Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I hear the chairman talk about investment. Let me tell you about the last investment of this type. We were giving, I don't know, a $100 billion slush fund to the Secretary of Energy, Secretary Granholm. When she was Governor of Michigan, she invested $874 million of your taxpayer dollars into, I don't know, eight energy companies. Four of them went bankrupt within 6 years.

A123 Systems, the worst of them, received a combined $350 million in Federal and State subsidies. What happened? Less than 6 months later, it was sold to the Chinese for $257 million, a $100 million loss.

Let me tell you where this investment is headed. It is headed to where the U.K. and the rest of Europe is headed.

Right now in Britain, their energy markets, U.K. electricity prices went up 700 percent, and a 250 percent increase in gas prices in the U.K. Germany's electricity benchmark has doubled this year.

That is where we are headed with this investment. That is where we are headed, ladies and gentlemen. Americans are already experiencing this. Don't let them do it. Don't vote ``yes'' on this.

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