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




            THE CAP-AND-TRADE BILL WILL DEFINITELY COST JOBS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Illinois (Mr. Shimkus) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SHIMKUS. Madam Speaker, it's interesting to follow my colleague 
from Florida because this cap-and-trade bill that's going to the floor 
will definitely cost jobs, and I have a lot of examples to promote that 
and prove that.
  The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission said in a memo to members 
of his delegation that: However, if the Waxman-Markey bill were to 
pass, Pennsylvania is looking at a bleak scenario by 2020: a net loss 
of as many as 66,000 jobs, a sizeable hike in electricity bills of 
residential customers, an increase in natural grass prices.
  You don't want to believe the public utility commission, just take 
John Dingell who is the chairman emeritus, having served here over 50 
years. He's quoted as saying, Nobody in this country realizes that cap-
and-trade is a tax and it's a big one.
  And if you don't believe that, just listen to the comments made by 
now-President Barack Obama in January 2008: Under my plan, a cap-and-
trade system, electricity costs would necessarily skyrocket.
  Now, in economies like we have today, the last thing you want to do 
is affect jobs and cause the loss of jobs, either by moving away from 
the fossil fuel infrastructure that makes our country great or by 
raising electricity rates.
  I always bring this poster to the floor. These are miners that lost 
their jobs in the last iteration of the Clean Air Act. This one mine 
had 1,200 miners. After the passage of the Clean Air Act they lost 
their jobs. This is Monterey 10 in Kincaid, Illinois.
  Here's a report from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. 
Listen to what happened after the Clean Air Act of 1990's amendment: 
Exxon Coal, Monterey 2, closed by market conditions brought about by 
the Clean Air Act; the next one, Ziegler Coal, Old Bin No. 24, market 
conditions by the Clean Air Act Amendments. We also have this one, 
Monterey 10, market conditions brought about by the Clean Air Act 
Amendments, and many more on this report.
  What a cap-and-trade bill does is cap fossil fuel use. It says you 
cannot use this anymore. What is a fossil fuel? It's coal, it's natural 
gas, it's crude oil. It's what we use to create the strongest economy 
in this world, and if you cap it and we have electricity demands go up, 
only one thing can happen, higher electricity rates.
  Now, if my friends on the other side were serious about carbon 
dioxide, in their bill they would forcefully push for the expansion and 
use of nuclear power. But is it there in their bill? No. Nuclear power 
emits no carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That's why many of us on 
our side really question the sincerity of our friends on the other side 
because there's no major promotion of nuclear power.
  Republicans have an alternative. It's the All-American Energy 
Security Act. It's very simple. It says we like energy, we like to use 
it, and we want all comers to come into the market of ideas to compete 
for use by consumers, driving down prices.
  These areas, the Outer Continental Shelf, are all natural gas. We 
would exploit natural gas and crude oil reserves. We would take the 
revenues to go to renewables, wind and solar power which is being 
exploited around the country right now. We would make fuel from coal. 
We would take coal, 250 years' worth of recoverable coal, turn it into 
liquid fuels, decreasing our reliance on imported crude oil. We would 
continue to move and exploit biofuels, which is soy diesel, corn, 
cellulosic, and the like.
  And the great ``add'' in the All-American Energy Security Act from 
the Republicans is, we need to build 100 new nuclear power plants in 
the next 20 years. That is a commitment on lower electricity prices for 
the consumer, and that is a down payment on energy security. We have 31 
permits now in the process of going through. We only have credits for 
three nuclear power plants to be built. That doesn't touch the 
increased demand that we're going to have.
  So either you have job loss, higher prices, and a cap-and-tax demand-
control economy energy future, or you have an all-of-the-above strategy 
which sets standards and says we want all comers to come and provide 
the energy that Americans need, bringing more supply and lower prices, 
and creating jobs.

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