Joe Barton

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I thank my friend from Florida for the time. Mr. Speaker, I am puzzled by Congressman Hastings' remarks in opposition to the rule. This is a very fair rule. The Rules Committee received 13 amendments from the minority. They made in order 11 of those. One amendment was not germane and the other amendment by the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey) would have restricted the oil to the United States and not allowed any of the product to be refined and sent overseas possibly, and that's a function that the Rules Committee felt should be a market function and not prohibited. So 11 amendments by the minority were made in order. This is a bill that came out of my committee, the Energy and Commerce Committee, on a bipartisan vote. All the Republicans supported it and between a fourth and a third of the Democrats supported it. The underlying thesis of the bill is pretty straightforward. Under current law, you're supposed to make a decision on pipeline permits between 180 and 90 days. The Obama administration EPA has had 2 years on their watch and 1 year under the Bush administration. EPA has had over 3 years if you count towards this September, next month, or right after August, and has not made a decision. The bill says make a decision. Make a decision. There is an existing pipeline. The Keystone pipeline would connect an existing pipeline that ends in the Midwest to the gulf coast. It would go to Congressman Poe's district in Port Arthur and go over into Louisiana. It would create tens of thousands of jobs in construction; it would bring approximately a million barrels of oil per day into the United States to provide competition for existing oil supplies; it would be refined in U.S. refineries; and most of the product, if not all, would probably be consumed by U.S. consumers. This is a good bill. This is a good rule. I would ask that we support the rule and then listen to the debate and hopefully decide to support the underlying bill.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I am one of the original sponsors of the tax limitation/balanced budget amendment under the Contract with America back in 1995. I have got one of the most conservative voting records in the House over the last 25 years. Common sense tells you that our budget problem today is a spending problem. It is not a revenue problem. And as the first law of ditch-digging says, When you are digging a hole, in order to fill it, you've got to stop digging it deeper. President Obama's budget that he submitted to the Congress earlier this year does not have a budget deficit of less than $500 billion over a 10-year period. Cut, Cap, and Balance may have some technical issues with it, but the basic premise is sound: We need to spend less money short term, this year; we need to spend less money in the next 5 years; and we need a constitutional amendment that locks into place that we, over time, have to balance our budget every year unless there is some act of war or national emergency going on that takes a two-thirds vote to override. Vote for this bill later this evening.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Madam Chair, it is my sad duty to report to the House that last night in the 50th Annual Congressional Baseball Game, our friends on the minority side eked out an 8-2 victory. We gained 87 seats in the last election. They gained three, but one of theirs is a pitcher from New Orleans, Cedric Richmond. I do want to point out to Mr. Richmond that the congressional salary is $175,000, the major league minimum salary is $350,000; and I know the owner of the Astros and the Texas Rangers. We want to congratulate our friends. I want to tell you how proud I am of the Republican team. We have a lot of new Members. They played really hard. They practiced very hard, but sometimes it just isn't to be. And I want to congratulate Mr. Doyle and his entire team on a victory well earned. I yield to my friend from Pennsylvania.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Reclaiming my time, I do want to recognize the Republican MVP, who did get a legitimate hit, Steve Pearce of New Mexico. And I will point out to my friends on the minority side that this victory last night, while it is the third in the row in the modern era, makes it 36 Republican, 19 Democrat, and one tie.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Before I yield to the gentlewoman from Tennessee, I would point out that the light bulbs that my good friend, Mr. Doyle, just alluded to, are five times to six times as expensive as the traditional incandescent light bulb, and they are not manufactured--I think there is one facility in the United States, a Sylvania facility, that still makes light bulbs. The rest have moved overseas. I yield 3 minutes to a cosponsor of the legislation, a member of the committee, Mrs. Blackburn of Tennessee.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 2417) to repeal certain amendments to the Energy Policy and Conservation Act with respect to lighting energy efficiency, and for other purposes.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Briefly, to reply to my good friend from Massachusetts, the light bulbs that he just showed, the least expensive one of those I think he said was about $1.60, $1.70. Your traditional incandescent light bulb you can buy, if you can find them, for anywhere from 25 cents to 40 cents apiece. So that light bulb is still five to six times more expensive than the classic incandescent bulb. With that I yield 3 minutes to another original sponsor of the legislation, a member of the committee of jurisdiction, the good doctor from Denton County, Texas, Dr. Michael Burgess.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Houston, Texas, Judge Ted Poe.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on this legislation, and to insert extraneous material on the bill.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I yield myself the balance of my time. I have listened, Mr. Speaker, with interest to what my friends on the Democrat side have said about this bill. And I think in the interest of fairness, we ought to call a spade a spade. It is true that the law that they are defending does not automatically ban incandescent light bulbs. That is a true statement. What it does is set efficiency standards that the existing 100-watt and 60-watt and 75-watt bulbs can't meet. So they are effectively banned because they cannot meet the standard. As has been pointed out by Mr. Doyle and several of the other speakers, it is also true that industry has developed new incandescent light bulbs that do meet the standard. What they haven't done is develop a new incandescent light bulb that meets the standard at existing cost. What gets left out of the equation by my friends on the Democratic side of the aisle is the cost to purchase these new bulbs, whether they are the squiggly tailed CFLs or the new, more energy- efficient incandescents. We're not opposed, I'm not opposed to CFL lighting. I'm not opposed to the new incandescents. But I am opposed to telling my constituents that they have no choice at all, that they have to go and fork over $1.50 or $2.50 or $6. Or in the case of the LEDs that Mr. Waxman just referred to, a minimum of $12, and the average price of the new LED lighting at Home Depot or Lowe's is $40 a bulb. Now, I'm young enough to remember when I was a renter and I would move into an apartment, and when I went into the apartment, there were no light bulbs. The people who left took the light bulbs with them. So I would have to go out and buy 20 or 30 or 40 light bulbs. Well, if light bulbs are 20 cents apiece, or 25 or 30 or even 40 cents apiece, that is an expense but it's not exorbitant. You go out and replace 40 light bulbs at $6 a pop, you're spending some money that, to our constituency, to our voters, Mr. Speaker, that's real money. Again, we're not opposed to new technology. We're not opposed to more energy-efficient incandescents. But why take the low end of the market off the market? Why not give our constituents, i.e., our consumers, our voters, the choice? If you're Al Gore and you want to spend $10 a light bulb, more power to you. More power to you. But if you're a young family that's just getting started, give us the option to go out and spend for a package of four or a package of six the equivalent of 25 cents apiece, or 30 cents apiece, or as I purchased last week at a food store here in Virginia, 37.5 cents apiece for four 60-watt light bulbs. We're saying let the market work. We're saying let people make their own choices. Why in the world does the Federal Government have to tell people what kind of lights to use in their home? That's not anywhere in the constitutional requirement of the Federal Government. And this bill that was passed in 2007 had a lot of preemptions of State and local. It preempted State and local building codes. It required historical buildings to meet certain standards by the year 2050. It had so many bad things in it that this one, while offensive, was kind of the least of the evils. But it is also, Mr. Speaker, what the average voter, the average consumer understands. When I go to the grocery store or to Wal-Mart or to Home Depot, let me decide what kind of lighting, let me decide what kind of energy efficiency I want. Now, it is a true statement that these new bulbs are more energy efficient; but if it takes you 10 years to realize the efficiency and the only way you do it is by leaving it on all of the time, it is spending money to save money that some people don't have. Again, purchase a classic 100-watt or 60-watt incandescent light bulb for less than 50 cents, you might use it, you might not. But if you use it all week, it is going to cost you less than a nickel. And if you use it like the average consumer, it is going to cost you a penny to 2 cents a week to use. So do you save money? The CFL that I bought last week for $6 or $5.99 is guaranteed for 10 years and says it will save over $40, but you've got to use it for 10 years. You know, I don't think that's a very good deal, with all due respect to my friends on the other side. What we're saying is let's get the Federal Government out of something that they shouldn't have gotten into in the first place. Let's go back and let the market operate. If these new CFLs and these new incandescents are as good as they claim to be, people are going to want to buy them. But if they are not or if they can't afford the up- front cost, don't force them to. Don't take off the market the very thing that provides price competition in the market. Even the new incandescents cost on average $1.50 to $2 a pop. And I haven't seen a CFL--I've seen them for $10 or $12, the average price is around $6 or $7--I haven't seen them even in the most energy-efficient package for less than about $2.50 or $3 apiece. And, again, if you're buying a lot of light bulbs at one time, that's real money, Mr. Speaker. What we say is let's repeal this part of the bill. Let's also say with regards to mercury that you cannot mandate mercury. That's the section that Mr. Waxman was apparently referring to. We're not banning fluorescents. We are simply saying you cannot require mercury to be used in the CFLs. So I would urge an ``aye'' vote on the pending legislation, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I yield 1 minute to one of our vigorous new Members from the great State of Illinois, Congressman Hultgren.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I want to start off by introducing to the body my special assistant this week, Mr. Speaker, young Jack Kevin Barton, my 5-year-old son. He is with me to help with the congressional baseball game that we are going to play on Thursday evening. And he loves coming to the floor, and he loves voting. So we are glad to have Jack Kevin on the floor with us. Mr. Speaker, we are here today because of something that happened back in 2007, when this body passed a bill that later became a law that effectively, beginning next year, if not changed, would ban the traditional incandescent light bulb, the 100-watt bulbs, the 60-watt bulbs that we have all grown up with. The bill doesn't truly ban them. It just sets an efficiency standard that the current light bulbs cannot meet. The problem with the de facto ban, Madam Speaker, is that it has the effect of taking off the market one of the least expensive options for lighting in our constituents' homes. I went to a local grocery store last week and purchased one CFL 60-watt bulb for $5.99. I purchased four 60-watt incandescent light bulbs in a four-pack for $1.50, or 37.5 cents a piece. Now, obviously, a $6 light bulb is a much bigger expense to a moderate- or low-income family than a 37.5-cent light bulb. The 60-watt CFL does claim it will last 10,000 hours, and it does claim over its life it will save money. That's probably a true statement, Madam Speaker. But what is not so apparent is that that $6 cost up front is real, and the savings may or may not occur, depending upon how long that bulb lasts, how often it's used, and under what conditions it's used. If you assume that the average bulb is used 4 hours a day, which is what the American Lighting Association assumes, then it is quite possible, Madam Speaker, that that $6 CFL bulb won't last 10,000 hours if it's turned on and off 2,500 times. It might last half that long. So I am not opposed to the squiggly tailed CFLs. I think they have their place in the market. But to take off the market something that's cheap, effective, and in average use costs maybe two or three cents a week to use seems to me to be overkill by the Federal Government. When I have talked about the light bulb bill in my town hall meetings and in my meetings in my district, I have had very few people, Madam Speaker, say that they think that's a good piece of legislation, that they think the Federal Government should be telling us what kind of light bulbs we should and should not use. They think we should let the marketplace operate. We should repeal this de facto ban, then let people decide whether they want to pay $6 per light bulb or 37.5 cents. Some people may decide that the life expectancy cost savings are worth it. But I bet the majority, the overwhelming majority, would choose the less expensive up-front costs of the traditional incandescent light bulbs. With that, Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Thank you, Congressman Hoyer. It has been my pleasure to serve for 26 years on the Energy and Commerce Committee with the distinguished gentleman who is having his 85th birthday. What some of our newer Members may not know is what a gentleman Chairman Dingell is. And the uniqueness of his character is he will impart his wisdom to those of us in the opposition party and encourage us to then go out and use it against him, knowing that he is smart enough, tough enough, and effective enough to beat us at our own game. He is truly a paragon of this Congress, and will go down, in my estimation, in history as one of the top 10 Congressmen or -women of all time. I want to extend him my warmest 85th birthday wishes and get him to guarantee that as long as he is able he will serve in this body, because he is truly a treasure for both sides of the aisle.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Madam Chairwoman, Shell Oil Company has spent 5 years of time and $3 billion trying to drill one well in the Arctic Ocean--5 years and $3 billion. In that time period, worldwide and in other areas of the Outer Continental Shelf of the world, they have drilled and received permits for over 200 wells--200 and the rest of the world ``zero''--in the Arctic Ocean. All this bill does is set up a fair procedure so that any company that wishes to drill a well--and the Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA, should probably be renamed under the Obama administration the ``energy prohibition administration''--can go through the permitting process and get a decision within an adequate time period. Our friends in Russia are drilling wells in the territorial waters in the Arctic Ocean up there. Our friends in Norway are drilling wells in the Arctic Ocean in their territorial waters. We in the United States, because of bureaucratic foot-dragging at the EPA, are refusing to even let one well be drilled. This bill changes that. It sets timetables. It sets standards. It determines where you measure the emissions. There will be some emissions when you drill a few wells in the Arctic Ocean, but they're not going to be extensive. This bill says that you determine the emissions at the shoreline, which in the case of this particular well is about 80 miles away, and you measure it there. Madam Chairwoman, there will be more emissions created from the EPA agency heads and staff assistants in their driving up to Capitol Hill to testify than there probably will be from the service supply ships that go out to service the handful of wells that will be drilled. This is a commonsense bill. It doesn't change the underlying statutory language at all in terms of standards. It does set timetables. It does define where you measure the pollution, and it does require that you actually make a decision. It is a good bill, H.R. 2021. In blackjack, if you get a 20, that's almost a sure winner. If you get a 21, it's a sure winner. This bill is a sure winner, H.R. 2021. Please vote for it.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Thank you, Congressman Burgess, and it's good to see you in the Chair there, Mr. Chairman. I feel empowered and confident that you're going to make the right rulings as the day goes on. We're going to have more amendments offered on this small part of the repeal effort of the new health care law than the Democratic majority allowed in the last Congress on all the health care legislation they brought to the floor. After general debate, we're going to have at least five amendments that were made in order under the rule. That's five more than Speaker Pelosi and then-Rules Committee Chairwoman Slaughter made in order in the last Congress when we were debating these issues. Republicans are not necessarily opposed to the concept of these exchanges, Mr. Speaker. What we are opposed to is the process in the last Congress where the actual bill that became law was dumped in the dead of night, with no amendments made in order, little debate, in an up-or-down vote as soon the Speaker twisted enough arms on the then- majority side of the Democratic party to move the bill. So we're trying to repeal it piece by piece; once that's done, then to replace it. This particular bill that's before us is pretty straightforward. It repeals the authority of the Secretary of Health and Human Services to obligate such sums as necessary to fund these exchanges. This ``such sums as necessary'' could be $50 million, could be $100 million, could be $200 million, could be a half a billion dollars. We just don't know. Those of us on the now-majority side, the Republican side, think that's bad management: such sums as necessary. So we're not really having a debate on whether exchanges are good or bad. I can agree with my friend from New Jersey that, in concept, exchanges are good. Now, I could have a debate that if you are going to have exchanges you ought to let the market operate and determine what's offered in the exchanges and not mandate what has to be qualified in order to be a part of the exchange. And we could have a debate on what the premiums are and what the coverage is and whether you allow flexibility or whether you put these Federal mandates on what has to be in the health care plan to be part of the exchange, but that's a different debate. The debate today, Mr. Chairman, is should the Secretary of Health and Human Services have the ability to obligate, without any constraints by the Congress, such sums as necessary to empower and fund these health exchanges. We say ``no.'' So we're going to urge a ``yes'' vote at the appropriate time so that we can take away that authority, send this bill to the other body, and hopefully have that pass, and then at some point in the future bring back a reform bill where we have the policy debate which, again, I think you can say that there will be some agreement between the majority and the minority side on the underlying policy. But on the fact that the Secretary of Health and Human Services shouldn't be able to just obligate with no oversight by the Congress how much money goes into the creation and maintenance of these exchanges, we think the answer to that is, the current Secretary or any future Secretary should not have that authority, and that is why we have put forward the bill.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I want to read the section of the law that we're trying to repeal today. It says, subparagraph 5: Appropriations. Out of any funds in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, there is to be appropriated for each fiscal year 2010 through 2013, $50 million for the purpose of carrying out this subsection. Funds appropriated under this paragraph shall remain available until expended. And then in this subsection: Definitions. ``School-based health center'' and ``sponsoring facility'' have the meanings given those terms under such and such and such and such. We're trying to repeal $50 million a year for 4 fiscal years, 2010, '11, '12 and '13, for these school-based health clinics. I support school-based health clinics. Dr. Burgess supports school-based health clinics. We both represent parts of Tarrant County. The public hospital in Tarrant County, Texas, is John Peter Smith. There are a number--I don't know the exact number, but I believe in the neighborhood of a dozen school-based health clinics in his district, in my district, Congresswoman Granger's district, Congressman Marchant's district. We support those health clinics. But we believe that the State and county should provide the facility, and the Federal Government should provide the funds to staff it. We don't believe, when we have a $1.5 trillion budget deficit each year, that we need to be spending another $50 million or $200 million over 4 years to actually provide the facility, to provide construction. So it's not an opposition to the health clinic itself, school-based. I've gone to openings; I support them. I think they do excellent work. But until we get our budget balanced, Mr. Chairman, I think it's prudent to not require the Federal Government to not only fund the operation and the staffing, but also fund the construction and the facility itself. So this is a case where we're specifically repealing a specific appropriation, in this case $50 million a year for the years 2010 through 2013, the fiscal years. And I think that is something that, with a $1.5 trillion budget deficit, is a prudent thing to do. So I rise in strong support of the bill and, at the appropriate time, would urge a ``yes'' vote.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I thank the distinguished subcommittee chairman. Madam Speaker, when I came to Congress in 1985, there was no such thing as a cell phone. I remember my first mobile phone was a box phone. It cost about two bucks a minute to use, as I recall. We did have personal computers, but they were big and bulky and very slow. I still had a typewriter in my office, and I had constituents who still used telephones that actually had the dial, you know, the mechanical dial. That was in 1985. Today, we have over 2 billion users of the Internet. I have two BlackBerries. I have a laptop. I have a personal computer in my home. In fact, in my home in Arlington, Texas, we have two. The Internet has revolutionized telecommunications. Yet, in December of 2010, the FCC adopted a rule giving themselves the right to regulate the Internet. It gave them the right to regulate how fixed and mobile broadband providers disclose their network management practices and performance characteristics; to regulate how fixed and mobile broadband carriers provide access to content, applications, services, and devices; to determine whether the way fixed broadband providers are carrying network traffic is unreasonably discriminatory; to regulate how fixed and mobile broadband carriers charge for the carriage of traffic; and to determine whether fixed and mobile broadband providers' network management techniques are reasonable. This is the regulation of the Internet. Mr. Walden's bill is pretty straightforward. It's one paragraph. You can read it. It doesn't take much time. It just simply says that the Federal Communications Commission cannot regulate the Internet. We have had the most successful business practice in the last 100 years, and we are trying to give the FCC the ability to regulate it? Give me a break. This isn't Republican DNA. This is plain common sense. Vote for the Walden bill, to not give the FCC the authority to regulate the Internet.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I rise in opposition to my good friend, Mr. Markey's, amendment. He must think EPA stands for ``Energy Punishment Agency'' as opposed to ``Environmental Protection Agency.'' EPA's role is not to regulate the oil and gas industry. It's not to set an oil import fee. It's not to set quotas. It's to protect the environment. And the bill before us today does that. It restricts the Clean Air Act to its original intention, which is to regulate the criteria pollutants for which it was intended when it was passed in the early 1990s. We are trying to segregate greenhouse gases from regulation under the Clean Air Act. That's all this bill does. It's not affecting fuel efficiency standards that NHTSA regulates and will continue to regulate. It doesn't have anything to do with that. We are simply saying that greenhouse gases should not be regulated under the existing Clean Air Act. We disagree with the Supreme Court decision that gave the EPA the authority to make a decision, and we definitely disagree with the endangerment finding, which I think was fatally flawed. We can do a lot on decreasing oil imports both by supply increases in the United States and letting the market operate in an efficient fashion. We don't need the EPA to have some sort of a stranglehold on oil production in the United States of America.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Madam Chair, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I rise in opposition to my good friend from Texas, Mr. Cuellar's amendment. It may be well intentioned, but it is poorly drafted. He may not have intended it, but if we were to accept it, by allowing the EPA to regulate anything under title 2, he would give the EPA authority not only to regulate tailpipe emissions from cars and trucks, but also authority to regulate trains, planes, and any other mobile source. I don't know that that was his intent, but that is certainly the effect of the amendment. We oppose the amendment for that reason, for the drafting reason. We also oppose the amendment because it is the majority's opinion that we need, after 2017, to have one regulator for mobile sources, and that regulator is NHTSA, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration. This amendment would have three regulators: NHTSA, EPA, and the State of California. We have been very careful in the drafting of the underlying bill to make sure that the existing standards for tailpipe emissions stay in place. This bill does not change that. It would prevent EPA from issuing regulations for CO2 emissions for tailpipes, but the underlying bill does not prohibit regulating the various emissions under NHTSA and the State of California for tailpipe emissions that actually affect fuel economy. The only thing even without this bill that the EPA would have the ability to regulate are the emissions out of the coolant of the air conditioning systems. They have absolutely no effect on fuel economy. So we oppose the amendment. With that, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Olson), and I ask unanimous consent that he be allowed to control that time.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I thank the distinguished chairman. I rise in strong support of this bill. I would like to make a few comments. First of all, the bill before us doesn't change one sentence or one paragraph in the Clean Air Act. It doesn't change anything. What it does do is prevent the EPA from using the Clean Air Act to regulate CO2 as a criteria pollutant under the Clean Air Act. I was in Congress when we passed the Clean Air Act amendments back in 1991. I was a cosponsor of the bill. I worked on the bill in committee, voted for it on the floor. So I am a supporter of a strong Clean Air Act. CO2 is not a criteria pollutant under the Clean Air Act. It was never intended to be. It's only because of a 5-4 Supreme Court decision that said the EPA had to make a decision whether it should be, and then a very flawed EPA endangerment finding, when President Obama became the President, that we have an EPA authority, tenuous as it is, to regulate CO2 under the Clean Air Act. What this bill does is take us back to the original Clean Air Act and say we're going to regulate the criteria pollutants. But greenhouse gases and CO2, which is a greenhouse gas, are not one of those criteria pollutants. What are the purported benefits of regulating CO2? According to numerous studies, in terms of the amount of reduction in CO2, by the year 2100, which is 90 years away, 89 years away, we would see a reduction of about 3 parts better per billion if we regulated CO2 from the current 380 to 390 parts per billion. We would see a reduction in temperature by about 0.006 to 0.015 of a degree centigrade, and we would see a reduction in sea-level rise by about 0.007 of a centimeter. In other words, if we spend up to $100 billion a year to regulate CO2, we get no reduction in parts per billion, we get no reduction in temperature, and we get no reduction in sea level. But we do get a huge cost to the economy every year. This bill is a commonsense bill that simply says the Clean Air Act is the Clean Air Act, and let's use it to regulate sulfur dioxide, and let's use it to regulate lead and particulate matter and ozone, but let's not use it to regulate a naturally-occurring compound which is necessary for life and which helps us all. Please vote against all the amendments, and please vote for this very commonsense bill when we get to final passage. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to regulate carbon dioxide emissions under the Clean Air Act. Reports from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and even the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works estimate that the cost of these proposed regulations will be about $78 billion per year. The regulations will affect industries, farms, hospitals, office buildings, and hotels to name just a few. The regulations will adversely affect our ability to produce energy and structural materials. According to the EPA, the regulations will have this estimated effect: ``Based on the re- analysis the results for projected atmospheric CO2 concentrations are estimated to be reduced by an average of 2.9 ppm (previously 3.0 ppm), global mean temperature is estimated to be reduced by 0.006 to 0.015 deg. C by 2100 (previously 0.007 to 0.016 deg. C and sea-level rise is projected to be reduced by approximately 0.06-0.14cm by 2100 (previously 0.06-0.15cm).''--Federal Register 75, page 25,495. If we add up the yearly costs, then by the year 2100, we will have spent about $7 trillion to possibly make us cooler by 0.015 degrees Centigrade. This doesn't seem to be much of a benefit as a result of such a high cost. The Clean Air Act was never designed to regulate GHGs. It is time for us to come to our senses and statutorily forbid the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I thank the distinguished chairman for the time. Well, let me say something positive about my good friend from Houston, Texas's amendment before I say something negative. If it were to pass, it would at least force the EPA to do a real study, which is more than I can say they did before they issued their endangerment finding. If you look at the endangerment finding that they actually did to satisfy the requirement of the Supreme Court, they didn't do any scientific analysis. They didn't do any independent analysis. They basically took regurgitated research and press clippings and apparently some student's thesis as the justification for coming up with their endangerment finding. If we accept the gentlelady from Houston's amendment, you do really gut this bill, which, if you are opposed to it, that's probably a good outcome. But if you are supportive of it, it's not a good outcome. We don't need to do a study. CO2 is not a pollutant under the definitions of the Clean Air Act. It's not harmful to health, as I keep pointing out. As I speak, I create CO2, and so you need CO2 for life. Manmade CO2 does not significantly contribute to climate change. We do have climate change, as we always have and always will. But to say that CO2 emissions made by man somehow are causing all these catastrophic changes is simply not true. What the bill before us does is say we protect the Clean Air Act, we want to enforce the Clean Air Act, but we want it to be in force for the criteria pollutants that it was intended for, and we do not believe that CO2 is one of the pollutants that it was intended to regulate. So we don't need a study, and I would oppose my good friend from Houston's amendment and encourage all Members to also oppose it.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. A tax is a burden.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of this rule and in strong support of the underlying bill. I have been a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee for 26, now 27 years. I'm a past chairman. I'm a past subcommittee chairman. I currently have the title of chairman emeritus. I participated under former Chairman John Dingell, former Chairman Billy Tauzin, former Chairman Tom Bliley, former Chairman Henry Waxman and now current Chairman Fred Upton, dozens of hearings on the Clean Air Act, markups, amendments, dozens of hearings on climate change, global warming and all of those issues. The bill before us, if the rule passes, does not change the Clean Air Act. It does not gut the Clean Air Act. It does not in any way prevent enforcement of the criteria pollutants that are regulated by the Clean Air Act. It simply says that greenhouse gases are not to be regulated under the Clean Air Act. And the reason it says that is that greenhouse gases are different than the criteria pollutants that are regulated under the Clean Air Act. First of all, greenhouse gases by definition are necessary for life. As I stand here, Madam Speaker, and speak, I am creating, as I breathe in and out through the respiratory process, CO2. So under the dictates of today's EPA, I am a mobile source polluter, because I am breathing. I am creating CO2. CO2, carbon dioxide, is necessary for life. Greenhouse gases are necessary to protect the environment. They have the ability to prevent heat from escaping into outer space, and that is what creates the temperature zone that allows life to exist. The radical environmentalists who think CO2 is a pollutant have decided amongst themselves--I don't know how they have done it-- but they have decided that the magic number for CO2 in the atmosphere should be about 350 parts per billion. We are currently at about 380 parts per billion. We know from records and from ice samples and tree rings and things like this of the past that we have had CO2 up in the thousands parts per billion in the past. So how 350 has become the magic number is beyond me. In any event, let me simply say, the bill before us doesn't change one sentence in the Clean Air Act. It does say that the endangerment finding was flawed, and the decision by the Obama administration to regulate CO2 under the Clean Air Act is wrong, and it should not be allowed to stand. If this Congress or future Congresses want to regulate CO2, want to regulate greenhouse gases, let them bring a bill forward through the normal regulatory process and do it. Please vote for the rule. Please vote for the bill.