Jay Inslee

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I would yield to the dean of the House whose leadership helped bring this bill to the floor today, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell), for such time as he may consume. (Mr. DINGELL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, in closing, I want to make a point. I think this is a great bipartisan success, to try to improve organ donation prospects for these 70,000 Americans. But we have more work to do. This bill is not the end of our efforts. I worked for 2 years with Mike Bilirakis, a great Republican, to try to have people in hospitals work with families on transplant donation issues. We need to fund that bill, and I hope we can have a bipartisan effort to do that. We have work to do to fund immunosuppressant drugs. Right now, we are not funding the drugs that donees need to suppress the immunological response to donation. So I hope we can continue to work in a bipartisan fashion to help these 70,000 Americans. We will remember Charlie Norwood's efforts in this regard and on future successes Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Mr. Barton for reading Dr. Norwood's eloquent statement into the Record. I want to note that kidney donation is not just for the recipients. It is for their families and the places they work, and even the U.S. Congress. The reason we had the benefit of Dr. Norwood's wisdom for years in the U.S. Congress was because of a lung transplant. I want to note that what we are doing today is not only helping those 70,000 people, but also their families and workplaces and the whole U.S. economy. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the bill under consideration.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 710) to amend the National Organ Transplant Act to clarify that kidney paired donation does not involve the transfer of a human organ for valuable consideration, as amended.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that I may hereafter be considered as the first sponsor of H.R. 710, a bill originally introduced by Representative Norwood of Georgia, only for the purpose of adding cosponsors and requesting reprintings pursuant to clause 7 of rule XII.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, we are here today to pass the Charlie W. Norwood Living Kidney Organ Donation Clarification Act. We do so both to honor Dr. Norwood, who provided such great service to his district and to the country for many years; of course, Dr. Norwood did so as the result of being a recipient of lung transplants himself; but also to honor the thousands of Americans who are today waiting for kidney transplants. This bill, we believe, will be a great step forward to hasten the day when those folks can potentially have kidney transplants. It is a fitting tribute to Dr. Norwood for his tireless efforts to improve our Nation's health and his great work in fighting as a patient's advocate. I will submit for the record a statement from Dr. Norwood in support of this legislation. Second, I would like to thank the staff of both of the committees, as well as Dr. Norwood's office and personal staff, for their work to make this bill a reality. This legislation would allow a procedure commonly known as paired donation to be legal, to make that clear, and to provide hope to patients waiting for kidney transplants. Paired organ donation will make it possible for thousands of people who wish to donate a kidney to a spouse, a family member or a friend but find that they are medically incompatible to still become living kidney donors. This is very important, because, as of February 23, we had over 70,000 patients who are now on the waiting list for a kidney transplant, and yet we performed only 16,500 kidney transplants in 2005, of which only 6,500 were living kidney donors. H.R. 710 will take a significant step towards reducing the number of patients on the waiting list and giving many more the hope that their wait will not be endless. Further, this bill is supported by numerous medical organizations, including the United Network for Organ Sharing, the American Society of Transplant Surgeons, the American Society of Transplantation, the National Kidney Foundation and the American Society of Pediatric Nephrology. I have sort of a local person who gives me advise about this, Dr. Connie Davis, who is a transplant expert, a physician, and she says that this bill is a huge step forward for the transplant community as clinical efforts in the direction of paired donation have been severely hampered by concerns over the legal status of such activity. I believe it is imperative that we make it clear that there is no intent by Congress to bar this procedure. It is my hope that the Senate will act quickly on this. Simply put, we want this legislation to save lives immediately. So, for the 70,000 patients waiting for lifesaving kidney transplants, with time spent on costly and often arduous dialysis treatment, their time on the waiting list can be significantly shortened with passage and implementation of this bill. It is an honor to stand here working for the name of Dr. Charlie Norwood. I want to thank all those who have worked on this bill, and I hope very shortly we can have this on the President's desk and help those 70,000 people to a healthy future and great productive years, just like Dr. Norwood had in the U.S. Congress. Statement of the Honorable Charlie Norwood Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 710, the Living Kidney Organ Donation Clarification Act. This bill will explicitly state that Americans in need of a kidney will have a greater chance of receiving one through the process of paired donation. Over 70,000 Americans are currently in need of a kidney transplant. As a result of significant demand and limited supply, most transplantees wait for over four years before receiving a kidney. Four years for their lives to be saved or lost. During this time, if their kidneys fail, End Stage Renal Disease can set in. These patients must undergo dialysis. While dialysis extends patients' lives, their condition often prevents them from being fully engaged in their community and career. Dialysis is life-extending, but not life-bettering. Sadly, in many cases, this is where patients lose their battle. In 2004 alone, 3,823 transplant candidates died awaiting a kidney. As our population ages, that figure is going to increase. Mr. Speaker, medical science has enabled us to perform more successful organ transplants than ever before. These transplants give patients a new lease on life. Many Members in this body or their loved ones have been touched by the lifesaving gift of organ donation, myself included. Kidney transplants from living donors tend to be highly successful, but in many cases, those who want to give a kidney to a loved one feel they cannot help because they are not biologically compatible with the patient in need. H.R. 710 is very simple. It clarifies that paired donation is legal under the National Organ Transplant Act. As a result, a pair consisting of a kidney transplant candidate and an incompatible living donor can be matched with another such incompatible pair to enable two transplants that otherwise would not occur. Remember those 3,823 souls and ask yourself--could you justify not allowing a process of simply cross-matching to save their lives? I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this legislation in memory of those who have died waiting for a kidney as well as the thousands of Americans who are seeking a transplant or trying to become a living donor to save a loved ones' life. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to Ms. Karen Fant, who devoted her life to preserving wilderness and wildlife in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. We mourn the loss of such a treasured conservationist and pioneer in the Washington state environmental movement. She spent four decades organizing for conservation, working for groups including the Alaska Coalition, Sierra Club, Olympic Park Associates, Wild Sky Working Group, Washington Wilderness Coalition, and Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition. Her activism spanned many years, crossed state lines, and extended as far as Chongqing, China, where she dedicated herself to developing a strategy to address environmental degradation in Asia as a board member of the Seattle- Chongquing Sister City Association. Born in Altadena, California, Karen grew to cherish wilderness at an early age, spending her childhood hiking the Sierra Nevada Mountains with her family. She continued this passion, earning a degree in geology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Formally beginning her long legacy of protecting our wild forests, Karen first went to work for the Sierra Club in the 1970s, fighting for roadless forest preservation. In 1979, she cofounded the Washington Wilderness Coalition, an organization dedicated to empowering Washington state citizens to preserve and restore wilderness areas through grassroots advocacy and public education. Karen once said, ``We will continue to work on these issues as long as there is wild land left in the country.'' Friends have described her as selfless, caring, inspirational, effective, dedicated, wise, humble and relentless in organizing and empowering people to speak up for the wild places in America and around the world. Karen was the epitome of the dedicated and effective activist. She touched the lives of countless individuals throughout the Northwest. She had a knack for recognizing everyone's ability to make a difference, and encouraged people to stand up and speak out for what they believe in. She was never the loudest person in the room, but often the most effective voice at bringing people and ideas together to advance the protection of wilderness and the wild creatures that depend on it. She delighted in walking in wild, unspoiled places and bringing others out to experience the serenity, joy, and splendor of wilderness. Because of her work, the conservation community in Washington has been left with an immense knowledge of what is at stake as we fight to protect the wilderness areas that remain in the United States. Karen was instrumental in passing the 1984 Washington State Wilderness Act, which sets aside over one million acres of new wilderness. She also initiated the efforts to preserve Wild Sky. She organized to protect the Owyhees Canyonlands in Idaho and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. Finally, she organized in support of a bill that is close to my heart, The National Forest Roadless Area Conservation Act. Passage of this bill is vital to protect areas in the national forest deemed as roadless and ensure that they remain free from development or devastation. As the original sponsor of this bill, I encourage you to support the protection of our national forests. This spring, Karen's ashes will be spread among some of her favorite wilderness areas in the North Cascades and Sierras Nevadas, areas that continue to need protection to this day. Here in the U.S. Congress, I cannot imagine a better way to honor Karen's conservation legacy than for my colleagues to join me in supporting H.R. 866, the Wild Sky Wilderness Act of 2007, which will be marked up in the Natural Resources Committee this week. This bill would serve to protect and expand the federal wilderness of the Skykomish River Valley in Washington State and ensure that ecosystems and stunning vistas in this area are enjoyed by people and wild creatures for generations to come. Passage of this legislation would be the perfect tribute to Karen's legacy. If Congress could merely echo the unwavering efforts of this woman, we would no doubt be doing a great service to our children and grandchildren in ensuring there are wild lands for them to enjoy far into the future.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, America will hear 435 separate ideas about Iraq, but I want to note one great shining light about our country. The American people are absolutely unified, no matter what they think about the policy in Iraq, of holding American warriors and our sons and daughters close to our hearts. This is a unified position across this country, and it is a bright light for America. Now, I have heard some people have suggested that soldiers who fall in Iraq will have fallen in vain. That is wrong. Any American who falls in the course of the conduct of American wars, they do not fall in vain. They fall into our arms, and they fall into our hearts, and there they will always remain. And we are unified on this principle. And when I go to a memorial service for a young man from Redmond, Washington next Monday, I will carry the unified American prayers and hearts of the 650,000 people I represent. Now we are in a difficult situation in Iraq and none of us have a silver bullet, and none of us have a magic wand. And it seems to me that when we are in dark times, we should go back to fundamental American character to find a way forward. There are three parts of the American character we should think about here: first, the character of the American mission in Iraq; second, the character of American common sense; and, third, the character of American democracy. What is the character of our mission in Iraq? President Bush, when he started this war, said we have three missions: Eliminate WMD. Mission accomplished. They were never there. Second, eliminate any terrorist that attacked us on 9/11. Mission accomplished. They were never there. Third, eliminate Saddam Hussein as a threat. Mission accomplished. He is no longer a threat to anyone who walks the face of the Earth. Our proud men and women have fulfilled the three mandates of missions set forth by George Bush. And now we have one moral mission to complete, and that is the moral responsibility to give the Iraqis a reasonable chance to form a government. We have done that after 4 years; and our investment of 3,000-plus lives and hundreds of billions of dollars of American money has fulfilled that moral obligation in spades. Second, what is the American character of common sense? Why did General Abizaid, when he asked all the divisional commanders whether this escalation would help and every single one of them say no, why is that? It is because they have common sense. I was on a walk a couple of months ago, and I met an old high school friend. His son was serving in Baghdad, and I asked him what he thought about Iraq. And he said, We have no common sense in our policy. He said, the fundamental problem in Iraq was that the Shiites were not agreeing with the Sunnis principally over oil revenues. And my son is serving in Baghdad today as a security blanket because the Iraqi politicians will not make the compromises necessary to form a government. That has to end. It is American common sense to understand the real enemy in Baghdad is sectarian intransigence. The real enemy in Baghdad is their failure to compromise. And the best weapon we have is a dose of reality to the Iraqi people of all sectarian faiths. You have to get a grip on your country because you will very shortly have your own fate in your own hands. The best weapon we have in Iraq is to tell the rest of the immediate region that they must become responsible for their own neighborhoods. That is the weapon of reality we should use. And, third, what is the character of American democracy? George Bush said that he was the decider. That is wrong. The decider is the American people. And the American people had a message to George Bush that there has to be a change in Iraq policy. And he is not listening to the generals, he is not listening to the bipartisan commission, and he is not listening to the American people. Congress has a responsibility coequal with the President under Article I of the Constitution to declare war, to raise and support armies, to make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces. It is time for Congress to stand up on our hind legs and take away the keys from the man who has driven our foreign policy into a ditch. It is time to restore the American mission to where it belongs, to American common sense where it belongs, and to American democracy where it belongs. Support this resolution. Prevent this escalation in Iraq.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, this is a great bill and cellulosic ethanol is great from a global warming perspective because it simply recirculates carbon through the atmosphere. It doesn't add any additional carbon. It is simply that the plant takes it out of the atmosphere. They crush the plant, burn the fuel. It is a cycle. It doesn't add any net increase. But I want to make sure Members understand this bill is just a beginning of what we need to do. Brazil is totally energy independent today because they have gone to an E-85 system. They burn fuel that is 85 percent ethanol. But I talked to the person in Brazil that made this happen, and he told me one clear lesson. If you don't do something to compel the oil and gas distribution system to put in E-85 pumps, they don't do it. Now, they in Brazil had to adopt some policies to compel the installation of these E-85 pumps because there is a competitive reason. The oil and gas industry doesn't want to put in these pumps to compete with their oil and gas. So this is a start to demonstrate why the use of cellulosic ethanol is very allowable in Brazil. They pump this stuff all over the country all the time. But we are going to need to take another step to get those E-85 pumps built to fuel our flex- fuel cars. This is a first step. There is more to come.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, today, when we pass the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Monument Act of 2007, we will be making a strong American statement. That statement will be that the power of fear will never again be allowed to overcome the promise of liberty. These are images we should never see again in America; and today, with the passage of this bill, we will make a strong American statement that they will not. On March 30, 1942, the American Army, pursuant to an executive order by an American President, rounded up 227 Americans living on Bainbridge Island and marched them down the Eagledale Dock in Eagle Harbor of Bainbridge Island, Washington, surrounded by American soldiers, some having bayonets deployed. They were taken away to internment against their will, without trial and without recognition of their rights as citizens and their honor to serve America. And now, today, when we are making the memorial on Bainbridge Island at the site of this dock, which is now being prepared and is under construction, we will be making an American statement that this cannot happen again. The saying is ``Nidoto Nai Yoni, never let it happen again,'' and by making this part of our National Parks System, we will be making a statement that these images will never happen to any generation of any creed in America. I want to note some of the people. This is a picture of a young fellow at that time named Frank Kinamoto. In this picture, Frank had his little tag. Everyone was given a little tag they had to wear with a number on it. Frank grew up to be a respected dentist on Bainbridge Island, and Frank has done personally what this legislation will do nationally. He has spent many years going around showing a collection of photographs telling young students why the protection of our civil liberties is critical and why we should never be overcome by fear again, and I pay respects to Frank and his efforts. Another young woman at the time, who testified several months ago, who has been pivotal in this effort, Fumiko Hayashida, shown with her daughter here just before she was marched down that pier. Fumiko came to town, who is 95 years young, who is the oldest internee that we are aware of, to send Congress a message to make a national statement to memorialize this. Now, there are three reasons I think it is important that we pass this bill. First, although this was a tragic episode in American history, it was an episode involving patriotism because, and this is incredible to me, of the 227 people marched down that pier, 62 of them turned around and volunteered to serve their nation in World War II, and 62 of these people served with distinction. These people were the ultimate patriots. Having been sent to camps by Uncle Sam, to turn around and fight for the freedoms to which they were not entitled was the ultimate act of patriotism, and we honor them as an act of patriotism in this memorial. Second, it is a memorialization of their neighbors. Many of their neighbors rallied around them. Many of their neighbors guarded some of their equipment to wait for them to come home. And Walt Widward, the publisher of the Bainbridge Island Review, was the only publisher on the western coast of the United States to editorialize against this violation of American values. That is something to memorialize. But, most importantly, Nidoto Nai Yoni, never let it happen again. And this will be a statement to ourselves, to our children, to our grandchildren, that, when we are in fear in this country, we should never lose that anchor of American civil rights and civil liberties in respect to what we are as Americans. We have gone through these days in the last several years. We have experienced fear that sometimes has infected the discussion here in the Chamber; and when we go through and deal with our fears today, I think it is well that we take a lesson from history of 1942 to hew to the power of liberty, rather than the power of fear. So I am happy today that we will pass this bill that will make this part of our National Parks System. I will invite all Americans to come visit us in Bainbridge Island. We will invite the world to come see that America is a country that makes mistakes but learns and improves. And this is a continuation of that American tradition of improving the American value system. So I am happy today this House will take this step. I want to thank the Bainbridge Island community and all of those who worked on this project. Clarence Moriwaki, who has led the effort on Bainbridge Island, congratulations. And congratulations to America for always being an improving country.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor this evening to continue the effort to revolutionize American energy. We had the first breakthrough here just about a week and a half ago where the U.S. House of Representatives took the first step in the clean energy revolution. I think it was long overdue, and I think it is going to be much enjoyed by Americans, because what we did about a week and a half ago was take the first step toward freeing ourselves from the shackles of oil and gas and in fact starting down the road toward clean energy with a high-tech clean energy future. The way we did that, we reeled back in $14 billion of giveaways to the oil and gas industry, the most profitable industry in the history of the solar system, that had been given under the previous Congress; and we put that money for Americans to use to develop a clean energy future that can depend upon Midwestern farmers rather than Middle Eastern sheiks. This really was a first step on a long road toward a clean energy future for America. It was a very, very important first step. This evening I wanted to share with my colleagues some folks I have met whose lives are intertwined with that clean energy future. We call the clean energy future the new Apollo Project because we believe we need a new high-tech energy future for this country every bit as bold and revolutionary and visionary as John Kennedy's original Apollo Project when he stood behind me in 1961 and said America was going to place a man on the Moon and bring him back safely in 10 years, and that happened. We believe that we need that same spirit, that same idea that our genius, our innovation and inventiveness in America can create new technologies to provide us new energy. The people I wanted to talk about tonight are all people I have met in the last month and are people who I believe exhibit why we need the new Apollo energy project and why it was a good idea for Congress to have created this clean energy fund, take money out of oil and gas and put it into clean energy. I would like to talk about some of those folks. The first two people I want to talk about are exhibits A and B as to why we need a new clean energy future. One is President Note of the Marshall Islands who is a gracious fellow. I met him on Bainbridge Island awhile back. When I talked to him, he told me about the plight of his Nation, the Marshall Islands in the southern Pacific, very, very low atolls. They are essentially coral reefs, and they are just a few feet above sea level. What the President of the Marshall Islands told me is that his Nation is now threatened by sea level rises associated with global warming, together with the coral reefs that can be occasioned by acidification in the ocean and increasing water temperature, again because of global warming and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. What President Note told me is that, for the last year or so, they have had to take emergency provisions to keep the sea from encroaching where they live, essentially. They are now starting to have active consideration of where folks will have to go after they leave the Marshall Islands when the seas swallow the Marshall Islands or make them uninhabitable. Another problem they are having is the storms are increasing in severity as well. So here we have the President of a nation state who was in Seattle this weekend pleading for us to take measures to stop global warming to try to preserve his nation. I thought this could be the first nation really destroyed by environmental catastrophe associated with an energy policy that is polluting the atmosphere with so much carbon dioxide. President Note was pretty convincing that as an act of humanity we should not allow his nation to drown, and to me it was sort of a common-sense, human thing to do, to ask me to talk to my colleagues about what we could do about that, and so I am here tonight. The second person I want to talk about is the director of relocation for a town called Shishmareff, which is a town on the northern coast of Alaska. This is a town that has been there for 4,000 years in some village system or otherwise. For 4,000 years, people have enjoyed living there, but now they are being swallowed by the sea. The Arctic Ocean is essentially intruding into the town. If you go and google Shishmareff, Alaska, you will see pictures of the houses simply falling down into the ocean. For a combination of reasons, the tundra is melting underneath their houses, and the ocean is intruding because an ice barrier that formerly protected their village has melted. So they are both having the tundra melt underneath them and the storm waves coming in and washing away the town. About 3 weeks ago, the town voted to move 13 miles, move the whole town, kit and caboodle, to the mainland. They are now on a coastal barrier island, and this will be the first town, Shishmareff, Alaska, the first town that falls victim to global warming in the United States, the first American town. I cannot be thinking that that is something to be proud of, that we have an energy policy that allows the oil and gas industry and others to put untold amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It is actually destroying an American town. I think we ought to rally to the idea that we do not allow American towns to be swallowed by a problem. We have got to solve the problem. So there are two people, the President of the Marshall Islands and the leader of Shishmareff, Alaska, both of whom are having their communities literally being swallowed up and having to move at some point because we have an energy policy that is fit for the 19th century, not the 21st century. That is the bad news, but now I want to shift to some people I have met who have given me a huge amount of confidence that we can deal with this problem. Because I think if you spend time talking to the scientists and the inventors and innovators, as I have during the last year, you would be convinced that Americans, the country that had people who invented the light bulb, the jet airplane, went to the moon, perfected the Internet and mapped the human genome, are capable of creating a new energy future that will not allow the destruction of other American towns. The reason I believe that is because I know these people. I just want to share some of the people I have met in the last month. Last Friday, I met people from a company called General Compression, and these are scientists who have invented a way to make a compressor about 80 percent more efficient which does not sound too thrilling, I suppose, until you think what it can do. Because what they can do with this compressor is put it on the top of a wind turbine and use the wind turbine that blows in the wind to compress air and then take that air and can pump it down into subterranean caverns and keep stored air under high pressure that then can be vented and used like a big battery. When you vent this compressed air, it can drive a turbine and generate electricity. Now, the upshot of all this technology is it means that we can take wind turbines and essentially connect them to a giant battery in the form of compressed air to store that energy. This is very, very important in the effort to have clean energy because now we can make wind turbines part of the grid. We can have energy that wind turbines create. We can have access to it even when the wind does not blow. Wind does not always blow, except here in the House of Representatives, of course. So this, for the first time, when this technology is perfected, and it is not perfect yet, will be able to perhaps double the revenues that can be generated from wind turbines, a clean energy source that does not emit one pound of carbon dioxide when we generate that electricity. So here is a tremendous breakthrough that could make radical changes in our energy policy by perhaps doubling the efficacy, at least the revenue generation of wind turbine farms. We have had a bunch of them go up in the State of Washington. We have the largest wind turbine farm in North America in the State of Washington, which is already as cheap as any other type of energy that we have. So there is one company. The second company, the day before I had in my office a company called A123 Battery. It is a company in Massachusetts, scientists who have spun off of MIT, largely; and A123 Battery company is a company that has developed a lithium ion battery which has tremendous capacity essentially for storing electricity. They have now signed an agreement with General Motors in an effort to provide the battery for the Volt, the first plug-in hybrid that GM has announced they would like to build in several years. A123 Battery company, it is exciting because their technology, once it becomes commercialized, once it becomes packaged in a reliable source that we can make sure we can put in our car, will allow us to have plug-in hybrids, a car that we can take home at night, plug into a garage outlet, next day drive it up to 40 miles on electricity. And over 60 percent of our trips are under 40 miles a day, but if you want to go over 40 miles a day, then you have an auxiliary internal combustion engine that will burn either gasoline or ethanol that can take you the rest of the mileage as far as you want to drive. So it is a plug-in, flex-fuel hybrid vehicle. Plug-in meaning you plug in at night, flex-fuel meaning runs on a gasoline or ethanol, and hybrid means it has electric and internal combustion engine. So this company now has sort of answered the $64,000 question of how we are going to have enough battery capacity; and all they need to do, as they explained to me, is to mount some engineering. The science is there. Now they need the engineering. This is very exciting to think that in 5, maybe 6, 7 years, we will be able to have an electrical driven car, by and large, that we can distribute energy over the electrical system. Think about when you put those two companies I just talked about, put those two companies together. General Compression, which can perhaps double the efficacy of the wind turbine, that can generate electricity that goes out over the wires to your garage, that you plug in your car at night and drive off and get 40 miles on electricity and unlimited mileage on your gas or ethanol, a clean system, with zero carbon dioxide emissions. There is some pretty good news, and they are not the only one. Now maybe we will not have wind turbine-driven electricity. Maybe we will have clean coal. You know, most of the energy is from coal, from electricity right now in the United States, and it is very dirty, huge gigatons of carbon dioxide which are responsible for global warming, but there may be a way we can burn it cleanly. We can put it through a combined cycle process that can take the carbon dioxide out of the stream. We turn the coal into hydrogen. We burn the hydrogen in a gas turbine, and that generates electricity. But we have got to have some place to put the carbon dioxide so it does not get in the atmosphere. We basically sequester it, and we pump it under high pressure into the ground, and it stays there for hundreds of years, but it takes a lot of energy to compress that CO2. For every two coal-fired plants, you have to have one just for the energy to suppress this CO2. But a company I talked to yesterday called RAMGEN in Tacoma, Washington, RAMGEN has a nascent technology using a very sophisticated technology to increase the efficiency of compressors by very significant amounts, which would allow us to compress this carbon dioxide and use much less electricity to do it. So here we have a situation where we have these three companies I just talked about that may mean we would be able to have affordable, clean coal electricity to go into our electrical grid to power our plug-ins; and, if not that, then we have wind turbine technology to power our plug-ins with a battery that works. That is a beautifully elegant system that can keep the Shishmareff towns and the Marshall Islands that are being swallowed by the sea and keep us having cars that do not have to drive on oil from the Middle East. That is a pretty nice system. So there is a lot of great news out there, because there is a lot of great innovation out there. But the question is, what can we here in Congress do to accelerate that rate and that pace of innovation, and this is the third thing I would like to address tonight. We have talked about the problem. We have talked about the people who are solving it, innovation, but we have a role here, too, to help accelerate that rate of innovation. I would like tonight to talk about some of the things, not all of the things, but some of the things we can do here in Congress. First, what we can do is try to accelerate the rate of the commercialization of this plug-in hybrid battery. It is still going to take some engineering to make sure the battery is put in sequence in a crash-worthy system. We can pass a bill I introduced last week with some colleagues called the grid plug-in hybrid vehicle bill that will use some of this $14 billion that we have set aside for research that will help this industrial application get off the ground. It would also provide incentives for consumers to buy these products so we can help increase the demand for them; and, of course, we know once we increase demand, the cost of these goes down, the more we have on the road. The bill would also create a Federal testing ground. We have several of these now that help prove the concept of these--that prove these concepts work, and we would build on that by providing another test facility to certify the safety and reliability of these systems. So here is one bill that can help speed this transition to an electrical driven car, and we are very close to doing it. It may happen without Federal action, later rather than sooner, but we cannot wait. We cannot wait because of our dependence on foreign oil, and we cannot wait as the scientific panel will come out with its report this Friday again noting the danger we face as a country as a result of global warming. So that is one thing we can do, pass this plug-in, flex-fuel hybrid vehicle bill. Secondly, what we can do is make it easier for people to generate their own electricity. You know, photovoltaic energy where you put solar cells on your roof is becoming close to being market-driven. There are some very, very exciting things going on in photovoltaic energy right now. A company in California called NanoSolar is producing 450 megawatts of thin cell solar cells which they hope will decrease the cost of photovoltaic cells dramatically, another company called MiaSole. But we want to make it easier for you. If you want to put it on your roof, when you generate more electricity, you are feeding it back into the grid, to basically--to sell electricity you grow at your home, home- grown electricity back to the utility company. We want to make sure that you can get paid for that. So we have another bill called the net metering bill. Net metering basically means that you net on your meter what you used from the utility against what you produce and sell back to the utility. This bill would create a right for you as a consumer, under certain rules that were set up, to sell your electricity back to your utility, make sure you can hook up, have a Federal standard to do that. That is the key to being able to get to what we call a distributed generation system, where we can have generators all around the country, including on our rooftops and our businesses and our homes, not just in large coal plants and large hydroelectric dams. This is a pretty simple thing to do. It has been blocked now for 4 years in Congress. We are hoping that it can get through this year, a simple thing to do. Third, we have got to increase our research and development in all of these high-tech energy fields. I just mentioned several of them. There are many others, wave power. We now have the first wave power plant that has been proposed off the coast of Oregon, 50 megawatts, with buoys that bob up and down underneath the surface that can generate very considerable electricity. There is enough electricity that could be generated off a 10-by-10 square mile area off the coast of California that, if the buoys can be shown to survive ocean conditions, can have all the electricity California could use. It is pretty amazing. Now, there are hurdles to show that these buoys can survive in the wave power, but we need to do more in the wave conditions. We need to do more R&D on this. We need more R on the clean coal. We need more R&D on the solar thermal, which we are having great success with lately. The reason we know this is because when we compare this to other major challenges, we are really pathetic. We are pathetic when it comes to doing R&D and energy right now. You know, this challenge we have is at least as visionary as going to the Moon, but it affects our planet rather than the Moon. Yet we are spending one-seventh of what was spent and invested in the new Apollo Project, one-seventh per year what we spent on getting to the Moon. That is a sad commentary on our failure to act with dispatch when it comes to energy. We would not have gotten to the Moon, probably ever, had we had such a skimpy, weak, pathetic amount of research into this basic science. We have all this explosion of information going on between nanotechnology and biofuels, which we haven't even yet talked about tonight. We have got to ramp up that Federal R&D. That is the third thing we need to do. Fourth, we need to have major steps forward to advance our biofuels potential in this country. We have enormous potential in this country for biofuels. I have read the last few days some articles and newspapers by pundits who get to say anything they want. They don't ever have to run for election, so it doesn't matter what it is, really, I suppose. But these pundits have suggested that biofuels could not play an important part of our role, and those people are not talking to the scientists who recognize the breakthrough technology that we are on the cusp of enjoying in this country to dramatically increase the productivity of biofuels. Now, we know we are already producing very significant sums of ethanol and some biodiesel in this country. We know that that can increase. But what folks don't understand is that these biofuels, we are ready to take giant leaps forward to leapfrog the corn ethanol that we now use, and corn ethanol right now is what we might think of as the first- generation biofuel. It is kind of like the Wright brothers' flier. It works, you can fly, but it is just a start. We are going to enjoy succeeding generations of biofuels. The first one that we will have will be cellulosic ethanol. Cellulosic ethanol is a fancy term that basically means instead of just using the seed of a plant to distill ethanol, you use the whole plant. You don't just use a kernel of the corn. You use everything, what they call the corn stover that grows above the ground. You mash it up, and you put an enzyme in it to break down the carbohydrates in the cell, then you distill the carbohydrates and you make ethanol. When we do this, we will increase the productivity of the Midwestern farmer by a factor of two or three, not 5 or 10 percent, but by a factor of two or three. We will generate two or three times as much energy and money per acre as we are generating right now. This technology is ready for the first commercial plant, which should be in Idaho, a company called Iogen, that is ready as soon as they get a loan guarantee from Uncle Sam so they can build the first commercial plant to do this. When we do this, we will be able to have a very significant amount of our transportation fueled by domestically produced biofuel. This is not me just saying this. This is the Department of Energy that has done extensive analyses of this, Department of Agriculture, a whole suite of agronomists who have looked at it, who have basically concluded that in 25 years we can have 25 to 30 percent of our transportation fuels fueled by this, by this stream of domestically produced ethanol. That is just a beginning. That is a second generation. A third generation could include algae. Algae has the capability of producing 50 times as much at least per acre as even the second generation of biofuels. There is at least one company that has at least one commercial application of that technology now, basically to make diesel fuel out of algae. That is the kind of thing we need to invest in, and that is what we need to start doing. Last, I want to mention something that is pivotal to driving these technologies, and that is the technologies that I have talked about tonight all operate under an enormous competitive disadvantage. They have to compete with other industries that have a huge subsidy that they don't get, and that's the subsidy that the fossil fuel industry has because they get to put their carbon dioxide, their pollution, in the atmosphere for free. Now, you think about that. If a coal-fired utility right now can put its garbage, its pollution, its carbon dioxide, its pollutant that is damaging the Earth's atmosphere, that is damaging the atmosphere by the megaton and not pay a dime for it, in unlimited amounts, now, compared to what you do and what we do when we go to our county garbage dump with a pickup full of stuff out of our garden, goodness knows what we have got in the back of our basements, we have to pay money to dump our stuff in a limited space, because there is only a limited space in a garbage dump. But utilities that put all this pollution in our atmosphere, which has limited carrying capacity for carbon dioxide, get to do it for free for as much as they want. That is a huge subsidy of those industries. If you are a small company in California building solar cells or ocean-powered technology or wind turbines, or if you are a farmer in Ohio that is going to build cellulosic ethanol and sell it, you don't get that subsidy. It is an unfair subsidy, and it needs to stop. The U.S. Congress needs to stand up on our hind legs and pass a cap and trade system to cap, to limit, to put a ceiling on the amount of carbon dioxide that can go in our atmosphere from these polluting industries. When we have that cap, when we limit the amount of carbon dioxide that can be put in, two things are going to happen. We are going to protect our atmosphere for our grandchildren; and, second, we are going to give a boost to these new businesses that are really ready to start producing these products to become commercially available for the clean energy future of this country. That is a big two-fer, a clean, healthy environment and an energetic economy. All of the things I have talked about tonight will help produce both things. This is a situation where we are going to have the cleanest policy in congressional history and the most robust economy in American history once we develop these new technologies, because we need to be the country that fulfills our destiny as being the inventors of the world. You know, China is going to need this technology. They are building one dirty coal-fired plant a week, and they are going to need clean energy technology. We should be the one selling it to them. Here is a great way to restore the imbalance of trade between us and China. One of these companies, the director of Ramgen, this company that may be able to do this clean coal technology, was going to China today, and here is a perfect example of how we can start to fix this terrible trade imbalance we have when we can be the sellers to the world to this clean energy technology. So, in summary, there is some good news and bad news here tonight. The bad news is we have some fellow Americans whose talent is being destroyed by global warming in Shishmareff, Alaska. We have a fellow citizen in the world, the Marshall Islands, whose country is being devoured by global warming. That is the bad news. But the good news is we have a great combination of innovators, inventors, business people that are ready to tackle this problem and create these new technological solutions to this problem. One day we will be driving clean cars. We will have cleaner homes with better efficiency. We are going to lick this problem of global warming at the same time we are going to grow the U.S. economy. That is a message that this Congress, I am proud to say, is now sending for the first time. We have broken the chains of the oil and gas industry. We have broken the chains of the 19th century, and we have entered a new century of clean energy technology. I will look forward to more successes so we can help Americans continue to invent. It really is the American destiny to pass the new Apollo energy project and do just what John F. Kennedy did, take this country to a new vision.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, today we really do begin America's clean revolution in this bill. Every revolution has a beginning. The American Revolution began at Concord; the aerospace revolution began at Kittyhawk; and America's clean energy revolution begins today with this bill. And years from now when we have licked global warming and we have achieved energy independence, we will look back to this day as the first step on the road to clean energy for America. Today we are going to break the shackles of oil and gas. We are going to free Americans to invent, to innovate, to create the clean technologies we need in energy. This is only common sense. We pay once at the pump for gasoline already. We shouldn't have to pay again on tax day on April 15 to line the pockets of the oil and gas industry. It is common sense. Our national resources should be going to the innovators who will lead us in energy in the 21st century, rather than to those who have kept us in serfdom to the oil industry, an industry of the 19th century. Change is afoot starting today. Now we are going to unleash the talents of the Nanosolar Company in California. It is perfecting thin cell solar cells. We are going to empower the Ocean Power Technology Company that is perfecting wave energy, enough wave energy off the California coast to light the entire State. We will get loan guarantees to the Iogen Corporation, which is going to build the first cellulosic ethanol plant in the Western World in Idaho starting today. Today we recognize that the solution to our energy challenges is not below our feet in the ground. It is above our shoulders in our brains, and we are going to unleash the intellectual talents of America to see that that happens. I will be introducing again the New Apollo Energy Project bill, which will marshal our Nation's talents, just as John Kennedy marshaled our national resources in the original Apollo Project. Today is the first step of the new Apollo Energy Project. Tomorrow I will introduce the Plug-In Hybrid Bill, a bill that will hasten the day when our cars are powered on clean energy, clean electricity, and clean biofuels so we can get our energy from Midwestern farmers rather than Middle Eastern sheiks. These are just two of the many steps on this long road of the clean energy revolution; and there is no silver bullet to our energy challenges, but there is a silver lining, and that is the genius of the American people. Today we are freeing the genius of the American people. It is long overdue.

Mr. INSLEE. Regarding clean coal, we believe clean coal could be part of our energy future, and we need to do research in it to find a way to sequester carbon dioxide so that resource can be used. But in doing so, we can only do it if we have some limitation on carbon dioxide. The FutureGen project will never be built unless we have a limit on carbon dioxide. That is the only way it is going to be built. Democrats stand for research on that. It is part of this bill, it is part of clean energy.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. It created jobs in creating these scrubbers. It helped our health and it actually, if anything, increased the gross domestic product. So what we are seeing is that some of these visionary companies are embracing this idea and it makes sense. Today when I was talking to the Treasury Secretary, Mr. Paulson, I said, you know if we don't do this we are going to be wasting a lot of money. The Bush administration has supported a program, basically, it is a combined cycle way of using coal that you can make into hydrogen and sequester the carbon dioxide. It is called ``future gen.'' We are going to have a future way of generating coal based electricity. And I think it is a good idea to invest in that type of research to see if we can burn coal, take the carbon dioxide, stick it in the ground forever and we will have clean electricity. But the Bush administration is spending $750 million of taxpayer money to do that. But the plant will never, ever, ever be used or built if the Bush administration's policies succeed because they don't want to have any charge for carbon dioxide, any regulation on the amount of carbon dioxide going into the air. Well, if you are a coal company and you have got to invest money in this future gen program but you can put your carbon dioxide in the air for free, are you ever going to build this kind of machine that President Bush wants to build? It doesn't make any sense. So if we are going to do research in this new technology, it only makes sense also to have some regulation in the amount of carbon dioxide that goes into the atmosphere. Otherwise these technologies will be developed and never used. And that is not our goal, Mr. Hall.

Mr. INSLEE. When that day arrives they will write a sequel to Tom Wolfe's book about the Mercury 7 program, and he called it ``The Right Stuff.'' Tomorrow Congress is going to have the right stuff. We are going to do a good energy policy.

Mr. INSLEE. I want to comment on two really exciting transportation alternatives. One is public transportation. The city of Portland, Oregon, has demonstrated the ability of America to reduce our CO2 emissions to deal with global warming. They are the first city in the Nation to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels, which would be consistent with the Kyoto Treaty, which may be a treaty we do or do not eventually adopt, but they have been the first city in the Nation to reach these 1990 levels, to roll back their carbon dioxide emissions. One of the principal ways they did it was they embraced an incredibly popular light rail system to move people. Rather than sitting on freeways for hours at a time, you go down to Portland on a convenient, much-loved system that has now been voted on five times successfully in Portland because people love this system. It is convenient, it is safe, it is cheap, and it saves us from global warming. So if we have a transportation policy in this country that helps communities work in that regard, we will make some strides. The second thing I want to bring up is a technology called plug-in hybrids, which I think could be maybe the ultimate vision for us in the next decade, and that is to develop our cars so we go home at night and we plug them in. You take power off the grid, electricity generated by clean wind, clean solar, clean wave, clean coal, or a variety of technologies. These are cars that today are running, that can run 20 or 30 miles just on electricity. And then when you run out of juice, you start running on your motor. If we have a flex-fuel hybrid plug-in car, we are going to be in really great shape in this country, because we can plug it in and get clean electricity. We have the pipes to deliver it, which is the electricity grid. You plug it in at night, you run your first 20 or 30 miles, then you use ethanol that you bought from our local farmer in the Northeast, or in Iowa, or eastern Washington. And if you don't like that, you can burn gasoline as well. General Motors just announced their first sort of proposed car, called the Volt. They ran it out at their show just 2 weeks ago in Detroit at the auto show. Now, we have to improve the batteries to really make them commercialized, but that is where our money should be going, to improving the batteries so we can have plug-in vehicles, rather than going to the oil and gas industry. So tomorrow we are going to make a decision to take money we gave to the oil and gas industry and give it to these companies, to the extent we can, to help develop these new technologies for batteries and a whole host of other things. These are lithium iod batteries, and they are close to being commercialized. There are a few security issues they have to work with to make sure they are stable and workable, but that is a good shift for the country.

Mr. INSLEE. And I think it is important to point out the tremendous payback to our economy of relatively small Federal investments. Look at the computer industry. It grew by leaps and bounds because of the Apollo project. There is more computing power now on a wrist watch than there was in the original Apollo space vehicle because we developed computer based software systems as part of the Apollo project. Our medical device industry with these exotic materials largely came from the American space program, and these were relatively small investments. By the way, we spend less today on research and energy than we do in a month in Iraq by a factor of about 10, just to put this in perspective. We are talking about for a family's budget a lot of money, but for the Federal budget fairly small amounts of money that can have absolutely tremendous payoffs. I want to talk about one other thing that we think we need to help these companies too, though. If you want to start a company that will generate clean electricity with no carbon dioxide emissions today, you don't have a huge advantage because of a loophole in the law that a coal company has right now that is putting their carbon dioxide up the stack. That coal company that has what we call dirty coal, where you just burn it and you put your carbon dioxide, you dump it into the atmosphere, they have a huge loophole in the law because they can put as much CO2 into the air as they want the tape. They can't put as much sulfur dioxide, they can't put as much nitrogen oxide, they can't put as much particulate matter, but they can put as much CO2 into our atmosphere that you and I own jointly, with no charge. And the company that is going to make a clean industry, they don't get any benefit like that. We have to close that loophole. There has to be a way that there is some charge imposed on polluters who use our atmosphere to dump their carbon dioxide. And that is a loophole that needs to be closed to help these innovators as well to level the playing field. Now it is really interesting. We are getting some support for this idea from some unusual sources. Duke Energy, I think, the third or fourth largest electrical utility in the United States, they burn massive amounts of coal, I think 40 or 50 percent or more of their electricity is produced by coal. But they recognize the need to have what they call a cap and trade system that caps the amount of carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere. And in part they realize that, I think, because when you impose some cost on this pollution it inspires these new companies to be able to create new technologies that are clean. So we hope ultimately the U.S. Congress will adopt a measure that will level the playing field and not allow these dirty plants to continue to pollute our atmosphere for nothing. You know, when you and I go to the dump it costs us 25 bucks to dump our pickup load of junk at the dump. But a company that burns coal can put their carbon dioxide and just dump it into our atmosphere, gigatons for nothing. That needs to change

Mr. INSLEE. I want to comment that some people have argued this is sort of peripheral or tangential sources of energy, niche types of energy. I think it is important to realize the scale of energy that we have available domestically. It is enormous. When you talk to the scientists about this, the wave power in a 10- mile-by-10-mile stretch of the California coastline, that is 100 square miles, if you can imagine 10-by-10, there is enough wave power using this existing technology to generate all of the electricity used in the State of California. That is not hypothetical. That is actual wave power that is available. That is not a niche technology. In Montana, if we can a find way to burn coal cleanly, and I say if because we are a long ways from being able to do that, to segregate and store the carbon dioxide below ground, but there is enough coal in Montana, just Montana, if we can find a way to do that, to power the electricity needs of the entire Nation for decades. Just to give people a sense of the scale of this, with solar energy, in a few hundred square miles, there is enough to light the entire Nation, if we get solar power down to a market-based price. It is more expensive than electricity right now from a coal plant or a gas-powered plant. But what we are learning is that for all the technologies we have talked about today, solar, wind, wave, efficiencies, where some day plug-in hybrids, plug our cars in and run on clean electricity, every single one of those technologies has come down in price dramatically as the technologies have improved and as we have scales of economy. Wind power has come down in price 80 percent in the last decade. Solar is coming down. There is a factor basically every time, if I get this right, every time it goes up, and I am going to have to check to make sure. In fact, I will not use it because I can't remember what it was, but there is a ratio that has been clear with solar power that has come down. Every time you ramp up production by a factor of X, you get a Y percentage decrease in price, and that has been a constant. What we have learned is that we know there are two curves. Fossil fuels are going up because China is coming on gangbusters and demand is going to go up. We might reach peak oil. We don't know. But we know fossil fuels are going up long term, and these are coming down, and we want to be on the downward sloping path. So one of the things we want to do eventually, in our new Apollo project, is to have a renewable portfolio standard to say that a percentage of our electricity will be generated by clean energy sources by the year 2020. We just did this in Washington by popular vote. I yield to Mr. Kline.

Mr. INSLEE. And what we are finding is that more and more companies are actually accepting this idea, thinking it is a good idea because one, it will drive innovation. It will help us invent new technologies. But second, they realize this works. What we are talking about is a thing called a cap and trade system. We cap the amount of carbon dioxide that can go into the air and we allow polluting companies to bid and trade for the right to put that pollution in. It is the most economically efficient way to do it. And what the companies have discovered is that when we do this, it works. When we did with sulfur dioxide in the 1980s it cleaned up the air and it actually ended up helping the economy.

Mr. INSLEE. There is so much good work going in to stop those things that you are talking about. To mention two instances of success on energy efficiency, I was talking to the Vice President of Dow Chemical yesterday. Dow Chemical historically has not been looked at as a company on the forefront on environmental issues, but they got a star last year for their energy efficiency program. They have saved 42 percent of their energy since 1990. They have reduced their energy since 2000 by 22 percent by just adopting commonsense measures, some of which you might have talked about, by having energy efficient appliances and lighting, by looking at how they monitor the energy in their building. So a 42 percent reduction of their energy usage, and they did that because it is good business, not because it is some granola-crunching idea. They did it because it is good business. And we will create a fund tomorrow to help businesses and individuals go down that road. Second accomplishment, California. California has essentially, while the average American uses 50 percent more electricity than they did 10 years ago, 50 percent, California has been stable for the last 10 years. They have not gone up one kilowatt hour. And the way they did that was to help people invest in energy efficient light bulbs, energy efficient windows and appliances. As a result, they use 8,000 kilowatt hours per person per year, and the average person uses 14,000 kilowatts. Does that mean people in California are living in the stone age? They are still taking hot tubs in Marin County and still putting out movies in Hollywood. They are living a good life there, and their economy is booming. But they are doing some commonsense things with energy. That is what we are going to start tomorrow.

Mr. INSLEE. We had a meeting with Hank Paulson today, Secretary of the Treasury in the Bush administration, and he had made an interesting comment. I am very impressed with him, though I have been pretty critical of the Bush administration, because he has been a pretty outspoken advocate that we need to do something about global warning. He said everything he has learned since taking the job as Secretary of the Treasury, he comes from a very successful Wall Street career, has been worse than he thought. The deficit, the situation in Iraq, everything he has learned has been worse than he thought, except energy, because he has learned about the new innovations going on around the country. What we want to do is help businesses, like the Iogen Corporation, which is ready to build the first commercial cellulosic plant in America in Idaho. They are ready to go, as long as they can get their loan guaranty. They have 300 farmers that are going to give them their straw left over after wheat. They are going to chop it up, put an enzyme in it, and then free the carbohydrates and distill that into ethanol, and, boom, you have a product that is three to four times more productive per acre than the current type of ethanol we get from our farms. Ocean Wave Technologies has the first permit for wave power in the United States off the coast of Oregon, a 50 megawatt plant. They are using a technology now that is in the water in Hawaii, generating technology with this buoy that is anchored below the water. It goes up and down and creates a force thoromatically that runs a generator. They are generating electricity today for the Navy. They are ready to make this a commercial operation. They need a little help to get started. The Nanosolar Company, a company that was started, and the fellows who wrote the first two checks were the two guys who started Google. They have done pretty well for themselves, and they wrote a check to a couple of entrepreneurs in California, and now they are ready to do 450 megawatts of thin cell solar, where you use a solar panel that has one- fiftieth the width, using a selenium, iridium, gallium and caesium type of technology that they think can be 30 or 40 percent cheaper. Another company trying something like this is called Miasole. These are the companies that need help, not the big oil companies. And what we are doing tomorrow is shifting the subsidies that have been given away to the oil industry, an 18th century technology, and helping these new-generation technologies come on. By the way, in this debate we are the optimists. We should identify who is on what side of this. We are the optimists who believe global warming can be dealt with. The pessimists say we can't. Now, they are giving up. The debate about global warming is over. And I know it is over because yesterday the Exxon Corporation, which has fought tooth and nail the science on global warming, basically withdrew their support from the political organization that has tried to create doubt about global warming. So when the Exxon Corporation agrees it is time to start getting serious about global warming, I think the debate is over. And now the question is, how can we join on a bipartisan basis to find solutions, and we are starting this tomorrow. I hope we draw some votes from some of our colleagues across the aisle. I yield to Mr. Hall.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, we come here to the well tonight to continue this discussion about energy. I have enjoyed listening to my colleagues Mr. Bartlett and Mr. Gilchrest, who have been talking about the need for changes in our energy policy to effectuate an energy efficiency policy for this country, to use our innovative talents to come up with new technologies to deal with our energy challenges, and to really bring our energy policy from the 19st century into the 21st century. And the good news is tomorrow, Thursday of this week, in just the third week of the 110th Congress, this new Congress is going to start with a big step out of the 19th century, which has been represented by the last Congress, and into the 21st century, which is represented by this Congress, and I am pleased to report to the House tonight and to the country, tomorrow the Democratic majority with some help from some of our friends across the aisle will pass a bill which will cause a major shift in the energy policy of this country. In the last Congress there was a clear direction of the energy policy of this country, and under the last management of the U.S. Congress the basic operative rule was to give billions of dollars of taxpayer money to the oil and gas industry, the most profitable industry in the history of the solar system, over $10 billion in tax breaks to the oil and gas industry. Tomorrow, that money will be returned to the citizens of the United States for the use in developing a truly 21st century energy plan. Tomorrow, the Democratic majority held Congress or House of Representatives will pass a bill which will reel back in $14 billion of taxpayer money that was sent to the silk-lined pockets of the oil and gas industry, and that is a good thing for Republicans and Democrats and Independents and for our grandchildren for reasons we will talk about tonight. It is a good reason because when we reel that $14 billion in giveaways to the oil and gas industry that happened in the last Congress, what we will do tomorrow is take that $14 billion and create a fund of money belonging to the American people that will be used for the development of new technologies, creative new sources of energy, energy efficiencies, more efficient vehicles, more efficient appliances, and a way to beat global warming. So we are going to convert the giveaways from the oil and gas industry that happened in the last Congress to an investment in the future of our country to have a new energy technology, technologically based future for the energy source of this country. We are going to do it for three reasons. And perhaps those three reasons are obvious, but I want to state them. Tomorrow when we pass this bill, we will create a fund called the Strategic Renewable Energy Reserve. Not really much of an acronym; I didn't get to name it. But the Strategic Renewable Energy Reserve will be a fund with $14 billion that will be taken back from the oil and gas industry and be used for our inventors, our businessmen, our academicians, our people who are doing great work to develop new sources of energy, and we will do this for three reasons. I will go through them quickly. Number one, we will use this fund to develop a domestic source of energy for this country. We will use this money to develop the new advanced biofuels, the second generation ethanol, the cellulosic ethanol, the advanced biodiesel systems so that we can start buying our fuel from Midwestern farmers rather than Middle Eastern sheiks. We know the trouble we are in in the Middle East due to our dependence on Middle Eastern oil, and we are going to break that oil addiction, not rhetorically, but in reality. Second, we are going to use these funds to develop new clean energy sources that can stop global warming. We are going to have energy efficiency which can have efficient appliances rather than dirty appliances that waste energy. We are going to have energy efficient cars, plug-in hybrids, flex fuel vehicles that can use biofuels developed in the Midwest; energy created by wind turbine, solar energy and perhaps clean coal, wave power. You name it. We have a thousand flowers that are going to bloom in energy if we use this money in a smart way to stop global warming. And, third, we will use this money to create a new energy source of jobs in this country. It is about time to start building fuel efficient cars in this country, new technologies here. It is time to reel those jobs back in. So I am very excited what will happen tomorrow. It is the first step in a long road of what we will talk about tonight, the new Apollo Energy Project. And we have a new Member of the U.S. House who has brought a new vision of energy, Mr. John Hall of New York. And I will yield to Mr. Hall.