Lower Energy Costs Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. STANSBURY. Madam Chair, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Bonamici).

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Ms. STANSBURY. Madam Chair, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Oregon.

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Ms. STANSBURY. Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Beyer).

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Ms. STANSBURY. Madam Chair, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Frost).

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Ms. STANSBURY. Mr. Chair, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Kamlager-Dove).

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Ms. STANSBURY. Mr. Chair, I yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Huffman).

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Ms. STANSBURY. Mr. Chairman, I rise today to ensure that the American people and every single New Mexican back home in my home State knows exactly what this bill is all about.

H.R. 1 is not a bill to cut costs and unlock American energy. H.R. 1 is a blatant giveaway of public lands, public waters, and public minerals to the highest bidder.

It guts environmental laws, it opens oil and gas leasing to mining and multinational companies, and it will send our communities and our laws back to the 19th century--the 19th century--to 1847 specifically, when we opened the West through the hardrock mining law to minerals claims and multinational corporations, who took advantage of our communities, who dumped tailings piles into our rivers and our streams, and who strip-mined sacred and ancestral lands of our indigenous communities.

That is right. This bill would take us back before the automobile was invented, before we had electricity, before women had the right to vote in this country, and before New Mexico even became a territory of the United States when our communities, lands, and waters were stripped away from them and given to the highest bidder.

So let me be clear: This legislation is not about lowering costs. It is not about lessening the burden at the pump. It is not about lowering costs for our families.

These are just talking points that have been provided by fossil fuel and mining companies and by their allies across the aisle who see the opportunity to strip away environmental regulations and vast amounts of public resources, lands, and waters for private profit.

In fact, this bill will increase the deficit, robbing our communities of more than a century of hard-fought environmental wins to protect our lands and waters.

That is why House Democrats have a clear message today: Not on our watch.

Let's be clear and talk exactly about what this bill is and does. My friends, Mr. Chairman, on the other side of the aisle want to claim that this bill will create jobs, that more drilling and mining will lower costs, and that it is going to somehow magically solve our global critical mineral shortage.

Let me be clear, as somebody whose parents worked in the energy industry. My father was a welder in the oil and gas fields; my mother, a crane mechanic at a coal-fired power plant.

As somebody who spent over two decades of my career working on natural resources issues, let me say it loud and clear: We cannot mine and drill our way to solve these problems.

In fact, this bill not only does not help our communities but puts our Nation and our planet at risk. Scientists from across the world released a report just last week that made clear that if we do not take significant action right now to curb global emissions, we will cross a global tipping point and catastrophic global climate change.

This bill would threaten our global planetary health. In fact, this legislation, which the President has already said he would veto, would open vast swaths of our land and our water to oil and gas drilling, to mining, not to lower costs, but to line the pockets of wealthy oil companies.

In the name of streamlining, it would gut environmental laws like the National Environmental Policy Act, a piece of bipartisan legislation that Richard Nixon signed; the Clean Water Act; the Clean Air Act.

It would gut protections for our communities to be able to actually have a say in what happens in their own lands and waters. It would make it easier for large corporations to pollute and dump toxins without consequence.

Finally, this legislation not only does not lower costs but raises the deficit by billions of dollars.

So I ask the American people and I ask New Mexicans: Is this what you want Congress working on, a 175-page bill filled with thinly veiled corporate giveaways that gut our environmental laws, that cut our communities out, and that would line the pockets of private corporations?

No. The American people want clean air. They want clean water. They want climate action. They want a planet that they can leave to their children.

That is why Democrats and the President fought to pass the Inflation Reduction Act just a few months ago in this Chamber.

That bill makes the largest investment in climate action ever in the history of this country and ever in the history of this planet.

Our bill, the bill we passed to address the global climate crisis, will create millions of jobs. It will rebuild our infrastructure and our local economies.

It will invest in our communities and the resilience of our ecosystems. It will reduce household costs like our friends across the aisle are trying to claim with this giveaway bill.

Guess what? It reduces the deficit, all while putting us on a path to cutting carbon emissions in this country by 40 percent by 2030.

Guess what else happened? Not a single Republican in this Chamber voted for that bill. Not one. Not one Member on the other side of the aisle voted to lower costs, voted for a clean energy future, voted to protect the environment, voted to protect our communities.

We cannot drill and mine our way to a clean energy and climate secure future.

Mr. Chairman, we cannot afford to pass H.R. 1.

We cannot afford to send our communities back to the 19th century. We cannot afford to let private companies deforest and strip-mine our lands.

We cannot afford to go back to a time when rivers were on fire, and companies dumped toxins into our groundwater with impunity.

That is why I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this legislation because the path is clear. We must take climate action now and build a clean energy economy and leave a livable planet for our communities, for the future, and for our Nation.

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