Calculating Your Share Of ``Cap-And-Trade''

Floor Speech

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Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. Well, I thank the gentleman from Missouri. Your overview of this, your reference to real science is refreshing. In the debate and most of the debate of the majority party here, it's not so much based on real science as political science or even, to some degree, science fiction. And so, to look at why this--and I looked at every piece of legislation in terms of cost benefits. And when we look at the benefits of this, I think human activity, it's acknowledged, does contribute towards carbon dioxide emissions. But it's less than 4 percent. To put that into perspective, forest fires, wildfires contribute 10 percent of CO2 emissions. And so not even with the debate of, you know, are we warming the Earth or not warming the Earth, there's a lot of smart folks out there that are publishing research or earning their dissertations based on debating that science. But what the experts agree upon, the researchers agree is, human activity is less than 4 percent contributes towards CO2 emissions.

You know, in terms of the cap-and-trade, cap-and-tax that we're discussing----

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Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. I think the gentleman points out an important point. These are all based on models and strictly speculation.

Mr. AKIN. Some of the models said that we're going to have surf at the front steps of the Capitol pretty soon. I was really looking forward to that.

Go ahead. I yield.

Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. Well, and the purpose overall of this is to really eliminate all energy other than green energy. And today, I mean, the energy sources that are only seen as viable by the majority party under cap-and-tax are, frankly, solar and wind. And today, that represents less than 1 percent of meeting our energy needs in this country.

So say we work real hard and we give it that Manhattan Project, and we absolutely double that, the energy capacity of solar and wind, well, that's 2 percent. We still have a huge gap that this country has that we need to be able to fuel our vehicles, heat our homes.

And I'm from a very rural district. The folks in my area, we have some pretty harsh, frigid winters, and we need to heat our homes. We commute in my home for work, for groceries. You know, frankly, a lot of folks in my area commute just to pick up their mail. And the cost of cap-and-tax, I believe, is projected, well, with, just on gasoline alone to increase by over 70 percent.

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Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. Sure. I think the important baseline on that 17.5 percent unemployment today in the country of Spain is the fact that, when cap-and-trade was instituted, it was 7 percent. Unemployment was 7 percent.

Mr. AKIN. So they've driven it up 10 percent.

Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. Over 10 percentage points is the outcome. Those really are the only two major outcomes that I see of cap-and-trade--higher unemployment and higher energy costs.

In terms of the job losses, that's what this bill is all about. This is a jobs bill. They're correct on that part; but, unfortunately, it's a job loss bill. You know, they talk about all of the green jobs that were created in Spain as a part of cap-and-trade and the proposal of cap-and-trade here to create jobs. Well, in Spain, for every 10 green jobs that were created, mostly related to solar or to wind, only one was sustainable within that economy by the industry that paid for that job and for its implementation. As my colleague from Louisiana talked about, nine out of those 10 jobs are still around today because the country of Spain doesn't want to see unemployment driven higher.

So how do they hang onto those nine out of 10 jobs? It's a subsidy bubble. There are tens of billions of dollars annually that the country of Spain has to infuse into the alternative energy industry so that it doesn't drive their unemployment up over 20 percentage points. You think about what this does to cost. There is no industry that will go untouched. Any industry that uses energy--and that's all of them--is going to see significant energy increases and costs. Today, especially in these economic times and even in the best of times, to be competitive globally and to have our costs be put up by--I don't know--say 30 percent or more, that totally makes us uncompetitive within the world.

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Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. Well, thank you, sir.

You mentioned natural gas. We could talk all evening on different types of manufacturing that utilize natural gas, not just as a process for heating and for energy but also as an ingredient. Natural gas is a key component in almost any type of manufacturing. I want to just focus briefly on two.

You know, some of the folks who help feed us are our family farms throughout the Nation; and I don't care what they're raising or what they're growing, many of those family farms use processes that use natural gas, specifically with fertilizer for growing crops--for growing our food. It feeds this Nation. When we see under the cap-and-trade of natural gas, it's clean. It's a very clean fossil fuel, but it's a fossil fuel that's going to be punished and penalized under cap-and-trade. We're going to raise the cost of food for America because of cap-and-trade and feel the impact of taxing the use of natural gas on our farmers.

Mr. AKIN. Just reclaiming my time, you know, I've got a chart I'd like to talk to you about because we figured out what the size of this tax is. You take the average per family, and we're going to go in a minute and take a look at what it is going to cost the average family every year for the next 8 years for this $1.2 trillion tax increase.

We've been joined by another doctor, a medical doctor but also a guy who graduated from high school science as well, from Georgia, my good friend, Congressman Gingrey.

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Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. Absolutely. I appreciate that.

I mean, this is a tax that hits everybody and everything, every business, every industry, every family, and it's a tax on everyone. And I tell you, the folks, I tell you what makes it an immoral tax is the fact that it taxes those folks who are just now maybe getting by paycheck to paycheck, those people that work hard every day and do their best and they're just making it. You know, what they bring in income, they're putting out on bills. And in Pennsylvania because our electricity, 60 percent of it comes from coal, we have about 35, 38 percent that comes from nuclear and nuclear's taxed. Even though there's no CO2 emissions, under cap-and-trade, nuclear is going to be taxed the same way.

Mr. AKIN. Just stop for a minute. That just absolutely dumbfounds me. The whole point of this deal is not to make any CO2 supposedly, so we are going to tax the nuclear power plant that doesn't make any CO2. What's the logic of that?

Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. One of my opening comments was the fact that it is refreshing to be here debating real science versus political science or science fiction. And here's the thing: The alternatives are out there. Republicans have been working hard. We've got an energy solutions group. We've been putting that out there. During the district days, we were in Pittsburgh and Indiana and out in the West Coast, and we were talking about a better solution for America. We've been hitting on parts of it tonight.

I view that that solution would provide us an energy margin. You know, what is it, 9 months ago where gas was pushing $4 or $5 a gallon? And gas prices are going up now again, and yet we're furthering our dependence on foreign oil. The President has shut off the tax deductions for domestic drilling and shut down areas in this country for domestic drilling, including through the Forest Service, an area in my district, Allegheny National Forest, really slowed down to a screeching halt new drilling.

And we could have an energy margin with the proposals put forward by the Republican Party that will allow us to have the domestic energy resources so that in the future when there's a hurricane, or where a foreign country that we have been dependent on for our energy resources decides to shut down that flow or some other catastrophic attack, we actually have an energy margin where our energy prices remain stable. And that's good for America. That's the type of energy policy Americans expect.

I'm actually blessed here standing between two physicians. I'd like to take the opportunity to call on their expertise--I worked in health care myself in rehab for about 28 years, but not as a physician--to get their diagnostic opinion on this. This is all in the name of green, greening America, specifically solar and hydro, but in terms of the economy, the other green that comes to mind is gangrene. And I just would defer that, though, to my colleagues who are physicians to have a better feel for that.

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