[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 2]
[House]
[Page 1744]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       GLOBAL WARMING TASK FORCE

  (Mr. STEARNS asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. STEARNS. Mr. Speaker, recently the Speaker has indicated that she 
intends to appoint a special task force, a select committee, to 
investigate global warming. The committee I serve on, Energy and 
Commerce, has jurisdiction on this matter and, in fact, we have had a 
hearing on this subject on July 27, 2006 in our oversight subcommittee. 
We investigated the so-called hockey stick effect. The hearing showed 
that there is a lot of information on global warming and that this is a 
very serious issue. But I question the need for another committee when 
the Energy and Commerce has full legislative power to continue to 
investigate and legislate. The committee the Speaker has designated 
will duplicate what is already in place with the longstanding expertise 
on the Energy and Commerce. In fact, as the chairman of the Energy and 
Commerce Committee recently said, ``We are just empowering a bunch of 
enthusiastic amateurs to go around and make speeches and make 
commitments that will be very difficult to honor.''

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