Reliable Power Act
Floor Speech
Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 3616, yet another Republican bill that puts large corporate polluters over people. At a time when American families are struggling with rising monthly energy bills, this legislation does nothing to address the affordability crisis.
Electricity prices continue to go up. They have increased by 13 percent just since President Trump took office, and they are about to get worse as the Republicans' big, ugly bill is expected to increase those prices another 61 percent.
You would think Republicans would want to do something to address the affordability crisis, but this is just more of the same from them. They refuse to address healthcare affordability, and this afternoon, they continue to ignore the crisis with regard to electricity.
I guess we shouldn't be surprised. After all, they just blindly follow President Trump, who simply does not care. He does not believe the affordability crisis is real. In fact, he recently said: ``Affordability is a Democrat scam.'' That is what he actually said. The President should tell that to the hardworking families who are facing skyrocketing prices across the board. It is a crisis, and Republicans are simply ignoring it.
This bill is basically a thinly veiled attempt by Republicans to obstruct any future administration's EPA regulations that keep our air, lands, and water clean. This bill would allow the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, to block any regulation from any other agency under certain circumstances. It takes what should be an apolitical process, a neutral review of the reliability of our Nation's electric sector, and twists it into a fully partisan exercise. That is why we should reject this bill entirely.
Right now, a number of Federal agencies have authorities that could impact the power sector. FERC and the Department of Energy have the ability to comment on those regulations if they have concerns and work through the interagency review process to ensure that those concerns are heard.
FERC Commissioners in recent years have not been shy about using their powers to publicly highlight and comment on Federal actions that they deem flawed or insufficient. Agencies can, and do, respond to that feedback, as we saw with the EPA during the previous administration.
What no agency has the power to do now is to arbitrarily block another agency's regulations that Congress gave that agency the power to make. That is simply ridiculous.
If Republicans have their way, agencies would not only have to seek review from the Office of Management and Budget but will also have to ask permission from FERC to see if FERC likes the regulation or not. If not, even if the White House likes the regulation, the agency can't finalize it.
If that is not bad enough, FERC testified before the Energy and Commerce Committee that it does not even have the capacity and expertise necessary to investigate every other agency's regulation for the impacts that they will have on electric reliability. That was before the staff attrition that has hit FERC over the past 10 months.
The agency has lost over 11 percent of its staff through September. Who knows how many additional staff have left over the last 3 months because you know that the President is wanting to fire everybody.
Let me just review this, again, because I don't want to be too bureaucratic here, Mr. Speaker. House Republicans want FERC to do something it has no ability to do, that would politicize our Nation's electric reliability regulator, and that would make FERC into a super- authority with powers rivaling those of certain White House offices.
This is all to kill regulations that keep our air clean and our water drinkable. That is what this is all about. Let's not pretend that House Republicans are worried about regulations coming from the Trump administration. They knew those regulations were all going to destroy whatever clean air or clean water we have.
Instead, they are worried about the next time we have a President who actually cares about protecting public health and the environment, a President who wants to restore the bedrock environmental laws that the Republicans have gotten rid of.
Republicans then want to use this bill as a shield to protect polluters. If the polluter now, under a new President, isn't going to have the protection, and the public is going to have the protection to make sure that the water and the air are clean, then they want to make sure they have some shield to protect the polluters.
We shouldn't let them do that. That is not what we are supposed to do. We are supposed to worry about the public.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no,'' and I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. PALLONE. Castor), the ranking member of our Subcommittee on Energy.
Mr. Speaker, I have a lot of respect for the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Balderson), who just spoke, but the bottom line is that I think it is dishonest for Republicans to claim that the cost of compliance with environmental regulations is driving up utility prices.
The regulatory chaos that the gentleman from Ohio mentions is created by the Trump administration. Since President Trump took office, his administration has created tremendous regulatory uncertainty through DOGE, senseless tariffs, and unprecedented executive actions. As a result, as I mentioned, electricity prices are up 13 percent, and natural gas prices are up 8 percent since the President took office.
Mr. Speaker, this holiday season, Americans are struggling to afford record-high utility bills and skyrocketing grocery prices. Donald Trump and the Republican Party were elected on their promise to bring prices down. Instead, the Republican Party is about to become the grinch who stole Christmas. They want to let the Affordable Care Act credits that kept health insurance affordable for families expire on January 1.
This bill, the Reliable Power Act, would let the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, kill any environmental regulations they don't like. In other words, this bill would make Americans sicker as health insurance prices are skyrocketing.
Republicans in Congress are just not delivering on their promise to bring down prices. The big, ugly bill will increase electricity prices for American families by 61 percent. Instead of passing partisan bills this week that would increase energy prices, Republicans should be working with us and Democrats on bipartisan proposals that can decrease energy bills.
Mr. Speaker, Americans are just begging for relief on skyrocketing prices, and President Trump's only response has been to call the affordability crisis the ``Democratic hoax.'' His rhetoric is an insult to the American people, but my Democratic colleagues and I are taking the affordability crisis very seriously. We hear the concerns of the public, and we strongly urge our Republican colleagues to come to the table to pass commonsense legislation that brings prices down for the American people.
Mr. Speaker, I stress again that the President promised to cut Americans' power bills in half. Instead, he and his Republican accomplices in the House are causing those prices to soar with their backward policies and, essentially, their war on cheaper, clean energy.
Thanks to Republicans, electricity prices are climbing more than twice as fast as inflation, and more than 80 million Americans are struggling to pay their utility bills. Many of these Americans are having to make the impossible choice of either paying for housing, medicine, and food, or keeping their lights on.
Let me just give some examples. Since President Trump took office, electricity prices are up, 13 percent nationwide, as I mentioned. However, in Iowa, they are up 23 percent. In North Carolina, they are up 21 percent. In Pennsylvania, they are up 16 percent.
Mr. Speaker, electricity prices aren't the only bills that are skyrocketing. Residential natural gas prices are now 8 percent higher than they were a year ago nationally, but, again, 19 percent in Pennsylvania, 14 percent in Wisconsin, and 13 percent in North Carolina.
We mentioned that the big, ugly bill will raise electricity prices by a staggering 61 percent over the next decade due to its attacks on cleaner and cheaper energy and its crippling of the American clean energy industry.
The big, ugly bill destroyed tax credits that were designed to incentivize developers to build more domestic energy projects, raising barriers to those buildings in the process, and it will half the deployment of cheap, renewable American energy and imperil our power grid. These historic price hikes are on top of the $29 billion in electricity bill rate hikes that utility companies have requested since the start of President Trump's term.
Mr. Speaker, I don't want to just talk about prices because the bottom line is we are also talking with this bill about a cost to Americans' health and safety.
This bill allows FERC to override regulations established by other agencies. This is the Christmas gift to some of the Nation's largest polluters. Think about that. FERC, which has no expertise in public health or environmental protections, would just be able to stop another agency's regulation meant to protect public health.
These are regulations that are responsible for safe drinking water, for reducing air pollution, and preventing exposure to cancer-causing chemicals. We are not just talking about price increases here that the Trump administration has imposed. We are also talking about the impact on health and people's ability to breathe and drink clean water.
By advancing this bill, Republicans are telling communities that their health and safety is not a priority. Pollution is exacerbating your child's asthma. Who cares? Your water may be contaminated. That is nothing to worry about. We don't care.
Other agencies spent years crafting regulations, often after an extensive analysis that shows that the benefits of that regulation from a health and safety point of view outweighs the costs. However, this bill would throw all of that out the door by allowing FERC, which has no expertise in these areas, to just say ``no,'' and FERC doesn't even want to do it. They told us.
As the ranking member of the Energy Subcommittee, Ms. Castor, said-- they literally told us at the committee--that they didn't want to do this and didn't have the capacity to do it.
We have made so much progress in the United States on environmental protection over the last 50 years. Our Nation's rivers used to catch fire. Now, they don't. Smog used to surround our cities, particularly Los Angeles. Now, it doesn't.
President Trump and House Republicans want to undo all of that. They have waged an all-out war against public health, and this bill is just one piece of that.
If my colleagues care about public health, if they care about prices, if they want to make sure people can breathe and can still pay their electricity bills, I urge my colleagues to oppose this bill. It just makes common sense.
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