Fixing the American Economy
Floor Speech
FIXING THE AMERICAN ECONOMY -- (House of Representatives - March 5, 2009)
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mrs. LUMMIS. I thank the gentle lady from North Carolina and the gentleman from Tennessee for their dialogue. It brought to mind a constituent of mine.
I am from the State of Wyoming, and an Arapaho woman, who is a friend of mine, had a business last summer on the reservation in Wyoming where she was bringing groceries in, trucking groceries into the reservation for easy access and purchase by members of both the Shoshone and Arapaho tribes on the Wind River Indian Reservation. It provided an opportunity for Native Americans to shop on the reservation rather than having to go into town in Riverton or Lander. It provided Native Americans with jobs in trucking and in the grocery business. And she's a wonderful entrepreneur.
When the price of gas reached $4 a gallon, it was not clear that she would be able to keep her grocery business open. She was beginning to cut down on the hours that her employees worked, cut down on the amount of product she had on her shelves. And had those prices continued at that rate, she would have had to have closed her doors making it more expensive for Native Americans to drive to adjacent communities to purchase their groceries. Fortunately, the price of gas dropped.
But since I've come to Congress, and particularly in the last week, I've seen, as a member of the Budget Committee and a member of the Natural Resources Committee, proposals in the President's budget for Cap and Trade legislation that would include $646 billion in new revenue. Now, that new revenue is going to come from the American people.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mrs. LUMMIS. We do. And the gentle lady makes a wonderful point.
These are taxes. These are taxes on the consumers of American energy. So if you have electricity in your home or in your office, or if you drive a vehicle, or if you use electricity or oil or gas or energy of any kind, you will be paying a tax. And that tax will amount to $646 billion in new taxes, which will come out of your pocket.
So 100 percent of the people who use energy in this country will pay 100 percent of the taxes that will be levied pursuant to the Cap and Trade bill.
Now, this means that a typical consumer, in their electric bill in their home, will see about a 62 percent increase in their utility bills. And businesses, small businesses--such as you and the gentleman from Tennessee have been discussing--will see a 100 percent increase. They will see a doubling in their utility rates.
And, of course, other fuels will increase as well, including gasoline--which, once again, makes me recall my friend who brings groceries into the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming and the hardships that will be imposed on regular Americans as a consequence of Cap and Trade legislation.
In addition, the proposed budget by the President includes an enormous array of taxes on the oil and gas industry, which will, once again, be passed on to consumers in America--that is if the industry here survives.
And if the industry here does not survive or cuts back, that will reduce American jobs, it will increase our dependence on foreign sources of oil and gas. It fails to acknowledge that natural gas is the cleanest burning hydrocarbon. And my State of Wyoming, which produces coal, may end up shipping its coal to places like China, which are demanding coal and building new coal-fired power plants.
Now, I learned today in a committee meeting before the Natural Resources Committee from a witness that was brought in at the pleasure of the majority party that if you ceased all economic activity in the United States, Europe and Japan combined and did absolutely nothing, that unless China, India and Russia changed their ways, we'll see no reduction in carbon emissions--which is to say we could completely cease all economic activity in Europe, the U.S. and Japan and still, because of the carbon emissions and the increases in carbon emissions that are occurring in China, Russia and India, there will be no reduction in carbon emissions.
So, in other words, we are not going to be able to influence. By hurting our own economy, reducing our own jobs, taxing our own people, we're not going be able to reduce carbon emissions.
So, consequently, we need to look at the benefits of these programs that are being proposed in the President's budget and compare them to the costs. And I can tell you based on what I saw today in budget presentations in the Budget Committee and testimony in the Natural Resources Committee that the benefits of reducing carbon emissions in the United States, Europe and Japan are not recovered, and the cost is borne by the American people.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source