Conference Report on H.R. 6, Energy Policy Act of 2005
CONFERENCE REPORT ON H.R. 6, ENERGY POLICY ACT OF 2005 -- (House of Representatives - July 28, 2005)
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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.
Mr. Speaker, this bill is a historic failure. It will not lower gasoline prices. This bill does not do anything about fuel economy standards for automobiles and for SUVs. We put 70 percent of all the oil that we consume in the United States into gasoline tanks. This bill is silent on that. It is 2005. We now import 60 percent of all of the oil which we consume in America; most of it comes from the Middle East. One would think that we could do something about the place we put the oil. This bill is silent.
With regard to renewables, all utilities in the United States could have been given a mandate that they have to designate a substantial percentage of their electrical generating capacity over the next 20 years as renewable energy. This bill rejects that. It says, we are not going to move the utilities towards a renewable energy future.
Mr. Speaker, this bill is a failure on two of the central technology issues that the 21st century should be known for. I call for a ``no'' vote on this bill.
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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.
Mr. Speaker, this bill contains about $80 billion worth of giveaways to the oil and gas and other industries in our country. Those giveaways are coming from somewhere.
The United States has a huge deficit. We do not have any money. There is only one part of our government that is running a surplus, and that is the Social Security Trust Fund, and what the Republicans are doing is erecting a huge oil rig on top of the Social Security Trust Fund to drill for the revenues that will be given to the wealthiest industries in America--the oil and gas industries--that are reporting the largest profits in the history of any industry in the history of the United States.
The Republicans are tipping the United States consumer and taxpayer upside down and shaking money out of their pockets.
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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.
Mr. Speaker, in this bill there are so many preposterous provisions, it is impossible to list them all. But amongst them is a provision which after 35 years strips Governors and mayors of an ability to block an LNG, a liquefied natural gas facility, from being built in the middle of a densely populated area. This photograph shows Boston. This is my district. This is where one of the facilities has already been built, but it was built with permission.
Now post-9/11 with terrorists targeting sites with the highest potential harm to Americans, this bill blocks Governors, police, and fire departments from blocking facilities from going into densely populated areas. But the bill also allows the Pentagon, Secretary Rumsfeld, to protect against one of these being built next to a military facility. Imagine that, the Republicans will protect the Pentagon but not civilians in densely populated areas from an LNG catastrophe which could maim or kill tens of thousands of people.
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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, this bill is packed with royalty relief for big oil and gas companies, tax breaks for big oil and gas companies, loan guarantees for the wealthiest energy companies in America, even as they are reporting the largest quarterly profits of any corporations in the history of the United States.
It is politically and morally wrong for the United States Congress to come to this floor to pass legislation which will take money from the American taxpayers to hand over to the corporations who are now charging $2.30, $2.40, $2.60 at the pump to American consumers and reporting the largest profits in history. If they need to do new research, they have the money in their own pockets. That is capitalism. If they want to do new drilling out in ultradeep areas of the oceans, they have the profits to do that.
The American taxpayer should not be funding that drilling because, as American consumers, they are already paying for that drilling. The oil companies are saying publicly that they are making so much money they do not know what to do with all of the profits. But even as they say that publicly, they are coming here to the House floor, they are saying to the Members, we want to erect huge oil drills on top of the Social Security trust fund and drill $80 billion of subsidies out of American taxpayers' pockets and hand it over to the oil, the gas, the coal, the nuclear industries that are reporting the largest profits in history.
It is a moral and political failure because it is what is not in this bill that is the important energy agenda for our country. Our country puts 70 percent of all of the oil that we consume in gasoline tanks. We only have 3 percent of the oil reserves in the world. OPEC has 70 percent. That is our weakness. Our strength is that we are the technological giant of the world.
There is nothing in this bill about improving the fuel economy standards for SUVs and automobiles. There is nothing in this bill that will mandate that electric utilities increase their use of renewable energy so we can break our dependence upon these sources of energy that weaken our foreign policy by getting us deeper into the Middle East, emitting more pollutants which cause more asthma, more breast cancer, more prostate cancer as the environment alters genes to increase disease in our society. None of that is addressed in this bill in 2005.
If we could roll back the clock to 1905, this would be a very good bill. It would be about oil, gas and coal. It is 2005, however. We should be talking about the new agenda, the new technology agenda for our country. This bill is a political and a moral and a technological failure.
In addition to draining revenues out of the taxpayers' pockets to subsidize the wealthiest industries, we ignore the technologies which could break our dependence on imported oil and could send a signal to OPEC which would drive down the price of oil which would help our country's national security. I urge a ``no'' vote on this historic failure.
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