Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2018

Floor Speech

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Mr. Chair, I want to thank Ranking Member Lowey for yielding me time. Thank you to all members of the committee for the long hours you have dedicated to these bills, certainly our chairman, Rodney Frelinghuysen.

The artificially low allocations you were given have resulted in a package that I cannot support, but I want to note your efforts to find compromise where it was possible.

Though the House passed the Energy and Water bill as part of July's Christmas tree minibus, I am back down here today because the Republican majority has harmed the Department of Energy's funding for the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program, or, as they call it, the ATVM. It has been gutted as a pay-for to cover another shortsighted Republican cut to a Federal Emergency Management program.

Today's rule allowed this boneheaded Republican action, plotted just weeks ago before Mother Nature's catastrophic fury hit Texas with Hurricane Harvey. It doesn't look good to the American people when the majority cuts programs that are desperately needed. It doesn't serve America's future if money is pulled from developing engine technologies to increase fuel economy of cars, expand domestic manufacturing, and create good-paying American jobs.

Unless you live under a rock, you know these initiatives are both popular and effective and necessary: 61 percent of Republicans in Ohio support the requirement of getting to an average of 40 miles per gallon in new cars by 2025, with 73 percent of the public, overall, supporting that.

The Department of Energy's Advanced Technology Vehicle program supported Ford's development of the EcoBoost engine, which is built in Ohio at Brook Park, in my own district. Advanced Vehicle Research supported the development of all-electric vehicles, from Nissan's Leaf in Tennessee to Tesla's Model S in California. It supports America's competitiveness in a fiercely competitive and tough global marketplace that is, many times, not on the level.

We should support innovation and collaboration, not eliminate job- creating programs. I will fight to preserve this program in the final spending package.

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Mr. Chair, thus, I encourage all my colleagues to oppose this sort of backward maneuver and oppose the final bill.

In closing, I would like to say, and to acknowledge publicly, a very big thank you and congratulations to Taunja Berquam on her upcoming retirement from Congress. I know she will have a bright future ahead.

After her distinguished and exemplary service with the Army Corps of Engineers, including in Iraq, she dedicated over a decade of her brilliant life and mind to the important task of managing the Appropriation's Energy and Water Development, and Related Agencies Subcommittee accounts during my tenure as ranking member, as well as for Representative Peter Visclosky before me.

Taunja's high-minded commitment to democratic principles is unyielding. Our committee is losing a trusted and honorable adviser.

Her expertise and no-nonsense approach served our members, the staff, and the American people extraordinarily well.

Taunja, you will be missed, and you can leave knowing that you made a positive difference for America's future in nuclear readiness, in our energy future security, and in vital Army Corps development from coast to coast. We thank you.

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