SBIR/STTR Reauthorization Act of 2011
Floor Speech
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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, in a couple of hours from now the Senate will vote on the Inhofe-McConnell amendment which would prevent the EPA from moving forward with dangerous--I said ``dangerous,'' but certainly harmful to business and certainly costly--greenhouse gas regulations. I would hope my colleagues in the Senate will support that amendment for a number of reasons because it bears heavily on one of the great debates we are having in the country today. I think the American people must find it confusing--I certainly do--when you get all these mixed signals coming from the elected leaders in Washington, DC.
The American people must be incredibly confused because the President has said--rhetorically, at least, he has talked about the need to reduce our dependence, our dangerous dependence, upon foreign energy. He talked recently about getting the number of barrels of oil we import every day down by one-third at the end of this decade. The fact is, we do spend $1 billion every single day on foreign oil. There is $1 billion we export from this country because of the addiction we have to foreign sources of energy.
The problem is, everything this administration is doing is contrary to that goal. If we look at policies that are coming out of Washington, DC, right now, today, they completely contradict this idea that we ought to be moving toward energy independence and getting away from this dangerous dependence we have on foreign sources of energy.
I will make a couple of points.
We have, of course, in the Gulf of Mexico the so-called permitorium. We have not been issuing permits to explore, to continue the work that is being done down there in terms of energy exploration. The Outer Continental Shelf has been put off limits by this administration, and many Federal lands where there are abundant energy resources have also been placed off limits. In fact, there were some areas that had been developed or where there were going to be permits issued for exploration in some of the States in the West where we know we have abundant energy resources that have now been repealed or pulled back by the administration--just
recently, 77 in the State of Utah, 1 in the State of Montana. We have enormous resources right here in our own country we could be developing that would get us away from sending this $1 billion a day, every single day, to countries around the world because of our addiction to energy.
The other thing tried in the Congress last year was a cap-and-trade bill. It passed the House of Representatives. It passed narrowly. It was never voted upon in the Senate because there wasn't political support for it. That legislation would have also dramatically increased the cost of energy in this country, making it more expensive for our small businesses to run their operations, and imposed dramatically higher electricity and fuel costs on American consumers. That was a given. I think everybody conceded that was the case. But because there wasn't political support for it on Capitol Hill, it ended up not becoming law.
What we have now coming out of the EPA is essentially a cap-and-trade bill through the back door. The EPA has decided they will do by regulation what they could not get done--the administration could not get done--through the political process in Congress.
The point I wish to make about that is the cap-and-trade bill, which was widely debated and discussed at the time, would have driven up energy costs for people in this country. This proposal by the EPA would have the exact same impact and effect. In fact, if one is concerned about economic growth and job creation, which we all should be--Lord knows, when we have almost 9 percent unemployment and lots of people in this country looking for work, that ought to be our No. 1 priority--the fact that we would be putting policies in place that would be counter to creating jobs and getting capital deployed out there in our economy probably defies explanation, at least for most Americans.
In fact, the American Council for Capital Formation projects that the uncertainty created by the EPA's climate change regulations would increase the risk premium of capital by 30 to 40 percent.
The additional uncertainty is projected to reduce U.S. capital investment by as much as $400 billion per year.
So I would argue that if we are serious about creating jobs, if we are serious about growing the economy, why would we want to sideline hundreds of billions of dollars of capital every single year because of these onerous and costly regulations?
This is a major reason why there is $2 trillion today sitting on the sidelines. It is talked about a lot, but nobody seems to be concerned about changing that. What I hear repeatedly from those who are able to invest and have capital to put to work is, they don't like the economic uncertainty coming out of Washington. In most cases, if not in every case, it is focused on these regulations, on regulatory agencies, particularly the EPA, that continue to come up with new proposals to drive up the cost of doing business in this country.
There was a Charles River Associates study which projected the EPA's cap-and-trade regulations could increase wholesale electricity costs by 35 to 45 percent and reduce average worker compensation by $700 per year.
What is unfortunate about this whole situation is that the regulations will drive up energy and gasoline prices the most for middle- and low-income families. That is where the impact is going to be most felt.
Roger Bezdek, who is the former Director of the Bureau of Economic Analysis at the U.S. Department of Commerce, concluded recently that EPA's regulations:
..... will impact low income groups, the elderly, and minorities disproportionately, both because they have lower incomes to begin with, but also because they have to spend proportionately more of their income on energy, and rising energy costs inflict great harm on these groups.
I would go on to point out that perhaps the greatest burden of increased energy costs resulting from these new greenhouse gas regulations will fall upon the elderly Social Security recipients who represent 20 percent of all households in this country and who depend primarily on fixed incomes. They have limited opportunity to increase their earnings from employment. They get hit the hardest. What these regulations are going to do is target and hit the people who can least afford to deal with them.
So we have an opportunity to do something about that. I think what we are seeing with the EPA and many of these government agencies is an example of overreach, which is a function, in my view, of bureaucracies that have gotten too big. We all talk about government. There is going to be, I think--I hope, at least--a great debate over the next couple years as we address this issue of spending and debt, about the size of government and how much government intervention we ought to have, and I think most Americans have concluded that government has gotten too big and it has grown too fast. Perhaps the greatest example is these Federal agencies that have this tremendous propensity to want to regulate everything they can out there, to the detriment of many of our small businesses and those who are trying to create jobs.
As an example of how much our government has grown, the historical average for this country and what we spend on the Federal Government as a percentage of our total economy, as a percentage of our GDP, is about 20.6 percent. This year, it is over 25 percent. So the government continues to expand, continues to grow relative to the economy. The private economy continues, by virtue of comparison, to shrink. We ought to be looking at what we can do to grow the private economy, what we can do to create jobs, what we can do to create economic growth in this country as opposed to the things that are being done to expand government.
The solution we have put forward today, the Inhofe-McConnell amendment, is--there has been a lot of discussion about what it would or wouldn't do, but I wish to point out for my colleagues some things it would not do because it does get at the heart of this issue, which is preventing the EPA from moving forward with these costly and burdensome regulations.
There are a number of things it does not do. It does not prohibit States from regulating greenhouse gases and addressing climate change. The amendment expressly allows States to keep existing policies in place and allows States to regulate greenhouse gas emissions as they see fit. The bill also makes clear that any changes States have adopted in their State implementation programs and title V operating permit programs pertaining to greenhouse gases are not federally enforceable.
The McConnell amendment does not overturn the agreement between the White House, California, the automakers, the EPA, and the Department of Transportation on greenhouse gas emissions from cars. A lot has been made out of that issue. That is something the McConnell amendment does not do. In fact, the amendment expressly preserves the auto agreement and the most recently enacted fuel efficiency standards.
In 2017 and beyond, the amendment ensures that any future national auto regulations concerning greenhouse gases will be decided by Congress, which, frankly, is where it should be decided, which is why this overreach is such an example of big government gone bad.
The McConnell amendment does not overturn clean air and public health protections under the Clean Air Act. The amendment maintains all the Clean Air Act's provisions to protect the public from harmful pollution. Thousands of Clean Air Act regulations would remain untouched by this amendment. Certainly, this amendment does not, as has been suggested, gut the Clean Air Act. In fact, it is the contrary.
The amendment does, however, clarify that Congress never gave the EPA the authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases for climate change purposes. That responsibility, as I said before, lies and should lie with the Congress.
Finally, the McConnell amendment does not stop the U.S. Government from taking any action to address climate change. The amendment puts Congress in charge of U.S. climate and energy policy. Also, the bill expressly preserves Federal
research development and demonstration programs addressing climate change.
So if Democrats in Congress want to enact climate change regulations, I would encourage them to bring a climate change bill to the floor. This is where it should be debated, by the people's representatives, not decided by bureaucrats in some Federal agency, which is what the EPA regulations would, in effect, do.
There are a number of amendments that have been offered by our Democratic colleagues which I would describe as political cover amendments. They are hearing the same thing we are from their small businesses, from agricultural groups, and from consumers across this country about what these regulations would do and how they would adversely impact electricity and fuel costs in this country. So they are trying to give themselves some cover to be able to vote for something.
I wish to point out that all these other amendments being offered by our Democratic colleagues as alternatives to the Inhofe-McConnell amendment don't get the job done. We talked a little bit and we heard a little bit earlier today about the Rockefeller amendment, which has the 2-year delay in it. But, again, there is a very limited scope to that amendment. The temporary nature of the amendment is going to provide very little relief for businesses and consumers across this country. If it is enacted, permits for new projects and the jobs associated with those projects could be stalled until after the 2-year period. There is no assurance that any of these permits would be issued during this 2-year period when this amendment would be in effect.
The Rockefeller amendment would not stop or delay other EPA methods for increasing energy prices, such as the national ambient air quality standard for CO
2. The Rockefeller amendment does not prevent climate change nuisance suits sponsored by environmental activist groups hostile to energy development.
I can say the same thing essentially about some of the other proposals out there. The Stabenow amendment also has a 2-year delay, but it allows EPA to continue moving forward with rulemaking. It just wouldn't allow them to finalize those rules until the end of the 2-year period. If the amendment is enacted, permits for new projects and the jobs associated with those projects could again be stalled until the end of that 2-year period.
There are a number of flaws in all these amendments, none of which are designed to do the job. If we are serious about doing something to address what the consumer groups, the farm organizations, and the business organizations are asking us to do; that is, to prevent the EPA from moving forward with something they don't have the statutory authority to do and should be reserved for the Congress, but they are going to move forward with it anyway--if we are serious about addressing that issue, the only alternative is to support the Inhofe-McConnell amendment. It is that simple. It is that straightforward. All these political cover amendments that are being offered by our Democratic colleagues are simply that. They are cover amendments and they don't get at the heart of the issue.
I would again go back to where I started; that is, to say we ought to, in this country, be seriously debating policies that will move us away from the dangerous dependence we have on foreign energy. As I said earlier, every policy coming out of Washington, in my view, is designed to make it more difficult to develop the very energy sources that will create a domestic energy supply in this country that would release us from this grip that foreign countries have on us with regard to energy.
I hope the Inhofe-McConnell amendment will pass today and will have bipartisan support. It has already been talked about that perhaps none of these will reach the 60-vote threshold. What I would say to my colleagues is, again, if we are serious about trying to solve this issue, if we are serious about trying to make sure electricity and fuel costs don't go up dramatically for our constituents, then this is the amendment we need to be for. The other amendments don't get at the issue. They are political cover amendments.
I think it is pretty straightforward when we look at the number of groups that have come out opposed to those amendments and in favor of the Inhofe-McConnell amendment. I will just mention briefly, again, the American Farm Bureau and the Chamber of Commerce and other small business organizations that have come out in support of the Inhofe-McConnell amendment and opposed to the amendments offered by our colleagues.
I wish to read a quote from one of those letters:
Congress, not the EPA, should be guiding America's energy policy. Without action by lawmakers, EPA's regulations will make it difficult to attract new manufacturing capacity and jobs in the United States, let alone double U.S. exports in 5 years, which is what our goal has been, as President Obama has pledged.
This letter is signed by a number of organizations, including the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Association of Wholesaler Distributors, the National Association of Independent Business, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. As I said before, I have other letters from major farm organizations, including the American Farm Bureau, in support of the Inhofe-McConnell amendment and opposed to the other political cover amendments that are being offered by our Democratic colleagues.
Let's get this done right. Let's send a message to the EPA and to the administration that this is the job for the Congress to deal with. This is something the people's representatives should be dealing with, not unelected bureaucrats and Federal agencies that clearly have an agenda but an agenda that is completely contrary to capital formation, to competitiveness, to job creation, and to economic growth. That is what this Congress should be focused on, and that is why a vote in support of the Inhofe-McConnell amendment is so important.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon is recognized.
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