Paul Tonko

Mr. TONKO

Mr. TONKO. Not at all, Representative Sutton. Again, I applaud your efforts with Cash for Clunkers. You were a leader in making that happen. And you talk about the merit that that brought, but let's talk about the ripple effects that it inspired. Dropping that pebble into the pond and having those ripple effects reach into the auto industry, not only did it inspire people to trade in an energy-inefficient automobile, but they were now purchasing an efficient automobile and they were sparking additional production for our auto industry, which is absolutely important. So some of these actions that we take have positive follow-up actions. There are direct and indirect hits, and all of that grows jobs, grows opportunity and speaks accordingly--favorably--to an energy plan, to an environment plan, and to an economic recovery plan. So, across the board, all of these plans are responded to in a progressive fashion. The same is true, as you made mention, of the infrastructure issue. We think traditionally of roads and bridges. Well, many of those bridges that are measured ``deficient'' need to be addressed for public safety purposes. It also responds to the ironworkers across America who will have to provide for the supplies, and it responds to all of those who work in the industries, in the trades, who are connected to the ordinary transportation construction projects out there. It is the cement manufacturers and those who are providing all of the resources that are required. All of that produces more than just construction jobs on the scene. There are many ancillary industries that are favorably bolstered simply by this investment. When we talk about infrastructure, we can't stop just with roads and bridges. We need to look at the most efficient form of travel, that being rail, and we need to look at building into that today's ahead-of- the-curve sort of responses with high-speed, energy-efficient rail. Again, that requires embracing R&D so that our brightest science and tech minds can create efficient braking systems and efficient cars that can be utilized in the rail transportation corridors. All of that inspires progress, and it allows us to take some of the brightest minds who can help us with the intellect and with the discoveries that we require, but it also involves a full spectrum of employment--from trades individuals over to the Ph.D.'s. So we cover the full spectrum of jobs out there, and we provide, again, hope for American families. You know, I think it is important also for us to look at the measures that we can inspire and encourage that find us working with the deployment of these wonderful innovative and ingenious measures that are used now by other nations. Recently, the SEEC Coalition in Congress, of which I'm a founding member--and it's a brand new vehicle this year, the Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition--has been bringing in guest speakers. We had the most recent former Energy Minister of Denmark in to speak to the group to talk about the innovation that Denmark was doing with its economy on energy-related matters. Afterwards, I spoke to him. Representative Sutton, what he said to me was so telling. I asked him, What was the inspiration? Where did you reach to get these ideas that transformed the energy outcomes for Denmark? He smiled broadly and said, Many of them are American patents. We have not provided for that funding mechanism to take the whiz-kid ideas in the lab and in the R&D centers--both public and private and at academia. We have not provided the funding to deploy those into manufacturing or into retail use so that we can get the return on investment that was made. The Angel Network, the venture capitalists-- that ``valley of death'' as it is labeled--needs to be addressed. If we do that, we are providing more jobs, not just in R&D, but by inducing wiser manufacturing operations. You know, you talked about manufacturing and the heyday of which we all know of the manufacturing that was here. I represent a series of mill towns, which is a necklace of communities along the course of the Erie Canal and the Mohawk River. They were the Westward Movement. They were the epicenters of invention and of innovation, staffed many times by immigrant labor that created those ideas, which allowed us to rule the world. We created the Westward Movement with that sort of canal activity and those mill towns. Today, those mill towns have gone rusty, but we can save manufacturing in America if we do it smarter. We don't have to do it cheaper. We need to do it smarter. With the emergence of nanoscience in this country, there is a nanoscience center in the capital region of New York, which I represent, that just 2 days ago introduced an investment that will allow them to provide for precision characterization and inspection of product line development and manufacturing. This will take us a long way to being the best and the smartest, and that's the sort of investment that American workers deserve. America's families can have that hope brought into the fabric of their families simply by the wisdom that can be inspired with sound public policy here and by the investment of resources that can make things happen.

Mr. TONKO. Right. Some were shipped off into a foreign economy. Others simply evaporated. And we saw in record numbers the losses that were out there because they simply could not compete and stay effective. I meet people every day in my district, and I represent a capital region in New York State so that we have the benefit, the buffer, of public sector jobs. But our unemployment numbers are hanging near in excess of 9 percent. This is unacceptable. We need to do much more work as we go forward. And we applaud the efforts to date to take that surplus and apply it as a downpayment. But that's as it's seen, as a downpayment. There are many more installments to come in order for us to build hope in the lives of people, and that's what it's about. You hear it. We've talked about it. I hear it in my district. The fear with which people speak, the uncertainty of their tomorrow, the need for us to provide jobs for the youngest in society who are being released from higher ed who are in search of employment. Those who have been chronically unemployed, as you point out, before this recession hit and as it hit, chronic unemployment in many of our neighborhoods. All of this has to be taken into a full-picture view and create those situations that allow us to be competitive. And I think we can do it. For instance, in the energy-related areas, we can grow jobs of the green collar variety. We can reduce demand for energy in this country. We're the most gluttonous society as it comes to use of our energy supplies. We send hundreds of billions of dollars into the treasuries of unfriendly nations, those who inspire terrorist activities in our country and around the world. We're sending hundreds of billions of dollars there. And do you think we could move forward with an energy security agenda, growing our energy independence, providing for energy audits, creating energy teams that can go into neighborhoods, allowing jobs for those who have been chronically unemployed or those recently unemployed, training, retraining programs through our community colleges to advance those energy audits and then to do the implementation of the audits as they're developed? These are great jobs that reduce our demand of energy through an energy efficiency program, allow us to create American jobs as we generate our supplies locally through embracing our intellectual capacity as a Nation, inspiring investments in R&D, research and development, and that will also deploy these ideas that are coming from public and private sector R&D centers, put those into working capacity for our Nation's people. It's the cleverness. It's standing back and having a heart and a soul for our working families. And you know we can do it. You know that we have the capacity here as a legislative body, as the two bodies of the Capitol here in Congress, in working with the White House. We can make it happen, and the will must be there because we have the way and the means to make it happen.

Mr. TONKO. And whose pocket was it coming out of but the American working families. And so when we think about this, the work that we have to do, you know, somebody approved that there be no regulator, no watchdog over the financial sector. Somebody approved that. Somebody said, Let's create a doughnut hole and let people make a record bonanza on the pharmaceutical needs that our American seniors require. Somebody said, Let's give a tax break to the upper income strata and that will trickle down. Somehow that chart is telling us that was a fairy tale; it was fiction, not truth. A number of these elements now come to haunt us. So bringing about regulatory reform in the banking industry, in the financial sector, a step done just a few days ago; making certain there was a tax cut for middle-income America in the stimulus package, an historic, largest tax cut for middle-class America, part of the stimulus package; making certain that we now start putting down payments onto those issues like our energy infrastructure, which failed miserably in 2003, where we didn't invest in a domestic agenda; ending this off-line, off-budgeting of a war in Iraq that now is finally brought on-budget, to have truth and honesty in the budget. All of this hit at once. And then investing in a stimulus to stop the bleeding. We had to bring things under control and now talk about the progress that needs to be made, needs to be struck, in not only bringing about jobs but inspiring an innovation economy, those meaningful jobs that will be uniquely American or provide for America's needs through her own workers and allow us to clean the environment, respond to a favorable progressive energy agenda and make smarter outcomes, the outcome at our manufacturing centers, and inspire investments in our public safety workers, our firefighters, our police, and bring back a strength in our education process that won't deny our future workers; our children are our present and our future. All of this needs to be brought into one intelligent package, as you lead us, along with Representative Hastings, Representative Larson and the leadership of the House under Speaker Pelosi. As we go forward, this will be very important now to create a smart investment out of what was a huge catastrophe where we went again, to repeat myself, from the largest surplus to the lowest deficit, the greatest deficit, and where we could have, had it stayed on course, reduced the deficit to zero in this given calendar year. What a tragedy for all of America, and now the task of building a smart response has begun through the task force and through the leadership of the House.

Mr. TONKO. If you will suffer an interruption, if the gentlelady will yield, I think in simple terms what that is saying is some people were doing quite well and maybe perhaps realizing a bonanza and others were asked to live with what they've got and they stayed flat-lined. Is that perhaps an easy way to place it?

Mr. TONKO. If I can just ask you to point on the chart what year where we're starting to see the dip for the average household income for Americans. It's in the year 2000, 2001, where it really begins to dip and just continued to decline throughout that 8-year period or so that really inflicted pain upon American households.

Mr. TONKO. Yes, I have. And that certainly doesn't cut it with the American public, with middle class working families across the country. It simply does not cut it. But, Representative Sutton, I do want to commend you for the leadership as co-Chair of our task force on job creation. And I found your introductory comments to inspire a thought: Let's really look at how this started. We went from a record surplus under the Clinton administration to a record deficit. Had we stayed the course, the deficit reduction plan of President Clinton would have been completed. It would have completed its mission this year. We haven't seen deficit wipeout except for one Presidency, that of Andrew Jackson. So this could have been an historic year if we had stayed the course. What we found was that people will talk about the deficit, which the deficit has driven this recession which went longer and deeper than any forecasted, and now it's the daunting task of all of us who serve here in Washington to stop the bleeding. And great indicators out there suggest, many key indicators suggest that that has happened, as you alluded to, with 1.6 million additional jobs coming into the picture, direct and indirect measurement. We have also seen corresponding to that a .3 to a .9 percent reduction in unemployment. That at least is welcomed news that we could stop the bleeding. But now the overwhelming task, the challenge, is to grow this economy. And how are we going to do that? There are a lot of needs out there that require us to create those jobs, to funnel the resource to those jobs so as to improve America's competitiveness. We are asking our businesses and our workers to function in a global economy, and there are investments that we can make, Representative Sutton, that will take us out of this economic catastrophe and allow us to climb back. But the last 8 years have been devastating. They have put us into a deep financial hole. And as we cleaned up the mess, as we put the war in Iraq online in the budget, as we took the doughnut hole that was created that has hurt our seniors who are Medicare eligible as they have had to reach into their pocket to work with Medicare part D's doughnut hole, that was not put online in the budget in a way that really reflected the costs of these programs. So now we have truth and honesty in our budgeting, but that has produced an even deeper deficit because we're doing it with fairness and frankness. Now, with the task force and many Members in a bipartisan bicameral way, we hope, we can then get to the picture of job creation. And that's what it's about right now in Washington. How can we create the programming that will allow for the increase of jobs, be it in the energy-related field, in manufacturing, in our parks, in our municipal levels of government with public safety, fire, and police numbers, teachers in the classroom? All of these efforts need to be brought in and built, if we can, and we must build an innovation economy that will be sparked by our growing the competitive edge for our businesses so that we can win and retain and grow jobs.

Mr. TONKO

Mr. TONKO. Madam Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. TONKO

Mr. TONKO. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to talk about the 15th United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, that is currently underway. First, Mr. Speaker, I wholly reject false notions and political attacks attempting to destroy sound science and evidence. This issue, from its environmental to its energy and economic impacts, is too important for false political attacks and deceitful op-eds and letters to the editor. The Copenhagen discussions are about responsible governments coming together to negotiate an international climate treaty to better our environmental and energy outcomes, not to mention creating a fair marketplace in which the world's economies will indeed compete. There is a global race today, a race for a clean energy economy, the outcome of which will allow the winner to export clean energy intellect and expertise. Other countries are passing us by in this race. Like the space race of decades ago, we must come together as a Nation bound by the common goals of reducing global emissions, bettering our energy outcome, and enhancing our economy. The future of our Nation depends on us.

Mr. TONKO

Mr. TONKO. Mr. Speaker, as a new Member of Congress, I have spent this year actively seeking opportunities to offer constructive legislative proposals on issues important to my constituents and to the Nation. I have been honored to sponsor measures dealing with improving highway safety and fostering research and development for alternative energy. In addition to my other legislation focused on energy and transportation safety, I also directed my staff to contact the National Parks, Forests and Public Lands Subcommittee because the protection and preservation of our parks, heritage areas, forests and public lands are of vital interest to me and the people I represent. The committee informed me that the National Park Service needed legislation to deal with a number of technical concerns facing the agency, and I was honored to act as the sponsor. H.R. 3804 includes 10-year reauthorizations for two important advisory boards, the National Park System Advisory Board and the National Park Service Concession Management Advisory Board. The National Park System Advisory Board was first authorized in 1935 and advises the NPS Director and the Secretary of the Interior on matters relating to the agency, the National Park System, and programs administered by the NPS, including the designation of national historic landmarks and proposed national historic trails. A full, 10-year reauthorization of the Board is critical to maintaining the excellent management standards set by the National Park Service. The Concession Management Advisory Board was established by the National Parks Omnibus Management Act of 1998. The seven-member panel advises the Secretary of the Interior and the National Park Service on matters relating to the effective management of concessions in units of the National Park System. Reauthorization of this Board is important to ensure that the lodging, transportation, dining and other services provided to park visitors are of the very highest quality. H.R. 3804 also raises the ceiling for the popular Volunteers in Parks program from $3.5 million to $10 million. Volunteers, of course, are not paid, but many receive reimbursement for travel costs or other small expenses. Our national parks simply could not function without these volunteers, and the VIP program is really the least we can do to repay their enormous contributions. At the request of the National Park Service, H.R. 3804 changes the designation of the Martin Luther King, Junior, National Historic Site in Atlanta to the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Park, to better reflect the size and complexity of the unit. The bill also makes several minor boundary adjustments that will allow the National Park Service to cooperate with other sites near the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial to make ticketing easier for visitors and makes technical corrections for six provisions in the omnibus parks bill from earlier this year. Finally, H.R. 3804 will strengthen law enforcement in our national parks by increasing and standardizing penalties for violations of park laws. I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of this bill so that our Park Service can move to a more stable future.

Mr. TONKO

Mr. TONKO. Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Parsons Child and Family Center for immaculate community services that they provide for the needs of children and families in the capital region of upstate New York, which I represent. Parsons was founded some 180 years ago and has become one of the largest human service agencies in upstate New York. Its contributions to the 9,000 children and families it serves include counseling services, parenting education, child abuse prevention and treatment, and mental services. While there is no typical child served by Parsons, most have endured a significant traumatic event in their lives. The highly trained staff at Parsons using the latest techniques work to improve the lives of all they serve. The role and importance of the family are stressed, with the ultimate goal of preserving the family unit whenever and wherever possible. Today I want to commend Parsons' service and commitment to our region's families and children. I encourage us all to look towards them as a model of positive support and outcomes in a system that has turned around the lives of so many. With one in every five American children living in poverty, we commend the role of the professionals at Parsons for the work it does.

Mr. TONKO

Mr. TONKO. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material on H.R. 3598, the bill now under consideration.

Mr. TONKO. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 3598) to ensure consideration of water intensity in the Department of Energy's energy research, development, and demonstration programs to help guarantee efficient, reliable, and sustainable delivery of energy and water resources, as amended.

Mr. TONKO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself as much time as I may consume. Demand for energy and water resources is stressing our environment and our economy. Innovation and technologies which address the nexus between these two resources is critical to the future of our country. H.R. 3598 requires the Secretary of Energy to consider water-related issues in the Department's energy efficiency and energy technology research programs. Additionally, H.R. 3598 creates an energy-water architecture council that will facilitate the collaboration of industry, of academia, and of the Federal Government in improving energy and water resources data collection, reporting, and technological innovation. Chairman Gordon and Ranking Member Hall of the Science and Technology Committee have worked hard to improve this bill on its way to the floor. To ensure appropriate use of taxpayer dollars, the bill now includes direction to the Secretary of Energy to develop a strategic plan which will focus the Department's efforts on the most energy- and water-intensive programs and projects with the most potential to achieve the purposes of this bill. This legislation is the product of recommendations heard in five Science and Technology Committee hearings on water and several reports from the National Academies, the Government Accountability Office, the National Science Technology Council, and the Department of Energy. With letters of support from the Water Innovations Alliance, NanoH2O, Inc., and the Alliance for Water Efficiency, this legislation takes important steps to deal with our country's water and energy resource challenges. I encourage all of my colleagues to join me in support of H.R. 3598. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. TONKO. Mr. Speaker, I will continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. TONKO. Mr. Speaker, let me, on behalf of the Democratic members of our Science and Tech Committee, wish Elizabeth Kowal Chapel the very best in the steps to come. May I also share the sentiment that the child be gifted with a sense of humor that so obviously prevails at the Science and Tech Committee meetings. We wish you the best. We have no further speakers from our side on behalf of the bill, Mr. Speaker. However, I would like to make this final point of encouraging our colleagues to support H.R. 3598, which would put a primary focus, rightfully so, on water-related issues as the Department of Energy deals with the innovation economy that is sparked by energy efficiency and energy technology research. To do that optimizes the outcome, and I think it's a very strong bill. I congratulate the Chair and the ranking member on behalf of the work they've done on H.R. 3598. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. TONKO

Mr. TONKO. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 3029) to establish a research, development, and technology demonstration program to improve the efficiency of gas turbines used in combined cycle power generation systems, as amended.

Mr. TONKO. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material on H.R. 3029, the bill now under consideration.

Mr. TONKO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. My bill establishes a research, development, and demonstration program through the Department of Energy to improve the efficiency of natural gas turbines used in electric power generation systems. The Department had a similar public-private partnership research program in the 1990s that led to technologies used in turbines today. Resurrecting this capability is essential if our country is going to be the energy technology leader of the world. Currently, the United States uses natural gas for nearly 20 percent of our power generation, and with the recent discovery of natural gas in different regions of our country, that percentage is most likely to grow. Efficiency is paramount in turbines. The most advanced combined-cycle gas turbine systems today are capable of reaching somewhere near 60 percent efficiency. The goal of this bill is to develop systems that achieve up to 65 percent efficiency. The energy and fuel savings created by more efficient turbines will help ratepayers save more than a billion dollars per year in fuel costs alone. Deployment of 65 percent efficient gas turbines throughout the country would result in significant reductions in fuel use, leading to savings in electricity costs of some $180 billion through the year 2040. Energy efficiency should be our fuel of choice, a fuel we need to drill and mine like we currently drill for oil and mine coal. That's exactly what this bill does, Mr. Speaker. It makes energy efficiency our fuel of choice. Just 1 percentage point improvement in efficiency would result in CO2 emissions reductions of 4.4 million tons per year, as well as palpable reductions in NOX, SOx, and other harmful emissions. In addition to the environmental benefits and energy and fuel savings, this bill promotes United States technology leadership, putting our country in a position to assume a greater share of the worldwide energy market by creating and retaining high-value domestic jobs in turbine manufacturing. Furthermore, many technologies developed under this program can be retrofitted onto the existing fleet of turbines. This program will create thousands of domestic jobs in a variety of technology sectors. There are potential jobs in our labs, jobs in our factories, and jobs in our construction sector. This bill is a positive step toward restoring our energy, economy, creating clean-energy jobs, and enhancing our energy security. Getting this legislation to the floor today would not have been possible without the help of my colleagues on the House Science and Technology Committee. After the full committee markup of this bill, we continued to work to address the concerns of my colleagues, Mr. Hall, Mr. Bilbray, and Ms. Kosmas. With their help and leadership, we were able to expand the scope of this bill to include simple-cycle turbine systems, in addition to combined-cycle. I want to thank them for their suggestions and working with me to create an even stronger bill. In so doing, we also modestly expanded the authorization levels for the bill to reflect the inclusion of simple-cycle turbine systems. I want to thank Ranking Member Hall, his staff, and all of my Science and Technology Committee colleagues for continuing to work with me to improve this bill. Our chairman has been most helpful. Finally, I also want to thank Mr. Inglis for understanding the importance of this legislation and joining me as a cosponsor of this bill. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. TONKO. Let me again thank those of the committee and subcommittee respectively, Chairman Gordon and Chairman Baird, for their tremendous help in this measure, along with the ranking members on the committee. Before we close this debate, I think it's important to acknowledge the numerous letters of support that we have received dealing with this legislation. We have letters of support from the Gas Turbine Association, from General Electric, from Solar Turbines, Strategic Power Systems, Inc., and Florida Turbine Technologies, Inc. Having strong industry support is vital if we're going to be successful, Mr. Speaker, in moving forward with an innovation economy. We all must work together to move our country and our economy forward to a greener and brighter future. The bill before the House is a measure that will obviously underscore the value of energy efficiency and will allow us to make use of natural gas turbines in a way that promotes that added 5 percent of efficiency that will translate to billions of dollars of savings and economic and environmental savings that will come from the efforts of this bill. I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. TONKO

Mr. TONKO. Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Schenectady County Community College on its 40th anniversary of founding. Over the last 40 years, Schenectady County Community College has met the educational needs of tens of thousands and offered a pathway to career success and prosperity. SCCC has recently expanded its educational offerings to meet the needs of the 21st-century workforce. The college offers a cutting-edge Nanoscale Materials Technology program that trains students for top careers in the high-tech industry. The Culinary Arts program at SCCC attracts students from around the country and is a model for other community colleges as well. In addition, the college offers one of the only aviation programs currently available at a community college. As testament to the college's importance to the community, full-time enrollment at the campus has increased by 15 percent over the past year. On behalf of the residents of the 21st Congressional District, I would like to take this opportunity to thank President Quintin Bullock and Schenectady County Community College for 40 years of educating students and preparing tens of thousands for successful futures. We look forward to your continued achievement, and express our heartfelt congratulations.

Mr. TONKO

Mr. TONKO. Absolutely. And it's responding to the needs of middle- income America, working families across this country, who are part of the solution. They are part of the solution. We need simply to bring everybody together into a working semblance that then allows us to move forward. You know, I think of the wind energy efficiency bill that I got passed in this House that started in the Science and Tech Committee, taking a step back to look at how we can improve not only the placement but the wind forecasting. But also the manufacturing, the materials that are utilized. The gear assembly. How do we do this? Well, you couple that with the nanoscience sector and you can take that nanoscience growth, that intellect that's being developed, that's being fostered in the various centers of nanotechnology, and couple them with perhaps agriculture or pharmaceutical as an industry, or the health care industry, certainly the energy industry, and produce stronger materials, lighter materials, more durable materials, working on situations that provide for the greatest efficient outcome with the resources that we invest. I look at kinetic hydropower that was used as a demonstration project at NYSERDA, where I used to serve as president and CEO. We used the turbulence of the East River along the island of Manhattan, and we utilized that water movement to turn the turbines sub water to create power needs for Roosevelt Island. Well, that's just a snippet of the imagination that can be tapped into. Today, after improvements through the DOE lab in Colorado, we're now looking at the potential of 1,100 megawatts of power produced by kinetic hydro. That's just a sampling of what can happen. We see geothermal and its potential. I was there for a ribbon-cutting for a project at the Culinary Institute of America utilizing geothermal to help run the campus activities. All of this has immense potential, immeasurable at times, and all we have to do is unleash the talent. A leading Nation such as ours cannot, again, be complacent. And we need to continually energize our thinking and our behavior. No lead nation can allow itself to slip backward. Unless we encourage our workforce and our students out there, our youth, to desire, to invent, and discover and explore, we will not maintain a leadership status. So I agree with you, for those who are agents of no, for those who wanted to settle for the status quo, those who are perhaps using partisan approaches to deny progress with this administration, need not put the burdens and the hurdles before us. We need to march forward in progress, sharing a boldness of vision, created by a situation here that has really triggered the need for the American ingenuity, the American intellect, and the American resolve to move us forward. Representative Lujan, it's great to have you here this evening.

Mr. TONKO. Madam Speaker, we're going to utilize our 60 minutes this evening on the floor so as to have Democrats speak to jobs as they relate to this energy rethinking so that we can address the energy reforms that are essential for the strengthening of this Nation, to embrace our intellectual capacity, and to provide opportunities in job growth by promoting a strong sense of energy security, enhancing our energy independence, and therefore addressing favorably, Madam Speaker, our national security. All of these fine dynamics are met as we think outside the barrel, if you will, on energy policy. How do we create these jobs? Well, there is just a sampling in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that, when passed in early February, spoke to the creation of a half million jobs. That will now be invested through the Department of Energy, other resources, other agencies on the Federal level of government to make certain that we grow these opportunities through research and development investment, through energy efficiency, through renewables that are available through wind, solar, and the Earth, through geothermal; making certain that we can go forward with a progressive agenda so as to speak to a cleaning up of the environment and the security strengthener for the American economy by growing less reliant on fossil-based fuels. That gluttonous dependency that this Nation has on those fossil-based fuels is driving down our economy, and we have the potential here to enter a clean energy race, a global energy race, and win that race. I am joined this evening, Madam Speaker, by two of our colleagues who have asked to participate so as to insert their thinking and to share their enthusiasm with the American audience and those here in the House about the job potential as it relates to energy reforming and energy transformation. We're joined by Representative Jay Inslee from the State of Washington, the First District of the State of Washington, and we're also joined by Representative Ben Lujan from the Third District in the State of New Mexico. Both are outstanding Representatives as it comes to energy transformation but also outspoken voices about job creation, job retention as it relates to energy policy. Representative Inslee, because we are all, the three of us, partners in this new developed SEEC, the coalition that is provided for a Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition, a group that has brought together soundness of thinking and the advancement of progressive policy. You serve as a cochair of that panel on which both Representative Lujan and I serve. And so this evening if you would just share your comments with us about job potential as it relates to energy as an arena.

Mr. TONKO. Representative Lujan, I couldn't agree more. And I really do believe that many of us were sparked--our interest was sparked by just the vision that we shared and by the news that we would hear on a daily basis. We'd come home from school and hear it on the night news. That sparked so many people to look at math, at science, at engineering, because we had leaders that really saw that we had this greatness of potential within us. So everyone marched along in this chorus of belief that we could make the world a better place. There was a sense of global community. There was a commitment of this Nation to really lead in a way that provided for great outcomes. That sort of leadership is coming back here. I think that this administration, the leadership here with Speaker Pelosi and the leaders of so many committees in this House see it, they get it. They know we can solve this job crisis by bringing in the nuances of energy reform, of health care reform, of providing for a jobs agenda. You know, when you look at some of these issues where you take nanoscience within my district, where they're really developing this precision testing--the mass production of the past Industrial Revolution was about a great idea, perhaps started in your garage and then developed into a factory-size space because you had to meet demand. Well, today it's about precision. As you pointed out, something as thin as a strand of hair will be what they're working on. And so the prototyping, the testing, the evaluating, are all elements of success. Very pricey. And so there's a role here for the Federal Government to insert itself, to say, Look, you're an entrepreneur; you're a budding scientist; you're an emerging technology that's being driven by your intellect. Let us partner with you, let us partner with the angel network, with the investor communities, so that we can take this idea and make it real and put it on the shelf. That's what it's all about. Other countries are using our ideas--and our ideas are still those that are driven by an investment in education, in higher education. So this is a full set of circumstances by which we will govern ourselves, our thinking, in a way that transitions this economy. That's what it's about, the innovation economy. And yes, there's a jobs crisis. But yes, we saw what the deficit that had been going far too long did to our employment issue. Did this happen overnight? Did this just happen 3 months ago? Did we just start to lose jobs just weeks ago? I don't think so. But now the transitioning into an innovation economy is driven by heart and the mind--the thinking here that we can do better and we will do better. And that's what it's all about. It's taking the stand and making certain that we invest our way through some very difficult times.

Mr. TONKO. Well, Representative Lujan, what I believe you're expressing here is the greatness of America. And that is driven by a belief, a set of values, a skill set, an investment in education that says we have succeeded in the past, we can continue to succeed, and we will succeed because the success that is driven oftentimes is determined by a tone that is established. This administration has said, enough with these deficits that were created that we inherited and now we have to resolve. We have to move forward with an investment that carries us through these dark times that were developed. And how do we do that? Well, you and I, both working through the Sustainable Energy and the Environment Coalition--SEEC, as is commonly referenced--heard from the former minister of energy from Denmark. He talked about transitioning that economy of Denmark, transitioning their energy thinking. Afterward, I talked to him and said, Just how did you do it? Some of the ideas were driven by the American think tank. They took patents from this country and they deployed that thinking into their economy and they invested in their economy. Well, now that's sharp thinking. That's the sort of efficiency that we all should strive for in government. Now, in this process we need to invest, yes, in the R&D, but we need to then transition those discoveries in the lab, those whiz-kid ideas. We need to take those and deploy them to manufacturing, we need to deploy them to the commercialization sector, so as to realize the discovery here in a way that provides for improvements in society and new responses to energy crises. Well, just recently the President traveled to my district, to the capital region of New York, to Hudson Valley Community College. We have been talking about the wonderful economy, regional economy, that has been a foundation, a fertile ground for fostering the thinking of nanoscience and semiconductor as an industry. There is that fertile investment that now is anxious to couple with Federal thinking, with Federal resources. And so the President showcased this wonderful thinking in the region, through the community college, developing curricula for green-collar workforce development; dealing with construction majors who will know state-of-the-art solar or PV installation; working with all those budding scientists and skill sets from the trade sector that are going to be there to transition us. So he talked about the investment in human terms, in capital terms, in ways that will allow us to now transition. This is how we grow out of this deficit situation, which we inherited from no sense of vision and from poor management of resources. Now we're going to work together to develop energy plans, to work on a situation that grows jobs. This is all about growing jobs. We hear it all across America. People are looking for jobs. This is a good way to develop those jobs--R&D jobs, manufacturing jobs. Once you invest in that so-called ``valley of death'' where there isn't that network of Federal resources to be matched with the angel network and the venture capitalists that take the idea from the lab, from the investment, from both the private sector, academia, or maybe even government, taking that and transitioning it over into the commercial sector, into the manufacturing sector--that is the resource we need. And when the President traveled to the district, he heard how we needed to connect those dynamics so that the confluence of those ideas and those resources spell success, spell new ideas. The American intellect is so very capable of making that happen. That is the greatness of America. And we can underscore that greatness by investing and inserting the sort of policy that makes the total difference here. Again, we don't have the luxury to wait. We cannot sit by in some sort of idle complacency that finds us comfortable with where we're at today without stretching, without transforming, without moving forward in a way that we did 40 years ago with the space race. And we were proud when we won that. When I was a kid, we heard Sputnik all the time--in school, at home, at church, wherever you traveled in the community. People were passionate about making that happen. We were going to move forward, we were going to invest. We shared a vision. We fine-tuned that vision as an American people and then won that prize by landing that person on the moon. That influenced all sorts of technology growth and inspiration. We have that same golden opportunity here. What a mistake if we're to let it go by. We will fail generations to come if we do not seize this moment and make it work in policy terms, in investment terms, in resource terms, in a way that spells a new day for energy generation, energy efficiency, and energy investment through R&D. Representative Lujan, I know that working on these several projects, we can make a difference.