Protecting States' Rights to Promote American Energy Security Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. Chairman, I would just like to remind everybody that, although they might say, Why do we do this? Why is the rhetoric important? I mean, if we don't counter the kind of alternate reality that the other side often touts, people will think that that is reality. I will remind everybody in the room that the Federal Government and every State government has said that there has been not one accident--zero--referring to the aquifer regarding hydraulic fracking--not one.

People in Washington have never been to Dimock; they have never been to Renovo or to Tidioute or to Warren, Pennsylvania. They don't know anything about these places and what happens here, but yet they want to regulate us. The people who live there are the ones who are working there, and they have the greatest stake in protecting the environment.

Let me tell you what it has done for Pennsylvania: $750 million in road and infrastructure and improvements since 2008 has been provided by the gas industry. The average income is up $1,200 because of it; $1.8 billion in tax revenue has been generated by responsible shale development.

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Ninety-six percent of the employment comes out of the Appalachian basin. That is in Pennsylvania. That is where we live. There has been a $650 savings per household per year because of it, and there are 232,000 associated jobs with an average pay of $83,305 a year.

Mr. Chairman, there is a list of agencies that these people must comply with for every single portion of this. I am going to run out of time, but I am going to run out of time just going through them, all right: the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the County Conservation District.

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The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission, the Pennsylvania Game Commission, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, the Susquehanna River Basin Commission, the Delaware River Basin Commission, the Pennsylvania Historic Museum Commission, and the Pennsylvania Public Utility Council.

Finally, Mr. Chairman, all of those chemicals that were noted on every job site are listed on a material safety data sheet, which is required by law.

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