Continuing Appropriations Act, 2012

Floor Speech

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Mr. MARKEY. I thank the gentleman from Washington State.

We're having 100-year floods every year. We're having tornados rip through Joplin. We have floods in Vermont, in New Jersey, New York. We have hurricanes all across the country. We have 48 States who have had emergency declarations so far this year. The planet is warming; the weather is worsening.

What is the response of the Republicans? They have to find the money--they say all of a sudden--for disaster relief for people who are suffering, for people who are desperate, for people whose lives have been altered permanently.

They say we have to cut something. Now, do they say we're going to cut the nuclear weapons program because America doesn't need any more nuclear weapons? No. Are we going to cut the breaks that we give to oil and coal? No, we're not going to touch those things. Where are we going? What does the Republican Party do? What does the Tea Party want? I ask what the Tea Party wants.

The Tea Party wants to cut the Clean Car Factory Fund. Now, what is that? Well, that's the fund that we have that's going to invent the automobiles and the trucks that go 60, 70, 80, 90 miles per gallon without having to use oil. Now, why is that important? Two reasons: One, it's the oil that's being burnt that creates the greenhouse gases that are warming up the planet, causing all of these weather conditions that are leading to these disaster relief programs that have to have more money in them as each year goes by; and, two, it is so that we can tell the OPEC ministers, We don't need your oil any more than we need your sand.

So what are they doing here today? They're taking the one program that is central to the health and well-being of our country and to our national security--so that we alter our relationship with OPEC--and they are slashing it. They are slashing the one program that reinvents the vehicles that we drive. They are slashing the one program that gives young people in our country some hope that we are going to invent our way out of this problem.

You don't have to be Dick Tracy to figure out what's going on here. The oil industry, the coal industry, all of the polluting industries are saying kill the program that makes sure that the vehicles we get in 20 years get 75 or 100 miles per gallon without using one gallon of oil.

Vote ``no'' on this terrible bill.

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