Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act, 2005
ENERGY AND WATER DEVELOPMENT APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2005 -- (House of Representatives - June 25, 2004)
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 694 and rule XVIII, the Chair declares the House in the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the consideration of the bill, H.R. 4614.
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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, before I speak in support of the Sanders amendment, I would like to applaud the Chairman, Ranking Member and all the members of the subcommittee for their wise decision to eliminate all funding for new nuclear weapons initiatives, including the nuclear bunker buster, mini-nukes, the Modern Pit Facility, and accelerated nuclear test readiness. The committee has taken a farsighted and courageous step toward nuclear sanity by eliminating funding for these wasteful, dangerous and entirely unnecessary programs, and this action will help restore America's nonproliferation credibility around the world.
The Sanders amendment would inject some of that same farsightedness into our allocation of funding for energy research and development by increasing funding for solar, wind, biomass, hydrogen and geothermal renewable energy technology.
President Bush's Fiscal Year 2005 budget request and this legislation take us backward, not forward, in our national investment in the clean, renewable technologies that will power us safely and reliably in the 21st century. In this legislation, renewable energy research and development programs are either cut or flat funded from last year. Mr. Sanders' amendment would ensure that we increase funding for each of the renewable energy programs next year, not cut them.
The amendment would shift $30 million from "Advanced Simulation and Computing" in the nuclear weapons activities program to five renewable energy programs. This cut of $30 million represents less than a five percent of the total $633 million budget for advanced simulation and computing and would leave the program with almost twice as much funding as the total funding for solar and renewable energy research and development.
Renewable energy is good for America. It creates jobs. It lowers electricity prices. It eliminates pollution and waste. It increases our national energy security. But the appropriation levels in front of us suggest that Congress does not consider renewable energy important. If my colleagues believe that renewable energy is important, I urge them to support the Sanders amendment so that funding for renewable energy programs can be increased, not cut, next year.
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