Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2015

Floor Speech

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Ms. KAPTUR. The chairman and I work very closely on matters like this. It is difficult because of the fact that we have no new starts. We have a backlog that is enormous. And the Corps is under pressure. But we will be very happy to work with the gentleman and to try to resolve situations that you may face in your region.

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Ms. KAPTUR. I thank the chairman for yielding and for your sympathy toward the intent of the amendment. I commend Congresswoman Hahn and Congressman Huizenga for elevating the question of our ports. Waterborne shipping is the most-efficient mode for moving goods in and out of this country. I think they are performing for this Congress an extraordinary service by uniting on a bipartisan basis and kind of ringing the bell and saying, Hey, pay attention to what is happening here with this harbor maintenance tax and how we help our ports compete, as we see the Panama Canal come online and shipbuilding occurring in other countries like South Korea, for example, and China and Singapore and lots of other places, and saying, Hey, America, wake up.

I feel some urgency to want to support the direction of their efforts, but, as with the chairman, it comes to where the offset is. It is true that, with harbor maintenance tax funds, $185 million has been moved into the fund as a result of our efforts that the administration had not requested, so we as a subcommittee are moving in the right direction, but I am hoping that this might begin a conversation with our subcommittee and how we work with them on the harbor maintenance tax in a more effective manner. So I thank the chairman for yielding. They brought an important issue before us that we need to resolve more effectively.

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Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman and Members, I rise to oppose the amendment because it doesn't make any sense to me to make it harder for the Corps to do its job when we know they have backlogs in projects of over $60 billion. We are increasing funding for the Corps to try to meet the needs of States like Arizona--and the other 49 States as well--and there seems to be no shortage of complaints about the Corps' response time on project issues because they can't get their work done because they don't have enough money to complete their projects.

This gentleman may be unaware that oversight funding has already been cut by $4 million from the current year. We are giving the Corps more project money to try to deal with their backlog; but then if we don't have proper oversight, we are going to dig the hole deeper. We need to have the resources in order to complete the projects.

The amendment, in a way, is penny-wise and pound-foolish because it reduces Federal oversight of more than $5 billion. The problem with the Corps historically has been that every Member has projects that they want completed, but we don't have the money to do it. If you are going to cut the legs out of staff that are there to do the job, it is going to make it much more difficult to manage the money. It is like trying to send an army into battle and not giving them the weapons to do it or creating all these barriers to completion.

We need to turn around and allow the Corps to resolve the projects that are on the books--there are no new starts in this bill--and give them the staff to do the job and to get it done and to get it done well and within budget, not stretch it out. The reason these projects are stretched out over the years: they simply don't have the money. To put the infrastructure in the ground, whether it is Arizona, Ohio, or California, they are just shortchanged at every end. We make it really difficult for them.

I think the gentleman is well-intended. He wants to get the work done. I want to get the work done. I don't think that the amendment actually leads us to that end. Respectfully, we would oppose the amendment and ask our colleagues to join us.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I rise to support the gentleman's amendment and to say that he has worked so hard in the interest of maintaining both public health and restoration of the environment related to the Salton Sea. Unless you have actually seen the Salton Sea and the changing nature of the ecosytem in southern California, you can't imagine how enormous that challenge is. From the very first day he was elected, Mr. Ruiz was talking to us about the needs of that particular part of our country.

I know that polluted agricultural runoff had something to do with what has happened to the Salton Sea. The changing nature of rainfall has transformed it.

I think about the Sea of Azov in Russia and how dangerous that has become to the surrounding environment. We face the same challenge here in our country.

I know it is difficult to resolve this issue, and it will take many years, because it didn't just take one year for the sea to become a wasteland, really, and the surrounding communities so affected.

I just want to thank the gentleman for his leadership and for keeping us and your part of America on the right course. You are very talented and very caring. I just wanted to stand in support of your efforts.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I rise to oppose the gentlelady's amendment, and I do so for several reasons.

First of all, the renewable energy accounts, where the funds are taken from, have already been reduced by $113 million from the prior fiscal year.

Frankly, those accounts are part of our future--of our future energy security for the country and, as I said in my opening statement, of the preservation of our liberty.

With over 40 percent of our energy resources being imported, there is no higher priority than for us to diversify our energy portfolio and to reclaim our own economic and energy security. Further reduction in those accounts will have a detrimental impact not just in Montana, but across this country.

In addition, the amendment, as I understand it, reduces Departmental administration by $6 million. Given my colleague's frustration with the Department's pace on many activities, including on the approval of our LNG export efforts, this seems to be a case of, really, making it much more difficult for the Department to do its job.

Let me put on the record again that, just since 2003, in the last decade, our country has spent $2.3 trillion on importing foreign petroleum. This is a vast shift of wealth, and thousands upon thousands--literally millions of jobs--are evaporating from our country.

Bloomberg New Energy Finance reports for 2030 that the market outlook estimates that renewables will command over 60 percent of the $7.7 trillion of power investment that is going to be made someplace.

When we think about our country's future, we must be vigilant, and we must be smart. We must be engaged in those markets because, if we aren't, we see what China is doing and we see what Russia is doing.

We have to pay attention. We can't rob Peter to try to pay Paul. Any water project, whether it is in Montana or whether it is in Ohio, is largely a public project, and you have to make money in the market to pay for it.

Reasserting ourselves and becoming leaders in energy, rather than importers of energy, is where America needs to head. I think this takes us in the wrong direction.

We should be leading investment in these technologies, not further eroding their capacity for our country, because other countries will displace us, and they are doing so.

Now, in terms of rural water projects in the Bureau of Reclamation, those water projects already will receive $21 million above the administration's request, so it is not like our subcommittee isn't doing its job.

Frankly, our part of America gets much less attention than the West does, in terms of rural water investment. We have a 50-50 match in our part of the country.

We don't have anything like the Bureau of Reclamation, and we have to compete in the Midwest for those precious dollars. We don't have enough, but we manage to move along as best we can.

I think that we have done what we can in our bill for rural water, and I really would take objection to the gentlelady's efforts to try to further cripple those renewable energy accounts that are going to help to create America's new future and to lead us toward energy independence and toward a reassumption of our liberties. I would hope that she would find another way to achieve her objectives.

I think I must also offer the comment that, as we look toward the West and its water needs, because of what is happening in the environment, we may be at a point in America's history at which we have to put our dollars where it makes the most sense, and if development is occurring in areas that are already water short or that are becoming desert--where the desert is growing and where literally nature can't provide what it did, maybe, 100 years ago--I think we have to manage the public dollars more wisely.

I oppose the gentlelady's amendment. I hope that we can find a different way to meet her genuine concerns.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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Ms. KAPTUR. Could I offer the opinion that, if the gentleman found different offsets, this Member, as an Ohioan, would be very interested in supporting the workers in Portsmouth and in that region of Ohio which are so devastated.

At the moment, I can't do that because I don't agree with the offsets, but I wanted to place the opinion on the Record. And I thank the gentleman very much for his efforts on behalf of the State of Ohio and that region of Ohio.

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Ms. KAPTUR. I wanted to make a point on this particular Portsmouth facility and the Department of Energy's seeming inability to help communities transition. Whether it is coal-fired utilities and the issues that coal country faces in general or here you have a facility that is important in the Nation's defense looking back and looking forward, and so many times it just seems that when technologies change, when situations change, the local people who have invested their lives just get spit out.

I just wanted to put that statement on the Record, because I know the Department of Energy is listening today, and we have the ability in this country to transition communities. Maybe in places like Portsmouth we should be doing more on renewables, because America is going to need renewables; and maybe there is a way the Department of Energy could be more creative, whether it is natural gas, whether it is storage of certain material and so forth. But to put all those people out of work, without a plan, without a transition plan, it is like, you know, the private sector giving them the pink slip at Christmas. That is when they always give them the pink slips, right before Christmas. It is so heartless. Here you have a community that is going to be heavily affected.

So I just wanted to say on the Record, Mr. Chairman of the full committee, that I just feel that the Department has been a bit laggard, and I would hope that they could work with us in a more constructive way. I understand what the gentleman is trying to do, and he is very well-intentioned as he comes to the floor today. I just wish I could do more to convince the Department to help him.

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Ms. KAPTUR. I thank the gentleman very much for allowing me this privilege.

I just wanted to rise in opposition to the gentleman's amendment and to say that one of the reasons we have a budget deficit is because we have an energy deficit. We have had an energy deficit for over a quarter century--well over three decades now--and every year, the average family in our country puts out over $2,800 now, just for gasoline for their automobiles.

There were those who said we shouldn't incentivize the ethanol industry. Now, about 10 percent of every tank full of gasoline has ethanol in it, and that has reduced our imports. If you look at the hemorrhage from this country of over $10 trillion over the next quarter century with oil being $100 a barrel and you look at what is happening to the middle class in our country because we aren't energy independent, we had better be serious about changing the composition of energy production in this country because it is part of the major problem we face in lack of robust economic growth.

You can't import economic growth; you have to produce economic growth. One of the major ways we can produce economic growth in this country is to invent a future different from the past, so I completely oppose the gentleman's amendment because you are going to increase the Federal deficit because economic growth will not increase at the level that it should be.

It has been slowly creeping forward with the weight of two wars on our backs over the last decade or so, but you can't kill the future.

In Alabama especially, you have that major Huntsville operation with all those NASA facilities and all those subcontractors, and there are parts of Alabama that are doing very well as a result of Federal investment, but don't hurt the rest of the country on the energy front because you have some perspective about why we might have a deficit.

We have a deficit because we are not inventing the future fast enough, and we are importing too much of what we should be making here at home.

So I appreciate the courtesy in allowing me to place this on the Record. We can't kill renewable energy. We can't kill the future. We have got to be able to invent it and to cut off these imports and to begin to produce our way forward again in this country. I view it as our chief strategic vulnerability.

So I appreciate the gentleman wants to do something good in terms of reducing the deficit. The best thing we can do is to invent our way forward and create new energy sources for this country, including the renewables.

Don't kill the future. Oppose the gentleman's amendment, and I would respectfully yield the time that has been yielded to me back to the gentleman.

Mr. SIMPSON. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, I also oppose the amendment. While I opposed increasing EERE funding in previous amendments, I am also opposed to eliminating EERE.

When you look at the traditional energy sources that we use, the government has done research into the fossil fuels, into nuclear energy, into fracking, into other things, and hydrocarbons because they are important.

It is not the companies that we try to pick winners and losers from, but it is the technology that we try to do the research into, to try to advance certain technologies and help technologies become more efficient for the consumers to use.

We are trying to make automobiles more fuel efficient. We are trying to do work to make a SuperTruck that is much more fuel efficient.

I guess it could be argued whether the government should do any research at all. Years and years ago, a lot of those things used to be done by private companies, when you had the Bell Labs and other types of things like that.

Those aren't done anymore by companies because they are much, much too expensive for companies to do, but they are good for our economy.

You could make the argument that we really shouldn't have put any money into space research and putting a man on the Moon--that should have been done by a private company--yet the American economy and the world has benefited greatly from the investment that American taxpayers made into NASA. The same is true with the fuels that we use.

While we have tried in this bill to refocus what the administration had proposed, which was huge increases for renewable energies that produce a minority--a small amount--of energy compared to the others, we have tried to refocus that appropriation to where it more accurately reflects the actual energy used, the percentage of the actual energy used.

That doesn't mean that we can completely eliminate EERE and renewable energies. As I said previously, I like renewable energies. I think they are cute. They provide a small portion of our overall energy demand, and I don't see that increasing a whole lot because they can't address the base load needs of our energy demand in this country, but they are going to be a very important part of an overall energy strategy.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I oppose the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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Ms. KAPTUR. I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I rise in opposition to the gentleman's amendment. It is quite astounding that somebody from the State of California--a State that exists because of Federal investments through the entirety of its existence--would even come forward with an amendment like this. For someone from Ohio, it is very unusual to see this.

Let me just say that, in opposing this amendment, I wish to offer the perspective that America can't live in the past, that, in fact, when one looks at what we are enduring because of our dependence on energy that is imported, there is no greater imperative than for us to unhook from imports.

As I look at the gentleman's amendment, it is actually very destructive. You actually destroy our future. America is not innovating at the level that we should in renewables. We have a burgeoning solar industry, but China has captured it. She steals the patents. She steals the innovation, and we don't do much about it.

You take money from fossil programs. I don't have all of the scientific answers, but I know that a piece of our future relies on access that we have here in the ground.

The energy portfolio and the research portfolio of the Department of Energy is critical. The reason we have the horizontal drilling technologies--those weren't developed outside by some humanitarian group. They were developed by the American people's investment in drilling technologies, which have now given us a gas boom that will help us transition to a new energy future because the gas won't last forever, but at least we have the possibility of becoming independent here at home again.

I find the gentleman's amendment very backward-looking; and I would say, for someone from the State of California, if you look at the Bureau of Reclamation, if you look at all of the benefits that have accrued to the State of California and your own presence inside this 50-State Union, it is because of the investment in energy and water that you even exist.

So for you to come forward--and it may be a well-intentioned amendment, but to try to destroy the future of innovation through your amendment in the primary arena of imports--imported petroleum, which we have to unhook from and become energy independent--to me, is just astounding.

We live in very different universes--that is clear through your amendment--but there is no greater strategic imperative than for this country to become energy independent here at home. Our liberty depends on it. If you go back over the last 25 years and look at where our soldiers have died, it is very clear we are not independent.

I oppose the gentleman's amendment. I think it is backward looking. I think that it fails to move America into a new energy future. I oppose this amendment with full gusto.

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