SBIR/STTR Reauthorization Act of 2011
Floor Speech
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Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I rise today to speak against the radical McConnell-Inhofe amendment and in opposition to the efforts to overturn the Supreme Court. We should not be gutting the Clean Air Act and public health and environmental protections that are important to every American.
These anti-environmental, anti-public health, anti-economic riders, I believe, do not belong on a small business bill. When we boil it down, what is at stake is pretty straightforward. It is about the common good versus the special interests. The facts speak for themselves. According to some comprehensive reports, the Clean Air Act will save our economy $2 trillion through the year 2020. And even more importantly, the Clean Air Act will cumulatively save 4.2 million lives by 2020.
Those are striking numbers, and that is why it is so important that we protect the Clean Air Act and turn down these radical amendments that would effectively overturn it.
Congress has stopped other radical attempts to overturn laws that are about protecting our environment and protecting the safety of American people. I remember the debate on MTBE, in 2003, on the Senate floor. MTBE was a highly toxic fuel additive, and very small amounts of it could severely contaminate water supplies. Yet MTBE manufacturers who were on the hook for billions of dollars of cleanup wanted a free pass. They wanted immunity. They came to the Senate hoping to get that. Yet a bipartisan group of Senators stood up to that proposal, and the proposal to let MTBE manufacturers off the hook was turned down.
There have been other attempts to overturn the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Superfund Cleanup Act. Sometimes they get only as far as draft bills or a committee hearing. Sometimes we have votes on them. But these issues all have one thing in common--it is about the greater good versus special interests. Time and time again, Congress has wisely come down on the correct side of the issue and has rejected these proposals by special interests.
The environmental protections that we have continue in force today because we have consistently stood up to fight for them. Passing an anti-EPA amendment would hurt our economy. That certainly is the case with the McConnell-Inhofe amendment. It would overturn hard-won gains from the 2007 Energy bill that put CAFE standards in place to improve fuel economy standards for American consumers. These standards were passed with bipartisan support and save consumers as much as $3,000 over the life of a car through higher fuel efficiency. The proposed McConnell-Inhofe legislation seeks to overturn these advancements.
It is these fuel economy standards, which passed with bipartisan support in 2007, that are helping us to wean ourselves from dependence on foreign oil--not more domestic drilling. We could drill in every pristine, untouched corner of the United States--and sometimes it seems like the backers of those interests would like us to do just that--but in response to these calls, I would suggest you look at a recent letter Senator Bingaman and I received from the Energy Information Administration.
I ask unanimous consent to have the letter printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY,
Washington, DC, Mar. 25, 2011.
Hon. MARIA CANTWELL,
Chairman, Subcommittee on Energy, Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
DEAR CHAIRMAN CANTWELL: This is in response to your letter of March 15, 2011, which seeks a better understanding of some of the long term impacts of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA).
As noted in your letter, the long-term energy outlook which the Energy Information Administration (EIA) released just before EISA was signed into law (Annual Energy Outlook 2008 Early Release) projected a significant increase in U.S. dependence on imported petroleum through 2030. This finding is reversed in EIA's latest Annual Energy Outlook (AEO2011 Early Release), which projects a decline in U.S. dependence on imported petroleum over a forecast horizon that extends through 2035. Furthermore, over the 2008 to 2030 period, the cumulative reduction in net petroleum imports between the two sets of projections is about 26 billion barrels.
The policies enacted in EISA are responsible for much of the change in projected U.S. oil use. In particular, EISA mandated significant strengthening of both the corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards for cars and light trucks and the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) that was first enacted in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. However, other changes that have occurred since the AEO2008 Early Release was issued, including the outlook for oil prices and economic growth, have also influenced the more recent projections presented in the AEO2011 Early Release.
Following enactment of EISA, EIA conducted sensitivity analyses starting from the AEO2008 Reference case to estimate the effect of its key provisions. From these calculations, it is clear that EISA alone is responsible for a major reduction in projected oil consumption, which in turn reduces oil imports on an almost 1-for-1 basis. By 2030, the fuel economy standards provisions in EISA were estimated to reduce light-duty vehicle gasoline-equivalent fuel consumption by between 2.1 and 2.2 million barrels per day relative to a scenario where vehicle efficiency did not improve above the floor set by standards in effect at the time of enactment. Relative to a baseline that included projected market-driven improvements in fuel economy, the savings in fuel consumption due to the fuel economy provisions were still estimated at 1.2 to 1.4 million barrels per day. Furthermore, the RFS provisions of EISA were estimated to further reduce petroleum consumption by 0.3 to 0.6 million barrels per day in 2030.
The AEO2011 Early Release, which reflects current laws and regulations, does not include a further increase in fuel economy standards for model years 2017 through 2025 that is now under consideration in the regulatory process. The forthcoming release of the full AEO2011 will include alternative scenarios of increased light-duty vehicle fuel efficiency to illustrate how further actions by policymakers in this area could affect projected U.S. oil use and imports over the next 25 years.
Finally, while there are a variety of ways to place the major change in projected net petroleum imports resulting from EISA into perspective, comparisons to the level of U.S. proven crude oil reserves can be clarified by explicitly recognizing that reserves are only a subset of available domestic resources. As discussed in my recent testimony before the House Committee on Natural Resources, additions to crude oil reserves replaced over 93 percent of cumulative U.S. crude oil production of 19.6 billion barrels from 2000 through 2009. For this reason, total U.S. crude oil reserves declined only modestly over that decade, decreasing from 22.0 billion barrels at the start of 2000 to 20.7 billion barrels at the start of 2010.
I hope that this information is responsive to your inquiry. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any further questions or concerns.
Sincerely,
Richard G. Newell,
Administrator, Energy Information
Administration.
Ms. CANTWELL. In 2007, the Energy Information Administration was predicting that our foreign dependency was going to continue to increase in the coming decades. I should note that after the 2005 Energy bill, I heard some of my colleagues on the other side say that that EIA forecast was the great predictor and that it was going to help us reduce our dependence on foreign oil. But the truth is, the subsequent EIA analysis made after we passed the 2007 Energy bill says just two policies in that landmark bill--the increase in CAFE standards and the renewable fuel standards--are responsible for a downward revision of projected U.S. dependence on foreign oil.
So the things that have made us less dependent on foreign oil are the very things people are trying to gut from important legislation that is already on the books. It is not the case that additional drilling, drilling, drilling and saying to the EPA: ``Ignore the Supreme Court on the Clean Air Act,'' is going to help us. Reducing demand is going to reduce prices at the pump. Look at the example of the U.K., which produces almost all of its own oil from the North Sea. They still got hammered in 2008 when oil prices peaked at $147 a barrel because there is a world market price for oil. So to refute the notion that we should skirt our environmental responsibilities and drill, drill, drill to protect ourselves from high oil prices, we need to look no further than the U.K. example.
I don't understand why the minority leader wants us to increase our Nation's reliance on foreign oil. I think we should be getting off foreign oil and not allowing polluters to addict another generation to that product. I think we should be getting off foreign oil, rather than have future U.S. generations compete with the Chinese for every last remaining supply of ever more expensive oil.
I agree it would be better if Congress acted to address our need to diversify our Nation's energy sources. I am anxious to work with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to develop legislation that would use the power of the free market to do that and protect consumers at the same time. I am certain there is a bipartisan solution we can all agree to. But we can do this and solve our carbon pollution problem by working together, not by burying our heads in the sand and saying we can ignore the Supreme Court's edict to enforce the Clean Air Act.
There is a way to reduce carbon pollution and transition to a 21st century economy and we can and should work together to achieve these goals. It does not have to be about picking winners and losers, and we can protect consumers in the process. I want to work with my colleagues on a framework that embodies these principles. But, until then, I urge my colleagues to vote against these amendments that will undermine our Clean Air Act; that will actually increase our dependence on foreign oil, force consumers to buy more gasoline, and make our air dirtier.
We can do better and I hope we will.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Boxer, the chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, be the next Democratic speaker and that she have up to 10 minutes.
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