Pallone Leads Opposition to GOP Legislation Granting FERC Unprecedented Power to Undermine Clean Air and Water Protections

Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) delivered the following remarks on the House floor today in opposition to H.R. 3616, legislation that gives the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) the authority to arbitrarily block any regulation from any other agency:

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 3616, another Republican bill that puts large corporate polluters over people. And at a time when American families are struggling with rising monthly energy bills, this legislation does nothing to address the affordability crisis.

Electricity prices continue to go up – they’ve increased by 13 percent just since President Trump took office. And they are about to get worse as the Republicans’ Big Ugly Bill is expected to increase those prices another 61 percent. You would think Republicans would want to do something to address the affordability crisis. But this is just more of the same from them. They refuse to address the health care affordability crisis, and they continue to ignore the crisis this afternoon.

I guess we shouldn’t be surprised. After all, they just blindly follow President Trump who simply does NOT care – he does not believe the affordability crisis is real. In fact, he recently said it was a “Democrat scam.” The President should tell that to the hardworking families who are facing skyrocketing price increases across the board. It is a crisis and Republicans are simply ignoring it.  

Instead, this bill is a thinly veiled attempt by Republicans to obstruct any future Administration’s EPA regulations that keep our air, lands, and waters clean. This bill would allow the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to block any regulation from any other agency under certain circumstances. It takes what should be an apolitical process – a neutral review of the reliability of our nation’s electric sector – and twists it into a fully partisan exercise. That's why we should reject this bill entirely.

Right now, a number of federal agencies have authorities that could impact the power sector. FERC and the Department of Energy have the ability to comment on those regulations if they have concerns, and work through the interagency review process to ensure that those concerns are heard. FERC Commissioners in recent years have not been shy about using their powers to publicly highlight and comment on federal actions they deem flawed or insufficient. And, agencies can – and do – respond to that feedback, as we saw with the EPA during the previous Administration.

What no agency has the power to do is arbitrarily block another agency’s regulations that Congress gave that agency the power to make. It’s simply ridiculous. If Republicans have their way, agencies will not only have to seek review from the Office of Management and Budget, but also ask permission from FERC, to see if FERC likes the regulation or not. And if not – even if the White House likes the regulation – the agency cannot finalize it. 

If that’s not bad enough, FERC testified before the Energy and Commerce Committee that it does not even have the capacity and expertise necessary to investigate every other agency’s regulations for the impacts they will have on electric reliability. And that was before the staff attrition that has hit FERC over the past ten months – the agency had lost over 11 percent of its staff through September. Who knows how many additional staff have left over the last three months.

So, let’s review this again, Mr. Speaker: House Republicans want FERC to do something it has no ability to do, that would politicize our nation’s electric reliability regulator and would make FERC into a super-authority with powers rivaling those of certain White House offices. And this is all to kill regulations that keep our air clean and our water drinkable.

That's what this is all about. Let’s not pretend that House Republicans are worried about regulations coming from the Trump Administration. Instead, they’re worried about the next time we have a President who actually cares about protecting public health and the environment and who wants to restore our bedrock environmental laws. Republicans then want to use this bill as a shield to protect polluters. We shouldn’t let them do that.

I urge my colleagues to vote no, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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