Protecting and Securing Florida's Coastline Act of 2019

Floor Speech

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Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Madam Chairwoman, I thank the gentleman from Utah for yielding.

I rise in opposition to this bill and my colleagues' efforts to impede the rapid growth of American energy exploration. This bill is flawed in a number of ways, as we have recounted here already during this debate.

First and foremost, it is clear that banning energy exploration will increase the prices that families pay at the pump and the prices they pay to power their homes.

Unfortunately, the tax on our Nation's energy producers aren't new. We know what happens when government intervenes by imposing burdensome regulations and senseless moratoriums like we are seeing today.

For years, New England States have pushed restrictive energy policies, and what we are considering here on the floor is no exception.

A handful of Governors and State legislatures are narrowly focused on hindering the exploration and development of critical energy resources. What those policies have resulted in are increased prices for consumers, and they have done nothing to reduce demands for fossil fuels.

In fact, as Congressman Duncan recounted just a few moments ago, last year, those policies culminated in a Russian tanker delivering natural gas to the Boston Harbor. Why? Because there weren't enough pipelines available to bring it from nearby Pennsylvania. You heard it right.

Despite being just a few hundred miles from the Marcellus Shale, one of the largest natural gas reserves in the country, our New England States were forced to import natural gas from Vladimir Putin. Nobody on this floor--the advocates of this bill--seem to have a problem with that.

Now my colleagues want to implement these policies on a Federal level with moratoriums on drilling. The event in Boston shows us that the legislation before us would have no impact on reducing demand for fossil fuels. We would simply have to import more from our adversaries. That is not good policy.

As has been explained, to add to the madness, the bill is completely irreconcilable with the Land and Water Conservation Fund, one of the biggest priorities of the Natural Resources Committee in this Congress.

The LWCF receives its funding from oil revenues generated off the coast of States like Louisiana, my home State. On the very same day that the Natural Resources Committee marked up these bills to ban offshore oil and gas exploration, the committee marked up another bill to permanently fund the LWCF. The majority wants to see mandatory spending of $900 million per year out of the LWCF, but at the same time, it wants to eliminate completely its funding source. That is just simply nonsense.

Our country is blessed with an abundance of natural resources. We have the right to use those God-given resources to create jobs, foster economic growth, and pave the way to an era of American energy dominance. Oppressive policies like the ones before us today have been our own worst enemy, forcing us to rely on hostile, foreign nations to meet our energy demands. We simply can't do that any longer.

Madam Chair, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this bill.

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