Promoting Cross-Border Energy Infrastructure Act

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this trio of pro-polluter bills that we are debating today. These bills just double down on the Trump administration's commitment to raising American electricity prices by discriminating against clean, cheap energy. They prove that Republicans have never been for an all-of-the-above energy strategy and that they don't care about fixing the insanely high cost of living that is crushing families across this country right now.

The only thing Republicans care about is making their fossil fuel friends even richer.

All of this comes a few months after Republicans passed their big, ugly bill. That law will cause Americans' utility bills to go up by about nearly $300 per year. That is on top of the nearly $29 billion in electricity bill rate hikes that utilities have requested just since the start of President Trump's term. All this from a President who promised to cut Americans' electricity bills in half. That is just one of President Trump's broken promises.

President Trump and House Republicans also claim to care about China, particularly about beating China in the artificial intelligence race. That requires getting as much power on to the grid as quickly as possible, but the big, ugly bill will do the opposite. It will instead cause electricity capacity to decrease by more than 2\1/2\ times the size of the entire Midwestern electric grid, and Trump's law will render the United States unable to meet growing power demand or to compete with China.

All this doesn't factor in the enormous toll that Trump's tariffs will take on America's energy bills. A recent analysis found that Trump's tariffs will cost your average American family $2,300 each year. That is $2,300 that families need to pay rent, to buy groceries, and to afford clothes and school supplies for their kids. Trump decided to make everything more expensive, even the energy we buy.

The inconvenient truth that Republicans don't want to acknowledge is that clean energy can compete with fossil fuels. They don't like that. They are trying to put their thumb on the scale, and that is where this week's bills come into play.

The first bill we are discussing right now, H.R. 3062, the cross- border energy bill, was first proposed way back in 2013 to respond to the energy politics of the 2010s. It is simply irrelevant in this day and age. The Keystone Pipeline has been dead for 4 years. The Canadians are not interested in building energy infrastructure connecting our two nations thanks to Trump's tariffs, yet this bill would gut the Federal Government's ability to review the environmental impact of oil and gas pipelines that cross into Canada and Mexico.

Currently, the Federal Government reviews the entirety of a cross- border oil pipeline, but under this bill, the review would be limited to only 1,000 feet crossing the border. There would be virtually no Federal review for natural gas pipelines running from Texas to Mexico. This will make it easier to export American natural gas to liquid natural gas facilities in Mexico, which, again, will drive up utility prices here at home in the United States.

Finally, the bill creates a massive loophole allowing any existing cross-border facility to expand without any review whatsoever. A pipeline could be expanded by 10 times, dramatically increasing its environmental impact, and there would still be no review.

If Republicans want to get serious about permitting reform, they need to work with Democrats to advance policies that will fix the way we permit and plan our Nation's grid.

Later today, we are going to consider another bill, H.R. 3015, that would reestablish the National Coal Council, something that Energy Secretary Wright has already done. Instead of using floor time on anything important, like maybe trying to fix the affordability crisis that is strangling middle-class America, Republicans are wasting time passing a bill to do something that has already happened.

Then after that, the third bill, H.R. 1047, the GRID Power Act, would require the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to allow electric grid operators to prioritize connecting fossil fuel plants to the grid over connecting clean energy power plants to the grid.

Now, this is just another way Republicans are tipping the scales toward fossil fuels over wind and solar energy.

Taken together, Mr. Speaker, these three bills will only continue to raise America's energy bills and, in some cases, do so while also removing the guardrails that keep our communities safe and healthy.

Mr. Speaker, I strongly urge opposition to all three bills, including the one we are debating right now, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. PALLONE. Castor), the ranking member of our Energy Subcommittee.

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Mr. PALLONE. McClellan), who is a member of the committee.

Mr. Speaker, I want to comment on what the gentleman from Georgia said. I know he is not here. I don't like to comment on people when they are not here, but I am not really being critical personally, just substantively.

The gentleman from Georgia and my colleagues on the other side keep talking about how they are going to use this legislation to address another pipeline from Canada. References were made to Keystone. Keystone is dead.

There is no reason to believe in any way that the Canadians are looking to work with us to build a pipeline and export more fossil fuels to the United States. Right now, we barely have a relationship with Canada because of the tariffs.

The fact of the matter is that there is a tariff on Canadian exports. The bottom line, I guess, is the only way that we could get Canada to maybe send us more oil or gas is if we did what President Trump says and annex them and make them the 51st State. I am not an advocate for that. I don't think that is going to happen.

It is unrealistic right now to talk about any kind of additional oil or gas coming to the United States through a Canadian pipeline. That is just not going to happen.

What I think is really happening here is that there is going to be an effort, because of the way the bill reads, to double, triple, or even 10 times the amount of gas that would go from the United States to Mexico, because the bill doesn't have any review with regard to that. If you have an existing pipeline, you can just double, triple, or quadruple it, or whatever, and send American gas to Mexico, where it is going to be made into LNG and shipped throughout the world.

That is only going to increase our gas prices here in the United States. That is what is going to happen here.

Again, we on the Democratic side have been stressing the fact that when it comes to energy prices, they are going through the roof. The Republicans don't seem to care at all about dealing with the issue. All they want to do is make it possible for more of our gas to go abroad.

The way this bill is tailored, there would be basically no review, other than, I think, for 1,000 feet, or something, into the other country. The suggestion that somehow there is still going to be some significant review here before these pipelines are permitted is simply not the case, based on what this legislation says.

Mr. Speaker, for all of these reasons, I ask my colleagues to vote in opposition to this bill.

I will talk more about the two that are following, but the same is true: They are not helpful to Americans. They are going to increase energy prices. They are another indication that the Trump administration and House Republicans don't care at all about the increased costs of energy for the American consumer.

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

The yeas and nays were ordered.

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