[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 8]
[House]
[Page 10587]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      OFFSHORE ENERGY AND JOBS ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Virginia (Mr. Rigell) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. RIGELL. Mr. Speaker, before I begin my remarks, I want to just 
express my appreciation to our colleague, Mr. Fleischmann, and my 
respect for him and the eloquent tribute that he paid his father. 
Indeed, his father was a member of the Greatest Generation, and we 
thank him, his father, for his service to our country.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise this morning to talk about my number one priority 
in serving the Second District of Virginia and this incredible country 
that we have the privilege to live in, and that's jobs. That's the 
number one focus for our office.
  I rise in strong support of House Resolution 2231, Offshore Energy 
and Jobs Act, that will come before this House either today or 
tomorrow. That bill includes language that I authored and introduced, 
and it creates a clear path, an opportunity that can really change the 
lives of hardworking Americans.
  And I'm awfully proud of what the bill will do--ideally, when it's 
passed through the Senate and made into law by the President--in job 
creation.
  But before I share with this House what the bill actually does and 
what the language does, I want to make clear what it's not. It's not a 
bill that spends more money. In fact, it's just the opposite. It's a 
bill that actually creates Federal revenue.
  Here's how it works:
  Right now, there is a moratorium, a full stop, on offshore 
exploration of energy off the coast of Virginia. And what our bill does 
and what the language does is it breaks through that, and it opens up 
that tremendous job-creating potential of Virginia's offshore energy.
  The first benefit of this bill, of course, is jobs. Eighteen thousand 
jobs are estimated to be created by this bill, just in Virginia alone. 
And, Mr. Speaker, every one of those jobs is a life-changing job.
  I'm an entrepreneur in what I refer to as a season of public service, 
and I've had the privilege, hundreds and hundreds of times--perhaps 
thousands, I don't know--of being able to look at an applicant and say 
these incredible words, ``You're hired.'' And I know the person goes 
home and says, ``I got the job.'' That's what Americans are looking for 
is opportunity, and that's what this bill advances.
  And as we become more energy independent, what happens is we've 
reduced our need to have our young men and women around the world 
protecting our sources of energy. It makes America a safer country.
  Right now, more money than any one of us would like is going to 
countries like Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. These countries don't share 
our values, and we're fueling their economies. We should be fueling our 
economy.
  It creates the revenue, Mr. Speaker, that we need. I'm a Republican 
who talks about the need for more revenue, but we get that by growing 
our economy. This is the way we can invest in our schools and have 
better roads, make the investments that we need to make into our 
infrastructure.
  And look, it fast-tracks a great renewable--wind. It has tremendous 
opportunity. Frankly, it's too expensive right now. But we're 
Americans. We're smart. We can innovate. We can think our way through 
this and find a way to make wind energy more affordable.
  In this very body right here, the President came in and he said, I'm 
all of the above with respect to energy. Mr. Speaker, that's common 
ground, and I'm delighted to say it's common ground.
  Right now, I'm having difficulty reconciling what he said with this 
full moratorium off the coast of Virginia, and this bill represents 
common ground. We've got the Governor of Virginia. We have our two U.S. 
Senators, interestingly, both Democrats, Senator Kaine and Senator 
Warner, both support, in principle, this same objective. In fact, 
they're introducing similar legislation in the Senate. The General 
Assembly of Virginia wants to move forward. There is a clear consensus 
in Virginia that this legislation ought to go forward.
  Right now, the only thing holding up these jobs, every one of these 
life-changing jobs, is the administration. We're not asking for a 
tremendous amount of money. As I mentioned, in fact, we're just asking 
for the administration to get out of the way.
  Mr. Speaker, I didn't mention what tremendous local support this bill 
has: We have the local NAACP behind the bill. The mayor of Virginia 
Beach, the largest city in our district, is behind the bill; Hampton 
Roads Chamber of Commerce, Hampton Roads Planning District Commission, 
Hampton Roads Global Commerce Council, the Virginia Port Authority.
  And we can do this, Mr. Speaker, while meeting the deep obligation 
that we have, the moral obligation to leave our children with clean air 
and clean water and clean soil.
  To those who put one against the other, that it's either jobs or a 
good environment, I reject that outright. Why? Because we're Americans. 
It's in our DNA to innovate and to think through these things. We can 
have a reliable source of energy. We can help right off the coast of 
Virginia. We can create the local jobs that we need to give our young 
people opportunity and our veterans that are exiting the military, so 
many of whom exit the military right there in Hampton Roads.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of the bill.

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