The Green New Deal

Floor Speech

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Mr. GOSAR. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, the gentleman from Washington, for organizing this important Special Order on the Green New Deal.

Mr. Speaker, America's energy renaissance is the backbone of our economy. It is a story of freedom, prosperity, and opportunity.

After decades of reliance on other countries to meet our energy needs, the U.S. Energy Information Administration projects that America will export more energy than it imports starting in 2020. We are no longer dependent on volatile foreign sources produced in Russia or Saudi Arabia.

Recent innovation and technology improvements associated with fracking and horizontal drilling have allowed shale resources, previously deemed uneconomical, to be developed, and are the main reason the U.S. was the world leader in carbon emissions reductions in 2015, 2016, and 2017.

That is right. Fracking, demonized by environmental extremists without justification, has proven to be the best energy solution for our environment.

Abundant oil and natural gas has reduced electricity bills, kept gas prices low, and provided the largest share of U.S. electric power generation in recent years.

The oil and gas industry supports more than 10.3 million jobs and nearly 8 percent of our economy.

The United States is the world's top energy producer, and the American Dream is thriving.

January 2019 saw the hundredth consecutive month of positive jobs growth in America, the longest period of continuous jobs growth on record.

The U.S. job market is strong, and in December, employers posted 7.3 million open jobs, a new record.

Now, despite America's energy renaissance and the aforementioned emissions reductions, we continue to hear hyperbolic statements about pending climate catastrophe and the need for radical change to stave off future disaster.

The Democrat socialists pushing the Green New Deal want to get rid of all energy sources except wind, solar, and batteries by 2030. How are we going to do that when wind and solar only produced 7.6 percent of our electricity in 2017?

The Green New Deal would drive energy production and jobs to countries like China and India that have much worse environmental standards. Global greenhouse gas emissions will increase as a result, in direct contradiction to the main talking point of the Green New Deal.

The socialist Green New Deal says it will provide higher education, higher quality healthcare, and affordable, safe, and adequate housing to all.

The Mercatus Center estimates that the cost of the single-payer healthcare provision alone would cost $32 trillion in the first 10 years, something that I think is probably on the low side.

The Green New Deal is an alarmist pipe dream that seeks to fundamentally transform America without a blueprint. This socialist manifesto changes by the day, and important details on how a transition of the Green New Deal's magnitude will occur are missing, including how we will pay for this pie in the sky aspiration.

If one needs to have more evidence that the Green New Deal is not plausible, look no further than the country of Australia where electricity prices are the highest in the world and the Aussies' obsession with renewables has destroyed their electric grid. Mass blackouts and mass power cuts are the new norm, and a massive Tesla battery backup system ran dry this past month as the Aussie power grid crashed in summer temperatures. Ninety thousand Aussie homes had no air-conditioning for the next 2 weeks of blistering heat.

Let's learn from Australia's mistakes. Let's not repeat them.

Mr. Speaker, I look forward to enlightening everyone on this legislation further in the coming days.

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