Joe Barton

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I hope at the appropriate time the gentleman from California will withdraw this motion that the committee do now rise. I want to put into the Record a letter that has just arrived to the chairman of the full committee, the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Tauzin), dated today, August 1, from the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Honorable Christine Todd Whitman. I want to read from that letter that says: ``The Bush administration strongly opposes this amendment. The Federal RFG program has been an extremely successful and a cost-effective program that has provided substantial air quality benefits to millions of people throughout the country. The program also has encouraged the use of renewable fuels and has the potential to enhance energy security. Although we recognize that California and other States have raised concerns about certain aspects of the RFG program, we believe these concerns must be addressed carefully and comprehensively in order to preserve the benefits of the program and avoid further proliferation of boutique fuels.'' Mr. Chairman, I include this letter from Administrator Whitman in the Record. The letter referred to is as follows: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, Aug. 1, 2001. Hon. W. J. Tauzin Chairman, Committee on Energy and Commerce, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, DC. Dear Mr. Chairman: I understand that an amendment to H.R. 4 may be offered that would allow the State of California to adopt a reformulated gasoline (RFG) program separate from the Clean Air Act's RFG program. The Bush Administration strongly opposes this amendment. The Federal RFG program has been an extremely successful and cost-effective program that has provided substantial air quality benefits to millions of people throughout the country. The program also has encouraged the use of renewable fuels and has the potential to enhance energy security. Although we recognize that California and other states have raised concerns about certain aspects of the RFG program, we believe that these concerns must be addressed carefully and comprehensively in order to preserve the benefits of the program and avoid further proliferation of boutique fuels. I want to assure you that, pursuant to the Administration's National Energy Policy report and consistent with the provisions of H.R. 4, EPA, along with the Department of Energy and other agencies, is examining these issues and exploring ways to increase the flexibility of the fuels distribution infrastructure while advancing our goals for clean air. This comprehensive review of Federal and State fuel programs will allow the Administration and the Congress to better understand, and thus, more effectively address, any concerns with the federal RFG program. The proposed amendment is apparently intended to waive, for the State of California only, the so-called oxygenate requirement in the RFG program. The Clean Air Act already includes a provision that allows the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to waive this requirement upon a showing that the requirement would interfere with a state's ability to meet national ambient air quality standards. As you know, California requested such a waiver, and I denied the request because of uncertainty over the change in emissions that would result from such a waiver. Some advocates of the amendment support their position by citing a draft EPA document concerning California's waiver request. That document contained a number of uncertainties and was never finalized. After further evaluation by EPA staff, I determined that the data did not support California's waiver request. That draft document is no longer relevant and is not an accurate reflection of EPA's position. I appreciate your attention to these issues as you consider amendments to H.R. 4. Sincerely yours, Christine Todd Whitman. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht).

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the pending Issa motion.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Buyer).

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I want to direct the Members' attention to the word that is carved in the cabinet that is right here before us. It cannot be read too well, but it is tolerance. I want to speak a little bit about tolerance, and I want to speak a little bit about facts. Facts are troublesome things but they are facts. The fact is that we use about 100 quads of energy in this country every year. A quad is a quadrillion BTUs. That is a fact. The fact is we produce only about 70 quads. Subtract 70 from 100 and we have a deficit of about 30. Thirty quadrillion BTUs of energy that this Nation is importing. That is a lot of energy. Most of that is in the form of oil, but not all of it. We import electricity. We import natural gas. We import uranium to be refined into enrichment rods for our nuclear power plants. The only thing we do not import in terms of energy is coal. We are a net exporter of coal. Some of the gentlemen that are supporting this particular amendment by the gentleman from Washington State (Mr. Inslee) have been talking about the lack of an energy policy. We are going to have that bill on the floor next week. The major committees in the House reported it out last week. The Committee on Science reported it out by voice vote. That shows a little bit of tolerance there and a little bit of bipartisanship. The Committee on Energy and Commerce where I am a subcommittee chairman, we reported it on a 50 to 5 vote. The gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Boucher) and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) and others voted for the bill. That shows a little bipartisanship there. The Committee on Ways and Means was a little bit tougher. It was a party line vote. The Committee on Resources was a bipartisan vote. Those bills are being packaged together and it will be on the floor next week, we think, on Wednesday. There will be a lot of amendments made in order, some by Democrats and some by Republicans. We will have that debate on energy policy beginning next week. My subcommittee this fall will put together an electricity restructuring bill, a pipeline safety bill, a nuclear waste bill, a hydroelectric reform bill. Hopefully, we will get bipartisanship, a little tolerance, and we will put those bills on the floor sometime this fall or next spring. So we will have our energy debate. We will have our energy policy. I think the House will do what it is supposed to do and pass much of that and send it to the other body and hope that they work their will. The particular pending amendment is kind of cute. Nobody can deny that. It gives people a forum to vent their frustration. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing illegal. But is it really worthwhile? I think not. If we want to do some cute things look at the lights right up here. Some of the most energy inefficient lights in the country are lighting this debate so to speak. The powerplant that provides the electricity is an old coal and oil- fired powerplant two blocks from the Capitol that many in the neighborhood think is an environmental hazard. If we want to engage in the kind of debate where we begin to point fingers, let us point at ourselves first. I am willing to be a part of that. But I am not willing to be a part of this particular amendment being considered as a serious amendment. It is really an amendment made in order to try to highlight an issue that we are going to have a lot of opportunity in the next week and in the next months to highlight. I hope we vote against this. I am working with the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee). He is a champion of something called real-time metering and net metering. That will be in a bill that will come out of my subcommittee hopefully in the next 6 weeks. He will be a part of that process. My friend, the gentleman from California (Mr. Filner) has very eloquently depicted the plight of some of his constituents in southern California. We tried to put together a package for that earlier in the year. It floundered primarily on the fact that we could not get a consensus on price caps and we tried. We tried to get a consensus on price caps and we could not get it. We may have that debate again next week on the floor, and, if so, we will have a spirited debate and let the votes fall where they may. But on this amendment we should vote it on down and move on to the more substantive parts of the bill.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. (Mr. BARTON of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I had the recognition. I asked to strike the requisite number of words before the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. LaHood) was recognized.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Chairman. How much more time remains on the 5 minutes?

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I just wanted to announce, for members of the Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, that we are going to finish our markup this evening. Food will be provided on a bipartisan basis, so I would encourage all members of that subcommittee to come back to the markup, and I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, again reclaiming my time, I will withdraw my request for a colloquy, because I am absolutely stunned at what the gentleman has just said.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. That is true, that is true.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I yield to the gentleman from Alabama.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, let me say one thing, because I am not going to press the point. But the language that I had prepared does not expand the number of boat permits, it simply says if there is an existing boat permit or has been, that it can be utilized. That is all it does.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. I would like to enter into a colloquy with the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Callahan), the distinguished chairman of the subcommittee. Mr. Chairman, my family came to Texas in the 1840s and settled in Hill and Bosque County in the 1870s around a community called Whitney. My great-great-grandfather and my great-grandfather and my grandfather and my father all grew up on a farm under what is now Lake Whitney, because in the 1940s, the Corps of Engineers built a public lake. Since 1954, that lake has been open for use. There have been hundreds, if not thousands, of boat docks put on that lake, but beginning in the 1970s, the Corps began to refuse permits for new boat docks and, as the old boat docks have declined, they have refused to allow them to continue to be maintained. I had submitted language to the Subcommittee on Energy and Water Appropriations that would be no cost, but would simply allow a holder of a permit on Lake Whitney for a boat dock to use that permit. I would like to ask the distinguished gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Callahan), the chairman of the subcommittee, ``Beach Boy Callahan,'' if he would support at some point in the process insertion of language that is of absolutely no cost to the Federal Government, but which would allow people around Lake Whitney which, at some point in time, had a permit for a boat dock to utilize that permit.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, again reclaiming my time, the gentleman and I have not had a discussion on this recently.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, if I could reclaim my time, I think the gentleman from Waco has got an absolutely sincere complaint. The gentleman and I have spoken on this several times, but not in the last week. I thought this was in the bill.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I have done that.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, the gentleman and I have actually had discussions on this.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Yes, we have. Yes, we have.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me time. Mr. Speaker, my good friend the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey), and he is my good friend, we work together on privacy issues and telecommunications issues, this is one we agree to disagree on. The great State of California has buy-cap authority today. If the Governor of California thinks that electricity prices are too high, since the State is buying all the wholesale power, all he has got to do is pick up the phone and call the gentleman who is negotiating these contracts, I do not know if it is on a day-to-day basis, but it is generally a man named David Freeman, a very smart individual, and say do not pay more than $100 a megawatt, or more than $50, or more than $200, whatever it is. The Governor of California has buy-cap authority right now. What has happened? What has happened is in the last 6 months, as California began to grapple with the fact that they are a part of the real world, they cannot suspend economic laws, they have begun to negotiate contracts, and long-term contracts from 1 year to 5 years to 10 years, some of those contracts are becoming public and they are finding out they are paying above market prices. Now, I do not think the political leadership in the great State of California started out to pay above market prices. I think just the opposite. But it is fundamental; if you try to pick a political price for any commodity, and, almost by definition, you are going to pick the wrong price, because markets change. Every time we have tried price caps on any commodity in this country for any length of time, the only certainty has been it has led to shortages, disruptions, it has led to unequal distribution of that commodity. So I think the Committee on Rules was eminently fair. This is a spending supplemental. It is not a policy supplemental. We should not have extraneous amendments on items like price caps that do not make sense in the real world, and I hope we vote for the rule.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I serve as the authorizing subcommittee chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce that has jurisdiction over the LIHEAP program. Earlier this year, we were trying to move legislation to help the West Coast with their electricity problem. The gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Bono) offered a LIHEAP amendment authorizing an additional $100 million. The Bush administration later came forward and said they were going to support $150 million. The subcommittee and now the full committee in the supplemental has raised that to $300 million. If we look at the history of the program and look at the situation both in terms of heating requirements in the colder regions of the country and cooling requirements in the warmer regions of the country for the summer, the amount of additional funding in the pending supplemental should be more than adequate, if we consider the rollover money that is carried forward that the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula) talked about in his statement several minutes ago. Also, if we consider that we are going to have a FEMA increase amendment, we think fairly quickly on the floor offered by three Members, which increases FEMA with an offset to the rest of the bill, I think we can handle that part of the amendment of the gentlewoman from Connecticut. So I know it is well meaning, but I would hope we would follow the committee and reject this amendment and support the Toomey-Tancredo- Flake amendment that should come later and we can act in a responsible fashion. So I would oppose the gentlewoman's amendment.