John Shimkus

Mr. SHIMKUS

Mr. SHIMKUS. Yes, sir.

Mr. SHIMKUS. Madam Speaker, I have a motion to instruct at the desk.

Mr. SHIMKUS. Madam Speaker, I want to commend my colleague from Colorado. I'm an aggie. I don't serve on the committee. And the agricultural sector is one of the few sectors that we have increased supply. So I do this with all due respect. My concern is that when we disincentivize the E85 fuel stations, the cellulosic debate, which is the next bridge to get us to the RFS standard that we passed in December, we can't get there without RFS, without cellulosic. And we're sending a bad signal when we have States without any fueling stations and we have States that do. And so that's what brings me down. And I'm glad my colleague from New York talked about nuclear power. The former head of Greenpeace now supports nuclear power. The former head of Greenpeace now supports nuclear power. Coal generating electricity is 50 percent of our electricity generation in this country. 50 percent. Nuclear's 20. Our demand's going to increase 30 percent in the next 20 years. Texas tried wind power. They had brownouts. Zack Wamp is right. We need more supply. This is what China's doing. China is building 40 nuclear plants in the next 15 years, not one. We haven't done one in 30. China's going to build 40. China's invested $24 billion in large scale coal liquification technology. China is rapidly expanding its refining capacity. One of the reasons we compete is because we had low cost power. We don't have low cost power anymore. Those days aren't here. Renewable fuels aren't going to fill the gap that we have. So we have to do, as Zach said, all of the above. In a column, Robert Samuelson said, what to do about oil? The first thing, start drilling. It's the easiest, quickest thing we can do. Unless you want to put up with this. Unless you want more, and, you know, you're a rural farm boy in Colorado. I try to remind people here that in rural America we like big trucks. We have to have working trucks. We can't haul a horse trailer with an electric engine, with a four-cylinder engine. It won't go anywhere. We need powerful trucks. We need trailers. We need working trucks. That's fossil fuels. That's diesel. We can't pay these gas prices anymore. And we're going to. Don't get me on climate change. All I want is transparency. If we're going to tax the American public they need to know they're going to pay 50 cents more a gallon. And my charts are way over. Why can't we go here? Why? Why can't we access these areas to get natural gas? Anhydrous ammonia, the Number 1 commodity input, natural gas. And what has your majority done? You put areas off-limits. We've got areas in your State in the last year we put off-limits. We didn't bring on more supply. Great solution. China's doing it, taking coal, gasifying it. When you gasify it you can burn electricity. You can capture the carbon. It's a clean way to do it. We can't do it. For every dollar increase in a barrel of crude oil, do you know how much the taxpayers have to pay to fund the Air Force? 60 million additional dollars. Our Air Force is the number one jet fuel user in the world. They're begging for help. It's crazy. We are relying on imported crude oil. Our national security depends on aviation fuel, and we are constrained by imported crude oil. Don't you think it'd be better to use our known natural resources to help our Air Force to fly our planes? Coast Guard authorization bill, $1 increase. $1 dollar increase in Coast Guard authorization diesel added $24 million to the cost of the Coast Guard to protect our border.

Mr. SHIMKUS. Would the gentleman yield since you mentioned Future Gen which is in central Illinois?

Mr. SHIMKUS. Madam Speaker, I would like to recognize my colleague from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) for 5 minutes.

Mr. SHIMKUS. Madam Speaker, I would like to save my time to close, so I would reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SHIMKUS. I appreciate your yielding. I was one of the few Members who actually talked to the President registering my disgust, frustration and anger. I will say it is now up to my friends on your side of the aisle, both in the House and on the other side of the Capitol to help move on a strategy to keep Future Gen on track. We have a strategy. We are working in a bipartisan manner. Coal is critical to our national security, low cost fuel. I am begging the legislative leaders on your side, which they can do by putting Future Gen legislation on must-pass legislation, funding it, and Future Gen can stay alive. But I am not in the majority now. I am glad you mentioned it, and I call upon your side to make it so.

Mr. SHIMKUS. Madam Speaker, may I inquire how much time I have remaining?

Mr. SHIMKUS. I yield the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Wamp) 10 minutes.

Mr. SHIMKUS. Madam Speaker, as many people who have observed the House floor over the past month, I have continuously come down to address the high cost of energy and the importance of bringing the supply issue to this debate. One of the things that we have been successful with, which is now under attack, it was once a success story, was E-85, ethanol and the entire debate of bringing more supply to this debate. This motion to instruct highlights the importance of E-85 fueling stations and developing that. For example, in my home State of Illinois, I am very fortunate. We have 171 E-85 fueling stations. In my congressional district, I can go all throughout my 30 counties and fuel up with my flex-fuel vehicle E-85. There are States in the Union that cannot. An example, Maine, we couldn't get any information on. Rhode Island has zero, Vermont has zero, Delaware has one, where other States, like Minnesota, has 346. One of the issues of more supply is also more supply locations. When we move to new fuels, as other people talk about, if we move to a hydrogen economy, we are going to need hydrogen-fueling stations, and that's all part of the importance. This motion to instruct says let's do what the Senate did on the farm bill, and let's talk about developing an E-85 infrastructure around this country so we can help decrease our reliance on imported crude oil. Why? Because everything we talk about on this floor revolves around energy and the high cost of energy, especially for the producers of our food. For example, manufacturer inputs have increased 14 percent in 2008 on top of a 12 percent increase last year. That's inputs to grow our food. Corn fertilizer costs $140 per acre for 2008, compared to $115 price in 2007, contrasted to $63 per acre from 2001-2005. What is driving up high farmers' input costs? No additional supply. A lot of fertilizers are affected, all buy natural gas. As we continue to restrict our ability to go after more supply, we push up the input costs, which drives up the price for food and this whole debate. I can go through all the huge increases that our farmers have had to do. DAP, prices rose from $252 per ton in January, 2007, to $752 gulf price. Urea rose from $272 to $415, muriate of potash rose from $173 to $252. We can just go on. It's a huge, huge increase. Now we don't want to come down to the floor without bringing alternatives and solutions. What's the solution? The solution is more supply. Look at what's happened. It's not disputable. Under this majority, crude oil has gone from $58 a barrel to $123. I come down almost every day. This price has not gone down. This price continues to go up. We have had promises made by Democrat leadership. In 2006, I quoted them before, Speaker Pelosi saying, ``We have a plan to drive down energy costs.'' Majority Leader Hoyer who just spoke: ``We have a plan to bring down energy costs.'' Jim Clyburn: ``We have a plan to drive down energy costs.'' The reality is, energy costs have gone up, not down, $58 a barrel to $123. What has that done for us at the pump? When the Democrat majority took over, the price for a gallon of gasoline was $2.33 on average. What is it today, on average, $3.66. Put in climate change tax, 50 cents, $4.16 is what we would be paying today with climate change. That's not a plan. In fact, it's a plan to fail. If you don't have a plan, you plan to fail, and that's the difficulty of our farmers getting into the field. Diesel costs have doubled, rising the price. Ethanol gets blamed. Ethanol gets blamed because energy costs to get the corn out of the fields has gone up. You want corn prices down? We have got to lower this. We have got to get back to the day of $58 a barrel crude oil. We can't get there with no plan. We can't get there by every week saying we have got a plan, and there is no plan. There is a plan. We have brought them onto the floor numerous times. What can we do? One is use our great natural resources on coal in this country, 250 years worth of coal to be used using coal-to-liquid technology. Get coal from our underground, build a coal-to-liquid refinery, pipe it, in this case, to an Air Force base, pipe it to a commercial airline. We have lost all these airline jobs because of high costs. This is what we do. Guess what you can make: Diesel fuel. Diesel fuel. What is the farmers' major input? Diesel fuel, because that's what goes in the tractors when you have got to plant the corn. That's what goes in the tractor when you have got to harvest the corn or the beans, and diesel fuel has cost. Truckers are going on strike. Independent truckers are going on strike. A lot of these independent truckers are hauling the beans, hauling the corn to the elevator. Without a plan to lower cost of energy, you plan to fail. Coal-to-liquid is a solution. What is another solution? See all this red area? We don't have Alaska on there. Off-limits. Off-limits for natural gas. Off-limits for crude oil. Let's open up these areas. The environmentalists will say, oh, no, we can't do that. One of our major areas for crude oil and natural gas is the gulf. Guess what happened here? Katrina, big storm, devastated New Orleans. A major oil spill in the gulf? No, no major oil spill. We can do it cleanly, we can do it efficiently, we can bring more supply to the market. You want to know how to lower prices for the farmers? Lower energy prices. But what's our policy here? Can we drill in ANWR? ``Forget it.'' What about offshore? ``Are you crazy?'' Clean coal? ``Out of the question.'' Nuclear power? ``You're just joking.'' Well, what are we going to do about the high price of energy? When you have no plan, you plan to fail. My farmers, who are getting accused for high prices, have high prices because we have high energy costs, and we have high energy costs because we won't get to supply. That's why we want ethanol to succeed. That's the only thing we have done to bring more supply to this debate. If we don't address the high input cost, what's going to happen is this fuel-food debate is going to go crazy. I was at the hearing. Guess what, there is a call to roll back the ethanol renewable fuel standard. Now, that really helps our energy independence, doesn't it? Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SHIMKUS. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. (Mr. SHIMKUS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. SHIMKUS. Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. SHIMKUS. These are input costs. You know the diesel price has doubled. I mean, my farmers, when they plant the corn, they're in a tractor. When they harvest the corn or the beans, they're in a tractor. It's run by diesel fuel. There's an attack on ethanol today. I was in committee today, I mean, 2 days ago, let's stop the RFS. It's the only thing that we have. And why is it under attack? Because input cost to production of commodity grain has gone up because we can't get low price diesel fuel. When we harvest the corn we take it to a grain elevator. We do that with a big diesel truck, a big tractor trailer. We have independent truckers striking. They drove around here a couple of weeks ago, big signs. We can't afford the high cost of diesel. And we know costs get passed on. What's some Democrats' response? Oh, we've got a great idea. Let's tax the energy companies more. My challenge is, when have we ever raised a tax that's lowered the price to a consumer? And I've challenged people; give me one example where we raised the tax and costs went down. No one's challenged me. And I'm sure people will look at that. Another thing is let's demand that the people we're reliant on, pump more crude oil. Oh, that helps us not become reliant on imported cried oil. Let's demand that the people who are providing us oil pump more. That's why I'm so frustrated with this. I hope you understand. We need to lower prices.

Mr. SHIMKUS

Mr. SHIMKUS. Now bring in climate change. On average, climate change is going to add 50 cents to a gallon of gas. That would raise the price to $4.16. Nobody wants to pay that. How can we solve this problem, Mr. Speaker? Let's go after our natural resources in the Outer Continental Shelf. Billions of barrels of oil, billions of cubic feet of natural gas right on the OCS. Democrats keep blocking the ability to get that. Let's do coal-to- liquid technologies. Go after our coal reserves, 250 years' worth in Southern Illinois alone, and turn that into liquid fuel. Let's lower the cost for homeowners so that we don't have to rely on bailouts, we don't have to rely on government. My individuals want independence from government. They want independence on fuel costs. They want to pay lower costs. Democrats can bring a bill to the floor. They promised it in 2006. We have yet to see it.

Mr. SHIMKUS. And when Steny Hoyer said, ``Democrats believe we can do more for the American people who are struggling to deal with high gas prices,'' that would allow us to address the majority leader's plan to help bring down energy prices; is that correct?

Mr. SHIMKUS. Likewise, Jim Clyburn said, ``House Democrats have a plan to help curb rising gas prices.'' That would allow us to find out what that plan is; am I correct?

Mr. SHIMKUS. And it's tied to this debate, and I know my colleague who just spoke, it would probably be important for her to vote ``no'' on the previous question so that some of her concerns would be aired; would that be correct?

Mr. SHIMKUS. Well, Mr. Speaker, high energy costs really affect this debate because high energy costs are causing people to make tough decisions where they can't meet their bill payments. Just last year the cost for natural gas for an individual homeowner went up 5.9 percent. Just last year the price for home heating increased 37.2 percent. The cost for propane increased 22.2 percent. The cost for electricity increased 4.3 percent. Why? We have no plan. The Democrat plan to lower energy costs was no plan. There was a plan. It did this: Crude oil was at $58.31 when the Democrats came into the majority. Today, $121. Yesterday it hit $122. I've been doing this for 4 weeks. It hasn't gone down; it keeps going up. What has that done at the pump? When Democrats came into control, $2.33. What is it today? On average, $3.60. That's no plan. That's a plan to fail. That's higher costs. If you want people to be able to meet their mortgage payments, let's lower energy costs. Let's lower the price of a gallon of gasoline.

Mr. SHIMKUS. And that would be in conjunction and probably would meet with the Speaker's promise in 2006 that Democrats have a commonsense plan to help bring down skyrocketing gas prices. She made that quote. That would allow us to bring that plan to the floor, would it not?

Mr. SHIMKUS. So a ``no'' vote on the previous question allows us to debate lowering energy costs in this country; is that correct?

Mr. SHIMKUS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the ranking member a question on what's really going on in Florida. One of the reasons we are objecting to this is because of the previous question. Can you mention the previous question?

Mr. SHIMKUS

Mr. SHIMKUS. Mr. Speaker, under rule XXII, clause 7(c), I hereby announce my intention to offer a motion to instruct on H.R. 2419. The form of the motion is as follows: Mr. Shimkus moves that the managers on the part of the House at the conference on the disagreeing votes of the two Houses on the Senate amendment to the bill H.R. 2419 (an Act to provide for the continuation of agricultural programs through fiscal year 2012) be instructed to recede to the provisions contained in section 9021 of the Senate amendment (relating to the E 85 Fuel Program).

Mr. SHIMKUS

Mr. SHIMKUS. I want to thank my colleague, and I appreciate it. A couple of things I want to highlight. When he talks about supply, we have a 250 years worth supply of coal in this country, 250 years that we can have access to. And according to the Federal Government, there is enough oil in deep waters many miles off our coast and on Federal land to power more than 60 million cars for 60 years. So your point about supply is important and a critical portion of this debate, and really what separates Republicans from the Democrats as we fight about these energy costs. We believe that when you bring more supply to the public that's demanding it, prices will go low. Speaker Pelosi promised, on April 24, 2006, ``Democrats have a commonsense plan to help bring down the skyrocketing gas prices.'' Well, they have a plan, but the plan was just the opposite of what she envisioned. Here's a barrel of crude oil, $58.31 when she became Speaker of the House; the price today, $115.92. That, as I stated on this floor numerous times, that is bitter change, that's negative change. Change is not always good. This is bad change. This is change that was promised by the current leadership in the House. Now, how does that translate into the fuel for the soccer moms in the country? Well, when the Democrat majority came in, the price of gasoline at the pump was $2.33. Today, it stands at, on average, $3.65, a huge increase. Again, negative change based upon what was promised by the then Democrats in the minority. What they said, what happened when they got into the majority, they promised change. This isn't the change that we bargained for. And just because I like to bring in the aspect that energy is the item that affects every aspect of our lives, as I said last week, in the Coast Guard Authorization bill, for every dollar increase in diesel fuel, it costs our Coast Guard $24 million. For every dollar increase in a barrel of crude oil, it costs our United States Air Force $60 million. For the sake of the taxpayers we ought to be demanding more supply. And Bill, you know the coal-to-liquid opportunities that are up in your neck of the woods, and how the Air Force is pleading with us for energy security, for the ability for them to project their cost, and really for national security. Isn't it crazy that our military is dependent upon foreign sources of energy to run our war machines? Not only is it crazy, it's scary. And I would make the argument that it's negligent on our part to keep our military financially reliant on imported energy and really militarily at risk, where we could, in essence, be blackmailed with the threat of controlling those supplies when we need to move our war machines. Add to this, I always like to add this on this chart, $3.65 is the price. Guess what happens when we moved to climate change? Chairman Dingell of the Commerce Committee is the only intellectually honest person who started talking about climate change, and he said, ``for us to address climate change, it will require an additional 50 cents per gallon of gas.'' So now if we've got, on average, $3.65 and we add 50 cents for climate change, that means right now, before we get to the summer driving season, people will be paying $4.15 for a gallon of gasoline. That is bitter change. That is change that the public did not agree to when Speaker Pelosi made her promise in 2006. And this highlights what you were talking about. Here's a comic. And you know when issues start getting into the media and the folks start making fun of public policy in America that you've really got a point that's resonating. ``We demand you energy companies do something about these high prices.'' Isn't that what we're hearing our friends from the other side of the aisle? Okay, energy companies, do something. Can we drill in ANWR? Forget it. How about offshore? Are you crazy? Clean coal? Out of the question. Nuclear power? You're joking, right? Well, don't just sit there, do something. And what do we hear from the other side of this building? What we hear is, which is laughable, let's add more taxes to the energy companies. Now, where in the history of this country, when you've added more taxes do you get lower prices? I would challenge anybody on the other side of the aisle to show me any time in history where we added more taxes and we lowered the price of a good. You know what? They can't do it. It's ludicrous. And then they also say, I know what, we're going to force the people who are selling us the oil, we're going to force them to drill and produce more oil when we won't even do that ourselves. How crazy is that? So as my colleague, Mr. Sali, pointed out, we have options, we have solutions. We mentioned many of them. One is, take our natural resources in coal, over 250 years of coal resources. Now, I would rather have the good midwestern Illinois coal-basing coal that you have to go underground, not stuff you can get off the surface like in some of the western States, but here is a picture of a western State. Grab that, build a refinery, refine that coal into a fuel, stick it in a pipeline, send it to our Air Force bases, or send it to our airports. How many recent budget airlines have just gone bankrupt? At my count, there's four. Think of all the job losses. Think of all the health care now that's no longer accessible to those families. Why did they go bankrupt? High jet fuel costs. One solution would be this; and the great thing about this is, American jobs in the coal mines, American jobs to build a refinery, American jobs to operate the refinery. These are good-paying jobs with good benefits. American jobs to build a pipeline. And of course, these are American jobs to fly the airplanes and operate the airfields or protect us. So with that, I would like to yield to my colleague from Tennessee (Mr. David Davis).

Mr. SHIMKUS. I thank my colleague for coming. In reality, and I taught high school for a couple of years, and when you don't make a decision, you have made a decision. Even though you don't have a policy, you in fact have a policy. Our debate is that when the Democrats promised us, when Speaker Pelosi promised us, and I quote, ``Democrats have a commonsense plan to help bring down skyrocketing gas prices''; and when Majority Leader Steny Hoyer promised, ``Democrats believe that we can do more for the American people who are struggling to deal with his gas prices,'' well, they sure did more. They just burdened struggling citizens with higher gas prices. Democrat Whip Jim Clyburn said, ``House Democrats will have a plan to help curb rising gas prices.'' When you don't have a plan, the plan that you have is a plan for failure. This is a planned failure, $58 to $115. Facts are hard things to dispute. Gasoline prices, $2.33, $3.65. That is Speaker Pelosi's plan to bring down skyrocketing gas prices. They are skyrocketing gas prices but they are not being brought down. They are continuing to go up. So Monday we had truckers driving around Washington, D.C. protesting the high cost of diesel fuel. I have got independent truckers going bankrupt. In fact, I brought to the floor in the last couple of weeks a picture of a local strike of independent strikers protesting the high cost of diesel. My friend, Congressman Brady, highlights the fact that many small town, independent, self-employed people are not making any profit this year because the profit they had planned, it's all going into pay the high cost of gasoline. This is failure. We would hope our colleagues on the other side would recognize this failure and come to the floor and help us fix this. But their solution is demanding on other countries more drilling when they won't demand drilling in our own country. And then they have this convoluted idea that if you tax people, that is going to lower prices. I challenge them anywhere historically to show me a time when you have raised taxes and prices have come down. In fact, I have got the perfect colleague to come up here and talk, a CPA and accountant. He has probably seen a lot of small businesses, probably seen a lot of tax burden come onto businesses. I am not sure those tax burdens have ever lowered the cost of that company doing business. But I would like to welcome Congressman Conaway from Texas.

Mr. SHIMKUS. I thank my colleague. There's a great op ed today in the Washington Post by Robert Samuelson. I want to read the first paragraph: ``What to do about oil? First it went from $60 to $80 a barrel, then from $80 to $100 and now to $120. Perhaps we can persuade OPEC to raise production, as some Senators suggest; but this seems unlikely. The truth is that we are almost powerless to influence today's prices. We are because we didn't take sensible actions 10 or 20 years ago. If we persist, we will be even worse off in a decade or two. The first thing to do is start drilling.'' Now I am joined by my colleague from Georgia, Mr. Westmoreland. Welcome.