The Math is the Math is the Math

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Madam Speaker, we have a bit of the tyranny of the clock, as you know, so I am going to try to do this somewhat rapidly.

There has been a lot of speechifying today. I am frustrated because I don't have an elegant or delicate way to say this, but people keep making crap up. Let's actually walk through some basic math so we understand something.

Does anyone here have any memory of last fall when a number of us were coming behind these microphones getting ready to talk about the winter that was coming. Do you remember the discussion of about how high the power bills, the heating bills were going to be? It is because fuel prices--hydrocarbon prices--didn't just go up because of the Russian invasion.

If you look at the charts, this began functionally when the left took power. It really began in 2018 and really took off when they had unified control. It didn't just happen. As a matter of fact, there is a number of charts out there and futures contracts that were basically saying the prices you are seeing today at the gas pump--they just showed up about 6 months early--that that is actually where we were going because consumption and supply wasn't keeping up because of what we have done to ourselves.

You see it already. Do you not remember last October and September crossing $6 on natural gas? It was already coming at us and it was our own fault. How does this craziness happen? We keep getting folks coming behind the microphone and saying: It is because of the Keystone pipeline; it is a little bit. It is because of some of the drilling bans; it is a little bit.

It is mostly because over, particularly this last year, but also going back when the left took power after the 2018 election, they basically started to threaten capital markets. If you are a company and you invest in hydrocarbons, I think the SEC should look into you. If you're CalPERS or a pension fund and you invest in hydrocarbons, we are going to look down upon that. As a matter of fact, we are going encourage universities and other pension funds no more investing in hydrocarbons.

What did you think was going to happen? When you actually see this frustration and the absolute distorted rhetoric coming from the White House--well, there are 9,000 drilling permits out there. I think most of America already understand that is lunacy; you get a permit, you find out if there are any hydrocarbons in the ground. But how do you go to capital markets and get any money to stick that straw in the ground? This continued.

Over and over, the Biden administration's executive orders missed the mark. It was actually talking about the Treasury coming at anyone that is putting capital markets into hydrocarbons. Understand what you are paying at the gas pump, what you are paying to heat your house. You voted for this.

If you voted for the left, if you voted for them in 2018, if you voted for them in 2020, you voted for this. You voted for that price because this is what they promised us. Do you remember the discussions here, the debates here? We are going to make it so you can't raise money to finance a pipeline, to finance new hydrocarbon extractions, to finance natural gas.

What is so ironic about this--just quote after quote after quote. Pension systems and others--the idea was strangle hydrocarbon extraction, oil and gas, and make it so they don't have the capital to open up new wells, to invest in more efficiencies. The left actually got what they wanted.

Are they now willing to admit that they got what they wanted there? We are now seeing $5 gasoline. You see the price of natural gas. Guess what, congratulations, we burned 23 percent more coal last year because they made natural gas so expensive; we moved from one fuel source that was dramatically cleaner than coal, but you raised the price so high. Remember, power generation is regulated. Power plant after power plant after power plant around America moved back to coal.

So now you have the brain trust in the administration saying things like: Well, go buy an electric car. Except that electric car is going to be powered by coal because the dramatically cleaner burning fuel of natural gas you have just made really expensive.

A couple of months ago we came here to the floor and talked about natural gas and the concerns the left has said over it--well, what about methane--showing them some breakthroughs of really inexpensive ways to capture that methane.

There is a rational argument there. Methane is a 9-1, but has only now a shorter half life of what is considered to be a greenhouse gas. Instead of saying, hey, we are going to look for technologies that deal with the problem there, the left's opinion is, well, let's wipe them out because those who invest in green energy finance and write checks to Democrats. The green mafia basically owns the Democrat Party.

Then you go look at other absurdities that is Democrat policy. I am sorry I had to grab an older slide. Do you realize the amount of baseload nuclear we have in this country that is going off line? You do realize over this 10-year period the United States is going to get dirtier? This is even before the left functionally raised the price of natural gas so much that power plants moved back to coal.

We are moving so much clean baseload nuclear off the grid that it doesn't even offset every bit of photovoltaic and wind we have put on the grid.

We give lots of pretty speeches here. We do lots of virtue signaling, but the math is the math is the math. The virtue signaling creating policy has actually raised more greenhouse gases. Look what Germany did by shutting down its baseload nuclear. They now burn massive amounts of coal. They got dirtier.

You have heard speech after speech here today about how much we despise Putin, but we also know his propaganda wing absolutely supported the left's movement to strangle these hydrocarbons. This is what you get when you make crappy policy. It didn't happen overnight. It is going to take us years to fix this mess.

Can I beg the Democrats: Stop hurting people. Stop making the poor poorer. Stop crushing the middle class. Come back to sensibility. Guess what, there might be a bonus there, and that is all the coal that is being burnt, all the dirty imports, you would actually get a benefit of the greenhouse gases, but you got to come back and do math again.

Madam Speaker, I think I am up against my time and I yield back the balance of my time.

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