[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 11006-11007]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                BULB ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Virginia (Mr. Connolly) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. CONNOLLY of Virginia. Madam Speaker, we are 2 short weeks away 
from defaulting on American debt, which would devastate our economy and 
plunge this country, if not the global economy, into a steep recession. 
We are engaged in three overseas wars as part of the broader struggle 
to defeat terrorism. Century-old autocracies are crumbling in the 
Middle East. Extreme drought is destroying farmers' livelihoods across 
the Southeast, Texas, and Oklahoma, while floods of biblical 
proportions inundate the upper Midwest. Unprecedented tornadoes have 
killed hundreds of people in Missouri, Alabama, and Virginia, while the 
melting of glaciers and polar ice continues to accelerate. Meanwhile, 
our economy stagnates for lack of any new congressional action to 
expedite growth.
  In response to these existential threats at home and once-in-a-
lifetime opportunities for democracy abroad, the Republican leadership 
has brought to the floor a bill to repeal a nonexistent ban on 
incandescent light bulbs passed by a Republican Congress and signed by 
a Republican President, President Bush. That's right, light bulbs. 
Connoisseurs of Internet hearsay are aware that Tea Party conspiracy 
theorists think President Obama is trying to outlaw the incandescent 
light bulb even though President Bush signed that law into enactment. 
Cooler heads, such as representatives of every major light bulb 
manufacturer in America, from Philips to Johnson Controls, actually 
support the light bulb efficiency standards because they provide a 
competitive advantage for American manufacturers relative to their 
Chinese competitors, who produce shoddy, light-inefficient bulbs. Who 
knew that the Tea Party contained so many Manchurian sympathizers who 
have hidden their proto-internationalist agenda beneath the folds of 
the Don't Tread on Me flag?
  As we have heard, those who would repeal the light bulb efficiency 
standards believe we are ``taxed enough already.'' Apparently the 
lowest Federal tax burden in 60 years has left these zealots with extra 
disposable income, and they want to spend it on inefficient light 
bulbs. In fact, repeal of the light bulb standards would give Americans 
the liberty to spend $85 extra per year on light bulbs to produce no 
additional light. It's hard to understand how ideologues in this House 
can suggest

[[Page 11007]]

imposing $85 per year on their constituents in order to buy light bulbs 
which consume more electricity than necessary.
  Those who are baffled by Republican support for this anachronistic 
incandescent bulb tax may want to refer to the legislative record of 
the House over the last 7 months. The Republican Party has deviated so 
far from its historic support for conservation that it now supports 
legislation that would allow air and water pollution with impunity. The 
new Republican Caucus supports legislation like the BULB Act, which we 
dealt with last night, and retrogresses to the time of Thomas Edison 
and the invention of the light bulb. These Republicans sound like flat 
earthers, and they must really mean it when they call themselves 
originalists.
  This entire situation would be humorous but for the gravity of the 
threat our Nation faces, from climate change to the debt puzzle, or the 
opportunities that we will forgo in the Middle East because this House 
is distracted by a paranoid attack on light bulbs.

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