Energy Policies
Floor Speech
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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, in watching from the sidelines and since we are not directly involved and because the Democrats decided to go it alone, our Democratic colleagues appear to be playing a game of whack- a-mole to keep their reckless tax-and-spending spree from falling apart.
After months and months of intra-party negotiating--again, talking among themselves, not to us--they hit the gas pedal last week when they knew that President Biden was going to the U.N. Climate Summit in Glasgow, Scotland, and they wanted to give him something that he could actually deliver on.
So, last Friday, they finally settled on a framework, but the cracks quickly began to show. We don't even have a pricetag on this proposal, but some have estimated its cost at $1.75 trillion--an absolutely staggering amount of money. The truth is no one knows because the bill hasn't even been finalized yet, much less scored by congressional scorekeepers.
Unsurprisingly, yesterday, one of our colleagues, the Senator from West Virginia, expressed some of his skepticism about the proposal; and I imagine more are in the wings, wringing their hands in private. After all, this bill spends trillions of dollars on radical priorities that are out of step with where most Americans are: expanded healthcare subsidies; handouts for labor unions; government-funded childcare; and an all-out attack on American-made, affordable energy.
On Friday, the President touted the $555 billion that this agreement would put forward to support clean energy efforts, but these, upon further inspection, are mainly subsidies--taxpayer subsidies--for corporations and the well-off.
I am reminded of France's yellow jacket protests a few years ago. In 2018, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in Paris to protest a hike in gas taxes. At the time, President Macron said the increase was critical to pushing the French people to buy cleaner vehicles, but for most hard-working families, pricey electric vehicles simply were not and are not an option. The yellow jackets felt disenfranchised by the urban elite, saying leaders were talking about the end of the world while they were worried about the end of the month.
It sounds pretty familiar. Here in the United States, families are being pounded by inflation. Prices are going up on everything from groceries to home appliances. Gas prices alone have gone up 60 percent from just 1 year ago, and families are doing their best to prepare for an expensive winter. Energy bills are expected to soar by as much as 54 percent.
Despite the serious financial strain that families are feeling, our Democratic colleagues are pushing policies that will drive up those costs even more.
But here is the real kicker: Often under these proposed policies, the wealthiest of Americans will stand to benefit the most on the backs of hard-working American families.
One of the most clear-cut examples is the aggressive push toward subsidizing electric vehicles, which are among the most expensive cars on the market. Now, with 280 million cars on the road, only 2 percent of which are electric vehicles, this will not benefit most hard-working American families. It will benefit those who can afford these expensive vehicles, and the cherry on top is the up to $12,500 taxpayer subsidy that will help those wealthy Americans buy these expensive vehicles that are out of reach for most hard-working families.
It doesn't matter if the vehicle is completely or substantially made in China, for example, or if the buyer makes hundreds of thousands of dollars a year--they are still eligible for the tax credit. The most generous benefit is reserved for vehicles built in--you guessed it-- union shops. We know the labor unions are among some of the biggest supporters of our friends on the other side of the aisle, and they are set to receive their reward. Buyers could receive up to a $12,500 tax credit for purchasing an electric vehicle from a union shop.
I have nothing against union shops. I support people who choose to be part of a labor union, but this idea that taxpayers should have to underwrite a benefit that goes exclusively to one part of the electric car business, to me, is offensive, and it is just unjustified.
I haven't seen any evidence either that union-made electric vehicles are somehow more green than their nonunion-made competitors', but those companies are certain to gain financial benefits because of these generous taxpayer-funded handouts. Wealthy Americans and Big Labor win; hard-working American families not so much.
Then there is a long list of government handouts to make homes more energy efficient. Similar to those electric vehicles, the high cost of retrofitting a home makes it infeasible for most families--certainly, the middle-class families. Outfitting a home with solar panels will cost you well over $10,000; and, of course, the bigger the house, the more the cost.
The Biden administration is, once again, happy to let taxpayers subsidize these expenditures. The Democrats' proposals include billions of dollars in rebates and grants to help cover the cost of retrofitting homes, even for the well-to-do, who will be the ones who will primarily be able to afford, even with these subsidies, this sort of retrofit.
At the end of the day, the family with the means to spend thousands of dollars on these products will spend less on their monthly electricity bill, which I assume is the point, but everybody else will pay more in taxes without having the benefit of a lower electricity bill. If our colleagues on the other side of the aisle get their way, monthly electricity prices are likely to increase for everyone else.
As I mentioned, gas prices are up significantly from last year. If you filled up your pickup truck a year ago, today you will find out that you will spend about $33 more for each tank of gas that you pump. And energy prices for homes this winter are expected to go up as much as 54 percent.
These are incredible numbers. This is what happens when you throw so much money at limited goods and services--prices go up; inflation goes up. It is a silent tax on people who must pay for these goods and services and have nowhere else to turn.
With this as a backdrop, our Democratic colleagues have proposed to raise taxes on energy companies and drive those prices even higher. Now, only in a fantasy world can you impose greater costs through tax increases on a business and not have them transferred directly to the consumers who buy these goods and services. They are going to be passed along to the people who pay for these goods and services.
This bill will include a new methane tax, which would require oil and gas producers to pay hefty fees if they emit more methane than the government allows.
Natural gas accounts for 40 percent of our electricity--double the amount as renewable sources. Hitting those companies with a methane fee and other proposed tax hikes isn't going to change the fact that we need natural gas to keep the lights on.
By the way, we need natural gas in order to produce the electricity that you use to charge your electric vehicle.
As we hope to move to cleaner forms of energy--obviously, coal being the one that most of us believe emits the most emissions--moving to natural gas just makes sense, and as a matter of fact, the United States has reduced our emissions, not by banning access to any particular energy source but by producing more natural gas.
If we need an example of what a natural gas shortage in America would look like, just take a look at Europe. The supply shortage has caused electricity prices in Europe to skyrocket, plus the fact that they have banned the use of coal and even nuclear power, which is emissions-free. But after the Fukushima nuclear meltdown and the tsunami that followed, Europe basically decided to hang up on any additional nuclear production. So natural gas prices, which are going to sustain the greatest demand, will go up about 600 percent. Since the start of the year, they have. The situation is so dire that utility companies have switched from natural gas and now begin to burn coal and fuel oil because they simply don't have access to enough natural gas.
This is the problem with the push to quickly move away from fossil fuels before we are ready to transition into other types of energy sources and when you punish the producers of that affordable energy.
Renewables, as laudable as they are--and in Texas, we are an ``all of the above'' State. We produce more electricity from wind turbines than any other State in the Nation. But renewables don't come close to generating enough energy to power our world.
If the United States and our allies scale back production to pursue arbitrary emission benchmarks, that leaves the world turning to countries like Russia and organizations like OPEC, led by Saudi Arabia, to provide that energy. So it is no wonder that Russia is a no-show at the U.N. climate summit. They are actually the ones that will stand to benefit the most if other countries eliminate fossil fuels from their fuel mix because other countries around the world will have no choice but to buy more and more Russian energy.
In his remarks yesterday, President Biden said we should view the current price volatility as a call to action rather than a reason to back off our clean energy goals. Well, I disagree. Families are being pummeled by high prices across the board. We don't need to increase that burden by driving up costs or potentially adding an energy crisis to the mix.
As I said, Texas has always been a proud supporter of the ``all of the above'' energy strategy. We are often recognized for the might of our oil and gas sector. But a lot of folks don't know, as I said, that Texas is a leader in wind energy. Well, we produce about one-quarter of all the wind energy in the United States. If we were a country, we would be the fifth-largest wind energy producer in the world. We don't plan on stopping there. We are also making serious strides in energy innovation through cutting-edge carbon capture and storage projects.
Texas is proof positive that we can strike a balance between conservation, productivity, and economic power, and you can embrace low-emission energy sources without hammering the middle class. But those are not the types of proposals we see from the tax-and-spending spree bill now pending before the House of Representatives. This bill would simply drive up costs for hard-working American families, hurt our energy independence, and benefit our adversaries.
This may impress President Biden's peers in Glasgow, but it is sure to fall flat with the American people.
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