Jay Inslee

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. I was talking to a businessman the other day who wants to develop the Chinese market to sell China thin solar film technology to become the distributor in China of a technology developed in America. Talk about a great thing for our balance of payments. You talked about the original Apollo project. We have named our bill, the first step we will talk about tomorrow, the New Apollo Energy Project because we believe, as John F. Kennedy did, that we have unlimited innovative capacity. But what we don't have at the moment are policies to put that innovative genius to work. For instance, we are spending less than 16 percent on energy research in total in this country. We are only spending 16 percent of what we spent on the Apollo project. That is just abysmal. We had at least as much of a challenge as trying to get to the Moon. I had a utility executive in my office today. He told me this factoid: We spend more on research about dog food than the utility industry does on new energy in this country. I don't want to belittle dog food, it is important, but we need to boost our research. Tomorrow we will put $14 billion back into the pockets of Americans to use in part for research, the tremendous things that are going on. Every time I pick up the phone, I learn about a new technology being developed. 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.

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. If the gentleman will yield. Very much so, it is claiming what should be rightfully ours. We essentially gave away oil that belongs to the citizens of the United States, and gave it away with no royalties. It was a giant, giant giveaway program. And subsidies in certain circumstances are appropriate for nascent growing industries, but this is a mature industry. There was no reason to give a company that made $20 billion profit last year more of our taxpayers. You are paying twice when that happens. You are paying at the pump, and then you are paying on April 15 when you are paying taxes that are given to these oil and gas companies. I want to just touch on your wind sample. Today I had the Director of the Bonneville Power Administration that runs the electrical grid in the Northwest today, and he was telling me that wind power today is cheaper, cheaper than essentially any other system that we have to generate electricity, at least in the Pacific Northwest, cheaper than coal even. For those that say wind cannot be an integral part of the system, a study came down from a Minnesota group last week which evaluated how one can integrate wind because the wind does not always blow. It is not a totally reliable system, so you have to integrate it into your system. They concluded it is so cheap you can integrate it by having backup gas turbines sometimes to kick in if the wind doesn't blow with minimal to no increases in prices. This revolution that is happening in energy that we will start tomorrow, sort of the Concord Bridge moment for the energy revolution here, is all over the country. You mentioned in your neck of the woods, it is not just the Midwest, in Washington State we are going to have the biggest biodiesel plant in the Western hemisphere. It is going to be up and running next year. Minnesota has huge growth in wind power. Wisconsin has a company that is building wind turbines so fast they cannot fulfill the orders. Missouri has just started three huge wind farms. This is something all over the country. When I talk to businesses, what I find is there is not a State in the country that does not have some business that is going to benefit from what we will start tomorrow, which is new energy revolution. California in Silicon Valley is developing these new solar cells that could be 30- 40 percent less expensive. A company called Fiber Forge in Colorado is starting to make composite bodies for cars that could be 40 percent stronger and half the weight. This is a national effort. All of us will get to brag about it some day. I would like to yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Klein), a new Member of Congress. Thanks for joining us.

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

Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, I rise today to bring to the attention of Congress one of the human impacts caused by the indiscretion of government officials regarding the covert identity of Central Intelligence Agency operative Valerie Plame Wilson. As nearly every American knows, and as most of the world has heard, the covert CIA identity of Valerie Plame Wilson was exposed to the public as part of an Administration response to a critical op-ed published in the New York Times by Mrs. Plame Wilson's husband, Joe Wilson. The national security ramifications for this act have been discussed thoroughly on this floor, in the news media, and I am quite certain behind CIA's closed doors. Today I intend to call my colleagues' attention to the human toll that this ``outing'' has had on one, often overlooked, individual. That person is Valerie Plame Wilson. While the media, Congress, and the judiciary have gone to great lengths to discuss the impact of this unfortunate act on politicians, bureaucrats, agents in the field, and the suspected perpetrators of the outing, few have looked at the impact that the outing has had on Mrs. Plame Wilson and her family. On July 14, 2003, Mrs. Plame Wilson's professional life was forever altered, and her CIA career irrevocably ruined by the syndicated publication of a column, which revealed Mrs. Plame Wilson's identity as a covert CIA officer. Since this time, numerous reports on Mrs. Plame Wilson's personal history have surfaced in the press, official government documents, and by government officials. Following the initial outing in the media, Mrs. Plame Wilson's future as a covert CIA operative ceased to exist and her career of two decades was destroyed. On January 9, 2006, Mrs. Plame Wilson resigned from the CIA, recognizing that any future with the Agency would not include any work for which she had been highly trained. For these reasons, and under these distressing conditions, Mrs. Plame Wilson voluntarily resigned from the Agency. Despite Mrs. Plame Wilson's 20 years of federal service, she does not meet the minimum age requirement to receive her retirement annuity. She has been left without a career. I am introducing legislation to allow Mrs. Plame Wilson to qualify for her annuity, as one who has served her country for two decades, and waive the age requirement for collecting it. To best demonstrate the annuity for which Mrs. Plame Wilson may qualify if this legislation were to pass, I am submitting for the record a document sent to Mrs. Plame Wilson by the CIA. It outlines her deferred annuity and testifies to 20 years of service. The document bears no indications of classified material as required by CIA procedures, and was sent via regular postal mail after Mrs. Plame Wilson was no longer in the employ of the CIA. Legal experts have assured me that this is not a classified document. I believe that this is one small measure to help send a message that we must stand up for public service officers, such as Mrs. Plame Wilson, who have been treated wrongly despite their loyalty and sacrifice to country. For those who have been, for all practicable purposes, pushed out of public service for reasons unrelated to performance, but instead seeded in politics, we should not turn our backs. Central Intelligence Agency, Washington, DC, February 10, 2006. Mrs. Valerie Wilson Dear Mrs. Wilson, This letter is in response to your recent telephone conversation with regarding when you would be eligible to receive your deferred annuity. Per federal statute, employees participating under the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) Special Category, who have acquired a minimum of 20 years of service, are eligible to receive their deferred annuity at their Minimum Retirement Age (MRA). Your MRA is age 56, at which time you'll be eligible to receive a deferred annuity. Your deferred annuity will be based on the regular FERS computation rate, one percent for every year of service vice the FERS Special rate of 1.7% for every year of service. You will receive 1.7% for each year of overseas service, prorated on a monthly basis, after January 1, 1987 in the calculation of your annuity. Our records show that since January 1, 1987, you have acquired 6 years, 1 month and 29 days of overseas service. Following is a list of your federal service: Dates of Service: CIA, CIA (LWOP), CIA (P/T 40), from 11/9/1985 to 1/9/2006--total 20 years, 7 days. Based on the above service and your resignation on January 9, 2006, your estimated deferred annuity is $21,541.00 per year, or $1795 per month, beginning at age 56. The above figures are estimates for your planning purposes. The Office of Personnel Management, as the final adjudicator of creditable service and annuity computations, determines final annuity amounts. Please let me know if I can be of any further assistance. Sincerely,

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express my support for H.R. 4, the Medicare Prescription Drug Price Negotiation Act. I strongly believe Medicare should ensure seniors have access to the drugs and biologics they need. In the past, my reluctance to support this kind of legislation has stemmed from the hope that we might find an alternative solution to the fact that our citizens, including our seniors, are subsidizing the research and development for drugs and biologics for the rest of the developed world, which has traditionally not paid its fair share of these costs. It is with the recognition that such a remedy is not forthcoming that I cast my vote today in favor of H.R. 4. I applaud the Democratic Leadership's desire to ensure that this legislation continues to prohibit the HHS Secretary from requiring a particular formulary or list of covered drugs to be used by Medicare prescription drug plans or limiting access to any prescription medication. As a Member that represents a district with a strong biotechnology sector, I believe that America's continuing leadership and innovation in developing new treatments would make this particularly inappropriate. Small, emerging biotech companies are researching and developing cures for cancer, Alzheimer's, multiple sclerosis and other devastating diseases. The overwhelming majority of biotech companies are small companies without approved products, highly reliant on the public and private capital markets. It is important that as we seek to ensure that our seniors are receiving the best care possible under Medicare, we must not take action that hinders this important research, which is estimated to cost $1.2 billion and can take over 10 years. Research and development that is the lifeblood of the biotechnology industry, and we must guard against taking action that would result in fewer breakthrough therapies.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, we need a surge of congressional action to stop George Bush's disastrous policy in Iraq. The country needs and is desperate for a change in policy in Iraq, and tonight President George Bush will continue his policy of failure, of giving us just more of the same. It is clear that we need to insist on a political solution in Iraq rather than to insist on Americans continuing to pour billions of dollars and thousands of lives into this political chaos in Iraq. The President has refused to listen to the bipartisan panel calling for a change in Iraq. He has refused to listen to the American people. But he cannot refuse to listen to a Congress that fulfills its obligation under the Constitution to exercise the power of the purse to stop this misguided escalation. The U.S. House should vote in clear and no uncertain terms to fund the troops that are there and to cut off funding for any escalation. It is our constitutional obligation. It is a commonsense policy to insist on Iraqis standing up. That is the direction and the change we need in this country.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, yesterday, January 4, 2007, marked a historic day for progress in the United States of America for two reasons. The House of Representatives grew by taking further steps to represent the full fabric of the American People. The American people have selected their first woman speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and their first Muslim member of Congress, Keith Ellison. I am proud that Americans have rejected the statements from some who alleged Americans of all faiths are not welcome in Congress. This is also the first time the American people are represented by a speaker with a clear goal to move the United States towards energy independence. These advances represent steps forward in America's continuing experiment in democracy in which Congress represents America's stripes.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Holt.

Mr. INSLEE. I would like to point out a shining example of what Mr. Holt is talking about, and that is in Portland, Oregon, in part, because of the leadership of Mr. Blumenauer, Portland, Oregon achieved two very significant milestones in the last year. First, it was the first city ever to essentially meet the Kyoto targets for reduction of carbon dioxide. This proves it can be done. A smart transportation policy and a smart energy policy can be both good for your economy and meet these targets to reduce carbon dioxide. Portland, Oregon has achieved that, and one of the reasons is because of their second accomplishment, the first city in the last 30 years in America, has had less miles driven per individual in the last several decades. It is the first city that has ever accomplished that by developing a very sophisticated public transportation system and developing a living system that can reduce the need for some of our long commutes. And I want to point out Portland's success on this has been an enormous benefit to its economy, because Portland, Oregon's economy has been booming. The value of property has been booming as a result of these smart energy choices it has made, and people want to live there. And it is because of some of the smart choices that have been made in order to use energy more efficiently.

Mr. INSLEE. You mentioned transportation. I just want to note what I consider to be a very exciting development in the last 7 days in this country in transportation. I want to yield to a real leader in there, Mr. Blumenauer. But when it comes to cars, we have not improved the efficiency of our cars in 25 years. We get less mileage today in our cars than we did 25 years ago. But in the last 30 days something very dramatic happened in the auto industry. General Motors announced that they were going to start developing a plug-in vehicle in the next 5 years where you can go home at night, plug in your car, charge your batteries off your electrical grid from one to two cents, effectively, a mile, you are now spending ten to fifteen. For one to two cents a mile off the grid, you can run your car for, we hope, for the first 20 miles. Then after you run out of juice, if you drive more than 20 miles, and 60 percent of our trips a day are less than 20 miles, but if you go more than 20 miles then you start burning either the gas or the ethanol that you got from corn and soybeans and rye grass. You have a flex-fuel vehicle, you plug it in at night, you are off to the races. That is the first thing. The second thing is the Department of Energy last week issued a study which concluded that there is enough energy-generating capacity in the United States, excuse me, it was a Pacific Northwest laboratory out in Washington State, actually, an arm of the Department of Energy. They concluded there was enough electrical generating capacity today to fuel 85 percent of our cars and trucks using a plug-in battery system and not build a single new generating plant. In other words, we could fuel 85 percent of all of our cars once we get a plug-in battery system developed without building a single new dirty plant coal or even a clean coal, for that matter, because you have all of this excess capacity at night that is sitting there that we don't use. We have all these plants that just sit there unused at night. We can use them to charge our cars. These are two very exciting developments using home-grown technology if Congress acts to move these subsidies away from the oil and gas industry, as Speaker Pelosi pledged to do today, and move them into support for these new businesses and consumers to get the new end higher energy. I want to yield to Mr. Earl Blumenauer, who has been a real leader in trying to bring transportation, particularly public transit which is a very, very effective way of reducing our pollution and making our transportation more efficient.

Mr. INSLEE. I want to note too, as we do that, we want to do in a way that is fiscally responsible. One of the things we have done is to pay for these things by repealing some of these tax breaks that have gone to the oil and gas companies, and then shifting them over to these investments, to do this in a fiscally responsible way. We also want to do it in a way that helps businesses rather than hurts them. Some of the incentive programs that have been done in the past have been done in a way to ensure their failure. For instance, some previous Congresses have been in the terrible habit when they do tax incentives that are intended to help businesses grow, they have done it for one year at a time or two years at a time; and venture capitalists, and I have talked to many of them, say we are not going to make multibillion dollar investments, realizing the rug can be pulled out from under us. That has been done because Congress has tried to hide the deficit, so they have tried to make these things seem like they are short term. We only have about two more minutes. I would just like to yield to anyone who has a closing comment.

Mr. INSLEE. I would like to note that when Mr. Blumenauer talks about leveling the playing field, I think that is very, very important. Because when you look at these entrepreneurs, small businessmen and women that maybe have 10, 15, or 20 employees who are working out of their garage or a little warehouse they have rented somewhere and they are developing some new way. For instance, there is a company called Fiber Forge in Colorado, and they are developing a new way to use composites to build the body of an automobile that can be four times stronger than steel and weigh 30 to 40 percent as much. Now, the challenge in doing this, we are building a composite airplane, the first one ever, the Boeing 787, but the challenge is how do you do that quickly in mass manufacturing, because it takes a lot of hand labor right now. Well, here is a little company called Fiber Forge and they are developing a way to manufacture this using mass production methods that will decrease the cost so you can build cars someday, the body of a car, out of composites that are stronger and weighs about half as much. Do not hold me to that exact number, but significantly less. But they are not getting subsidies, tax breaks, or help, whereas the giant oil companies of the world are getting those huge tax write- offs given to them by Congress. I want to mention two other subsidies the oil and gas companies have that these new competitor businesses do not have. Subsidy number one. Probably a third of our defense budget is dedicated to the protection of our oil lanes to protect the oil these companies get and then sell to us at $3 or $2.50 a gallon. That is a multibillion dollar subsidy to the oil and gas industry that solar, wind, biofuels, clean coal that we can dig up and hopefully someday burn cleanly, they do not get that subsidy at all. That is number one. Subsidy number two. The solar people, the wind people, the clean coal people, the wave power people, the transit people, people who do not put carbon dioxide in the air, they are competing with a company that is using the atmosphere as a free dump. The oil and gas companies today, and those using dirty coal today, are using the atmosphere as a free dumping ground to put their carbon dioxide in and they are not paying a penny for it. These other business people do not have that subsidy. We have to do something about that so that there is some cost associated with using the air we breathe as a private dumping facility. When you go to the garbage dump now it costs us 25 bucks to dump a bunch of stuff out of your pickup into the dump, but these industries can put it into our air for free. Now, we fixed that with sulfur dioxide and we fixed that with nitrous oxide, we have a cap and trade system, but there is a giant loophole, a giant loophole that these companies use for carbon dioxide. It is the most serious pollutant in the world today, but there is a loophole in our laws that does not impose any cost associated with putting that pollutant into our atmosphere. That needs to get fixed as well. Now, we are going to have a long discussion about the best way to do that, but we have to do it. I would yield to Ms. Kaptur.

Mr. INSLEE. I just want to comment on that. I think basically a way to say this is that our current biofuels economy, which is very productive, and I believe is at least a small improvement on net CO2, is really a first generation of biofuels. We have a second and third generation that are very close to coming. One of them is this cellulosic ethanol that I have talked about. There is a company called Logen, there are several other companies doing this, to use a cellulosic method in an enhanced way of breaking open the cell to get at the carbohydrates. When we do this, this second generation of biofuels is really going to kick in and make this competitive. I want to mention one thing before I yield to Mr. Holt, and that is we have just Democrats participating in this discussion. But our fellow Republicans are also involved in this discussion. I, myself, and others are talking to some of our Republican colleagues, developing a bill to try to enhance this second generation of ethanol. We do want to make this, and believe we can make this, a bipartisan effort now that we have new leadership that will free us from the chains of the oil and gas companies that have shackled the Congress to date. We are going to have some colleagues on the other side of the aisle work with us, too. I yield to Mr. Holt.

Mr. INSLEE. If I can allude to a choice, another sort of choice, I think that is a very fundamental principle that we want to give people choices in their uses of energy. But I want to allude to a choice, if you do decide to drive a car, what kind of fuel you use. And it is a Democratic Party principle now under the leadership of Speaker Pelosi that Americans are going to have more choices about what fuel you use because as part of our effort to move money away from this giveaway to the oil and gas industry that have enslaved Americans, you are a slave to the oil and gas industry if you have got a car right now, to move it over to give more fuel choices to Americans. We intend to develop a vision for this country that you have the same freedom that Brazilians have, because in Brazil today when you pull up to the pump you are not a slave to the oil and gas industry, you are the boss because when you pull up to a pump in Brazil you decide whether you want gasoline or whether you want domestically manufactured ethanol made from sugar cane in Brazil and soon to be made through cellulosic ethanol, through corn and wheat and corn stovers and switch grass and who knows what kind of products we are going to develop so that consumers can decide what product they are going to put into the tank. And when we do that, we are going to create thousands of jobs across the country, particularly in the agricultural belt. I got an e-mail just as I was walking over here tonight about a little article about a company in Wisconsin that are building sort of the foundations for wind turbines. They can't hire people fast enough. Right down the road, at the Chippewa Valley co-op they are brewing ethanol in Minnesota to give people a choice to put ethanol in their tank rather than gasoline, and they have created source of jobs in this little town in Minnesota that was sort of a declining town at the time. We want to give choices to people. And we have another leader here tonight on those issues, Representative Kaptur from the great State of Ohio, that has been a leader in an effort to make a transition from just an oil and gas economy to one based on biofuels. And I have to tell you that I am very excited about this because I have been talking to scientists who tell me that we now have the possibility of having two to four times more bio fuels per acre than we even have today, and with our corn usage today that is certainly being successful with a consequent reduction of carbon dioxide that Representative Kaptur can tell us about. I would like to yield to Representative Kaptur.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor this evening on truly what is a historic day, the beginning of this Congress. Historic, I will mention two reasons: One, the first woman Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, something that certainly has caused a lot of joy here and across the country and it is something worthy of noting. But a second historic event arises from Speaker Pelosi's first address as Speaker of the House today that I think marks a pivotal moment in our future of the country when it comes to our energy policy. Speaker Pelosi today, in some of her very first comments, made a commitment to the country that our Nation would start a titanic and historic shift from old technologies associated with fossil fuels that are now putting massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and towards the use of new technologies that can produce our mode of power for our cars and our planes and our buses and our homes and our computers, and even our hair dryers in a way that does not contribute to global warming. And this is her commitment and her very first comment, I think it was telling, that this House will pass a measure in very short order, in the next several weeks, that will shift a huge amount of our national resources away from work in these fossil fuels that are now contributing to global warming and put that money into a fund that will be dedicated to the use of new high-technological energy sources that can free us from Middle Eastern oil, create jobs in our country, and stop global warming. This is certainly a three-fer. And the way that she has made a commitment that this House will do is that we basically will repeal some of the less prudent activities of the former Congress that gave $7 billion of taxpayer money to the oil and gas industry, a very imprudent move, an industry that is in tip-top form financially, making profits hand over fist, the most profitable corporation in American history, indeed, world history. And yet the last Congress saw fit to give billions of dollars of tax relief to these organizations. And these organizations are good organizations. They have good people in them. But there was no reason to give that money away when it has higher purpose. And that higher purpose that Speaker Pelosi talked about today is to take those billions of dollars, those tax goodies given away to these corporations, repeal those giveaways and shift that money, shift those public resources, into a pool of funds that will be used to develop new high-tech, clean energy sources that we can go forward to build energy independence and reduce our contributions of carbon dioxide and other gases that are contributing to global warming. And I think this is a fundamental shift in American history. We have had a steam revolution starting with American ingenuity, with Fulton and others. We had an industrial revolution led by American inventors, Ford and others. We have had an IT revolution led by many people in the software business. Many of them in my district in North Seattle and Redmond, Washington. And now we are heading into a fourth revolution in the industrial base of America, and that is an energy revolution, where we make a transition from dirty fuels to clean fuels, many of which we will talk about tonight, and we will do it in a smart, prudent, fiscally sound way of using funds that are being wasted essentially on these old dirty technologies and shift them over, starting today with Speaker Pelosi's wise comments, towards these new technologies. And in doing so, we will use the most fundamental character of Americans, which is technological brilliance, innovation, creativity, tinkering. We are the greatest tinkerers and inventors, not speaking personally but our country, in human history. And now starting today, we are taking the first step what I call the road down to new Apollo. We had the first Apollo project with John F. Kennedy where we went to the moon. Today, with Speaker Pelosi's comments, we took the first step on the road to a new Apollo clean energy future for this country to move these resources into a clean energy future. And I am very excited about it because it will build upon the scientific prowess of America. I would like to yield now to one of the Members of Congress who is a leader in the scientific community, a physicist with a history at Princeton, who personifies what science can do for this country, who has been a leader on these clean energy issues, for some comments on this issue, Rush Holt of New Jersey.

Mr. INSLEE. Yes.

Mr. INSLEE. That point of being able to sell American technology to the world, I want to mention two companies, their CEOs I have talked to in the last month. One I talked to this morning is called Greenpoint Energy. It is a company in Boston that has developed a way to take coal and to process it into natural gas, then burn the natural gas in a way that eliminates the mercury emissions that typically come out of a coal stack, eliminates the sulfur dioxide that comes out of a smokestack and most importantly reduces carbon dioxide, the global warming gas by 60 to 65 percent. Now, when I asked this young entrepreneur, who formerly did very well in the software industry, and is now into energy, what he saw as the future of this, he said it is unlimited. The reason it is unlimited is that we can take this technology that we build here, we can build these plants and sell them to China. China is building one dirty coal plant a week, a 500-megawatt coal plant a week in China, which is creating massive CO2 contributing to global warming gas. Here is a company right now, they have got 25 employees right now, and 20 subcontractors, they can have thousands at some point when we start selling this technology to the Chinese. Another company called Nanosolar in Silicon Valley, California, they developed a way to make a solar cell using a thin cell material that can increase the efficiency, or at least decrease the cost at least by 40 to 50 percent of solar energy, using a thin cell that is about 5 percent of the current thickness of a silicone-based solar cell. They want to sell this technology when we develop it. We have the first 450- megawatt capacity plant they are building right now, as we speak tonight. They want to start selling these around the world. So here is a tremendous opportunity for America to reverse our balance-of-payments problem and start selling things to the world rather than buying them.

Mr. INSLEE. We just have a few seconds. I would like to just make a closing comment. First, I would thank my colleagues and say that I really do believe this is a historic moment for the industrial base and agricultural base of America, which is today's date, to start to move to a new base away from just a dirty fossil fuel-based system to a clean energy system. We are starting to do this starting today. We are going to join Republicans, hopefully, in finding a bipartisan way to do it. We can tell people that the genius of Americans is in these new wind sources, wind turbines, solar cells, transit, flex-fuel vehicles, plug- in vehicles, cellulosic ethanol, wave power, geothermal, fuel efficient appliances, energy efficient homes; this job is going to get done by a new Congress and it is a bright day for the country.

Mr. INSLEE. We want to turn to the things that can be done, because one of the messages of the new Apollo Project is that we have a clear path to use technology to solve this problem. But before we launch into a discussion now, I just wanted to note three conversations on this issue about global warming I have had in the last two weeks, that I want to note about why this is so compelling to have new energy. The first conversation I had last week was with a woman who was a leader in the first city in the United States that is being relocated as a result of global warming. That is the village of Shishmaref in Alaska; it is on the Arctic coast of Alaska. This woman told me that last week the city voted to move their city, I think it is about 13 miles off of a coastal barrier island, that is disappearing because sea levels are rising, the tundra is melting, and the ice that serves as a barrier protecting their village is melting, and their island is disappearing, right literally underneath them. They are having to move their whole city at a cost of $150 million, onto an inland area, that is Shishmaref, Alaska. When we have to start moving cities in this country to start dealing with global warming, it is time to have a new energy policy. Second, I had a conversation with the president of the Marshall Islands. It is an independent nation in the South Pacific of 60,000 people. The president of the Marshall Islands told me that they are in an emergency situation because of the rising seas and the increasing frequency of big storms which are literally overtopping their islands, which are just a few feet. They are built on coral reefs. Their coral reefs are dying because the oceans are becoming warmer and more acidic due to global warming. We have a whole country that may go under water as a result of global warming. The third conversation I had last week was with a woman who was a climatologist, I may have butchered that word, meteorologist. She is an expert on the Arctic, basically. The University of Washington just published a study that said with a fairly high degree of probability the Arctic ice pack will have disappeared in months of September, disappeared with just marginal little bits of it hanging on to the coastline by the year 2050, with all of the changes that portends, including the disappearance of the polar bear, that even the current administration under George Bush agrees should be listed as a threatened species because the Arctic ice is going to disappear. I just note these because since Mr. Holt and I last discussed this in the last Congress 2 months ago, these three changes have taken place. This is a dramatically rapidly changing climate we have that demands an answer to energy policy. So I just want to set the urgency for taking steps, the first step.

Mr. INSLEE. We appreciate the gentlewoman from the State of Ohio. We know the State of Ohio is going to do some great work on energy under the leadership of the new governor, Ted Strickland, who is committed to this agenda. And he would have been here tonight, but he is serving as governor, or will be in about a week. I want to make two comments on the transition to a biofuels economy in the United States. First off, some people have said, well, we should not use fiber or plants for fuel. We have to use it only for food. I want to point out the fallacy of that argument. Right now we are exporting an enormous percentage of the foodstuffs we grow. We send it around the world and they send us the cash. What do we do? We take the cash and send it to Saudi Arabia. Let us cut out the middleman. Let us grow our own. This is time to grow our own. We are sending it all over the world and then sending the cash to Ridya and Saudi Arabia. Let us keep it right here. Let us grow our own fuel. By the way, this is no pie in the sky. The Department of Agriculture has concluded we could have 30 percent of our fuel easily in the next 20 years, easily, using very conservative efforts. This is a very achievable goal. The second point I want to make is that this may happen eventually without Congress's help, but it will be too late. Brazil took 30 years to make this transition to an energy independent condition using their biofuels. They use sugar cane there. They took 30 years. We do not have 30 years to wait. We have a problem with al-Qaeda tonight, we have trouble with global climate change tonight, and we have trouble with a loss of a manufacturing base in America tonight. We do not have 30 years. So we need to act and we need to do some things that the past Congresses and the current administration have not done. Let me just mention three of them. Number one, they have not given loan guarantee assistance to get some of these plants going. The first cellulosic plant in the world, commercial cellulosic plant in the world is a company called Iogen. They are ready to build a plant. They have contracts with 300 farmers to grow a plant using the leavings of wheat to use cellulosic ethanol in Idaho, but they can not get the loan guarantee to get the job done. We want to get that job done and get that plant up and running in Idaho. And this is going to be three or four more times effective per acre with increasing profits to farmers as a consequence. Second, to give Americans this freedom to choose what fuel to use, they have to have cars that burn both gasoline and ethanol and, frankly, the industry has not been willing to do that. So we need to have some requirement to make sure that they make cars that burn gasoline or ethanol. They make a car for less than $100 to burn either one, so it is basically nothing to the manufacturers. We need to require that to be done. Now, they say they are going to do more of them in years, but we do not have years. Third, we need the pumps that pump either gasoline or ethanol made from midwestern corn or wheat or biodiesel. But the folks in Brazil will tell you that companies do not like putting those pumps in, because now you're competing with their gas and oil. They have a monopoly on gas and oil, and they are not crazy about putting in a pump that competes with them. So we are going to need to require that Americans be given a choice in pumps. Maybe we start by saying 10 percent of the stations have to have an alternative pump of ethanol, if you have 25 stations. We do not want the moms and pops that have to do this, if they cannot afford it. But if you have a big chain, why not have 10 percent of your stations at least have one ethanol pump so Americans can have that choice. We took the first step in this journey tonight when Speaker Pelosi said we are going to start making a shift from giveaways to oil and gas towards these new clean energy futures, and I am looking forward to making progress. And I yield to Mr. Blumenauer.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, I was absent from the House floor during today's vote on the previous question that would allow for floor consideration of a Minority Rules Package. Had I been present, I would have voted to support the previous question. Stated against:

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 5946, a bill to reauthorize the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. This bill is critically important as it will improve the management of our Nation's fisheries, providing a better future for tomorrow. Among other things, the bill ensures that the role of science in the fishery management decision-making process requires annual harvest limits at sustainable levels for virtually all U.S. fisheries and sets out a clear process for ending overfishing where it is occurring. These strict conservation measures are already in effect in the fisheries of the northwest--I am pleased that our management successes will now be replicated in all other regions. Another key advancement for our Nation's fisheries in this bill is Congress' clarification that certain processes going through the Council process currently will not be negatively affected by the positive changes in current law. Specifically, the cap and trade systems will improve the economics of fishing and enhance the safety of our fishing fleets. Our existing cap and trade programs for sulfur dioxide--which have cut down on acid rain--are being replicated within our fisheries management systems. These programs have helped in curbing some of the effects of global warming, they will now improve fisheries conservation. I am also pleased that the new legislation will not disrupt the ongoing efforts by the Pacific Fishery Management Council to enhance the management of its ground fish fisheries. The Pacific Council is working diligently to develop a cap and trade or ``rationalization'' program for its ground fish fisheries. This process has been underway for more than 3 years, and is nearing completion. While the bill requires the Pacific Council to implement an appropriate ground fish management program within 24 months from the date of enactment, and to meet other requirements in law, it does not require the Pacific Council to begin anew in developing that program. Yet another important provision included in this legislation will create a study on the effects of ocean acidification within the National Research Council. Research into the impacts of high concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the oceans is in its infancy and needs to be developed rapidly. This study is a first step in understanding the problems our oceans will face. The provisions included in this bill requiring the scientific and statistical committees to provide Councils with recommendations for allowable biological catch, preventing overfishing and achieving rebuilding targets are perhaps the most important. I will be closely following the performances of the regional fisheries councils, their decisions regarding harvest, and their operation and utilization of their respective scientific and statistical committees, as well as the council's use of their scientific and statistical committees' recommendations. The oceans are absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere and this is causing chemical changes by making the oceans more acidic (that is, decreasing the pH of the oceans). In the past 200 years the oceans have absorbed approximately half of the CO2 produced by fossil fuel burning and cement production. Future generations will benefit greatly from the governments research into this subject. Reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act is a positive step on the road to the healthy management of our ocean systems. I look forward to working with the Resources Committee in the 110th Congress on other positive steps to ensure that our oceans are safe and healthy for future generations.

Mr. INSLEE

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