Madam Speaker, today, we are going to highlight this hour on energy and the needs of the United States in terms of enacting a robust energy policy that is going to create jobs here in America, move away from our dependence on foreign…
Madam Speaker, today, we are going to highlight this hour on energy and the needs of the United States in terms of enacting a robust energy policy that is going to create jobs here in America, move away from our dependence on foreign sources of oil, and make our country stronger in the long term.
Now, I want to speak to you from a military perspective, having served nearly 15 years in the United States Air Force. I think that this issue has to be elevated from just a national debate to a matter of national security. And it's not just Congressman Boccieri from the 16th District of Ohio saying this.
In fact, in 2003, the United States Department of Defense issued a study and suggested that the risk of abrupt climate change should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a U.S. national security concern. The economic disruptions associated with global climate change are projected by the CIA and other intelligence experts to place increased pressure on weaker nations that may be unable to provide the basic needs and maintain order for their citizens.
So, from my own perspective, having graduated with a degree in baseball and minoring in economics, I didn't get into the whole scientific debate on whether climate change was real or perceived, but when the military experts and our intelligence experts speak, I'm going to listen, and I have to tell you that America should be listening as well.
I hope that over this next 60 minutes we will have a robust discussion about how this energy policy is going to move our country down the field so that we can end our dependence on foreign oil and we can make sure that our country becomes energy independent. After all, we did send a man to the Moon in 10 years, and I think and believe in my heart of hearts that we can become energy independent in the next 15 to 20 years. I believe in the innovation of America, and I believe that we can do this if we put our efforts on it.
Now, with the national energy debate comes a sense of trying to correct the status quo. And I know those changes are difficult, but for those who are against a national robust energy policy for the United States, you hear them speak the rhetoric from those who delivered $4-a- gallon gasoline to the United States of America. We listened to the same talking points that delivered oil prices over $150 a barrel. We listened to the same talking points who don't want us to end our dependency on foreign oil.
We import 66.4 percent of our oil from overseas; 66.4 percent of our oil comes from overseas. Nearly 40 percent comes from the Middle East. Forty percent comes from the Middle East.
History reminds us that, in 1944, when the United States and our allies bombed the Ploiesti Romanian oil fields, we effectively cut off the German supply of oil; but they quickly transitioned to a synthetic fuel, which is a derivative of coal, and they fought on a lot longer.
So the single largest user of energy in the United States is the Department of Defense. My friends, this is a matter of national security, and that's why an energy policy that moves away from our dependence on foreign oil is going to move us down the field to becoming
energy independent. I believe that the amount of alternative energy our Nation is able to produce is only limited by the amount of energy we are willing to invest in it, and that is why the United States is moving down this track.
We find that our intelligence experts, over serious matters of national security, have talked about this. In fact, General Anthony Zinni, a retired military staffer, has weighed in on this. We find that many of our military experts have weighed in on this as well as the CIA, which last month just set up a national policy and an agency in launching the center on climate change, with national security as a focal point for its work on this subject. So this is not just a matter of climate change but a matter of national security, and the impacting phenomena of such certification is just giving emphasis to the fact that we have got to address this as a matter of national security.
So we are going to talk tonight about energy. We are going to talk tonight about health care. I am joined by some of my colleagues on the floor, and we are going to be able to pivot in between these two subjects tonight as members of the 30-somethings because there are two topics.
There are two issues that confront us as a Nation that offer some serious challenges for our long-term competitiveness. They are health care and energy, health care in the fact that we spend more than any industrialized country on health care. Yet we find that our outcomes, our life expectancy, is on par with Cuba. With infant mortality and with chronic diseases like diabetes, heart conditions and asthma, we rank out somewhere around 38th in the world. So it's very clear that we are spending more than any industrialized country on health care. Yet our returns and outcomes, our return on investment, is not as good as it needs to be. So tonight we are going to talk about those two subjects as 30-somethings, energy and health care.
I am happy to be joined by my colleague from just a State away, Jason Altmire from Pennsylvania. I would like to recognize him for this time.
Well, I couldn't agree with the gentleman from Pennsylvania more in that we will find the courage to find what is clean coal technology and what we can use clean coal technology for.
Let me just say this: the United States Air Force right now is testing synthetic fuel in our airplanes, and it is using it for other applications broadly across the military because they know that we have more coal reserves in America than we have oil.
For those who may be out there who believe that we should drill in America and should take every last drop of oil out of America, we are going to expand drilling at some point. It's in the Senate version of the bill right now; but we will always have less oil than the Middle East, and right now 40 percent of our demand is supplied by the Middle East. Many have said that we're funding both sides of this war on terror, that we're sending money over to the Middle East and that they, in turn, are sending money to rogue terrorist nations that are actually looking to harm America.
So let's become energy independent. Let's use our resources. Let's use nuclear. Let's use clean coal. Let's use solar. Let's use the type of biofuels that are being researched right in our part of Ohio.
Now I want to speak to you because, if we end our dependence on foreign oil from the Middle East, what will it take? many Americans ask. What will it take to end our dependence on foreign oil?
There was a study issued that said if we put 27 percent of the vehicles on the road in the United States which are gas electric hybrids, like the Ford Escape or the Toyota Prius, we could end our dependency on foreign oil from the Middle East. Isn't that an achievable goal? Eighty percent of the worlds oil reserves are in the hands of governments and of their respective national oil companies. Sixteen of the twenty largest oil companies are state-owned--
nations that want to seek harm to the United States.
In fact, we hear from our military leaders, from General Anthony Zinni, a retired marine and former head of the Central Command, who said that we will pay for this one way or another. We will pay to reduce greenhouse gas emissions today, and we will have to take an economic hit of some kind, or we will pay the price later in military terms, and that will involve human lives. It is very clear that this is a matter of national security.
I will.
Mr. Murphy, you are exactly right. This is not a debate that is new just to this year or to this Congress. In fact, every Presidential candidate running for the highest office in this country last year stated that it is a matter of national security.
So I remind some of our friends on the other side who need to be reminded of the fact that some of their leaders who were running for this office suggested that we need a national energy policy that moves away from our dependence on foreign oil, that creates jobs in America and that makes America stronger, not weaker. One of those was Rudolph Giuliani.
To the gentleman from Pennsylvania's remarks about clean coal, he said we need to expand the use of hybrid vehicles, clean coal/carbon sequestration. We have more coal reserves in the United States than we have oil reserves in Saudi Arabia. This should be a major national project. This is a matter of national security. Every Presidential candidate has suggested that. We'll revisit some of their remarks in a few moments, but I want to go back to what some of our national intelligence experts are saying here.
Peter Ogden, chief of staff to the State Department's top climate negotiator, said the sense that climate change poses security and geographical challenges is central to the thinking of the State Department and the climate office. They're citing studies that were done under the Department of Defense which suggested that our National Intelligence experts are suggesting that this will be a breeding ground for terrorists if we do not look at this very seriously.
We are finding that areas which are wiped out by tsunamis and which have these cataclysmic events happening in their regions become breeding grounds for terrorists. They can't fund the national or the basic interests of their communities, of their countries. As a result, the CIA has said that the economic disruptions associated with global climate change are projected to place increased pressure on weak nations which may be unable to provide basic needs or to maintain order for their citizens.
That is critical, my friends. I didn't get into the whole scientific debate of climate change, but I'm paying attention when our military experts and when our Nation's intelligence experts are suggesting that we have to elevate this to a matter of national security.
I know Representative Tonko, from New York, has a few words, and he joins us in our 30-something hour.
I couldn't agree with the gentleman from New York more, that this is not only about creating jobs, it's a matter of our national security and moving away from our dependence on foreign oil.
In fact, in September, the Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA, is launching the Center on Climate Change and National Security as the focal point for its work on the subject. The Center is a small unit led by senior specialists from the Directorate of Intelligence and the Directorate of Science and Technology. And further, the National Intelligence Council reports that the demands of potential humanitarian responses may significantly tax U.S. military transportation and support force structures, resulting in a strained readiness posture and decreased strategic depth for our combat operations.
This is a telling remark of where this issue needs to be highlighted. I'm a C-130 pilot. We provide humanitarian relief. We support our troops. We will be flying humanitarian relief all over the world if this issue is not addressed. And they are talking about our readiness as a country. The CIA and others are talking about our readiness as a country. And I think this is very, very important. We can use all the resources that we have at our disposal. Can you imagine one day, my colleagues, rolling into a fuel station and having a choice, between using traditional gasoline, biofuels, biodiesel, ethanol; maybe we plug in our electric hybrid or drive by the gas station or fuel station altogether because we have a fuel cell that allows us to get a hundred miles to the gallon. That is an achievable goal that we should strive towards, having choices, not just using traditional gasoline but having a variety of sources. And, in fact, we can end our dependence from Arab nations and OPEC-producing nations if we put 27 percent of the vehicles on the road that were gas-electric hybrids. That's an achievable goal, to end our dependence from the Persian Gulf.
Would we bring our troops home? Would our national interests now be so closely aligned and attached to what happens in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and Iraq and all those areas--Iran--that have all the oil, 40 percent of the oil that comes to this nation? We can use the resources at our disposal, and I think that we ought to think about doing that. This is about jobs. This is about national security.
Let me just relate to you something that some of our leaders who are running for the highest office in this land have said. Mike Huckabee himself said this:
A nation that can't feed itself, fuel itself or produce the weapons to fight for itself is a nation forever enslaved. It's critical for our own country and our own interest economically, and from a point on national security, we commit to becoming energy independent and we commit to doing it within a decade. We have to take responsibility for our own house before we can expect others to do the same in theirs.
It goes back to his basic concept of leadership. Leaders don't ask others what they are unwilling to do themselves. That right there, my friends, is something that is very, very important.
We have been joined by one of our friends from Virginia, Congressman Perriello, who has much passion about this topic.
Thank you. I agree that this is not only about national security but creating jobs, too. We had a
recent announcement last month that Rolls Royce was moving the center for their research into my district, for fuel cells. We are going to become a leader in fuel cell research provided that we have the courage to invest in it.
You may have missed my earlier remarks because you just joined us, but I said that the only thing that is holding us back in terms of the amount of alternative energy our nation is able to produce is the amount of energy we are willing to invest in it. We have got to find the energy and the courage to make this happen.
I know Congressman Murphy has been trying to champion this in Connecticut.
Well, I couldn't agree with you more. The gentleman from Connecticut is absolutely correct. This is about creating jobs. So many jobs have been created already in our congressional districts, and let me just highlight a few of those.
In Ohio, he is right about the private venture funds and the public investment that is going to be required to get this started. Ohio is going to see a $5.6 billion investment in new public and private sources due to programs and incentives under the American Recovery and Reinvestment and American Clean Energy and Security Act. These investments will lead to nearly 70,000 clean-energy jobs in Ohio, even assuming some potential setbacks with respect to how we transition to those new technologies. Presently there are about 35,000 clean-energy jobs in Ohio, and that was as of 2007.
So we can do this. We can create the jobs of tomorrow. We can stand with the innovators and the entrepreneurs, and we can disregard the gibberish and the talk that we hear, the talking points from the status quo folks, who believe and are taking their talking points, quite frankly, from the same people, the very people who gave us $4 a gallon gasoline, $150 a barrel oil prices. We can do better than that, and I think it is about our country.
Let me revisit, before we recognize Representative Altmire, what Mitt Romney said. He said there are multiple reasons for us to say we want to be less energy dependent on foreign energy and develop our own sources. That is the real key, of course, additional sources of energy here, as well as more efficient uses of energy. That will allow us and the world to have less oil being drawn down from various sources where it comes without dropping the prices too high to a level. It will keep people, some of whom are unsavory characters, from having an influence on our foreign policy.
Now, even Mitt Romney, who was running for the highest office in the country, had suggested the fact that we get and we fund both sides of this war on terror, because we buy so much oil from overseas. And I believe that every presidential candidate running last year said that this is a matter of national security, and it is time that we do this.
One last thing. I visited an industry this week in my district that is leading the charge in trying to make our buildings more efficient. We spend $400 billion a year on inefficient buildings across this country, and I know Representative Perriello said this before, the cheapest energy in our country is the energy that we never use.
To save energy, to reduce our consumption, is very important, especially when you have 3 percent of the world's population and we are consuming nearly 30 percent of the world's resources of energy. That has got to change, and we have got to find our way away from this, and that is what this means tonight.
Representative Tonko had a few words on that.
The gentleman is correct that we spend an awful lot of time often looking back at what was instead of looking ahead at what could be. And I remember the words so clearly, reading and hearing about what President Kennedy said: We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
It is hard to break from the status quo. It is hard to let the folks who have been delivering us $4 a gallon gasoline, let them go and break our dependence on our consumption of oil that comes from overseas. The opponents of a robust energy policy in this country have been attempting to define this bill and define our movement towards efficiency, towards creating jobs, towards protecting our national security, about cap-and-trade. Cap-and-trade is one section of the bill, one section of the bill that looks at addressing the climate change issue that the CIA, that the Department of Defense and our intelligence experts are looking at.
So, are we going to put our weight with the folks who have been giving us $4 a gasoline and those big energy industries that have been making a lot of money over the status quo years, or are we going to stand with our intelligence experts and suggest that this is real? Our intelligence experts are suggesting we need to do this.
Now, when this body was faced with the decision, the section of the bill that deals with cap-and-trade, we had a decision to make. There was a court case at the end of last year that said the EPA was going to regulate emissions in this country. Well, do you want the EPA and bureaucrats in Washington doing it, or do you want the free market to do it? Because I believe, like so many of my colleagues, that the Federal Government has a responsibility to set the out-of-bounds markets, to set the goalposts, let the free market operate in between, and then throw the flag like a good referee does when someone goes out of bounds. That is what we should do. Let the free market drive innovation; let entrepreneurial spirit, let the innovators in this great country do that.
Let's do that. But attempting to define this as a national energy policy, as cap-and-trade, is not only disingenuous, I think it threatens our national security. And those aren't just my words. Those are the words of a fellow who I have a great deal of respect for, John McCain, Senator McCain.
I flew this gentleman, this honorable American, out of Baghdad when I was flying missions over in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said it is about cap-and-trade. There will be incentives for people to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It is a free market approach. John McCain is saying it is a free market approach. The Europeans are doing it. We did it in the case of addressing acid rain.
He said if we do that, we will stimulate green technologies. This will be a profit-making business. It won't cost the American taxpayer. Let me repeat that. It won't cost the American taxpayer, he said, because of the free market approach. Joe Lieberman and I, Senator McCain introduced the cap-and-trade proposal several years ago that would reduce greenhouse gases within a gradual reduction. He said we did this with acid rain. This works. It can work--if we have the courage to do it.
We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. That is what leadership does. But if we are worried about the next election and not worried about where our future is going, the gentleman from Virginia is absolutely correct that we are going to continue to be enslaved, like the gentleman from Arkansas said. Like he said, if we can't produce the weapons to fight our own Nation's wars, if we can't find the energy here in our own country, if we can't feed ourselves, it is exactly right that we will be forever enslaved. That is why we have to make the decision now. That is what leaders do.
Well, I can agree with the gentleman more that this is about tomorrow. This is about where we are as a Nation 10 to 15 years down the road, 20 years down the road, where my children and their children's children will be.
Let me just drive home this point on national security. There was a report that came out in 2009 by the Center for Naval Analysis, coauthored by 12 retired generals and admirals of the United States military, and they found that our dependence on fossil fuels undermines United States foreign policy. It involves us with the volatile and unfriendly powers, endangers our troops in combat, undercuts our economic stability, and drives climate change, which weakens and threatens to destabilize countries and add to an already heavy American military burden. Our military experts are saying this. Our intelligence experts are saying this.
Now, we have to be leaders and say that enough is enough. We can invest in the tomorrow because we have the energy, we have the alternative energy at our fingertips, and we can make this happen. But we have got to find the courage to do this.
I know Representative Tonko wants to speak one last word on some of our colleagues and what they have said. A gentleman that we serve with here in this body, who I have a great deal of respect for, Ron Paul, Congressman Ron Paul, he said, ``True conservatives and libertarians have no right to pollute their neighbors' property. You have no right to pollute your neighbors' air, water or anything. And this would all contribute to the protection of all air and water.''
Now, what he's saying in the broader context is that this issue of climate change is our responsibility, too. We're great partners and leaders in the world, and we have to lead by example, like Mitt Romney said, like Mike Huckabee said, like the President is saying, like Secretary of State Clinton is saying. We have to lead by example, and that's what America has always done. We've led by example. So this is about where we are reaching down within our own internal national character and finding the courage to lead in this economic challenge that we face as our country.
Representative Tonko.
Thank you, Congressman Tonko.
We're going to wrap up here with the last 4 minutes just underscoring what we're talking about here today, the fact that we're focusing on our Nation's energy needs and the fact that we have got to move away from our dependence on foreign oil, protect our national security, and create jobs right here in America with our investments in these technologies.
And how disingenuous to some who would use the arguments by the status quo who suggest that we need to continue on the way that we have, where we'll be dependent on foreign sources of energy, on the Middle East, and on OPEC-producing nations when we want to put our faith and our trust and our energy in the innovators and the great thinkers here in America.
And how disingenuous that we attempt to define a national energy policy on an issue of cap-and-trade that has been working in this country since the 1990s, on an issue that really is just one small segment of a national energy policy that will mean the difference of us breaking our dependence and creating jobs.
This is a turning point, a tipping point for America. Are we going to lead or are we going to block? Are we going to believe or are we going to fear? And are we going to look forward or are we going to look back? Those are the questions that we have to ask with the national energy policy. That's what we can do.
Representative Perriello, why don't you finish this up tonight.
Thank you, Mr. Perriello.
National security, creating jobs right here in America, moving away from our dependence on foreign oil, that's what this bill is about. Making America again the producers of wealth instead of just the movers of wealth, that's what this bill is about.
I'm proud to stand with my colleagues today to talk about our Nation's energy policy and how we move this country down the field. We do these things not because they're easy but because they're hard, as President Kennedy said.