[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 76 (Thursday, May 4, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1540-S1543]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           ELECTRIC VEHICLES

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, since President Biden took office, he and 
our Democratic colleagues have been on a

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mission--a mission to replace every car in America with an electric 
vehicle.
  Think about that for a minute. There are 280 million cars on the road 
in America, and our colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle want 
to replace every single internal combustion engine with a big battery 
with wheels on it, known as an electric vehicle. They are determined to 
please the Green New Deal enthusiasts by shoveling mountains of 
taxpayer money into this effort, and they are making some headway.
  Last summer, our Democratic colleagues abused the rules of the Senate 
to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on something called the 
Inflation Reduction Act, which, in true Washington form, does not 
actually reduce inflation. But that is the name they gave to it. More 
importantly, this massive bill included a variety of pet projects, from 
a supersized Internal Revenue Service to handouts for rich folks who 
want to buy electric vehicles.
  Wealthy Americans, the only ones who can afford these expensive cars, 
can receive up to $7,500 in taxpayer assistance to buy an electric 
vehicle. So, in effect, you and I and everyone in the country is 
subsidizing, with our tax dollars, a private, well-to-do person to buy 
an electric vehicle, most of which costs in the $60 to $70 to $80,000 
range and up.
  Democrats passed this bill at a time when most people can't afford 
their basic expenses. That is because of inflation, another product of 
profligate spending. Working families are struggling to keep up with 
the cost of everything from gasoline to groceries, to rent and 
electricity. Our Democratic colleagues responded by forcing every 
person in America to subsidize wealthy people's purchase of an electric 
car.
  Initial estimates pegged the costs of these EV tax credits, as they 
are called, at just over $30 billion. That is a lot of money. But 
private forecasters have recently reevaluated that number based on more 
precise projections. They said that the actual cost of the electric 
vehicle credits will be closer to $196 billion--6\1/2\ times higher 
than advertised.
  Again, hard-working families are suffering under inflation. When 
everything costs more, their purchasing power is diminished. 
Washington, DC, and our friends on the Democratic side of the aisle 
said: Well, your life is not quite hard enough; so we are going to make 
it harder. We are going to force you to subsidize wealthy people's 
purchase of these cars.
  Unfortunately, that is not the end of the story. The administration 
recently rolled out new rules to ensure--or at least to claim--that, by 
2032, two-thirds of new passenger vehicles sold in the United States 
will be electric.
  By 2032, President Biden will be long gone. Probably many Members of 
the U.S. House and Senate will no longer be in office. Nevertheless, 
the administration says that, by 2032, we are going to mandate that 
two-thirds of new passenger vehicles be run on batteries, be electric.
  Of course, this announcement was met with applause by those who think 
that every driver in America should drive an electric vehicle, that 
somehow this is the price that has to be paid in pursuit of climate 
change or to combat climate change.
  But everybody else in America understands this is an unrealistic 
mandate because, like I said, with 280 million cars on the road, only 
about 6 percent max of the new cars sold in America are electric 
vehicles--only 6 percent of the new cars sold.
  But the Biden administration says that, by 2031, two-thirds of the 
cars have to be electric vehicles. So making the leap from 6 percent to 
66 percent--which is two-thirds of the new car sales--in less than 10 
years is an impossible task, and it comes with a lot of risks and 
hurdles.
  One of the most obvious ones is cost to consumers. At the end of last 
year, the average price of a new electric vehicle--this is just the 
average price--was more than $61,000. That is only a few thousand 
dollars less than the median household income in my State.
  Most families don't have tens of thousands of dollars to spend on 
fancy electric cars. As we have seen over the last few years with 
inflation, people are already struggling to keep up. They are not in 
the market for a fancy new electric vehicle that costs more than they 
make in an entire year.
  Another big issue has to do with how these vehicles are going to get 
powered. One of my favorite questions for my friends who are 
enthusiasts for this mandate and these taxpayer subsidies--one of my 
favorite questions--is this: Do you actually know where electricity 
comes from?
  No, it is not just that wall socket that you plug an appliance into. 
Electricity is generated by the same source that produces most of our 
other energy: natural gas, some nuclear, some coal, some other types of 
energy--hydroelectric energy, depending upon the location. But all of 
that energy use, including fossil fuels, is needed to produce 
affordable energy that then becomes electricity, that you can then plug 
your vehicle into.
  So this pie-in-the-sky idea that we are going to somehow cool the 
climate by everybody driving an electric vehicle is just--well, it is 
unattainable, and it is, frankly, ridiculous.
  Last year, 60 percent of America's electricity was generated by 
fossil fuels, including 40 percent by natural gas and nearly 20 percent 
by coal. Despite the fact that we will need these energy sources to 
power the electric grid and charge electric vehicles, we know the folks 
on the left side of the political spectrum have waged a war on fossil 
fuels. Well, this will turn out about as well as Europe's dependency on 
Russian oil and gas, on a sole source of energy, which they found out 
did not turn out well at all once Russia invaded Ukraine and they tried 
to diversify their energy sources. Putting all of our eggs in one 
basket with unrealistic goals and mandates to achieve a social outcome 
is bound to be unsuccessful.

  Our colleagues across the aisle have also made these energy sources 
more expensive by instituting a methane fee and tax hikes on energy 
producers, which, invariably, get passed on to the consumer; and they 
are consistently, it seems, trying to make fossil fuels less affordable 
in order to push our country toward renewables.
  Now, don't get me wrong. I am not opposed to renewables. We generate 
more electricity from wind turbines in Texas than any other State in 
the Nation. One reason our State continues to prosper economically is 
because we have the most affordable energy costs that come from an all-
of-the-above strategy. We don't try to put all of our eggs in one 
basket--that is bound to be unsuccessful. We say: Well, let's do as 
much as we can using renewables--solar, wind--but we are also 
pragmatically clear-eyed about where electricity comes from, and we 
need all of the above.
  So one big important issue that I think was overlooked when the 
Inflation Reduction Act was passed by strictly Democratic votes in the 
Senate is that renewables only accounted for 22 percent of America's 
electricity generation last year--22 percent. It is growing, but it is 
not nearly sufficient to generate the electricity necessary to charge 
your electric vehicles.
  Either consumers have low-cost, reliable energy from fossil fuels or 
an all-of-the-above strategy, or else, they are condemned to an 
expensive and unreliable grid powered only by renewable energy sources. 
Those are the only options at this point, and I am afraid that is 
exactly the path that our Democratic colleagues are heading down.
  But since COVID-19 hit, we have seen what happens to vulnerable 
supply chains for the components we need to do all sorts of things. We 
spent a lot of time and money and focus on advanced semiconductors. 
That is really important because if we lost access to those advanced 
semiconductors, it would tank our economy and it would also jeopardize 
our national security. But the supply chain for electric vehicles is a 
vulnerable one as well. The feature that differentiates electric 
vehicles from those with an internal combustion engine is a battery. 
And, actually, what you can think of is the electric vehicles are like 
a battery on wheels run by a computer. And--this should really come as 
no surprise, but you would think this would have been vetted before--
here is where batteries come from.
  Last year, China's battery manufacturing capacity accounted for 77 
percent of the global total. Its production capacity is greater than 
that of the rest of the world combined. You can

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see Poland at 6 percent, the U.S. at 6 percent, and everybody else is 
at just 11 percent.
  China is home to 6 of the world's 10 biggest battery makers and 
completely dominates the global battery-manufacturing market. Nobody 
else even comes close. By 2027, it is estimated that its manufacturing 
capacity is expected to increase nearly sevenfold--sevenfold. In that 
same timeframe, the United States is expected to see a twelvefold 
increase, but we are starting at 6 percent. That is not going to get us 
anywhere near where China is or where they will be by 2027.
  China will still command more than two-thirds of the world's battery-
manufacturing capacity and the United States will be in second place 
with a measly 10 percent. Anyone who doesn't recognize and appreciate 
this issue hasn't been paying attention. Over the years, the Senate has 
been spending a great deal of time analyzing and addressing supply 
chain and particularly security gaps. As I had said, the pandemic 
taught us many lessons--many tough lessons--but one was the importance 
of a resilient supply chain. And we tried to make sure--we tried to 
learn from that so those lessons would not be in vain.
  I mentioned semiconductors. That may be the best example. The global 
chip shortage affected everything from personal electronics to cars to 
defense assets and critical infrastructure.
  We came to appreciate the hard way how reliant we had become on other 
countries for these semiconductors, these integrated circuits. And that 
made us incredibly vulnerable to another pandemic, to a natural 
disaster or, heaven forbid, a military conflict in the Taiwan Strait.
  So Congress responded appropriately by creating the CHIPS Program to 
bolster domestic chip manufacturing and close this massive security 
gap.
  But now our Democratic friends seem content to replace one 
vulnerability with another. As they continue to push for arbitrary and 
unrealistic electric vehicle goals, we will find ourselves in a similar 
situation when it comes to the batteries necessary to run these 
electric vehicles. To be blunt about it, we will be at China's mercy 
which, as we all know, is a very dangerous place to be.
  Despite the fact that China dominates the supply chain for the 
critical minerals used to produce batteries, most of those minerals are 
not actually mined in China. They come from reserves around the world. 
The Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, is home to the world's 
largest cobalt reserve. Indonesia is the leading producer of nickel. 
And three of the largest lithium reserves are concentrated in South 
America in Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile.
  Critical minerals are not safe from Chinese influence just because 
they are mined beyond China's borders, because China has made a huge 
investment in processing those critical minerals in China. In other 
words, they are mined in these countries, exported to China for 
processing, where they control access to the critical minerals that are 
needed to build batteries, among other things. China has aggressively 
increased its own processing capacity.

  Part of the problem, I might mention, is because it takes so long and 
requires an arduous, bureaucratic Rubik's Cube in order to get a permit 
to build things in America. And that is true whether it is from fossil 
fuels or the transmission lines from green energy that can transmit the 
electricity generated from wind turbines in Texas or anywhere else. You 
don't have those problems in China. They also don't have the same 
concerns we have for the environment.
  As we know, China is building more coal-fired power plants than any 
other country in the world. What happens in China does not stay in 
China when it comes to those emissions.
  So, right now, we have a general sense of the problems that we are 
confronting, but we are lacking some specifics when it comes to 
critical minerals, particularly. We don't know what reserves are under 
the control of foreign adversaries. We aren't guaranteed to receive a 
heads-up before major deals are made regarding mining rights and 
processing. Indeed, China has shown itself to be expert at operating 
surreptitiously under the cover of companies that sound like they come 
from somewhere else, where actually the People's Republic of China--the 
Chinese Communist Party--actually has controlling interest in those 
companies.
  So we are not able to identify the many risks of the global supply 
chain or critical opportunities for new trade partnerships. We need to 
address the blind spots that are protecting China's dominance in 
critical minerals and battery production. And we are not going to be 
able to do it overnight and certainly are not going to be able to meet 
President Biden's goal of two-thirds of new cars being electric 
vehicles by 2032. It is just not going to happen unless we are going to 
go to China and get those batteries.
  So a number of us are working to try to solve the problem. I think 
that is the appropriate response.
  I hope this is a topic where we can work together and that we are in 
bipartisan support, much as we did on the CHIPS Act, where Senator 
Warner, the senior Senator from Virginia, and I introduced that bill 
back in June of 2020, and we ended up passing that into law, as I 
indicated earlier, because both sides of the aisle saw a need to come 
together and come up with a solution.
  We need a solution in this area, too.
  Well, our colleagues on the other side have repeatedly prioritized 
some ideological obsession with all electric vehicles over the 
practical ramifications. Most Americans can't afford to purchase these 
pricey vehicles. Given the war on fossil fuels, our electric grid may 
not be able to sustain them, even if they could. By increasing our 
reliance on battery-powered vehicles, we are certain to increase our 
reliance on China. Given the major costs and risks, you have to ask, is 
this really worth it? Can we afford the risks? Will it actually--can it 
actually work? Will this have an impact on emissions as our friends 
across the aisle seem to believe?
  The answer is no. China is responsible for nearly one-third of all 
global emissions. As I said, they build more new coal-fired power 
plants than any other place on the planet. So China is responsible for 
nearly one-third of all global emissions, more than 2\1/2\ times the 
amount emitted by the United States.
  When it comes to U.S. emissions, passenger vehicles are only a 
fraction of the total. In 2021, the entire transportation sector 
accounted for 28 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions in the 
United States. So if every car and every truck on the road was operated 
by an electric battery and electric vehicle courtesy of China, that 
would only account for 28 percent of the emissions. So this is not a 
solution to what our colleagues across the aisle are actually saying 
they are trying to do.
  Transportation is a significant source of emissions, beating out 
electricity production, industry, and agriculture, but that doesn't 
mean that personal vehicles are responsible for 28 percent of the 
emissions, because you have to include cars, SUVs and minivans, and 
trucks that drive all across America. So regular working families 
driving their kids to school or to work account for a little over one-
half of the transportation emissions. The remainder comes from 
semitrucks, airplanes, trains, buses, ships, pipelines. In total, 
personal vehicles account for a little over 16 percent, and the U.S. 
emissions account for only 12.5 percent of global emissions.
  So we are not talking about a solution that our friends across the 
aisle say they want to accomplish. We are not going to eliminate our 
dependence on all of the above sources of energy, and we are certainly 
not going to solve what they perceive as a problem with the climate by 
forcing hardworking American families to subsidize electric cars for 
rich people.
  My purpose in speaking today is to demonstrate that these goals set 
out for by the President and which our colleagues have voted for in 
pursuit of their climate agenda are unrealistic. They are dangerous, 
and they are shortsighted. We will continue to shine a bright light on 
the facts as I have tried to do today so the American people can 
understand exactly what is going on here. This is more a pursuit of an 
ideological agenda rather than a practical solution to the real 
problem.

  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The senior Senator from Maryland.

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