National Coal Council Reestablishment Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. GUTHRIE. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 707, I call up the bill (H.R. 3015) to reestablish the National Coal Council in the Department of Energy to provide advice and recommendations to the Secretary of Energy on matters related to coal and the coal industry, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

The Clerk read the title of the bill.

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Mr. GUTHRIE. 3015.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the National Coal Council Reestablishment Act, introduced by my colleague from Ohio's Sixth District (Mr. Rulli).

This legislation would codify the National Coal Council, an important advisory committee that had aided our Federal Government for 37 years with expertise and technical reports on all matters affecting the coal industry and its workers.

The reestablishment of the National Coal Council couldn't come at a better time. It is no secret that our energy demands are rising. If the demand isn't met with sufficient supply, we risk ceding leadership in the next-generation economy to China, while raising costs on American households along the way.

We are seeing the demand for reliable electricity affect nearly every industry. At the end of the day, electricity policy is technology policy, and electricity policy is manufacturing policy.

There is one source of reliable electricity that has been powering American industry for many years. Coal-powered generation is a key baseload resource that even today can protect against upward price pressures and provide the right type of energy to fuel American innovation and the next-generation industries.

Unfortunately, the previous administration sought to deliberately undermine the financial viability of coal while subsidizing preferred sources like wind, solar, and batteries.

Instead of regulating one industry and subsidizing another to make it competitive, we need to get back to making things affordable in the first place.

The National Coal Council plays a critical role in developing a cohesive national energy strategy that will unleash American energy dominance to lower costs for hardworking households.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 3015, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, we are absolutely concerned about families making ends meet through cheaper electricity. There are also hardworking families in my Commonwealth of Kentucky who work in the coal industry and have been really hurt by the policies that came out of the prior administration.

This has been reinstated by the Trump Presidency. This ensures a future President can't again undo what we experienced in the last 4 years. That is the difference in where we are. That is why it is important that we are doing it.

He is a new member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and I am proud to have him on the committee.

Mr. Speaker, I just want to say that over the next decade, we are going to need 152 gigawatts of power. A gigawatt of power is about what is needed to power the city of Seattle, so 152 Seattles over the next decade is what is estimated.

We are also slated to close 112 gigawatts of power, so we need 152 gigawatts of power in the next decade. It takes years to get any project approved. Hopefully we can speed that up through permitting reform that hopefully we all can work on. However, when you need that much power and you have existing power, then why take it offline?

My understanding--I have had a couple of people bring this coal plant up that was just mentioned--is that the grid needed it for the summer because they were afraid they were not going to have enough power to get through the summer. It wasn't just that the Federal Government forced them to keep it open. The Federal Government allowed them to keep it open.

The first thing we can do to help our fight against China--that is what it is all about. We know either we have the scaling data centers here, or China is going to dominate. That is the only choice.

Europe can't do it. We know what happens if you overregulate and don't produce the energy. That is a good example right there from Europe.

We know we need the power or we are going to lose the great battle of our time of who is going to control AI and supercomputing, eventually quantum computing.

The very first thing we can do to really bridge that power gap is not take power offline. I think it is reasonable to do. I think it is the right thing to do, and I think that it is absolutely what we should do.

Hageman).
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Mr. GUTHRIE. Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, Congressman Rulli, for sponsoring this legislation. It is important. We don't want this to be unestablished. I know it is getting reestablished.

The reason President Trump is having to reestablish it and it is coming soon is because it got unestablished. That is what we are trying to prevent in the future.

Mr. Speaker, I wish the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. McGarvey), my friend and colleague, were still here because I would thank the gentleman for the kind words. He is a good friend with kind words.

I will say that I wish that he were in here just a couple of years ago when he said we haven't spent 1 minute or any time helping the coal miners. There are more retired union coal miners in Kentucky and the surrounding areas than there are current coal miners. Their entire pension system and their healthcare system were based on a time when there were always new people coming in and fewer people going out.

It is upside down now. If my friend had been here, he would have seen in the Longworth Cafeteria or the Rayburn Cafeteria, day in and day out, people with their coal hats on, their miner hats on, their shirts, and a lot of them from Kentucky saying, what am I going to do? This is something I had depended on.

I will tell you, we all worked on it. I will have to say that his constituent, our colleague on the other side of the bill and the leader at the time, Leader McConnell, took that as his issue. I will tell you, if you ask any coal miner, retired coal miner in Kentucky with a pension, a union benefit, retired union benefit, they will tell you who spent time on that issue, who was the leader on that issue.

Leader McConnell used to go around Kentucky when he was campaigning and say things like, Kentucky punches above its weight, and we absolutely did on that. He threw the right punch on that.

Our retired union coal miners have the benefits they have today because in an omnibus or spending bill--I can't remember, probably both together--he put in a provision that preserved their benefits.

When you say we hadn't spent a minute on it, maybe he is talking about right now, but I can tell you we have here in this Congress, the leader absolutely did, and I commend him for that.

Mr. Speaker, I urge support of this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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