American Clean Energy And Security Act Of 2009

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. LATTA. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Madam Speaker, I rise today in opposition to this massive national energy tax.

You know, we are all for clean energy. And Republicans have put forth an all-of-the-above strategy, and that's the strategy we need to do in this country. We can't pick winners and losers.

I represent a very interesting district in Ohio. Not only do I represent the largest manufacturing district in the State of Ohio, I represent the largest agricultural district. Ohio uses 87 percent of its coal for our generation. What this bill is going to do is kill jobs in Ohio, and we are struggling right now. It's tough.

One of the things that a lot of people don't realize out there because we have so few farmers out there that are left, less than 1 percent in Ohio, is that we have so many of our farmers, my relatives included, that not only work a full day on the farm, but they go out and work all night on another job. But we've got to have jobs going both ways parallel with each other.

This bill is not going to help these people out there. This bill is going to kill jobs across this country. And when the Secretary of Agriculture was before us not too long ago, I posed this question: Is China going to comply with what we're going to do? And the answer was, Well, maybe not this month, or maybe not next month, but it's going to happen.

The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman's time has expired.

Mr. LUCAS. I yield the gentleman an additional 15 seconds.

Mr. LATTA. We can't put the American farmer behind the proverbial eight ball. We've got to be able to compete against the world, and this bill is going to kill that ability to do that.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source