Energy Independence Is A Matter Of National Security
Floor Speech
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Mr. TONKO. Thank you, Representative McMahon. It's a pleasure to join with you and with our colleagues from Ohio and Maryland in dealing with the facts of the matter and not with the fiction.
I know that you had earlier gone through the mathematics and the calculations of the impact, as reported by the opposition in the House, as to what this is costing us. To take claim of $3,100 and basing it on a study done where the author has said you have misapplied that information from the MIT study and to grossly inflate it at $3,100 when, more appropriately, it's between the range of $65 and $80, it has an impact on a family. Then the author further addresses it by saying that it needs to be additionally calibrated to go toward the final package that was passed by the House, which has an even lesser impact. Yet leave that aside, and talk about the cost of doing nothing.
Many people will lament, I'm certain, in each one of our districts, as we travel through our districts, about the job loss, about the exportation, and about the offshore/across the shore of American jobs. Well, no one is there to talk about that same impact of sending $400 billion a year to regimes that are unfriendly, that are terrorist in nature, that are certainly not the most secure or stable governments in the world, and we're supplying $400 billion a year. That is the cost today. That is a tax. Call it what you want. It is a tax on the American public. We can go forward and address, in a more secure and energy-independent manner, the sort of solutions that will then grow American jobs. American clean energy jobs are what this whole proposal is about. So it speaks to our sustainable quality that we can encourage that which allows us to grow energy security.
How so?
Well, the Union of Concerned Scientists has said that the renewable electricity standards in our package in the House version will produce well over 300,000 jobs. Then we also have the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy that is talking about energy efficiency standards that are, again, part and parcel to this package that will grow over 225,000 jobs.
So there, just in a sampling of what can happen, you see how American jobs begin to grow and how they get cultivated from this very aspect of legislation. Those are real jobs. Those are factual bits of information that need to be exchanged and shared with the American public.
People know that our destiny here is controllable by our own actions. They know that. They want us to go forward. They want us to grow this green energy market. They want us to be able to respond in analytical terms where we embrace the intellectual capacity of this Nation and where we grow those technical jobs. There are incentives in this legislation. There are those underpinnings of support to, again, foster those kinds of jobs so that we can stretch this innovation economy and so that we can enhance the number of jobs that are science-and-tech related or are coming through ancillary forces out there that further extrapolate the good outcome and that grow the jobs that are so essential.
American jobs producing American power to then retrofit all of that activity into the American job market: manufacturing, making it more efficient.
We want to keep jobs here. Let's produce a package that retrofits American manufacturing centers to allow them to produce a product wisely, more effectively, efficiently, and then, yes, more competitively in the global market. It all begins with sound energy policy.
They don't want to face those facts. They just want to use applications of fear and say it will cost every family $3,100 when they have been defied in that statement by the very author of the study they cite. That is unacceptable, and the public deserves better than that. They deserve the facts that show how we can grow jobs, how we can create United States' jobs--American jobs--and how we can make us a global technology leader. We need to do it so that we can compete globally. If we're not creating these products, if we're not implementing those sorts of changes, we're falling drastically behind places like China, Germany and Japan, and we can continue to list those countries. It's imperative that we do this.
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Mr. TONKO. It is a pleasure to join with all of my colleagues in this colloquy.
Just yesterday and today in this Nation's Capital, a number of people got to meet the Apollo crew. They got to shake hands with astronauts that made history. They set foot on the Moon. We won a space race that took and demanded a huge investment by this Nation in science, technology, in growing our intellectual capacity, in creating a vision, in stating in bold measure how we were going to reach that goal.
We're at that same moment of challenge. Just think of it. If we had allowed defectors that perhaps divided us or shared misinformation or preached politics of fear, we perhaps wouldn't have won that race. And that was so critically valuable and important to the American Nation, to Americans at large.
That same sort of challenge, that sort of boldness of leadership, the demands for truthful exchange are upon us today, and to grow these opportunities, we'll deal with the facts. And I'm impressed by this House for the leadership and the membership that has really embraced that sort of factual information and advanced an agenda like the legislation that we're proposing and promoting here this evening.
You know, when we look at situations, as Representative Boccieri made comment, we can grow jobs but we can also grow intellect. We need to grow the brain trust of this Nation. This measure invests in that development of the human infrastructure. And certainly when Representative Kratovil talked about previous administrations through the decades talking about reducing our demands on foreign importation of oil, 60 percent of what we consume today imported from some of the most troubled spots in the world with unstable governments, it's more than that. We have a gluttonous dependency.
Efficiency can reduce the demand side, and for far too long we did not have a comprehensive energy policy in this Nation. We addressed only the supply side and ignored the demand side. Well, now we're talking about both sides of that equation: producing our own supplies and reducing per capita usage of that precious resource. That's what this is about.
Now we talk about innovation. We talk about growing those jobs. All of us have cited moments in history that have inspired us. I represent the city of Schenectady in upstate New York, dubbed the city that lights and hauls the world. Just over a century ago, they were the epicenter of invention and innovation. They allowed the world to be changed by the simple dynamics of creative genius in that location and an outstanding workforce. Blue collar, white collar workers that rolled up their sleeves and got the job done.
Over a century later, we're at that same point where we need an energy revolution. This Nation is poised for that sort of development. Are we going to walk away? I don't think so. I think it's that boldness of leadership that will bring us to the point that we need to be.
And speaking of GE, as a center in that city of Schenectady, they are already inspired by this legislation because we have advanced within the framework and the multiple needs that are addressed by this legislation, battery innovation, advanced battery manufacturing, batteries that can respond to energy generation, batteries that can respond to storage of intermittent power like wind and solar, and batteries that can address transportation sectors, both heavy fleets and lighter fleets. They have a battery application that they believe can respond to those multiple needs.
And they have proposed, at a press conference, to be the site in my district to do advanced battery manufacturing. They are competing for the dollars that are part of this package if it is successful and certainly working on the input that came from the stimulus package, from the Recovery Act.
Working with those applications, they want to go forward and make certain that we can build in this State of mine, in New York State, and your State, Michael, in a way that will have 350 to 400 jobs in the manufacturing sector of advanced batteries. That is progress. That is stability. That is security. That is a greening up of thinking. That is job growth. That is intellectual capacity that is stretched to a far greater degree.
And think of it again. 40 years ago this week, we accomplished our goal because we committed to that goal. We didn't stand up in a House of Representatives and deny
the facts or twist the facts or reject the truth. It all began with an honest exchange, and that's what we're doing here. We're going the make certain that the facts are addressed.
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