Ranking Member Kaptur Statement to House Rules Committee on the 2024 Energy and Water Development, and Related Agencies Funding Bill
Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (D-OH-09), Ranking Member of the Energy and Water Development, and Related Agencies Subcommittee, delivered the following remarks at the House Rules Committee in opposition to the fiscal year 2024 Energy and Water Development, and Related Agencies bill:
The U.S. economy is growing at record rates. We are producing historic levels of job growth due to laws enacted by the last Congress. With this historic job growth, revenues are now coming into the private sector and the Federal government at much higher levels than before because — post pandemic — millions more people are working. Companies are earning money. Indeed, our nation has bent the debt curve as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product for the first time in modern history, as we begin to pay down our nation’s accumulated debt.
Thus, I am unable to concur with my able colleague Chair Fleischman on this Appropriations bill. I prefer a more realistic Energy and Water allocation that meets the critical energy and water needs of our nation.
Ask the citizens of Maui or the State of Washington, or along the drought-stricken Mississippi Louisianan corridor as saltwater creeps north, or the flood victims in New York City.
Energy and water security are national security, but the nondefense spending in this bill is $5.4 billion lower — 22 percent lower — than last year’s effective level. It repeals over $5 billion for critical energy programs from the Inflation Reduction Act that would have helped American families save money on their monthly energy bills while simultaneously creating thousands of jobs in new energy technologies.
For Energy and Water needs, it is not overstatement to say people in our nation live or die by decisions being made here in Congress. Since World War II, America paid a terrible price for its unconscious slide into foreign dependency on imported energy. While we have made strides toward energy independence, after half century of effort, we still haven’t scored at the home plate of U.S. energy independence in perpetuity.
News outlets are correctly reporting that Russia’s unprovoked war on Ukraine is being waged on more than one front, including energy, through the manipulation of global oil and gas prices due to reserves Russia controls. Again, energy resources are intricately bound to the fate of Liberty halfway around our world.
And hasn’t our nation learned repeatedly — the hard way — that when gasoline prices top $4 dollars a gallon, our economy is thrown into deep recession?
Energy allows our private sector’s ability to flourish with millions of living wage jobs in energy production and conservation. Meanwhile, imaginative technologies are being created by America’s amazing inventors in new building materials, solar and electrified windows, biofuels, geothermal and thermal heat recovery, and wind and wave energy, to name a few.
On our water responsibilities, new, major engineering challenges lie before America. New York City has just been hit again with major flooding and record rainfall of over 8 inches, following the devastation and flooded subways it endured during Hurricane Sandy.
Our big cities are not prepared for these deluges of water, nor frankly, are our farmers when more field washouts are occurring every year due to climate change.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Bureau of Reclamation are needed now more than ever to handle regional approaches to new and changing water flows, whether it’s down the Mississippi, in the Great Lakes, or the dry, irrigated West.
There is an old expression: “Don’t try to fool Mother Nature.” I would say, “Don’t ignore Mother Nature.” This is one such moment in American history. Global population has now risen to over 8 billion people. In our nation, it is predicted that we will reach 400 million by 2050. Thus, we cannot pretend the impact of human activity on Planet Earth is negligible.
And so I must express that the Energy and Water Appropriation bill before us is completely inadequate. It does not meet our country’s needs in this new era of climate change. We must robustly meet the needs of the future, not flounder in the past.
In other areas of this bill, I continue to be troubled by the unsustainable spending in DOE’s weapons program, and cuts to nuclear nonproliferation programs.
Finally, the bill includes numerous controversial poison pill policy riders that sadly show extremist Republicans are not interested in bills that can gain bipartisan support and become law.
With that, I’ll close my remarks, and I express opposition to this bill. American can and must do better on the New Age Frontiers of Energy and Water.
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