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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AMENDMENT NO. 5 OFFERED BY MR. SANDERS
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.
The CHAIRMAN. The Clerk will designate the amendment.
The text of the amendment is as follows:
Amendment No. 5 offered by Mr. Sanders:
Page 19, line 14, after the dollar amount, insert the following: "(increased by $30,000,000)".
Page 23, line 5, after the dollar amount, insert the following: "(reduced by $30,000,000)".
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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Chairman, let me begin by thanking the gentleman from Ohio (Chairman HOBSON) and the gentleman from Indiana (Ranking Member VISCLOSKY) for all of their hard work on this important legislation.
The amendment that I am offering is cosponsored by the gentleman from New York (Mr. Hinchey) and the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) and the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur).
Mr. Chairman, this amendment deals, in fact, with one of the important issues of our time, and that is, whether the United States Government will take the bold step to break our dependency on fossil fuels, break our dependency on nuclear power and move forward as aggressively as we can into the new world of safe, clean, cost-effective, sustainable energy.
The truth is that we have made some progress in recent years, but the truth also is that we have a long, long way to go; and this amendment will help us move in that direction.
Mr. Chairman, specifically, the legislative intent of this amendment is to increase funding for renewable energy programs such as solar energy, wind, biomass, clean hydrogen, and geothermal by $30 million, to be offset by a decrease of $30 million in funding for the nuclear weapons advance simulation and computing program in the weapons activities budget. That offset, by the way, is a decrease of less than 5 percent for this program and a tiny fraction of the $6.5 billion for weapons that are funded in this bill.
Mr. Chairman, this amendment would bolster critical research and development so that we can deliver unlimited clean energy for generations to come. Improving the technology for sustainable energy is a huge step forward in protecting our environment,
improving our economy and making this world a safer place so that our foreign policy is not significantly dictated by energy needs.
Mr. Chairman, this amendment is supported by every major environmental organization in the country, including the League of Conservation Voters, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, American Rivers, U.S. PIRG and Public Citizen.
Mr. Chairman, if one looks at the big picture, it is clear that we are on the cusp of a historic opportunity to move from finite polluting fossil fuels to abundant, nonpolluting, clean energy sources that can be developed, refined, and manufactured here in the United States of America, not in the Mideast. The potential for these technologies is without limits as long as we adequately fund the research and development now.
The programs increased under this amendment, solar, wind, clean hydrogen, biomass and geothermal, offer our country a new path of abundant clean energy that will revolutionize our impact on this planet.
Passage of this amendment would send a message to the Nation that we are going to take the right path, that we are going to break from our destructive fossil fuel habits of the past and commit to a sane, clean, and cost effective energy future. When taken together, the funding for renewable energy sources in this bill falls $31.6 million below the President's own request. So this amendment for $30 million simply brings us up to what the President wants, which is, by no means, a radical concept.
Certainly we can add a modest amount of money to research, develop, discriminate and disseminate these technologies, which will prevent smog, acid rain, and global climate change. Certainly we can redirect a mere $30 million in a bill of over $28 billion to R&D that promises to dramatically reduce lung damaging sulfur dioxide and neurotoxic mercury in the air we breathe and the water we drink.
For those who might wonder whether we are already doing enough to support renewable energy, let me put our Government's support for different energy sources in historic perspective. From 1943 through 1999, cumulative Federal Government subsidies to nuclear photovoltaic, solar thermal and wind electric generating technologies, excluding hydropower, totaled about $151 billion. The nuclear industry received $145 billion, or over 96 percent of the subsidies.
Remarkably, even the alternative technology available today, which has been subsidized at a fraction of the amount we have historically thrown at nuclear power and fossil fuels, is competitive in the market and can eliminate substantial amounts of toxins from the air. If it is competitive in the marketplace today, let us think about what we can do if we adequately fund research.
In solar, we are making significant progress, but we are not funding solar any more today than we did in 1993. In wind, we are making progress, making real efforts to lower the cost of generating electricity from wind, but we are not adequately funding wind. Biomass, in my State of Vermont, 23 schools are now heated with wood chips. We are making progress. But everybody understands we can do a lot more. Geothermal the same, hydrogen the same.
Mr. Chairman, this is a modest amendment, but it is an important step forward in telling the world that we understand that a revolution can happen in breaking our dependency on fossil fuels, on nuclear power, and moving forward to clean, safe, sustainable energy.
Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I will close in a minute by saying that what we are talking about here is not a huge sum of money. It is $30 million. And one can always argue that where you take the money there is a reason for that money, and I respect that. But I think the evidence is overwhelming that we are on the cusp of major breakthroughs which can change our entire use of energy in this country and lead us and the entire world to move toward clean, sustainable energy and away from nuclear power, of which we do not know how to dispose of today, and away from fossil fuels, which are causing so many serious environmental problems.
So this amendment is not just a $30 million amendment, but I think it is an indication of the sentiment of this Congress to tell the American people and the world that we are prepared to go forward in a bold new way with huge potential, and so I would urge support for this amendment.
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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
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