Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, in our health care reform, our aspiration ought to be to give Americans the health care that people get at the Mayo Clinic, and nothing less. We can do this even though this sounds like a high bar because at the Mayo Clinic they provide cost-effective health care. Medicare spends about $6,700 a year in Rochester, Minnesota. In other places in the country, it is over twice that. In one town in Texas, it is $14,000 a year.

We need in our health care plan to provide quality medical care, choice of medical care, and cost-effective medical care. That's why in our bill we are going to need to insist on measures of peer profiling for physicians, critical protocols to make sure that quality happens, and reward for physicians for high quality. When we do this, patients will have the same quality as the Mayo Clinic and the same cost as the Mayo Clinic to the American taxpayer. That is a good deal. We have to make sure that cost containment is part of our health care plan.

Madam Speaker, I greatly appreciate the sentiments expressed in the attached letter from Carl Zichella, and I intend to work with these groups to achieve strong environmental protections in areas affected by transmission line siting.

Sierra Club,

Sacrementa, CA, June 26, 2009.

Hon. Jay Inslee,

House of Representatives,

Washington, DC.

Dear Representative Inslee: I write to thank you for your

leadership on renewable energy development and transmission

issues. The Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society and NRDC have

concerns about the presidential override provision of the

manager's transmission amendment. We recognize that it was

not the intention of the amendment's author to, in any way,

undermine environmental protection. We would like to work

with Congressman Inslee and the Energy and Commerce Committee

to help ensure that public land protection measures in

transmission policy reforms are as strong as possible, as

reflected in HR 2211 and to clarify the role of public

stakeholders in the planning process the amendment

establishes.

We are at your service in the coming days and weeks to

address these issues.

Sincerely,

Carl Zicliella,

Western Renewable

Projects Director.

Madam Speaker, this bill renews some basic American values of confidence in ourselves, optimism about our future, and a ``can-do'' spirit. We support this bill because we believe Americans still have the right stuff that we had in the 1960s when we went to the Moon.

This bill calls forward Americans' future to get off of foreign oil, to put millions of people to work in clean technology, and to give our grandkids a chance at a future with a decent atmosphere like we grew up with.

The people who are against this bill, I urge them to avoid the pessimism and the lack of imagination that I have heard on the floor of this House.

Now, will this have some investment cost? Yes. And what is the best assessment of that cost? It is the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan group that Republicans typically rely upon, and what have they said? They said this will cost a typical family of four 47 cents, a little more than the cost of a stamp.

Will we pay the cost of a stamp to get rid of five million barrels of oil a day from the Mid East? You bet we will. And this bill will do that. Will we pay a stamp to give our grandkids a future of an environment that's not going to destroy their health? You bet we will. Will we pay a stamp to give people at the Bright Source Company a chance? You bet we will.

We're going to put a stamp on America's future for the price of a stamp. It's a good deal for our future.

Mr. Speaker, Americans are the most innovative and the most entrepreneurial people on the face of the Earth. That is the reason that the people want us to pass the American Clean Energy and Security bill this week. This bill will give Americans what they want: More energy independence; less pollution; and most importantly, millions of new jobs of Americans building the new businesses, putting up solar panels, putting up wind towers, and stringing new electrical wire that we need.

Now, what is this going to cost Americans? According to the Congressional Budget Office, approximately the cost of one postage stamp a day: 47 cents. Do Americans want to rid ourselves of the scourge of addiction to Saudi oil for a postage stamp a day? You bet.

Do Americans want us to limit pollution and make polluters pay so Americans can have cleaner air for the cost of a postage stamp a day? You bet.

Do Americans want 3 million new jobs in this country for the cost of a postage stamp a day? You bet.

We are going to pass this bill. Americans want it.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to announce the introduction of the Spectrum Relocation Improvement Act of 2009 along with my colleagues, Mr. Upton of Michigan and Mr. Boucher of Virginia. This bipartisan bill reforms the Commercial Spectrum Enhancement Act (CSEA) to make the current spectrum relocation process more transparent and reduce relocation risks for federal agencies and those interested in bidding in future auctions of federally encumbered spectrum.

Washington State is a leader in the technology industry. It is home to companies large and small that are producing the most cutting edge Internet service technologies that benefit not only my constituents in the first District, but Washington State and the country as a whole. However despite the innovative efforts going on in Washington, and across the country, the United States ranks 15th in broadband adoption of 30 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries; a ranking that President Obama has called ``unacceptable.''

Investment in broadband infrastructure and services is a necessary economic driver, and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act allocated $7.4 billion dollars to aid the build out of our nation's broadband infrastructure over current spectrum, to unserved and underserved communities. This investment demonstrates the importance of broadband services, not only for America's economic recovery, but its ongoing prosperity.

Meeting the broadband infrastructure objectives desired by the American people and outlined by President Obama will require the allocation of additional spectrum for commercial use. In order for consumers to experience the next generation of voice and broadband wireless services, the government must identify more sources of spectrum. Once the government has auctioned spectrum to carriers, it is in everyone's interest to see that consumers

benefit from new services as quickly as possible.

In 2006, the Federal Communications Commission's Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) spectrum auction demonstrated that spectrum auctions can finance (1) all the Federal costs associated with clearing spectrum for commercial use, (2) enhance critical Federal communications capabilities and 3) raise revenue for the Treasury. The AWS auction raised $13.7 billion from wireless companies. That figure included roughly $1 billion to relocate federal communications systems for 12 federal agencies that had been operating in those spectrum bands. Originally, the agencies were slated to clear out of the affected spectrum by March 2010.

While relocation practices and procedures worked well for 10 of the 12 agencies involved, unforeseen problems affecting some agencies took more than a year to resolve and threatened to undermine the spectrum relocation process that the House Energy & Commerce Committee, the Department of Commerce, and the Office of Management and Budget worked for several years to implement. This bill is designed to improve the relocation process for all parties involved and address the problems that surfaced during the AWS relocation process.

Fundamentally, the Spectrum Relocation Improvement Act (1) increases the amount and quality of information available to potential bidders before an auction occurs, and (2) expedites the flow of auction proceeds to the relocating agencies to keep the relocation process on track. I am convinced that more complete information about the affected federal agencies' systems, their relocation cost estimates, and schedules reduces risks for potential bidders and ensures that commercial users' bids in future spectrum auctions more fully reflect the market value of the spectrum at auction.

In my home State of Washington we are already seeing the consumer and economic benefits of the AWS auction. T-Mobile, headquartered in Bellevue, WA, has rolled out 3G broadband service in Seattle, with 560 3G base stations, and by year's end will have built out over 900 3G base stations. This investment is adding to the local economy and job market, while providing services to customers. The company expects to deliver services to an additional 2,721,987 customers by year's end.

But this issue is not only about large companies like T-Mobile, it is about small and regional carriers that provide innovative and affordable services to consumers and often face challenges, relative to the larger carriers, in raising capital in order to bid on FCC licenses.

One successful AWS bidder--Cricket--has been in Washington State for eight years and serves a constituency often not reached by the larger carriers. Cricket provides flat-rate unlimited voice and broadband service to consumers without a long-term contract or early termination fee. Nearly half of Cricket's wireless broadband subscribers had never before subscribed to Internet service--not even dial-up.

This legislation will help ensure that customers, like Cricket's, will get to take advantage of not only the first generation of broadband services, but those still to come; and will provide the necessary structure to make sure that the next spectrum auction is successful for consumers, industry, and government.

I am pleased to introduce this legislation along with my colleague Mr. Upton who played a major role in drafting the Commercial Spectrum Enhancement Act, and with the distinguished Chairman of the Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet, Mr. Boucher.

Madam Speaker, it has come to my attention that a number of companies in the outdoor industry have begun taking steps to reduce the amount of packaging that accompany their products. I commend the companies for their efforts to reduce waste and minimize their environmental footprint.

These businesses have taken meaningful steps toward the preservation of our planet, and they set a vital example for businesses throughout America. Over the past year, a coalition of outdoor industry companies worked together to create policies for the reduction of consumer waste. I was pleased to learn that they have successfully followed through with these policies, utilizing higher levels of recycled material and reducing the amount of packaging used in production.

As these companies demonstrate, a reduction in waste can be accomplished through a variety of innovative practices. In order to cut down on the use of new materials, one footwear company redesigned their shoeboxes to use 100 percent post-recycled content. A family-owned business that sells camping equipment began packaging mattresses in completely degradable plastic bags. Another travel accessories company completely overhauled their packaging program, eliminating about 15 tons of packaging waste.

These companies are a beacon of environmental awareness and responsible stewardship. They provide an example to all American businesses involved in manufacturing, which must begin to see the reduction of consumer waste as an essential step in protecting our environment. As members of Congress, it is our responsibility to encourage every industry to begin making such environmentally conscious choices as these.

Mr. Speaker, I'm pleased to commend the Webcaster Settlement Act of 2009 to my colleagues.

I just want to make two or three points. First, this phenomenon of online radio is just a tremendous service for our constituents; 42 million Americans are enjoying this on at least a semiregular basis. It is growing rapidly. It is a very, very beloved service. And when it goes missing, as it did recently in my City of Seattle, a little station called OCO was sort of providing underground music to my local community and had to shut down as a result of the CRB decision, and it is much missed. We hope to get this and many other things back up when we get this settlement going.

Second, I think there is widespread agreement that the average 47 percent of revenues that the CRB decision would require simply is not sustainable for the industry. And I want to commend all parties to the discussions to try to find an appropriate way to move forward.

The third point I want to make is that keeping online radio going and healthy is not just about entertainment; it's about news, it's about public information, it's about emergency preparedness. We've got to do everything we can to give our constituents multiple sources of information. By allowing this bill to go through--and, hopefully, the parties will reach a final settlement--we're going to allow a democracy to blossom.

So I want to thank Chairman Conyers and Ranking Member Smith for their cooperation in facilitating this and commend this bill to my colleagues.

Madam Speaker, I just want to point out something about the benefits of efficiency in this bill. We know it's going to help the important

auto industry, but I want to point out how it will help consumers in efficiency.

Under this bill, Americans who participate will save an average of 133 gallons of gasoline a year by having access to a more efficient car. At the price of $2.71 a gallon, that's a saving of $368 a year in gasoline. That is 250 million gallons of gasoline that we otherwise will not be burning.

Now, the reason I point this out is there is a benefit to the environment in our efforts to stop global warming in this bill, and Mr. Israel and I had earlier introduced a piece generally in the same direction, heading with the great leadership of Betty Sutton and John Dingell and Bart Stupak, and we put our bills together, and this is the product.

Some folks have argued that the efficiency provisions of this bill are not aggressive enough. The bill I introduced with Mr. Israel had more aggressive targets.

But I want to point out something that is a singular achievement of this bill, and I want to thank Betty Sutton for her leadership on this. If we are going to stop global warming, we indeed are going to have to come together all across the country. Folks in the steel industry are going to need to work with people on the coast. People in the Midwest, in the Rust Belt States in the auto industry are going to need to work with those folks in the San Francisco Bay region.

Congress means coming together, and this bill, I think, represents a perfect example of how our Nation needs to come together to tackle the many challenges we have in dealing with global warming. And when we pass this bill today, it will be one step, one brick in the wall of that effort, for a true clean energy revolution in America that we can all be proud of across the country.

Congratulations.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to thank Chairman Conyers and my colleagues on the Judiciary Committee for reporting the Webcaster Settlement Act of 2009, a bill I introduced to clear the path for private negotiations to determine the royalty rates for the use of music over Internet radio.

The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) is a government body tasked with determining royalty rates for the use of music over Internet radio. In 2004, the CRB was tasked with determining a rate structure at the direction of Congress, and released its decision in March of 2007. The rate structure determined by the CRB substantially increased royalty fees that webcasters would be forced to pay.

Since the CRB is authorized to set and establish a royalty rate structure, stakeholders need Congressional authority to forge an agreement that the government would adopt. H.R. 2344 provides that critical authority, and allows private groups 30 days from enactment to work out a settlement amongst themselves to replace the rate structure established by the government.

Webcasters and copyright holders, including those in Washington State, like Washington's 101, WebRadioPugetSound, WildMixRadio Network.com, and Hollow Earth Radio need this legislation so they have the freedom to negotiate and craft a fair royalty rate structure for all impacted parties. Currently, Internet radio pays 47% of its annual revenue in royalty fees, a rate that will eventually crush the industry.

An estimated 42 million people tune to Internet radio on a weekly basis. Internet radio offers consumers not only entertainment value, but it serves niche markets and allows access to independent labels and artists, diversifying programming. Webcasters in Washington State allow small, local, Northwest bands an opportunity to have their music heard across the country. This bill will allow small webcasters serving those markets to continue to compete and be an outlet for minority voices.

I urge my colleagues to consider this important bill, and to help keep the music playing online.

Mr. Speaker, Americans are an optimistic people. That was confirmed yesterday when results came out showing that Americans believe, by a 2-1 margin, that we will grow clean energy jobs by the millions when we adopt a clean energy bill in this House, and they are right.

We should be optimistic that we are going to build electric cars and sell them to the rest of the world, not just China. We ought to be optimistic that we are going to build concentrated solar energy technology and sell it to the rest of the world.

We ought to be optimistic that we are going to build the electric batteries that will fuel our cars and help make our grid more responsive.

This is the optimism that those of us have who are going to pass a clean energy bill this year to make this happen.

Here is another reason for optimism. Yesterday we reached a consensus in the House Energy and Commerce Committee. With broad swathes of the country, the south-north industrial egg, we have reached a consensus that we are going to grow jobs everywhere in this country because we are the optimists, and the optimists are going to win this clean energy debate.

Madam Speaker, later this week or next week, the House Energy and Commerce Committee will advance President Obama's clean energy jobs program, and we will do that by maximizing the job creation potential of renewable clean energy and energy efficiency.

I saw the enormous potential of job creation this weekend in Seattle, Washington, where I went to the MacDonald-Miller Company, a company that installs highly efficient energy efficiency heating and cooling systems, where they have found they can reduce energy usage by 12 percent simply by putting in a system that will adjust the energy depending on what the temperature is outside.

Now if we could get huge efficiency measures like that and put hundreds of people to work, like they are doing at MacDonald-Miller, we're going to find that we can grow our economy while solving global climate change as well.

The energy bill we will do will require 15 percent clean energy and 5 percent efficiency. That's a vision for the future. We're going to pass President Obama's clean energy jobs plan. That's a good thing for the U.S. economy.

Well, I come to the floor with some good news tonight, and that is that the Energy and Commerce Committee will be working to produce a bill starting either late this week or early next week to really jump-start President Obama's vision for a transition to a clean energy future for the country.

And we reached today some very important milestones to reach consensus in our committee to move this vision forward. And I'm very optimistic about that, contentious as this is, for a couple of reasons. One, I just was being briefed by some findings about what Americans' beliefs are about this issue from a fellow named Mark Mellman, who basically looks and asks questions of people and what they think of America. And it was amazing how optimistic Americans are and how much they embrace this idea that we can innovate and create millions of new, clean energy jobs. In fact, the research showed that by two-to-one margins, over two-to-one margins, Americans believe that if we act in Congress to promote the creation of clean energy technology, to do the research and development to create these high-tech, energy-efficient sources of energy, if we create limits on the amount of pollution that polluters can put in the air, by two-to-one margins, Americans believe this will create jobs, clean energy jobs. And that fundamental belief is the thing that will allow the U.S. Congress this year to pass a bill to move us down the clean energy future.

And I would suggest there's a reason Americans believe by two-to-one margins that action on clean energy will create jobs, and that is that we're the most innovative, creative, dynamic, entrepreneurial society ever. And with all due respect to the Egyptians and the Romans, we are the most innovative society, and I think that this optimistic view by two to one that we can create jobs by moving forward in clean energy, it's really consistent with the American character. That's the first reason.

The second reason I feel excited tonight about the Commerce Committee's now advancing President Obama's clean energy vision is the same things that I've seen happen. I went home to Seattle, the Seattle region where I represent, and I just met such exciting people in the State of Washington who are creating these new jobs today.

Yesterday, I went to a company called MacDonald-Miller, a company in Seattle, and they install heating and cooling equipment and energy efficiency equipment. And a few years ago, they started to try to figure out how can they boost their sales. They were having some tough times. They actually went through a restructuring, and they asked themselves, how can we boost our sales and build our company? And they decided to really pursue energy efficiency. And they decided to build a model, a business model, around selling efficiency services, and they showed me one thing they're doing. It's pretty amazing.

It seems so simple, but they are employing hundreds of people at this company by selling a product that will simply adjust your thermostat. If you've got an office building, it will adjust the thermostat dependent on the outside air temperature. And what they found is, and I know this sounds simple, but what they found is that people's comfort level varies on the outside temperature. So they might want it at 73 on a hot day, but they're comfortable at maybe 69 or 70 on a cold day. So they found out people's comfort level varies; so they basically are selling a product that will adjust the temperature of the office building to be consistent with that comfort level depending on the outside temperature. And they had an average reduction of energy of, I think, about 12 percent when they did that. And that's astronomic.

I mean, if you reduced everybody's energy 12 percent in your buildings, it would be incredible in your heating and cooling expenses. But most importantly, by doing that, they're creating jobs and wealth, and their sales have gone up dramatically in the last 4 or 5 years because they are adopting that strategy.

So what we are doing here in Congress in this bill, we will be adopting a provision that will call for Americans to have a higher level of renewable energy, 15 percent, and an additional 5 percent of efficiency gains that will help boost these companies that are now hiring so many people around the country.

Another company in my area called McKinstry, President Obama mentioned them when we were at the White House last week. They have similarly sold efficiency services.

So everywhere you look, you can find opportunities for this job creation. But what these companies need are policies that will level the playing field, because right now our policies just favor some of the older industries, and now we need some policies that will really level the playing field and allow this transition to take place.

Now, in this bill where we're going to be doing it, there are some costs associated, of course, as there always are. We don't usually expect something for nothing. But in our bill it's the polluters and the polluters' industries that will pay. They will be the ones that will be required to purchase and pay for permits associated with this pollution. And, generally, I think it's fairly well understood that in a society that favors responsibility, it ought to be the polluters who are responsible for costs, not citizens. In fact, there will be some assistance to citizens with their utility bills associated with this project.

So the good news that I'm hearing from across the country is Americans believe that we will create jobs if we act on clean energy, number one. And, number two, I'm seeing with my own eyes my constituents getting hired in these new emerging industries.

I went to the 3 Tier Corporation the other day. They essentially manage electricity in large corporations, manage server farms and manage the like, and they're hiring people. The AltaRock Company is doing engineered geothermal in the North Seattle area. That's where you poke a hole down, you pump water down it, it comes up hot, you make steam and generate electricity.

I went to a company called Ausra Engineering. It's a marine architecture firm in Seattle. You don't normally associate marine architectural firms with job creation and clean energy, but they are potentially working on platforms to build floating platforms for offshore wind turbines, and they are in the preliminary work of looking at particular designs to do that because we have enormous capacity for wind off of our shorelines.

So the basic American belief in the innovative spirit of the country is now being matched by these real businesses in real time, hiring real people with real paychecks, and that's what this bill is going to do that we are going to pass here out of the committee hopefully late next week to really jump-start, kick-start this job creation.

So I appreciate the gentleman's letting me join him in this discussion.

Will the gentleman yield?

I think that's a very important point is that the portfolio of these new renewable energy sources that are going to provide the electricity for both our toasters and for these train systems that Mr. Blumenauer talked about, when you generate this electricity using renewable sources, it's, by necessity, a domestic product. If you are using renewable energy to generate your electricity, you know you're using an all-American energy source, because that means the wind is right in eastern Washington or eastern Oregon.

By the way, Washington just had the biggest wind farm in America, became the largest producer of wind power in the world last year. There are actually as many people working in the wind power industry today as the coal mining industry. We're rapidly increasing the number of jobs, but we are using domestic energy when we use wind power.

I went to a company in Tri-Cities, Washington, a couple of months ago. The Infinia Company has developed a sterling engine. It's a solar energy system using a sterling engine, and that's a system where you have these concave dishes that look like large satellite dishes and they concentrate the sun's energy on a little engine about the size of a couple of pop cans, and that turns out pressure differences into mechanical energy and generates electricity. Now, when you use the Infinia system, you are getting a job creation in the Northwest, in Washington State, and you are using a domestic supply of energy, namely the sunshine that's falling on us right now.

I think it's really important you have brought up the issue of coal. I think it's very important to note that when this bill comes out of our committee, it comes to the floor of the House. It is not going to ignore the potential of coal to remain part of our energy future.

We have huge amounts of coal reserves in this country that could power us for hundreds of years. But we need to find a way to burn it more cleanly, to take the carbon dioxide, which is now going into the atmosphere and making our oceans more acidic and contributing to global warming, to take that carbon dioxide and bury it in the Earth for 10,000 years so it's not going to be a problem. Now, in our bill we are not ignoring that issue. We are, in fact, contributing about a billion dollars a year in an effort to find a way to bury that carbon dioxide so we can continue to use coal.

Now, this is an important point, because we feel that we all need to move together, including the regions of the country that are very heavily coal dependent, and we intend to have a very well-balanced research program where we don't favor any one energy source. We are going to be doing work on solar, we are going to be doing work on wind, we are going to be doing work on geothermal, and we are going to be doing work to find a way, hopefully, to sequester carbon dioxide when it comes out of the coal-fired plants.

So I think that's an important point that all areas of the country you are going to have some benefit to find ways to use their energy sources.

You mentioned China, or meant to, one of the two. I wanted to comment on this too.

We are also, in this bill, dealing with, when we are advancing clean energy, we want to make sure we don't lose jobs in competition for some of these other countries, even if they don't move as rapidly as we do and try to move away from this pollution of CO2.

And one of the things we are going to have in our bill is a provision that will protect our jobs and protect our industries against job leakage going overseas to countries that may not have some CO2 regime to reduce pollution. We have now reached agreement, essentially, that we will essentially have a cushion for industry-intensive industries--steel, aluminum, cement--a cushion so they will be insulated from increases in energy costs associated with this so that we won't lose jobs, having these plants move to China or India or some other country that may not have a regulation on CO2 as we do. This is a very important resolution.

I worked with Mike Doyle, a Representative from Pittsburgh, on this,

and we can now legitimately tell folks in these industries that we have this protection against job leakage. And it is a message, an important message, to countries around the world that all countries are going to have to enter into some action plan to reduce carbon dioxide.

We know we can't solve this problem without China's participation, and that's why in this bill we will also have a provision that in the event there is not progress made, that there could be trade adjustment at the border for imports from China if, in fact, China is unable to move forward with this. Now, we hope it will succeed on that and that won't be necessary.

But the point is we are designing a bill that will capture the innovation, allow us to make the electric car here rather than China, and not lose jobs in the steel industry. And I think we have designed a bill that's going to accomplish that.

I think, too, when we think about this clean energy future, it has to be in relationship with what other countries are doing as well. And when we pass this bill next year, it is going to be because we believe we are not going to cede these markets to countries who could steal these markets from us.

You know, we are in a race right now to see who is going to be dominant making electric cars and electric batteries. China has an interest in doing that, and they are making enormous investments to do that.

We are in a race today to decide who is going to dominate the solar- power industry. China is making enormous investments in their solar cells. In fact, I met a fellow from, I believe it was from, Indiana who had a solar cell manufacturing plant. And he had a guy walk in from China and plunk down $300 million and try to get him to move his plant to China, lock, stock and barrel.

And the fellow said, I am a red, white, and blue American, and I am not leaving. But that's what we are up against, and that's one of the reasons we intend to take an aggressive position here with research and development dollars, with limits on CO2 that will spur investment and kick start the businesses here that we need so we can regain these markets.

You know, we invented solar energy in this country, but the Germans sort of commercialized it because they saw this a little before we did. We need to get in that game today and see to it that the companies like Infinia Companies and Nanosolar that's doing thin-cell photovoltaics and Bright Source.

By the way, I want to mention this one source of solar energy that people may not have heard about, the Bright Source Company and the Ausra Energy Company, two companies doing what's called concentrated solar power. What they do is they use mirrors in various fashions to concentrate radiant energy, heat up a liquid, make steam and then create electricity from it with zero pollution associated with it.

Bright Source has now signed contracts for thousands of megawatts of crystal pure solar energy in various places in the United States, and it would surprise you, it's not just Nevada. They have places in the Southeast where they can do this as well.

And it is this type of technological breakthrough that if we put our minds to it and pass this bill, we are going to jump-start jobs in this country.

The gentleman has mentioned wind. Some people think of wind as kind of a toy you get under a Christmas tree or something. In fact, wind energy, according to the Department of Energy, and this was under the previous President's Department of Energy, concluded that we could have 20 percent of all of our electricity generated by wind in the next couple of decades, just using existing technology.

Now, we believe there are going to be some advances in technology. We think there is a good shot at having good storage. One of the issues of wind, of course, is the wind doesn't blow all the time. It's an intermittent source. So there is two ways to get around that problem: one, have multiple wind sites that are tied together in an advanced transmission grid so if the wind is not blowing in one place, it will be blowing in another; or to have a storage system.

And I have talked to these companies now that are developing batteries that are as large as a semi-trailer, and these now have the potential of actually being grid connected to store wind and solar when we have excess power generation. So we think there is a reasonable chance to get to 20 percent, which is very significant, just on one technology alone. Then we have so many options, of course, including efficiency, which can be done everywhere, day or night.

We appreciate the gentleman's leadership on that. I want to

thank you. I must excuse myself, but I want to thank Mr. Blumenauer for being such a stalwart champion of these causes. We know there's going to be thousands of jobs created in this clean energy revolution, and I hope a lot of them are going to be in Oregon, which is a great State.

Thank you for letting me join you, Mr. Blumenauer.

Mr. Speaker, I have come to the floor this evening to speak about a bill that we hope to have on the floor in the next couple of months that is going to be styled the ``American Clean Energy Jobs'' bill. It is the right name for the bill because it will jump-start, kick-start and initiate an economic recovery based on the growth of clean energy jobs in this country. And it is timely, it is vital, and we believe it is possible this year to really give a boost to the American economy by helping create the millions, and I say that with an M, the millions, not hundreds, not thousands, but the millions of new jobs that we can create if America fulfills its destiny to become the arsenal of clean energy for the world. America is a country with a very special destiny. We have fulfilled the destiny to bring democracy to the world. And later we served as the arsenal of democracy during World War II. We armed the rest of the world with the tools they needed to defeat the powers of darkness during World War II.

And now we will have a bill on the floor shortly that will call on the American economy to produce the clean energy jobs and tools to essentially provide a new clean energy future for the world. And when we do that, we believe we will dramatically expand our economy, dramatically expand Americans' employment opportunities, and as an additional side benefit, dramatically reduce the pollution that today is threatening, in a very serious way, the way we live. We will also, at the same time, dramatically reduce our dependence on foreign oil. And as a side benefit, we will dramatically increase our national security, because we know that our addiction to foreign oil is a security risk to the United States.

I want to start talking about this bill from its first job, which is to create jobs for this country. In the current economic malaise we are in, we have got a couple of choices. We can sort of roll over and play dead and not take bold action to jump-start the American economy by seizing this opportunity to start new businesses in this country that can create employment. Some people in this Chamber still think that is what we should do, which is nothing. They are unwilling to make the investments both in governmental action or in the dollars that it is going to take to really create these clean energy jobs.

We think they are wrong. We think inaction is not the American way. We think America should take bold action to create clean energy jobs and that Congress has the responsibility to create the policies that are going to help create those jobs in this country.

So if I can, let me just start this discussion tonight by talking about just some very simple samples of the kind of jobs that we believe need to be jump-started in this country. I will start in Michigan, a State that has been so hard-hit right now with some difficult times in the auto industry. I will mention a couple of companies that if we do the right thing can really expand employment.

One is General Motors, which is going to bring out a car called the Volt in a year or two. The Volt is a plug-in electric car. The Volt is a car where you can plug it in at night and the next day run it on all electricity for about 40 miles, which is really cheap. It is about 1 cent a mile, maybe a little more to run, compared to 7 or 8 cents a mile for gasoline. And 60 percent of all the trips we take a day are less than 40 miles. But if you want to go more than 40 miles, then it will run on the internal combustion engine that is in the car as well. And you can drive it for 250, 300 miles, bring it home at night, plug it in again and you are off to the races the next morning on very inexpensive electricity, very quiet electricity and very nonpolluting electricity.

Now at some point, they may use some batteries by another company. It is a Massachusetts company called A123 Battery Company. And A123 Battery Company now, because of some policies we just adopted in the stimulus bill, we hope to be able to open a manufacturing plant in Michigan to provide the advanced lithium ion batteries that we think can be the backbone of an American electric car industry.

Now those two companies, General Motors, we know they are in difficult times, and A123 Battery Company, have the potential to employ thousands of Americans in high-paying manufacturing work if--if-- Congress takes a path of action to develop the clean energy policies we need to drive investment into those companies.

And that is what is at stake tonight. What we are talking about is making sure that those jobs of the future don't go just to China, where China has a very aggressive national policy to build electric cars. We need some national policies to make sure that they are done here.

I go to Washington State and I hail from Washington State. Take a look at the McKinstry Company, which is a little company that just started providing advice on how to do efficiency. And then they figured out that they could save corporations millions of dollars a year by teaching companies how not to waste energy, how to save energy. That company has now grown to hundreds of people who are working in Seattle, Washington, basically teaching companies around the world how to save energy. And that company is now probably the leading energy efficiency company in the world when it comes to teaching companies how to save energy. And hundreds of my neighbors

and constituents are working there saving energy. That company needs policies that will continue to drive investment into efficiency and away from waste. And we need this clean energy jobs bill that we will be introducing on the floor shortly to make sure that that happens.

Right up the street from that company a few miles is the Bio Novartis Company. Bio Novartis has figured out a way to help an algae-based biofuels company make essentially gasoline and other automobile and other fuels out of algae. And they figured out a way to get light to the algae using a glass tube to provide light into these algae pools that one day will power our cars. And they are not the only company doing it. There are other companies. I met a guy in a ferry boat in Seattle who has a company called Sapphire Energy that does the same thing. They are doing their work in New Mexico and San Diego.

These companies need policies, though, that give them a level playing field viz-a-viz the old type of energy we had, which was gasoline. They don't have a level playing field right now because the deck is stacked in the law right now to favor gasoline, the old kind of gasoline, rather than the new kind of fuel. And we will talk tonight about how this bill will level the playing field.

The list goes on and on about the companies. About 4 miles from that other company is a company called AltaRock. It is in northern Seattle in the Greenwood district. And they have the potential of hiring hundreds and thousands of employees doing what is called ``engineered geothermal.'' Engineered geothermal is a new type of way to produce electricity. What you do is you drill a hole down in the Earth. You pump water down. It picks up the heat that is in the Earth's crust. You bring it up hot, about 300 degrees, and you use that water to generate steam and then electricity. Zero pollution, all American energy, using pretty old technology. They have got to improve their pumps to make sure they can pump under high temperature positions. They have to do some geological testing to see where this works best. But drilling holes isn't totally rocket science. AltaRock has the potential to generate enormous job creation in this country.

You go about 5 miles from that company to downtown Seattle and there is a little company I met called Glosten Engineering. They are a marine architecture firm. It is a relatively small company now. They have about 65 employees. They are now starting to work on how to design offshore wind turbines, where we can put wind turbines off our shorelines, say 10 miles off our shorelines, where there is enormous wind potential where we might be able to provide 10 or more percent of our electricity from offshore wind. This company can grow and provide employment in the construction, not only the design, but the construction of these offshore wind turbines. They are going to design floating platforms for these 200-foot towers to be offshore. And that is going to require massive construction for cement, iron workers, steelworkers, machinists and the like.

Now what do all these companies have in common? What they have in common is they have great ideas. They have the potential to create nonpolluting energy in America and grow thousands of new jobs in this country. But what these companies need is a kick-start. And they need some messages from Congress that we are going to treat them fairly. Now, right now they are not treated fairly. The cards are stacked against these small businessmen and women, these entrepreneurs who are creating these new technologies. And the reason they are stacked against them is that the laws essentially, right now, allow a cost to be imposed on Americans by polluters that the polluters don't have to pay but citizens do. Citizens today have to incur the costs of what is happening because of pollution.

Pollution is going to be costing Americans big-time in the next several decades. It is going to cost them in loss of jobs associated with the decline of our forests, because we are putting too much pollution, carbon dioxide, in the air. That is changing the weather. And the weather is killing our forests. And people are going to lose jobs in the forest products industry because of the deaths of our forests. And costs are being imposed on our citizens right now that the polluters aren't paying, citizens are paying, and loss of jobs and loss of revenue. Fishermen are going to lose their livelihoods, and costs are being imposed on them because we are going to lose our salmon stocks because of changes in precipitation. We are in a prolonged drought right now in the West. And we have already experienced some decline in salmon stocks associated with no water in the rivers during the summer months, plus the threat of ocean acidification because pollution goes into the atmosphere, goes back into the ocean and changes the acidity of the ocean. Costs are being imposed and not paid by polluters.

We are going to experience very substantial costs caused by polluters when we get sea level changes associated with melting that is going on right now with the Arctic and potentially Greenland that will be relatively slow but will require very significant expenditure of infrastructure improvements. So right now, costs are being imposed on citizens that the polluting industries are not paying.

We are going to do a couple of things in this clean energy jobs program. We are going to basically make sure that investment goes to these new companies to create these jobs and that the cost of this pollution is put where it should be, not on the citizen, but on the polluting industries. And we are going to do this in kind of a simple way. It sounds complex, but it is really quite simple. We are going to do, right in this bill, a bill that will essentially do what we have already done in America for pollutants in several ways. In sulfur dioxide, for instance, several years ago, we had an acid rain problem.

So we decided and Congress passed a law that essentially limited the amount of acid that could be put in the atmosphere, sulfur dioxide, because sulfur dioxide went into the atmosphere and then made acid rain.

We are doing the same thing right now with carbon dioxide that is making acid oceans. It is doing the same only on a much, much larger scale. But there is a loophole in our law. This pollutant, carbon dioxide, is not covered by our antipollution laws. And as a result, citizens are going to have to pay for that unless we change that law.

So what this bill will do is exactly what we did for this other pollutant, sulfur dioxide, and it put a cap on the amount of pollution that is going into the atmosphere every year, and it will make the polluting industries pay for permits to be allowed to put that pollution into the atmosphere. And that money, significant parts of it, will then be recycled back to American consumers to help with their utility bills.

So three things will happen under this bill. And they all will result in what we want to achieve which is the creation of American jobs in these clean energy technologically driven companies. These three things that I am about to describe will all drive investment into these new jobs.

Number one, the creation of this cap once we limit the amount of pollution going into the atmosphere will immediately make these new jobs much more cost effective and much more attractive to investors because once there is a cap on some of these old polluting ways to use energy, now the new, clean energy companies become much more attractive because they are not subject to this cap.

The engineered geothermal jobs of the future will not have to buy a permit because they are not putting out pollution. The lithium ion battery producers in Michigan will not have to buy a permit because they are not pollution. The Bio Novartis Company with algae-based fuel is not going to have to buy a permit because they are not putting out pollution. And those jobs will immediately become much more economically tenable. That is the first way it will work.

The second way it will work is that it will put the cost of this problem where it belongs, which is on polluting industries. No longer will that be borne by citizens, John and Sally Citizen. It will be borne by the polluting industries. They will have to go out and they will have to buy permits from the government to be allowed to continue putting acid into our ocean and pollutants into

our atmosphere that is changing our planet. That seems fair to me; and it also seems fair to my constituents.

And the third thing that will happen is that the money that the polluters pay for these permits, some of it is going to go into research, some of these clean jobs; some of it will help industries clean up their act. But a bulk of it is going to go back to consumers. It is going to go back to citizens either in their paycheck or some tax credit, or perhaps a direct distribution to them.

So the bulk of the money that the polluters will have to pay will go back to citizens to help them with their utility bills. So this will mean that Americans in this bill will get more jobs. They are going to get help with their utility bills, and the polluters will pay for that.

What I am here to report to those who may be interested in this subject, and there are those here who still resist this idea because they are still fear mongering because they resist change. People who resist change, they try to create fear. They are going to try to create fear that this is going to drive people into bankruptcy for doing this.

But I will tell you, when you ask Americans do you think it might be a good deal for you to get a tax credit and the polluters have to pay for that and we increase our energy independence and decrease our pollution, we have asked Americans what they think and by margins of somewhere between 20 and 40 percent margins, people realize it is a good idea, even if it requires some up-front investment. And this will require some up-front investment. It will require some costs, but Americans' common sense understand that makes sense because Americans understand you don't get something for nothing.

What we are getting here is job creation, a clean future for our kids and our grandkids and our great grandkids, increased energy independence, and help with our utility bills. And Americans by huge margins favor that kind of an approach. We have asked them what they think.

Now, we have had some experience with this before. In the next several weeks, and already you are hearing the fear mongering that is going on. Some people in this Chamber are trying to scare Americans to think that the sky is falling if we take this approach. They have tried to drum up fear that this is going to cost Americans numbers that they pull out of the air that are pretty fantastic, thousands of dollars that are not substantiated by the economic analysis, and, secondly, are not substantiated by what America is about. What America is about fundamentally is innovation and optimism. What we have always learned through our experience in this country is if we put our minds to it, we can innovate our way out of almost any challenge.

The best example of this is what happened when we have seen this movie before, and we have seen this movie before. This movie played out in the Clean Air Act where people said that if we did exactly what we are doing right now, if we put a limit on the amount of acid rain and sulfur dioxide going into the atmosphere, and if we charged polluters for permits to put that pollution out, people came to this Chamber and said if you do that, it will drive Americans across the country into bankruptcy because utility bills will skyrocket and you will be facing huge, double, triple prices of your utility bills because the utilities will have to increase their costs. They will pass it on to utility ratepayers, and there will be these desperate economic conditions. That is exactly what people said in this Chamber.

What happened in reality? What happened in reality was that good old tried and true character of Americans kicked in, which was to innovate, to invent new ways to reduce this pollution. And very bright American scientists went to work and invented ways to capture sulfur dioxide, make sure it did not go up the smokestacks, at half the cost or less than what was predicted by the fear-mongers.

The other thing that happened is that we cleaned up our lakes, and we saved our lakes for our grandkids, where there might be some fish in them. It was a hugely successful program at less than half the cost predicted. And why is that? It is not because Congressmen and Congresswomen are smart or even lucky. It is because American businessmen and American scientists are smart and ambitious and creative, and they created the technologies to solve this problem. That is what is going to happen when we pass this bill now. American businesses, some of which I talked about tonight, are going to get the investment and they are going to create these clean energy jobs. They will get out there and figure out a way to produce electricity in a cost-effective way to in fact have the potential over the long run to reduce our utility rates.

The reason I say this is we really have two choices that will be presented to Congress in the next month or so. One choice is the status quo. And, unfortunately, a lot of my friends on the other side of the aisle are going to advocate for the status quo. In the status quo, we remain addicted to oil from the Middle East. I can tell you over the long run that price is not going to go down. It is going to go up and down over time, but over the long run, we are facing limited supplies of oil and increasing demands on oil. When the Chinese start driving cars, as they are starting to do, over the long run, with the limited supply of oil and an increasing demand in China and India and other places, don't predict that prices of gasoline are going to go down. They are going to go up over the long run.

The status quo, people who are against this bill who don't want to do anything about this problem, who just want to use fear to prevent people from acting, they want to remain hooked to oil. They want to remain slaves to the needle of oil addiction. We have to break that addiction. It is our only path to job creation in this country.

What we are saying is we have got to get out there and create new sources of energy. We are going to be burning oil for some time. There is no question, this is not going to happen overnight. But we have to start the transition where Americans can start to have their own energy sources that are beyond oil, frankly. And, fortunately, we now have the ability to do that.

By the way, those people who think electric cars are just some kind of Tonka toy, take a ride in a Tesla. I got in a Tesla in Seattle the other day. It is a little sporty thing. It goes zero to 60 in 3.9 seconds, which is faster than a Porsche. I rode in one and of course we obeyed the speed limit because I am a Congressman and I always do, but it was like getting into a rocket sled to feel that acceleration. I haven't been in a car that quick since I was 17 years old. That car is expensive right now, and not many Americans are going to be driving a Tesla. But a lot of Americans are going to be driving a Ford Focus, which is going to be all electric, and a lot of Americans are going to be driving a General Motors Volt, and a lot of Americans are going to be using electricity generated by wind power and solar power from the BrightSource Company.

By the way, we have this power all over the country. I talked to the BrightSource Company. I met them in California last weekend. They now have either hundreds or thousands of megawatts under contract. They do what is called concentrated solar energy, and they use mirrors to capture the sun's energy and they reflect the sun back up into a central tower that is about 100 feet tall. On top of this tower is a canister of oil or some product, it might be sodium, and they heat it up to terrific temperatures, and then they create steam and electricity from that. This company is going gang-busters, but what they need is fairness competing against some of the other technologies that are still allowed to put their junk in the air for free.

I have another company called Ramgen up in the State of Washington. They are building a compression technology that might allow us to burn coal and take the CO2 from the coal and bury it underground and sequester it. This is a compression technology that will decrease the cost of doing that.

But what they need is this bill that will create American jobs by creating a cap on the amount of CO2 going in the atmosphere. This bill will do some other things to help the emergence of these companies.

It is going to create a promise to Americans that we are going to get a certain percentage of our electricity

from clean energy sources. And 22 States or more have now adopted these laws. Every single one of them has worked. Every single one of these States that has set these goals for a percentage of their electricity is on target to meet those goals. We have one in the State that I am from, in the State of Washington, that was adopted by popular vote. Now we need a national goal that is called a renewable energy standard. We are talking amongst ourselves to figure out what that number should be right now, but it should be somewhere in the neighborhood of a fifth of our energy by 2025 to get from renewable sources, and this is eminently achievable.

The Department of Energy and various other entities have evaluated this, and this is an achievable goal. We know that, again, once we put these innovators to work and let them loose, we are going to get tremendous technological innovation to get this job done.

We are also going to create mechanisms to help these small businesses do this research. You know, we know what Uncle Sam can do. Uncle Sam is only going to play a part of this. Most of this will be driven by private enterprise. Most of it is going to be driven by private equity and lending from the private sector. But Uncle Sam does have a role to play in some of the over-the-horizon technologies.

Like in the original Apollo Project when we went to the Moon, Uncle Sam promoted the research and development, and we went to the Moon.

In World War II, Uncle Sam invented, with its nickel weapons systems that were incredibly powerful, and that was as a result of Uncle Sam's research and development.

Now Uncle Sam needs to step up to the plate and do the research and development that can now jump-start these clean energy jobs.

So who's going to pay for that research and development? Well, in this bill, the people who are going to pay for that research and development in the amount of about $15 billion a year are the polluting industries that are putting the pollution in the atmosphere today, unchecked, unregulated, in infinite amounts, at zero cost. They're going to pay for this research and development, not the taxpayer, not the individual American citizen. Because when these permits are sold at auction for these pollution permits, that money is going to be taken and put into a fund that will go to research and development to help these companies develop these over-the-horizon technologies. Now, that's the way it should be because we know we can be creative and we know that's the place that should fund this.

So the long and the short of it is that, by creating this limit on pollution, we make these jobs more economically competitive, number one. Number two, we create a financing mechanism to help the companies that are going to hire these people in these new jobs paid by the polluters.

Number three, we create a standard, a legal standard that utilities will need to meet of at least a portion of our energy will be guaranteed to come from clean energy sources. Those are the first three things that we do.

Fourth, we create a thing called a low carbon fuel standard, which will create a standard which will call for Americans to have more cleaner fuels over time so that companies that sell transportation fuels will be able to have--they will be required basically to provide cleaner energy sources to America and put out less pollution over time on a transition period.

Fifth, we're going to create in this bill, I hope, and it's not a done deal yet, but I hope we will be creating a thing called a green bank, where Uncle Sam will provide a revolving fund that will provide lending for some of these businesses at what is called the ``valley of death.'' A lot of these businesses, you get the people in a garage, they come up with a brilliant idea. They get some venture capital, create a prototype of their device. It works. They scale it up, but when it comes time to put it in the factory, to the build the first factory, they can't get a loan because banks just won't loan on sort of the first commercial-sized projects.

So in this bill financed by polluting industries, from these permits we will be creating a revolving fund. So in this credit crunch that we're now experiencing, these business will be able to, in fact, get access to capital.

This bill is going to be action-oriented. This is change. It is big change for our economy. And when you are in moments of crises, as we are, and when you think about it, we're sort of in a perfect storm of crises right now. We have had this enormous economic challenge that we're experiencing, huge reductions in capital so these businesses can't get capital--not just clean energy businesses, but any businesses right now--very high unemployment. So we have got an economic challenge.

We have a national security challenge. We're involved in two wars right now, and it is not accidental that one of those is in an area where the oil comes from. It's not accidental that a lot of the threats this Nation faces are from oil-rich areas. It's not an accident. It's a fact. Until we wean ourselves from our addiction off that oil that comes from that region, we're always going to be embroiled in these security threats.

So we have got a national security threat. We have an environmental threat that is also a national security threat. We have got a letter from 20 generals who have told us that if we don't solve this problem of global warming, we're going to have a national security threat of mass migration, because as droughts continue to affect the areas south of us and in the northern and sub-Saharan areas of Africa, you're going to have mass migrations of people and you're going to have collapses of governments, and you will continue to see what we're seeing in North Africa right now, of governments that just don't function because their society has literally dried up and blown away with their topsoil.

These generals are telling us that global warming is a security risk to the United States over the long run and have urged us to take action to limit the amount of carbon dioxide going in the atmosphere. So we have these multiple crises right now that are all hitting us all at once.

Now, it seems to me that when you're in that kind of situation, Americans want action. And that is what this bill, the American Clean Energy Jobs bill, will give Americans, which is action. Inaction is not an option here.

Unfortunately, at the moment, and I hope this will change, my colleagues across the aisle have insisted, No, no. Things are good enough. We will just leave them the way they are. We don't need these clean energy jobs by the millions. We don't need clean energy. We don't need to address our national security threat of addiction to oil. We don't need to address global warming, and we don't need to address the Chinese.

I want to address this for a minute. We are also in an economic race with the rest of the world. I don't mean to single out China, but I will just start the discussion with China.

We are in a race today to create these clean energy jobs, and we're not really winning that race today because other countries around the globe have got the drop on us. They're out of the gate first with policies that will support the creation of clean energy jobs in their countries, not ours.

That's got to stop. I am tired of Germany leading America in the production of solar energy because Germany has adopted what's called a feed-in tariff, which essentially creates something like we're going to create, which is a demand for clean energy. We have a little different version. We call it a renewable electrical standard. And they're now leading America.

We created these technologies in our country using American capital and American smarts. We invented solar energy, but the Germans are commercializing it and leading the export market around the world because Congress has sat on the dime and hasn't created these policies like the German Government has. I'm tired of that. We need to change that.

I'm tired that the Danish Government, because they created policies to drive investment into wind turbines a decade and a half ago, that the little country of Denmark, with 45 million people, is outproducing us, until very recently, in wind power. Now, we just passed them a couple of months ago, but with 300 million people in America and the most brilliant people in America, we should not be allowing the Danish, who I love as a people--and a

shout-out to Sven Auken, a friend of mine. He was the environmental minister who led this movement in Denmark. He saw something two decades ago coming, and they created some policies to help clean job creation in Denmark. But I want those jobs right here.

Now we're getting them back. The Clipper Wind Company in Iowa, the Gamesa Company in Pennsylvania. We have one of the largest wind farms in my State in Washington, but not fast enough. I'm not satisfied.

Take a look at what China is doing. I met in California last weekend a senior advisor to the Chinese Government. He told me just matter of fact, We're going to build electric cars. Unless you change in America, we're going to dominate this field. And the Chinese and Chinese Government are making massive investments now in developing the electric car.

We are going to be in a race with China to figure out whether we're going to make the electric cars in Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee, and maybe the Carolinas, or whether they're going to be made in China, and we lose again to an Asian country that got the drop on us in technology.

I will not stand here and allow the Chinese to become dominant in the electric car industry. My side of the aisle is going to insist that we adopt policies to build those cars here.

Now we have started down that track. In our stimulus package, we put $2 billion in to assist the development of the domestic electric battery companies so we can make those batteries and cars here. Yesterday, I was at the White House--time flies around here--meeting with President Obama about how we do this energy bill. He urged us to pass this energy bill. I agree with him on this.

We reached an agreement yesterday in a program called Cash for Clunkers. We, on my side of the aisle, are going to put a Cash for Clunkers provision in this bill, which will basically tell Americans if you're driving kind of a clunker that gets substandard mileage, below 18 miles a gallon, if you turn in your car and buy a new car with higher gas mileage, at least the CAFE standard, you will get a $2,500 voucher from Uncle Sam towards buying that new car. And that amount will go up the more fuel efficient the car is. I think it's up to $4,000. Don't hold me to this, but I think that's the amount it goes up to.

So Uncle Sam is going to give Americans an incentive to buy a fuel- efficient car and get off the road some of these inefficient cars to create jobs in this country. And that's one way we're going to help Americans in this clean energy transition.

It's not the only way, because Americans are also going to get cash in their pockets, either through a tax credit or some other mechanism that we're designing right now.

So we're going to take measures that make sure that America gets in this game of creating clean energy jobs in this country, and we recognize that we don't have the luxury of time like some of my friends across the aisle think. They think we can wait another 20 or 30 years to do this. We cannot wait to do this. We have got to do this right now.

We have got to create clean energy jobs right now or the Chinese, the Germans, and the Danish are going to do it. I mean, again, no disrespect to these other countries. They're great countries. They're competitive. They're eager. But we should not allow our technology to be mastered by them.

I want to talk right now, because we have some very important people in the Chamber right now that have just entered the Chamber, about the ability to use coal in our future.

Right now, we have great Americans who are working in the coal industry, and they're working hard and they're producing huge amounts of energy for Americans today. The problem is, unfortunately, that we need to find a way that we can use coal in a way that will reduce the amount of pollution going into the atmosphere. To do this, we think that there's an opportunity to be able to find a way to burn coal in a way that doesn't put massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

So what we are doing in this bill, in this Clean Energy Jobs bill, we will be taking money from polluting industries and creating a fund which will go to researching how we can find out a way to do what is called carbon sequestration. It's a fancy word for taking the carbon dioxide out of the coal-fired plants, electrical generating plants, and take that carbon dioxide and burying it in the Earth permanently.

If we can figure out a way to do this, we will find a way to use coal for decades. If we can't find a way to do this, it's going to be difficult to use all the coal we have, because if we burn all the coal we have, it will be good, cheap power, but it will also essentially change life as we know it in this country based on climate change.

So what we're doing in this bill is we're creating a fund that will help the coal industry have a long-term survival in this country, and they will be able to have assistance in this bill to generate over a billion dollars a year for research into coal sequestration technology.

Now, the reason I point this out is I think some very good people here in Congress are being a little shortsighted, and they are not seeing the benefit of generating funds that can go to the research and development of this new technology, technology that we clearly need to solve this problem. If we don't generate this money to create this technology, people in the coal industry eventually are going to have difficulty because of the inevitability of the climate change that we face.

Now, if I can, just for a minute I would like to address that issue of why we can create jobs while simultaneously dealing with climate change. First, I want to address a little bit the problems we face on climate change.

Climate change is now a fact, not a theory or hypothesis. We have direct observational evidence that carbon dioxide in our atmosphere has skyrocketed during the industrial revolution. It has gone from about 250 to about 360, 370 parts per million. It will continue to rise to double the levels of carbon dioxide. This is simply a fact.

Now, the problem with carbon dioxide is you can't see it, you can't smell it, you can't taste it. But it has a nasty little attribute, and no scientist today anywhere who has a scientific degree will disagree with this statement: It has the attribute of trapping a certain spectrum of radiation that can go in as one spectrum of radiation but can't go out when it is reflected off the surface of the Earth. All scientists of any repute recognize that.

So we are now involved in this massive experiment where we are the guinea pigs of what happens when you double the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Now, unfortunately, we are seeing what happens when you do that, and we are seeing it right now with our own eyes.

The Arctic is melting. The Arctic in the last several decades has decreased by 40 percent, and many scientists believe in the next decade or so it will disappear in the late summer months almost in total; it will just have a fringe of the Arctic.

We are seeing tundra melting rapidly in Alaska. We are experiencing droughts. We are experiencing by the millions of acres death of our forests because it doesn't get cold enough to kill the beetles, and they then kill the trees.

We are seeing changes in patterns of migration of our animals. We are seeing off my coast in the State of Washington creatures we have never seen in the State of Washington before off our coastline.

And, importantly, we are seeing increases in the acidity of the ocean. The oceans are becoming more acidic. And this isn't related to temperature; this is related to carbon dioxide, which comes out of our smokestacks, drifts over our oceans, goes into solution; and, when carbon dioxide goes into solution it makes it more acidic. The oceans today have 30 percent more acidic ions in them than they did in pre- industrial times. So we know we have to deal with this problem. By the way, there is no debate about ocean acidification. And even if we could solve the global warming problem, unless we create these green collar jobs and green energy jobs, we won't solve this problem. So we intend in the next several months to succeed, as we have always done, and by innovating to create these clean energy jobs.

Now, people are going to talk about: If we do this, that this is going to cost Americans, this fear factor that people

are going to try to scare people in, they are going to tell Americans it is going to cost thousands of dollars a year. It just doesn't hold up to any economic analysis, an analysis by MIT, which by the way has been incorrectly cited by some of my colleagues here. We have a letter from the MIT professor that basically said the total cost to the U.S. economy averages out to about 18 cents a day for the investments that will be involved in changing this. The EPA studies that have looked at this have concluded it will be in the $200 to $300 range a year of investment that will create millions of clean energy jobs.

These investments we know succeed because we have confidence in American businesses and American workers and American scientists to create these new clean energy jobs; and when we give them the investment they need, they will produce what we need, which is new technology. And this bill will be the largest jump-start of American technology since the original Apollo project.

Now the Democratic members of the Commerce Committee went to the White House to meet with President Obama yesterday, or the day before, and we talked about this bill. We are shaping this bill in a way that is fair to every region and takes into consideration the needs of certain industries.

By the way, I will point out something that is very important in the bill. We want to make sure that jobs don't go overseas as a result of this bill. And if some electrical rates go up as a result of this, we don't want to see jobs in steel mills or cement plants or aluminum plants go overseas to places where electricity may be cheaper. So what we are doing is we have a provision that Congressman Mike Doyle of Pittsburgh and I have worked on which will give benefits, free permits, to the steel, aluminum, other energy intensive, trade sensitive businesses. They will get free permits. The reason we are doing this is so they will not have a disincentive for keeping those jobs in this country. We are designing this bill in a way that is sensitive to make sure we keep jobs in this country and this does not distort our job creation, and it is being carefully designed to achieve that.

What President Obama talked about, I just want to cite one thing he said. He said that Members of Congress come here for a reason, and that reason is to very rarely and infrequently have a chance to do something historic.

This is a truly historic moment for America. It is a moment where we have the opportunity to seize the destiny of this country, to create a clean energy future for the country, to reduce pollution, to increase our energy independence. And that only happens when men and women of good faith come together to find a consensus that will create clean energy jobs, will limit pollution, will require polluting industries to pay, and will in fact move this country with a great, great leap forward in technology.

You don't do that by doing nothing. Doing nothing is not an action. We will be doing something historic in this bill, and I look forward to working with my colleagues to pass this clean energy American jobs bill. I look forward to the many ribbon cuttings that we are going to have as a result of this bill when these companies start up and start hiring Americans and start manufacturing the electric cars and wind turbines and solar cells and engineered geothermal and all of the things we are going to do to help create job creation in this country. That is a future worthy of this country. That is a bill worth passing. I look forward to it.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 8 o'clock and 23 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, May 7, 2009, at 10 a.m.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to introduce the Marine Renewable Energy Promotion Act of 2009, a bill to promote the development of renewable energy from our oceans and rivers, using the tides, currents, waves and even the thermal properties of our oceans to generate electricity. I thank Senator Murkowski for introducing a Senate companion to this important measure.

Marine and hydrokinetic devices offer the potential to capture energy from waves, tides, ocean currents, and the natural flow of water in rivers, as well as marine thermal gradients, without building new dams or diversions. The potential for this energy is tremendous. The Electric Power Research Institute has estimated that ocean resources in the United States could generate 252 million megawatt hours of electricity, which given as much support as other types of renewable energy, could be equivalent to 6.5 percent of America's entire electricity generation.

Currently, Washington State companies, universities, research institutions and public utilities are working to bring affordable, reliable and abundant electricity to major urban load centers located near Puget Sound.

For example, the Department of Energy designated the Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center, run by the University of Washington and Oregon State University, to develop tidal and wave research projects. Additionally, the Department of Energy's Marine Sciences Laboratory on the Olympic Peninsula assesses waterpower resource potential to address and remove environmental roadblocks to deployment, testing to accelerate the integration of large-scale waterpower electricity generation into the Northwest power grid, and is essential to establishing a robust basis for industrial investment based on verifiable technology performance, assured cost basis, and environmental performance. Furthermore, two entities in Washington State are further along in deploying tidal energy turbines than anyone else in the United States. Both Verdant Power, in partnership with the U.S. Navy, and the Snohomish County Public Utility District, in partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy, are well underway in their research and development of tidal energy in the Puget Sound and should be seen as test beds for the nation.

The Marine Renewable Energy Promotion Act will accelerate these efforts by establishing a research, development and demonstration program at the Department of Energy that is specifically devoted to marine and hydrokinetic renewable energy. This office will help to develop new marine renewable energy technologies, increase reliability and durability of facilities, reduce manufacturing and operating costs of the devices, help identify and address environmental impacts of marine renewable energy and make sure that such power can be integrated into the national electricity grid.

Importantly, the bill authorizes federal funding for a Marine-based Energy Device Verification Program, which will bridge the gap between design and development efforts and the commercial deployment of marine renewable energy devices. Funds would facilitate the installation and evaluation of marine renewable energy projects in partnership with appropriate federal research institutions and organizations. Information learned will be available for the benefit of utilities, independent power producers, generators, and others in the marine renewable energy development community.

Further, the bill establishes an Adaptive Management and Environmental fund to provide grants for entities to help pay for the regulatory permitting and development of new marine technologies.

Finally, the bill would allow marine energy to qualify for the existing accelerated depreciation tax benefit, which essentially allows marine projects to accelerate the depreciation of their project costs over five years and will help enhance project economic returns for private developers.

I urge my colleagues to consider this important bill.