Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I welcome everyone to the long-anticipated, endlessly rescheduled energy week. Over the next 2 days, with only a matter of days until a partial shutdown, rather than a…
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I welcome everyone to the long-anticipated, endlessly rescheduled energy week.
Over the next 2 days, with only a matter of days until a partial shutdown, rather than a transparent discussion on how to fund the government, this Chamber will debate and vote on a number of energy- related bills, bills Republicans claim will boost so-called energy dominance.
It is not hard to see through their talking points.
The U.S. is producing more oil and gas than ever before, and what do we have to show for it? Everyday Americans still face volatile energy prices because oil and gas are global commodities and because we are exporting record amounts of fossil fuels.
The communities nearest to this record-breaking production are overburdened with pollution, and their health and well-being are suffering. The climate crisis, because it is real, is getting more dire each year.
The United States should be leading the way to a new, cleaner future, not drilling deeper into this catastrophe.
Rather than addressing these issues head-on and building a just future that generations to come can be proud of, House Republicans are instead choosing to lead us toward more of the same--stuffing the pockets of Big Oil executives who are hoping to make another quick yacht off the backs of hardworking Americans just as they have done for years.
We have seen these washed-up, has-been proposals before.
Last year, Republicans passed H.R. 1, the polluters over people act which contains some of these repeat proposals. It is like a bad boyfriend coming back who just needs to be gone.
This week is no different.
We are going to see the same tired handouts to the richest and most polluting megacorporations, all while leaving our most vulnerable communities in the toxic dust. It is polluters over people 2.0.
The first bill on the agenda is H.R. 1121, which would prevent the President from banning fracking unless authorized by Congress, even if there is a public health emergency, poisoned drinking water, or any other fracking crisis.
For my colleagues across the aisle, maybe this is just a messaging bill, but for folks on the ground, it is extremely dangerous. It ignores the very real consequences of fracking for impacted communities.
Fracking is a method of extracting oil and gas from deep underground. It involves blasting open rock at high pressure with a mixture of water, sand, and chemicals, many of which are undisclosed.
In areas where fracking is concentrated, it has been linked to preterm births, high-risk pregnancies, asthma, migraines, fatigue, respiratory symptoms, skin disorders, and the list goes on.
The fracking chemicals we do know about--things like benzene and ethylene glycol, are known to be hazardous to human health. Children living near fracking sites have lower birth weights and higher rates of cancer.
Fracking chemicals end up in our soil and in our groundwater. Fracking is known to contaminate air and drinking water, but this Republican sweetheart legislation would stop the President from banning or even pausing fracking on public lands and in Federal waters, even if it poses a clear, known, and present danger to drinking water and public health.
Here is something you are going to hear a lot from Democrats this week: Big Oil and Big Gas don't need any more favors right now. They don't need more tax breaks. They don't need more special loopholes. They don't need more handouts.
The President should have the full range of tools to protect the American people, especially when it comes to our public lands and resources.
Mr. Speaker, I urge opposition to the legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to look at the balance sheets of all of these Big Oil executives. No one is waiting in a food line. No one is trying to cash an unemployment check. They have the money, and they will be getting more because of these loopholes.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Levin).
Mr. Speaker, in 2015 the Obama administration published a rule regulating fracking on public lands, and I should mention that the rule was not a ban on fracking, but a commonsense requirement that companies disclose what chemicals they are using.
It would also have required storage protocols for wastewater, barriers between wells and water zones, and the disclosure of the location of existing wells--additional commonsense protections for the public.
The rule was challenged, and the District Court of Wyoming struck down an appeal. The District Court of Wyoming read the Safe Drinking Water Act's exclusion of fracking from that law's underground injection program to mean that no Federal agency can regulate fracking.
This was a flimsy court case that has not been reviewed on appeal, and the Trump BLM rescinded the rule before the appeals court could rule on it. The case does not mean that the Federal Government should have no role in regulating fracking for oil and gas. This issue is too important for us to leave 100 percent to a patchwork of State laws. The President must have the full range of tools to protect our health, safety, and climate from the dangers of fracking.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Michigan (Ms. Tlaib).
Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to include in the Record Mr. Levin's amendment immediately prior to the vote on the motion to recommit.
Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record an article from the Yale School of Public Health, published in ScienceDirect in response to the statements of my colleague on the other side of the aisle that fracking is safe and that it is safe for nearby communities.
[From Science of the Total Environment, Aug. 16, 2016]
Unconventional Oil and Gas Development and Risk of Childhood Leukemia:
Assessing the Evidence
(By Elise G. Elliott, Pauline Trinh, Xiaomei Ma, Brian P. Leaderer,
Mary H. Ward, Nicole C. Deziel)
Mr. Speaker, this article shows that living within a mile of a fracked well directly increases the risks of children developing leukemia. They are not children from the radical left. They are children from across the country. The study warns that millions of people living within a mile of fracked wells may have been exposed to these cancer-causing chemicals.
In response to this study, several physicians are quoted as saying: ``This is like smoking in the 1950s. There was a lot of suggestive evidence, but the conclusive stuff came later. I think we're going to get it, maybe in 5 or 10 years, but it is a question of how much damage is going to be done in the meantime.''
``Too often, we look at the political environment before we look at the evidence, and I don't think that's serving our future.''
This is just one study looking at a couple dozen pollutants. There is ample evidence out there to be concerned with fracking's impact on public health, but there is still too much to learn. Yet, H.R. 1121 would ban restrictions on fracking before we know the full realm of impacts on public health. This is unacceptable. The bill is rooted in many falsehoods as it relates to public health.
I am so excited to hear my colleague talk about the fact that we should be hiring American workers, that we should be ensuring that we have great union jobs, that we should be invested in green energy infrastructure. I hope that is why my colleagues across the aisle woulda, shoulda, coulda supported the bipartisan infrastructure law--I know a couple of them did--as well as the Chips and Science Act, and also the Inflation Reduction Act. All of those bills are actually really focused on making sure that we are investing in our country, working on creating more clean, green energy that does not include fracking.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, my colleague from across the aisle is right: This makes no sense.
If my colleagues across the aisle actually want to push back against Russia, Iran, and Venezuela, then pass the supplemental because that funding will do more to help support democracies around the world and help countries most in need than whatever is in H.R. 1121.
Listening to some of the arguments we have heard from Republicans over the last week and even now today, I have to say, I am confused.
Is oil and gas production higher than ever, or is there a war on energy? Are gas prices high because of Bidenomics, or are prices so low that we should continue exporting LNG? Should the government stop picking winners and losers through energy subsidies, or should we continue giving handouts to oil and gas and even expand those giveaways with the bills up today?
I suspect Republican messaging is so confusing because continuing to rig the system for Big Oil just doesn't make sense.
The U.S. is producing record amounts of oil and gas and is exporting more than ever before. I will say it again: The U.S. is producing record amounts of oil and gas and is exporting more than ever before.
Yet, the American people aren't seeing the benefits. Prices for consumers are still high while Big Oil and other big corporations rake in massive profits.
Reporting from the Groundwork Collaborative found that over half of recent U.S. inflation was caused by corporate price gouging, even as input costs decreased.
Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record the Groundwork Collaborative report.
[From Groundwork Collaborative, Jan. 18, 2024]
Inflation Revelation: How Outsized Corporate Profits Drive Rising Costs
(By Liz Pancotti, Strategic Advisor, and Lindsay Owens, Executive
Director)
As their cost of doing business comes down, corporations
pad their bottom lines on the back of consumers.
Inflation has come down significantly from its peak over
the past year, yet prices remain high for American consumers.
From housing and groceries to car insurance and electric
bills, families are still feeling the squeeze. In the wake of
the pandemic, virtually every company in every industry faced
rising costs to make products and stock shelves. Labor costs
rose sharply, the cost of transporting goods across the
country hit record highs, and raw materials became costly or
impossible to get. Corporations were quick to pass rising
costs--and a little extra--on to consumers, fueling rapid
inflation. As supply chain snarls have receded and the
economy has stabilized, businesses continue to pad their
bottom lines, rather than passing these savings on to
consumers.
corporate profits are driving more than half of inflation
Some economists and pundits have sought to discredit the
link between inflation and corporate profiteering. A
Washington Post columnist recently claimed that blaming
inflation on corporate profiteering is like saying ``it's
raining because water is falling from the sky.'' But this
isn't true. Prices are simply the sum of costs and corporate
profits. While rising costs or inputs can drive up Americans
pay at the gas pump or the grocery store, corporate profits
can just as easily.
As corporations have lamented supply chain woes and high
labor costs over the past two years, their profits have
skyrocketed, fueling inflation and exacerbating a
longstanding affordability crisis.
Some economists suggested that markup growth in 2021 was
primarily driven by corporations raising prices in
anticipation of future costs increases. However, corporate
profit margins have remained high--and even grown--as labor
costs have stabilized, nonlabor input costs have come down,
and supply chains snarls have eased.
While labor and nonlabor input costs have played a role in
price increases, corporate profits drove 53 percent of
inflation during the second and third quarters of 2023 and
more than one-third since the start of the pandemic.
Comparatively, over the 40 years prior to the pandemic, they
drove just 11 percent of growth.
Corporate profits as a share of national income has
skyrocketed by 29 percent since the start of the pandemic.
While our economy has returned to or surpassed its pre-
pandemic levels on many indicators, workers' share of
corporate income has still not recovered.
As White House National Economic Council Director Lael
Brainard has noted, ``Overall, the labor share of income has
declined over the past two years and appears to be at or
below pre-pandemic levels. While corporate profits as a share
of GDP remain near postwar highs.''
Economist Isabella Weber has pointed out that corporations
are keeping prices high even as post-pandemic and Ukraine War
supply chain pressures ease and wage growth slows. Why?
Because they can.
Weber argues that supply shocks allowed corporations to
tacitly collude, hike prices, and rake in record profits.
This type of inflation, where corporations raise prices to
protect--and even increase--their profit margins, allows
prices to rise faster than the costs to make goods or provide
services. When corporations pursued this opportunistic
pricing strategy, they found a lot of space to increase
prices, drive up profits, and see very little dropoff in
demand.
Though inflation has eased, prices remain tremendously
elevated from their pre-pandemic levels. Housing costs, for
example, are up 21 percent, grocery costs have risen by 25
percent.
consumer prices are rising much faster than corporations' input costs
While prices for consumers have risen by 3.4 percent over
the past year, input costs for producers have risen by just 1
percent. For many commodities and services, producers' prices
have actually decreased.
Input costs for key goods and services have sharply
decreased over the past year. For example, nearly 60 percent
of the drop in input goods prices was driven by large
declines in energy costs, such as jet fuel and diesel fuel.
Transportation and warehousing costs, which many corporations
have cited as a main driver of price increases, have come
down by nearly 4 percent since peaking in June 2022.
These input costs are critically important for
corporations' balance sheets. As costs go down but revenue
stays high because of higher sticker prices, corporate profit
margins expand on the backs of American consumers.
One prime example of this is the diaper industry, which is
highly concentrated--Procter & Gamble Co. (P&G) and Kimberly-
Clark Corp. control 70 percent of the domestic market. Diaper
prices have increased by more
than 30 percent since 2019 from, on average, $16.50 to nearly
$22. Wood pulp is a major input in diapers and other paper
products, like toilet paper and paper towels. Wholesale wood
pulp prices soared by 87 percent between January 2021 and
January 2023. Yet between January and December 2023, prices
declined by 25 percent.
Using their pricing power, P&G and Kimberly-Clark have kept
diaper prices high for American families, allowing their
profit margins to expand considerably. In P&G's October 2023
earnings call, its CFO, Andre Schulten, said that high prices
were a big driver of profit margin expansion and 33 percent
of their profits in the previous quarter were driven by lower
input costs. During P&G's July 2023 earnings call, the
company predicted $800 million in windfall profits because of
declining input costs. In Kimberly-Clark's October 2023
earnings call, CEO Mike Hsu said the company ``finally saw
inflation in the cost environment'' and admitted that he
believes the company has ``a lot of opportunity to [expand
margins over time] between what [they're] doing on the
revenue side and also on the cost side.'' Despite these large
input cost declines, Hsu said he thinks the company has
``priced appropriately'' and did not anticipate any price
deflation.
The diaper industry is just one example of corporations
exploiting their pricing power to expand margins as input
costs normalize. The same is true for many consumer goods,
including new and used cars, groceries, and housing.
corporations have bragged about their ability to raise prices
Over the past two years, corporations have been explicit
about how they've exploited their pricing power, and how they
have and will continue to do so even as inflation comes down.
General Mills attributed their 16.5 percent increase in
profits in FY 2022 to ``getting smart about how [they] look
at pricing.''
PepsiCo raised its prices across snacks and beverages by
roughly 15 percent during each of 2022Q4 and 2023Q1 as it
increased its margin. CFO Hugh Johnson said they ``may, in
fact, increase margins during the course of the year'' as
costs decreases and prices remain elevated.
The CEO of Holcim, a construction materials manufacturer,
said on recent earnings call, ``We are in that inflationary
environment already for almost two years now...We have done
the pricing in a very proactive way so that our results
aren't suffering. On the contrary, they are improving the
margins.''
Profit margins for AutoNation's finance and insurance
segment have increased by 7 percent as they continue to hike
margins with new fees and increased prices for consumers,
even while products don't improve.
Carvana notes that it deceased its non-vehicle retail costs
by nearly $1,000 per car, driving huge margin increases (30
percent) even as used car costs remain elevated. Used car
prices remain elevated and are up nearly 40 percent.
conclusion
In the wake of the pandemic, consumer demand rebounded and
supply chains struggled to keep up as a result of decades of
disinvestment and offshoring. Goods became more expensive to
make and transport, and tighter labor markets delivered long-
overdue wage increases for workers. As businesses' costs went
up, they jumped on the opportunity to pass on rising costs to
consumers and have continued squeezing American's pocketbooks
for more. Now that their costs have stailized--or, in many
cases, come down significantly--it's time for companies to
stop gouging consumers.
The Biden administration is taking steps to strengthen
global supply chains and onshore manufacturing, crack down on
corporate concentration that has enabled corporations to put
consumers through the wringer, and eliminate junk fees.
President Biden said last month, ``To any corporation that
has not brought their prices back down--even as inflation has
come down, even [as] supply chains have been rebuilt--it's
time to stop the price gouging.'' The Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau, the Federal Trade Commission, and the
Department of Justice continue to dust off authorities not
touched in decades to rein in corporate profiteering and
concentration.
As Congress turns to expiring provisions from the 2017
Trump tax cuts over the next year, they must take a hard look
at the corporate tax rate. Our tax code should support a
robust and equitable economy, not incentivize profiteering.
The fundamental question we need to ask ourselves is
whether we want an economy where corporations can exploit
pandemics, supply chain crises, and wars at the expense of
American workers and families, or an economy where
corporations are put in check, allowing everyone to thrive?
Mr. Speaker, communities living closest to oil and gas production, mostly low-income and people of color, are left paying the costs of constant pollution and public health crises. We are all paying for the record number of billion-dollar climate disasters in 2023, driven by the fossil fuel climate crisis.
These bills we are debating today would walk back important protections for taxpayers and local communities to keep funneling money into the pockets of Big Oil.
It does not make sense to keep doubling down on a bad deal. Big Oil does not need more favors right now. They don't need more tax breaks. They don't need more handouts--I am going to keep saying it--and they don't need more special loopholes.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I often hear my Republican colleagues say that more oil and gas production in the U.S. benefits consumers and that fracking has helped that production along. We should celebrate.
Then I did have to think about seeing this recent movie, ``Killers of the Flower Moon,'' and how that is probably not a really good thing to celebrate, but I digress. I don't want to do that.
The U.S. is already the number one producer of oil and gas in the world. We are exporting record amounts of fossil fuel across the globe. Yet, our communities are still not seeing the benefits.
That is because the benefits are going straight to Big Oil, which is seeing profits soar yet again. We cannot rely on the decades-old Republican agenda of ``drill, baby, drill,'' to lower prices for Americans.
This bill proposes to give yet another handout to oil and gas, supposedly in the hope that these corporations will be so thankful that they will lower their prices just to be nice. I mean, does anyone still believe this trickle-down nonsense?
Look, if we want better energy prices, then we need energy independence, which means a transition to clean energy, which is cheaper, safer, and generated entirely here at home instead of being at the mercy of global price shocks like oil and gas.
I am also so grateful to hear my colleagues talk about the things that we should have learned from COVID. I hope that means that at some point they will be willing to discuss universal healthcare and making sure we all have access to affordable, high-quality healthcare. I hope that means that they are going to admit that COVID is a real thing and that vaccinations and access to that kind of healthcare and information is important.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, this bill is yet another shameless giveaway to Big Oil, even though Big Oil is still making earth-shattering, mineral- shattering profits by taking billions in taxpayer-funded subsidies, price gouging families, and leaving Americans with climate, health, safety, and financial consequences. This bill would enshrine Big Oil's exploitation of American taxpayers for the foreseeable future.
Big Oil does not need any favors right now. I know I sound like a broken record, but sometimes you have to say it more than once so people can hear it. They don't need more special loopholes. They don't need more handouts. They don't need more tax breaks.
Mr. Speaker, I oppose H.R. 1121, and I yield back the balance of my time.