[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 1]
[House]
[Pages 620-621]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       CLEAN-ENERGY JOB CREATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Washington (Mr. Inslee) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I came to the floor this morning to talk 
about our excitement hearing the President tonight express that feeling 
of optimism, confidence and can-do spirit that has always epitomized 
America, and that is in the field of the development of our clean-
energy job creation program.
  I'm excited about it because, as we're coming out of this very deep 
recession, many of us believe that one of the brightest spots on our 
economic horizon is our ability to develop hundreds of thousands of new 
jobs in this country so that America can fulfill its destiny of leading 
the world in clean-energy development.
  We believe it is our destiny to do that because we have always done 
that throughout America's history, leading the world in aeronautics, 
leading the world in software, leading the world in aerospace; and now 
we have a great opportunity to lead the world in the development of 
clean energy. And when we do that, we do believe that we will create 
hundreds of thousands of new jobs. And I look forward to the 
President's ideas on how to do that.
  But I want to talk about where we are right now in our ability to do 
that. I remember I came to the floor 2 or 3 years ago and talked about 
the prospects of creating jobs in America in the creation of an 
electrified transportation system and our ability to electrify our 
cars. And when I did that, I remember I was criticized by some in this 
Chamber thinking, well, that was sort of a pipe dream, couldn't happen, 
that was Buck Rogers-kind of stuff that really wouldn't allow us to 
create jobs in this field.
  Well, I want to bring us back up to where we are now this year to see 
what progress we've made. I want to mention three pieces of progress we 
have made that are going to, I think, be examples A, B and C of why the 
President's message of clean energy will be received well tonight:
  Number one, this year is the General Motors Volt. It is a plug-in 
hybrid electric car, a car that you can plug in and go 40 miles all on 
electricity; and then if you want to go more than 40 miles, it has an 
internal combustion engine that will generate electricity to charge the 
battery that will run the wheels of the General Motors Volt.
  And when I asked General Motors to bring the Volt to Capitol Hill a 
few years ago, people thought, interesting idea, will never work. Well, 
guess what. The General Motors Volt this year was North American Car of 
the Year a couple of weeks ago. It stunned the auto industry, and it is 
going to be one of the great leaders as we move to the electric cars of 
the future.

[[Page 621]]

  We have the domestic manufacturer, the Ford Focus, that we think is 
going to follow. Tesla is being manufactured here. We hope to see 
Toyota and Nissan produce electric cars here as well. These are the 
cars not of the future but of today. And we can lead the world in the 
manufacture if we do some of the things that the President will talk 
about tonight to electrify our auto transportation fleet.
  Second, I want to talk about one of the most exciting events I've 
ever had as a U.S. Congressman, and that is last October I went to the 
Wooden Cross Lutheran Church in Woodinville, Washington. And I got to 
participate with that congregation in dedicating the very first 
electric charging station in America in a church parking lot. And I 
thought, this is a great thing for America that we are electrifying our 
transportation fleet, allowing Americans a place to plug in their 
electric cars.
  And we dedicated this charging station. It's about 3\1/2\, 4 feet 
tall. And you pull up to it and plug in your electric car in the Wooden 
Cross Lutheran Church parking lot. The Good Book says ``let there be 
light.'' Well, now let there be power, and verily there is power in 
this church parking lot. And there's going to be more power in 
thousands of places in America because of our stimulus bill which has 
allowed the creation of these electronic charging stations.
  Third, I want to mention the production of batteries. We have grown 
something like--and I want to make sure I get the number right--700,000 
clean-energy jobs doubling renewable energy manufacturing and 
generating jobs in America by the year 2012. And the clean-energy 
sector has grown 2\1/2\ times faster--faster than the U.S. economy in 
the last year and a half.
  And one of the reasons is because we are growing an electric battery 
manufacturing capacity industry here in the United States. We only had 
2 percent of that capacity in 2009. We believe we can have 40 percent 
of the world's capacity by 2015. And if you want to think this is not a 
reality, go to Holland, Michigan, where because of our stimulus bill 
that we passed last year, we are putting hundreds of formerly laid-off 
auto workers to work in Holland, Michigan, making lithium ion batteries 
to run our electric cars. And that is happening because of what we did.
  Let's grow these clean-energy jobs. I look forward to the President's 
speech tonight.

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