Hands Off Our Home Appliances Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. KELLY of Pennsylvania. Mr. Chair, I offered this amendment with Representative Hudson and Representative Balderson to stop the wrongheaded rule that the Department of Energy finalized which threatens the use of grain-oriented electrical steel in our distribution transformers.

Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Joyce).

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Mr. KELLY of Pennsylvania. Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. KELLY of Pennsylvania. Mr. Chair, I thank the gentleman for his remarks. I am not sure where he gathered that information, but it is totally false, which is normal here.

The sole remaining domestic producer of grain-oriented electrical steel is in my hometown of Butler, Pennsylvania, and it is represented by 1,300 union workers from UAW 3303, which my colleague has referenced. He should have been in Butler with me when almost 500 of them showed up to protest what was happening with the elimination of grain-oriented electrical steel.

This rule threatens the long-term viability of the mill. The mill in Butler produces grain-oriented electrical steel for distribution transformers, and I brought a picture of it because most people don't know what we are talking about. Mr. Chair, if you are driving down the road and see a telephone pole with this gray canister on it, that is a distribution transformer. Inside it is a product called grain-oriented electrical steel.

That product, by the way, works at 98-percent efficiency. The other side would like to replace it with something called amorphous steel, which if you compare the two, only one is actually steel. Grain- oriented electrical steel is actually steel. Amorphous looks like tinfoil.

Our product is 98-percent efficient. If you transfer over to amorphous steel, you are looking at a load capacity of 80 percent, which is dangerous, while a traditional GOES transformer can run with a 120 percent load capacity.

The market for these transformers is at an all-time high. Why in the world would we go away from something that is domestically produced in Butler, Pennsylvania, for a product that is not produced in America, cannot serve the needs that are there, and cannot meet the market demands for some type of a wrongheaded idea that we must go with this new product.

Listen to fact versus fiction. This transformer with grain-oriented electrical steel, domestic steel, is produced in Butler, Pennsylvania, by 1,300 union workers, with each union job supporting an estimated seven local jobs in my hometown. The elimination of this product would eliminate that town.

Have we not learned enough over the years that when we turn away from a domestic-produced product and rely on a foreign source for it, that somehow in the end we don't have the product and capacity that we need.

We have dumb-headed rule after dumb-headed rule in some type of a made-up, fantasy world where somehow this is better. It is not better.

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Mr. KELLY of Pennsylvania. Mr. Chair, may I inquire as to the time remaining.

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Mr. KELLY of Pennsylvania. Mr. Chair, here we are again in a situation where it is ``he said, she said,'' or ``you said, I said.'' I challenge anybody who has not been to a mill and actually watched the production of steel to sit on this floor and say they have a better product because they say it is a better product.

The distribution of electricity is critical in our homes, businesses, and towns across the Nation. The last remaining domestic producer of grain-oriented electrical steel, which is the product inside all of these transformers, is made in one mill in one town in America, not in some strange place across the oceans that says we will provide you with this if we can.

Why do we keep turning away from domestic production and thinking that somehow, someplace, somewhere, somebody else is going to provide it for us? That is wrongheaded and just makes absolutely no sense.

Mr. Chair, I encourage my colleagues to please go in these mills, look at these canisters that are on the telephone poles, and understand that is how we push electricity from one point to the next. This isn't fantasy. This is the truth of what is going on.

Mr. Chair, I ask my colleagues to take down the rule that is there now and vote for this amendment. It is the only way we can save electrical transformers in America. Please vote for American products.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

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