Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. SIMPSON. Madam Chairwoman, I strongly oppose this ill-conceived amendment.

This amendment would cut $52 million out of the Nuclear Energy Program. This is on top of an amendment that was adopted yesterday that already cuts $73 million out of the nuclear energy program.

What I have heard for 2 days now is that climate change is a big issue. In fact, the drought in California and the West has been blamed on climate change. It may be true. I don't know. But if you believe that, then why are you attacking the one thing that can produce energy for this country in a carbon-free way? That makes no sense.

So I strongly oppose this amendment. As I said, I understand my colleague's support for the title XVI program. Due to the request from the gentleman and many others within this Congress, funding for the title XVI program basically is at current rate while many other programs have been cut.

We did this by balancing many priorities that the amendment would completely ignore. The amendment would cut, as I said, $52 million from nuclear energy. This is a 6 percent cut on top of the amendment yesterday. Accepting this amendment would be a 14 percent cut in nuclear energy.

Again, if you really believe in climate change and that we have to address it, one of the major things that is going to address it is going to be nuclear energy. Well, I like wind and solar and all of those kind of things. They don't produce the energy for the base load that is necessary in this country, particularly in California.

As I said, this is an ill-conceived amendment. Funding for nuclear research and development is a critical part of this recommendation support for a balanced energy portfolio, American manufacturing, and reduced reliance on foreign energy sources. Nuclear power currently generates 20 percent of the Nation's electricity, and it will continue to play a role in the future, I hope. Nuclear energy will be part of the energy mix in the future. America invented nuclear power, but now other nations are mimicking our companies' designs and building them entirely within their own borders.

This amendment is bad policy, and I strongly oppose its adoption.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. SIMPSON. Madam Chair, the gentleman brings up an interesting subject, as the gentlewoman from Ohio said, and it is something that I would hope he would continue to work on through the appropriate channels. There are problems that may exist with his proposal here, and this is not the right place to do it, on the appropriations bill.

The amendment would prevent the Department of Energy from approving an application for liquefied natural gas export, unless the Department has consulted with the U.S. Maritime Administration on the availability of U.S.-flagged vessels to transport the liquefied natural gas. The Department does not have nor are applicants for LNG export currently required to provide information on which vessels will be used for transportation.

In fact, shipping companies are separate and distinct from companies applying for export licenses, and assessing the shipping requirements for LNG is not within the DOE's current realm of technical expertise. The reality is that there are a few, if any, U.S.-flagged vessels capable of carrying LNG at this point.

I know the gentleman would like to change that, and I agree with him on that, but we need to do it through the proper channels. We need to do it through legislation that, I understand, the gentleman is probably working on now through the authorizing committees.

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Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this amendment.

While I commend my colleague for her consistent work to protect taxpayer dollars, this is not an approach I can support. What she suggests of just saving one penny from the Federal agencies is what we have been doing for the last 4 years on the Appropriations Committee, as she recognized. We have been reducing spending. In fact, we have reduced spending much more than 1 percent.

This bill is fully consistent with the Ryan-Murray budget compromise, and it spends, as was mentioned, $50 million below last year's level. The Ryan-Murray budget deal was passed by this House.

While difficult tradeoffs had to be made, this bill in its current form balances our needs. We prioritize funding for critical infrastructure and our national defense. These tradeoffs were carefully weighed for their respective impacts and are responsible, yet the gentlewoman's amendment proposes an across-the-board cut on every one of these programs. It makes no distinction between where we need spending to invest in our infrastructure, promote jobs, meet our national security needs, and where we need to limit spending to meet our deficit reduction goals.

The basic problem I have and have always had with across-the-board cuts is that it doesn't recognize the programs that are priorities and things that we ought to be spending money on, the Federal Government ought to be spending money on, and those things that maybe we ought to cut more.

In the Appropriations Committee, every time we do an appropriation bill, those are the decisions we make. We prioritize them. When the Democrats are in the majority, the priorities go toward their priorities; the spending goes toward their priorities more. When we are in the majority, the spending goes more toward our priorities.

If you look at our bill, there are areas in there that, if I were king for a day and could write any bill I wanted, there are areas I would probably cut more; there are areas that I would probably spend more. But this is a bill that is a compromise, hopefully a compromise for 435 Members of Congress that have different priorities and different needs. It does meet the budget goals that we have established in the Republican budget that was passed this year.

With that, I oppose this amendment, and I yield to my good friend from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur).

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Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. Chairman, I have to tell you that I am sympathetic to what the gentleman is trying to do. It is a concern that I have had for a number of years. And, in fact, a few years ago, when I was chairman of the Interior Subcommittee, we brought down a bill and we completely defunded any listing of new species or designation of critical habitat because the Endangered Species Act hadn't been reauthorized for, like, 26 years or something like that. Our intent was not to get rid of the Endangered Species Act or to get rid of the designation of critical habitat. Our intent was to send the message that the authorizing committees need to do their job.

I was supported in that, actually, by the chairman of the Resources Committee that is in charge of reauthorizing that bill. So far that has not been done. They haven't been able to get it done.

As you know, it is sometimes very difficult to pass reauthorization bills for a lot of these different programs, but many of these different programs are very, very important. I continue to try to seek a way to put pressure on the authorizing committees to actually do their job, to get these done.

So far, just defunding them has not been successful in achieving that, and I don't know why that is. It is frustrating both to me and to the sponsor of this amendment. Yet this amendment would do great damage to the Department of Energy. And I guess you could use this government-wide.

There are a lot of programs. You would be surprised which programs haven't been reauthorized. I think the Department of State hasn't been reauthorized. Most seniors programs have not been reauthorized. If we can find a way to put pressure on the authorizing committees to do this, I would be more than happy to work with the gentleman to try to accomplish that goal, but ending the programs this way, I think, would be too dramatic of an effect.

So, while I sympathize with what the gentleman is trying to do, I have to oppose this amendment.

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Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. Chairman, I guess the first question I would ask is: Why 2008 spending levels? Why not 2006 or 2004 or 2000 or 1998 spending levels, or 1972 or 1900?

What we need to do is look at what we are spending now and create savings by deciding what is important and what we ought to be doing and what are those things that we might like to do but we just don't have the money to do, and eliminate those programs or reduce the spending in many of those programs, which is what the Appropriations Committee does every day.

When these bills come down here, we have had hearings on the different functions of the Federal Government. And believe me, if you or I were to sit down and discuss what the Federal Government ought to be doing, we would agree on a lot. There would be things we would disagree on that I think are essential and things that I would disagree that you would think were essential. We have 435 Members, represent all corners of this country, and a budget is, by its very nature, a compromise in those different opinions on what ought to be funded and what the proper role of government is.

One thing we do know, that we are $17 trillion in debt, and that a portion of that, a portion of the solution, is reducing our discretionary spending. We have been doing that for the last 4 years, and it has been hard work by the Appropriations Committee.

We also know that you cannot get this budget to balance, no matter how hard you try, by reducing discretionary spending. It is not large enough, in the overall context of things, to cut it enough to get the budget to balance. You have got to do other things. You have got to have tax reform. You have got to have entitlement reform. We have to look at every area that the government is spending. Right now, I think it is about 28 percent of the total expenditures of the Federal Government are discretionary spending. About 72 percent of them are mandatory. They are on autopilot. They just go on unless we change the underlying law.

So we have got to have the courage to address a lot of the things that are driving our debt. I will tell you, you will never balance this budget until you get the economy growing again. That is the reality.

When you looked at the late 1990s, when President Clinton and a Republican Congress balanced the budget--or at least that is who was in charge at the time. We can argue about who balanced it. But at that period of time, it wasn't because Republicans were so conservative that they came in and reduced spending and the budget all of a sudden got balanced, or it wasn't that President Clinton came in and just raised taxes and everything and all of sudden we had a ton more revenue. What it was is that the economy grew, and I mean it boomed.

We had the dot-com bubble, if you remember, where we had more money coming in to the Federal Government than we knew what to do with. In fact, when we talked about paying off the national debt at the time, I actually heard debates from leading economists that said we could pay off the national debt too fast--we had that much money coming in--because the debts wouldn't come due when all the money was coming in.

But then, of course, that turned around when the dot-com bubble burst, and since that, then 9/11 happened and a whole bunch of other things and two wars and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

The reality is that you can't balance this budget simply by reducing discretionary spending, but I will tell you that the Appropriations Committee has been doing their job. They have been looking at the proper role of Federal Government, what our responsibilities are, what we must fund, and what we should fund, and also at what we would like to do and sometimes just don't have the money to do. So those are the difficult decisions we have been making, and we continue to do that.

This type of approach, I think, that would take these accounts, only some accounts, back to the 1998 levels, I think, would hurt our economy. And, in fact, one of the big parts of our account is the Army Corps of Engineers, which does water infrastructure, locks, dams, harbor maintenance, all of that kind of stuff which is vital to our economy. I don't know that you want to go in and cut that by 7.8 percent. The President proposed a $1 billion cut in it, a huge cut in it. We restored it because we, both Republicans and Democrats, realize how important the water infrastructure of this country is.

Those are the decisions that we make on the Appropriations Committee, a committee that I am proud to serve on, that has made, over the last several years, some very, very difficult decisions, and will continue to do so because, just like every Member of this Congress, we realize we can't continue racking up the debt as we have over the last several decades.

So I appreciate that, and I would oppose this amendment and urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment.

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