Providing for Congressional Disapproval of a Rule Submitted by the Environmental Protection Agency

Floor Speech

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Mr. CRAMER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding the time and for his leadership.

I might add that, prior to being in Congress, I was focused on the issue for nearly 10 years as a regulator of the energy industry in North Dakota. I served nearly 10 years on the North Dakota Public Service Commission, where I regulated not only the siting of coal plants, the reclamation of coal mines, but the cost of electricity to consumers.

I have to address some of the comments made by the gentleman from Georgia. I am sure they were sincere. I am sure they were well-intentioned.

But to stand here, Mr. Speaker, and lecture us that we are somehow motivated by hatred for the President of the United States is so beneath the dignity of this Chamber, and I am embarrassed for him.

Let me tell you that Barack Obama has the right to his opinion, and he is entitled to have it be different than mine. He perfectly has the right to be wrong even, if he wants to be.

But he doesn't have the right to break the law because he couldn't get a law changed when he had a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate. And that is what we are here to talk about, the violation of the law, as the chairman has pointed to earlier.

I don't even want to deal with the merits of climate change or global warming. I want to deal with the solution.

We have heard today that Republicans don't have a solution. Well, let me tell you about my little rectangular spot in the middle of the North American continent, North Dakota, best known now, of course, for producing a whole bunch of oil.

But long before we produced oil, we produced coal, 30 million tons a year, as a matter of fact. Seventy-nine percent of our electricity is generated by coal. We generate coal-generated electricity for many States in our region.

But we also are one of the seven States that meet all ambient air quality standards as prescribed by the EPA. We have a grade A, perfect, year after year after year for our air by the American Lung Association. The counties that have the greatest concentration of coal-fired power plants get an A grade.

Our utilities have been investing hundreds of millions of dollars over the years in clean coal technologies and scrubbers and everything that we can do to make our environment cleaner.

We live there. We love it. No bureaucrat in Washington, D.C., is going to love the air that we breathe in North Dakota more than those of us who live in North Dakota.

We also enjoy, like other coal-producing States, some of the lowest-priced electricity in the country.

I also would like to point out that, long before it was cool, we were siting wind farms. I sited over 1,000 megawatts of wind farms when I was on the Commission. Now there are nearly 2,000 megawatts of installed wind in North Dakota.

We don't even have a mandate. We don't need to be lectured to by people who don't know a thing about where we live, a thing about our economy. We will do the right thing because it is the right thing. We will do the right thing because it is good for our families.

And, by the way, the rule that we are disapproving, the two rules we are disapproving, disproportionately hurt the poor and the middle income. Do you think it is the poor people that can afford to buy an Energy Star refrigerator at the end of the month? Is it the poor people that can afford to wrap their house in new insulation? Of course not.

We need to pass these resolutions and reject these rules.

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