Pallone at Energy Markup: Republicans Are Making American Energy Dirtier and More Expensive

Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) delivered the following opening remarks today at an Energy Subcommittee markup of 13 bills: 

Over the last month, between their big ugly tax bill and the bills we’re marking up today, Trump and the Republicans have unveiled their energy strategy that will make energy less affordable for families, undermine clean energy, and allow Big Oil and Gas to build polluting infrastructure wherever they want, regardless of the consequences.

Independent modeling has found that the big ugly GOP tax bill will increase household power bills by more than $400 per year, and that’s on top of the annual $5,000 that President Trump’s chaotic global trade war will cost American families.  The GOP ugly bill will destroy any progress we’ve made towards revitalizing energy manufacturing and supporting innovation in America.  And I simply do not understand how, at a time when power demand is increasing, Republicans are doing everything they can to cut off new sources of electricity.  At the same time, they’re insisting on increasing demand for natural gas while also trying to make the supply of domestic gas go down because more of it will be sent overseas.  It’s a recipe for higher prices and disaster for the American people. 

And yet, Republicans are dead set on doubling down on their plan to increase prices.  Several of the bills that are before us today will do just that, either by forcing families to pay for uneconomic coal plants to stay online, or by allowing unlimited exports of LNG that will drive up heating and cooking costs. The Subcommittee heard testimony at the end of April, explicitly stating that these bills would explode costs for Americans across the country.  But that’s all fine under the Republican energy agenda of driving up energy costs on American families.

There are other bills today that blatantly discriminate against clean sources of energy.  These bills are proof that Republicans have never been for “all of the above.”  The only energy that they care about is fossil fuels, and every other source of energy—no matter how useful it is—must be left behind.

Republicans seem also content with giving the Department of Energy more and more work with several of the bills today, without acknowledging or trying to understand the impact of the serious staffing reductions the Trump Administration has indiscriminately and chaotically implemented. Rather than working with us to get answers from the Administration on how DOE plans to complete what it’s already tasked with, Republicans are intent to ask DOE to do even more with less.

Some of the bills before us were already passed by House Republicans as part of the GOP big ugly tax bill. 

Republicans are clearly marking them up today again because they don’t believe they are going to survive the so-called Byrd Bath in the Senate.  That’s why we are revisiting them again today.  In fact, Republicans already had to knock two of those permitting provisions out of their bill before it even passed the House.

To be clear, Republicans are so desperate to sell out the public interest for natural gas pipelines and LNG facilities that they’ll create an entire “pay-to-play” permitting regime out of thin air. Republicans want to allow pipeline developers and LNG exporters to pay government agencies upwards of $10 million to acquire permits free of any of scrutiny.  Just imagine the kind of corruption that this could produce, and none of it is in the public interest.   

What Republicans are going to tell you today is that these bills are somehow necessary to power the increasing electricity demand from artificial intelligence.  But that’s not true.  We’ve heard from AI and data center business leaders multiple times this Congress and they were all clear: we have to do the exact opposite of what Republicans are attempting to do.  To power AI, we need a grid that’s affordable, reliable, and clean.  If the bills we are marking up today were ever enacted, our grid would be expensive, unstable, and dirty.  And that will be a crisis that none of us can afford.

So again, I don’t understand the purpose of today’s hearing, other than to double down on the same things we heard as part of the budget reconciliation—and none of that is going to lead to more electricity, none of that is going to lead to more affordable prices, and all of it leads to more and more dependence on fossil fuels, which totally belies the “all of the above” philosophy. 

I just want to say, Mr. Chairman, I believe in “all of the above.”  We’ve worked together on nuclear power, we’ve worked together on a lot of different sources. There’s no reason to prioritize fossil fuels, which is what’s going on today.

And with that, I yield back the balance of my time.

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