesn't have to be that way. Sound policy will deliver us 
from these high prices.

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