[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15242-15243]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    THE UPCOMING ENERGY LEGISLATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Florida (Mr. Klein) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. KLEIN of Florida. Madam Speaker, by the end of this year, we hope 
to pass a comprehensive energy bill which will help this country move 
forward on clean, renewable, American energy, and certainly, will help 
fuel our economic recovery.
  As co-Chair of the New Democratic Coalition on Energy, I believe now 
is the time for a robust, market-based approach to approach our 
Nation's energy needs. We have to pass legislation that will make smart 
investments in alternative energy, and I think every American 
understands the common sense behind that. These are the kinds of things 
that will make us more viable and competitive, not only here in the 
United States but abroad, for our American companies.
  It's also clear, as we know as we get into this energy debate, this 
is about our national security; the fact that we continue to import 60-
plus percent of our oil from countries outside the United States, many 
of which, particularly in the Middle East, are not our friends and are 
funding our enemies.
  We also know it's about, as I said, job creation, and it's also about 
good environmental policy.
  Now, you've heard a lot about this energy bill so far. You may 
continue to hear a lot about it, and you hear studies on one side that 
say we're going to lose jobs; the other side saying we're going to 
create jobs. But I think there's quite a remarkable thing that's going 
on right now as I've worked on this with many other Members, on both 
the Democrat and Republican side.
  There's a coalition of people out there, interested groups, that have 
come together and said we support the energy bill that is currently 
being presented by Congress. And I just want to name some of the 
companies and some of the groups because it just doesn't sound like the 
normal groups that would come together: BP, big oil company; Dow 
Chemical; ConocoPhillips, General Electric. You've got the entire labor 
union movement supporting this. You've got the League of Conservation 
Voters and the Sierra Club.
  Now, I know not everyone's familiar with every one of these 
organizations, but suffice it to say, you have got some very large 
corporate businesses that have their view of the world and certainly 
the necessity to having an efficient energy policy. You've got some 
environmental groups that have come together and said, you know, we 
like this, this makes some sense to us. And you've got labor which 
doesn't always necessarily but sometimes agrees with the other two 
groups.
  So what I like to think when I hear a study from this organization, 
sometimes I've heard of that organization, sometimes I haven't, and you 
have got another group that comes and says the opposite, I like to 
think of common sense when it comes to coming together and putting 
together logical and efficient legislation.
  The fact that these three sort of disparate groups have come together 
and said, yeah, we support this, I think something is going on here 
that we should take a close look at and certainly consider in 
supporting.
  I want to talk specifically about the jobs that will be created by 
this because I had a very unique conversation with the president of the 
largest utility company from Florida where I'm from. He was telling me 
they're building the largest solar plant in the world in Florida. Now, 
we like to call ourselves The Sunshine State, so we think that's a good 
place for it, but there are already a lot of solar plants in other 
parts of the world.
  But they're building this in Florida, and what he told me was they 
were very unhappy about the fact that when they're building this huge 
plant, hundreds of millions of dollars, they're going to have to import 
the mirrors--that's the components to build the solar plant--from 
Germany. I said, Why is that? And he said, Well, we don't build them in 
the United States. There aren't the kind of incentives for businesses 
to do that here; but if you did build them in Florida or Georgia or 
California or Ohio, we would buy them here because they would be far 
less expensive. Just the shipping costs overseas of this very fragile 
equipment adds such an expensive piece to the equation.
  That, to me, strikes at the heart of this whole point. Why aren't we 
doing everything we can to create these kinds of jobs in the United 
States and creating the incentives? Well, the good news is the American 
Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which we passed--that's the recovery 
bill--a few months ago has the kind of tax incentives and many of the 
components to begin to encourage this type of industry for creating 
jobs in the United States. I want these jobs to be in Florida or other 
parts of the United States because they're good quality jobs and will 
support a good industry.
  Another area which I think we talked about, you know, nationally is 
wind power. A big part of what's going on around the world right now, a 
lot of that is built overseas, but here's another good example. A 
typical wind turbine has 8,000 parts and is made of 250 tons of steel. 
Americans make steel. We fabricate. We assemble. We can deliver that to 
a wind farm in the United States at far less of a cost than if it was 
done overseas. And guess what, you can't outsource the labor or the 
people that put these things together and install them. You can't do it 
from overseas. So, again, an idea whose time has come.
  The great thing about this energy bill is this is the kind of 
forward-thinking that will create the next generation of jobs, whether 
it's wind or wave or solar or any combination of things that will make 
this country more energy secure, smarter, more efficient, and will 
advance us into the next generation of not only energy but make this 
country very strong from a national security point of view and a jobs 
point of view.
  So I look forward to working with my colleagues to pass this bill, 
move this country forward, and make us more secure.

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