[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 105 (Thursday, June 15, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2109-S2111]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                 Energy

  Mr. President, the American people, as we all know, are facing many 
serious--one might describe them as grave--issues, some of which fall 
under the purview of our U.S. Department of Energy. Average gas prices 
remain well above $3 a gallon. That is a hardship on a lot of 
Americans. That is up 50 percent since President Biden took office. 
Average electricity prices--that is something we have to deal with 
every day--have increased 14.5 percent since 2022. Our aging power grid 
remains at risk for devastating cyber security attacks. While China's 
nuclear stockpile is growing, ours is getting older, and it is getting 
smaller.
  These are weighty problems. The Presiding Officer knows that as well, 
if not better, than I do. These problems cost the American people a lot 
of money, and they place our national security at risk. They are all 
impacted by the U.S. Department of Energy and the policy that it 
creates. But instead of trying to get control over our gas prices or 
the national security issues I just mentioned, President Biden's 
administration and his Energy Department, frankly, seem more concerned 
about Americans' basic kitchen appliances, and suddenly dishwashers 
seem to be enemy No. 1.
  The Department of Energy recently announced that it would be 
proposing a new rule to regulate the amount of water and the amount of 
energy used by dishwashing machines nationwide. Now, under the proposed 
rule--I want to describe it fairly. Under the proposed rule, 
dishwashers will only be able to use 3.2 gallons of water per cycle. 
Right now, the rule allows--although dishwashers don't use this much, 
the rule allows a dishwasher to use 5 gallons of water per cycle.
  No person with a brain above a single-celled organism has asked for 
this change. No reasonable circumstance demands it. Instead, the 
Department of Energy and President Biden's administration have harkened 
to the extreme climate activists who, frankly, we have learned from 
bitter experience will find any reason to micromanage the lives of 
Americans, by force if necessary.
  Let me give you a case in point. Most American dishwashers already 
use less than the 5 gallons of water that are allowed under current 
regulations. In fact, most American dishwashers use not 5, which is 
allowed, but 3.5 gallons of water per cycle. Why? Because the EPA, the 
Environmental Protection Agency, gave its Energy Star standard seal of 
approval to any dishwasher that will use 3.5 gallons or less. So even 
though a dishwasher can use up to 5, to get the seal of approval, which 
most dishwashers have and most manufacturers want, you have to use 3.5 
or less.
  Now, despite being EPA-approved, the Department of Energy's new rule 
will force manufacturers to abandon these efficient designs that we are 
already using to placate people who arbitrarily want not 3.5 but 3.2 
gallons of water per cycle. And you may be thinking, OK, well, we will 
save 0.3 gallons per cycle. We will not.
  I want to sidetrack a moment, but this is relevant. During President

[[Page S2110]]

Obama's administration, his regulators imposed a similar restriction. 
The results were disastrous. His rule was adopted in 2012, some may 
recall, and increased the price of dishwashers by $100. That is $100 in 
2012 dollars; it is more today. In exchange for those higher prices, 
the regulation that President Obama promulgated forced Americans to buy 
machines that don't wash their dishes nearly as well as the older 
machines, and that will prove the case with this new rule that is being 
promulgated by the Department of Energy.
  Now, if you have one of these dishwashers--not the ones that have yet 
to be approved by the Department of Energy but the ones mandated under 
President Obama--you know how it goes. You have to prewash the dishes. 
I mean, it defeats the whole purpose of a dishwasher. If you don't 
prewash the dishes, half the gravy is still going to be on the plate 
after the first run.

  So that leaves families with a choice: You can run the dishwasher 
twice, which uses twice as much water, in order to get your dishes 
clean or you have to hand-wash your dishes, which is going to use about 
17 gallons of water. Both of these options--and, once again, this is 
not the new rule yet. We are under President Obama's restrictive but 
less restrictive rule. Both of these options waste more water than the 
older washers.
  Now, the Department of Energy itself admits that 20 percent of 
families who own a dishwasher never use it. Why is that? It is not 
because dishwashing is fun; it is because they don't want to taste last 
night's jambalaya in their morning Cheerios when these weaker machines 
don't do their job.
  So now, instead of having dishwashers use enough water the first time 
to actually clean dishes, we are going to have even more families 
opting to use an average of 17 gallons of water per night to wash by 
hand.
  Let me restate this. Under President Obama's regulation, which will 
be made even worse by the proposed regulation by President Biden, if 
you wash your dishes the first time, they don't get clean. And those of 
you who use a dishwasher know what I am talking about. You do save 
water the first round, but your dishes aren't cleaned. So you are 
forced to use the dishwasher a second time, which uses even more water, 
or you are forced to wash your dishes by hand, which uses three times 
more water.
  Now, you don't need to be Euclid to see that this does not add up to 
water savings, and it makes even less sense when you consider the 
savings in electricity. The Department of Energy's new rule says it 
will cut the amount of energy that dishwashers can use by 27 percent. 
Shoot; we will all be for that. It will cut the amount of electricity, 
the energy, from 307 kilowatt hours annually to 223 kilowatt hours. 
That is for a standard dishwasher.
  The Department of Energy under President Biden says that this will 
help reduce ``carbon pollution'' and it is going to save the American 
people money, and, in reality, it won't.
  By decreasing the amount of allowed energy use by 27 percent under 
this new proposed rule, the new rule will save 84 kilowatt hours 
annually. That is fewer kilowatt hours than it takes to run an LED 
light bulb for a year. We are not talking about serious energy savings.
  How much will it save the American people? Using the very generous 
estimates of the Department of Energy, it is going to save Americans 
about 17 bucks annually every year. That is not even enough for a tank 
of gas under President Biden's inflation. However, once again, I will 
draw a parallel to the so-called water savings. Once again, the lesser 
performance capacity in these energy-efficient machines is going to 
result in more Americans choosing to run the machine twice or to hand-
wash the dishes just to get the plates clean.
  It is important to consider the context too. Louisianans--let me talk 
about my State. I know my State best, just as the Presiding Officer 
knows his wonderful State best. Louisianans are paying an extra $740 a 
month--not a year, a month--because of President Biden's inflation. 
That is almost $9,000 a year. And most of my people are not wealthy 
people.
  Let me just read you--these are not my numbers; these are the numbers 
compiled by President Biden's own government. Electricity is up 20 
percent; gas, 48 percent; eggs--I know they have come down a little 
bit, thank God. They are still up 67 percent. Potato chips are up 28 
percent. Bread 27 percent. Coffee 30 percent. Rice 28 percent. Flour is 
up 24 percent. Milk is up 20 percent. Ice cream is up 21 percent. 
Chicken is up 21 percent. Bacon--I don't want to live in a world 
without bacon--it is up 10 percent.

  I could keep going. I mean, the American people and my people are 
burning through their savings, and they are getting priced out of the 
housing market, but President Biden's administration seems to be 
obsessed with robbing our people of access to affordable appliances 
that actually get the job done; and I can't think of any better 
evidence of the fact that, in too many instances, this administration 
has a fatal attraction to nutty ideas.
  I am not against regulation. I mean, I think the world is complicated 
and, in some cases, dangerous; and if we can make it more efficient and 
safer for our people, we ought to do it; but you have to weigh the cost 
and the benefit. You have to weigh the cost and the benefit.
  This is what we know, after doing that, under this proposed new rule. 
The new rule is not going to save water. It is not going to save a 
significant amount of energy. It is not going to save the American 
people money. In fact, it is going to cost them money. This new policy 
is not going to be a win for America, but I will tell you who it will 
be a win for--the People's Republic of China.
  China is the world's largest producer of CO2 emissions. We 
are reducing our CO2 emissions; China is increasing its 
CO2 emissions. China stands to benefit from this rule 
because it produces about 70 percent of the world's dishwashers, and 
China is probably going to produce 70 percent of the new dishwashers 
mandated by the Department of Energy--more business for China. The 
dishwasher manufacturers in China are delighted.
  Now, these manufacturers in China, their factories, they don't run on 
solar panels. They don't run off of wind energy. They are not powered 
by fairy dust or unicorn urine, nor do the ships that have to bring the 
dishwashers from China to the American consumer. They all run off 
fossil fuels. Some of these manufacturers in China that our Department 
of Energy is giving business to run off coal.
  Now, look, I care about our planet, and I know you do, too, Mr. 
President. I want clean air. I want bright water. We all do. But this 
new proposed rule by the Department of Energy is not going to help 
anything or anybody. It is only going to make the American people have 
to spend more money on less efficient machines. The costs dramatically 
outweigh the benefit. It is going to make most of them either stop 
using their dishwasher or use it twice, using twice as much water or 
energy, or frustrate them to the point that they are going to say, hey, 
I will just wash the dishes by hand, using three times the amount of 
water.
  And it is not just dishwashers. If it were just dishwashers, I would 
chalk this up to, well, we have got some regulators that we need to 
talk to and rein in. There are other things on this looney list. In the 
past few months, the Biden administration has proposed new regulations 
for electric motors, for beverage vending machines, for microwaves, for 
ovens, for refrigerators, for furnaces, for air-conditioners, for light 
bulbs. Get ready. In fact, the Biden administration added more than 110 
regulations since it has been in office on appliances and equipment 
during 2 years.
  Most of these policies, if you weigh the cost and the benefits, make 
no sense--not in terms of CO2 emissions, not in terms of 
energy savings, not in terms of water savings, and certainly not in 
terms of the pocketbook of the American people. They are sops to the 
woke wing of the Democratic Party--not all Democrats. I am not going to 
paint with a broad brush here. Not all of them.
  But there are some members of the Democratic Party who think that we 
will all be better off if we had a rule for everything, and they think 
the American people are not capable of running their own lives. These 
new regulations will do little, if anything, to help the planet. But 
they do harm regular Americans--the Americans who get up every day, go 
to work, obey the law,

[[Page S2111]]

pay their taxes, try to do the right thing by their children, and try 
to save a little money for retirement. That is whom these new 
regulations are going to hurt. All these folks want is for their 
dishwashers to work. They want to spend less time on dishes because 
they want to spend time with their families. They don't want to have to 
hand wash the dishes every night. That is what they bought a dishwasher 
for.
  Now, surely, the regulators who are proposing this know that, and 
that is why they are going to downplay--they already are--the 
dishwasher regulations. It is why they are going to act confused when 
Americans wonder if the Federal Government is coming to unhook their 
gas stoves next.
  We have heard officials from the Biden administration say: If you 
like your gas stove, you can keep your gas stove. Not true. I am sorry; 
it is just not true. This administration is willing to regulate and try 
to control every aspect of American life. There are people in this 
administration who believe that. Why? To avoid empty criticism from the 
looney left--the looney left, which often ignores science and always 
insists on more control.

  Don't listen to what politicians do or say. Don't. Never listen to 
what a politician says. You can listen to them, but you have got to 
compare it to what they do. What you do is what you believe; everything 
else is just cottage cheese.
  President Biden and his administration are saddling Americans with 
harmful--maybe even hateful--regulations because they care more about 
what the activists say on TikTok than they do about the quiet suffering 
of everyday families in America all over this country.
  They have a blind spot for the lives and concerns of ordinary 
Americans, and it is why this administration is more worried about 
dishwashers and gas stoves than the fact that the average Louisiana 
family is paying $740 more a month--not a year--because of inflation. 
It is why they will kill American jobs, while continuing to buy solar 
panels and new dishwashers from the polluters in China. It is why they 
will give rich people tax credits to buy electric cars. How many poor 
people do you know driving electric cars? It is why they will give rich 
people tax credits to buy electric cars while people in rural areas in 
rural America struggle to pay for a full tank of gas and can't even 
dream of buying a used car because the used cars cost 30 percent more 
since President Biden took office.
  All this is virtue signaling. To some, it may be it amusing, but it 
is not free. There is no free lunch, and you don't get one now. It 
costs money--money that Americans don't have--and it causes them pain 
that they don't deserve, Mr. President.
  The new rule on dishwashers isn't yet settled. There is still time 
for my colleagues at the Department of Energy to scrap this rule and 
walk away from this fallacious nonsense, and I hope that they will.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Schatz). The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.