HOUSE Republican Leader John Boehner

Video: Mr. Boehner Goes to Washington

Courtesy of Chairman Mike Pence (R-IN) and the House Republican Conference:

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Oil Price Volatility Makes the Case for GOP’s All of the Above Energy Strategy

Today’s New York Times ran a front page story, “Volatile Swings in Price of Oil Stir Fears on Recovery,” which noted that “oil has risen 55 percent since the beginning of the year, to $70 a barrel, pushing gas prices up again to $2.60 a gallon.”  The Times story also stated that:

The instability of oil and gas prices is puzzling government officials and policy analysts, who fear it could jeopardize a global recovery.  It is also hobbling businesses and consumers, who are already facing the effects of a stinging recession, as they try in vain to guess where prices will be a year from now - or even next month.

Speaker Pelosi and her allies in Congress apparently believe that the answer to rising gas prices is to impose a new national energy tax that would punish Americans who dare to flip on a light switch or drive a car.  The Democrats’ energy tax would not only restrict the use of environmentally-safe offshore drilling, but would “permanently close some domestic refineries, which could permanently raise the price of gasoline,” as the New Hampshire Union-Leader noted in an editorial published today.

During the debate over Speaker Pelosi’s national energy tax in the House, House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) asked: “Do we need to have a national energy tax on every person in America who would drive a car, who would flip on a light switch or who would buy an American-made product?”  Leader Boehner continued: “if our goals are to clean up the air, to build an alternative energy business in the United States, a thriving one, and to create jobs, there’s a better way to do this, and it’s the all of the above strategy that we’ve been talking about in this Chamber for nearly a year.”

The House Republicans’ all of the above energy strategy includes four main goals:

• Increase production of American-made energy in an environmentally-sound manner.
• Promote new, clean and renewable sources of energy such as nuclear, clean-coal-technology, wind and solar energy.
• Encourage greater efficiency and conservation by extending tax incentives for energy efficiency and rewarding development of greater conservation techniques and new energy sources.
• Cut red-tape and reduce frivolous litigation.

The House Republicans’ all of the above strategy would put America on the path towards real energy independence, create good paying jobs at home instead of shipping them overseas, and would leave our children and grandchildren with a cleaner environment.  The American people don’t want a national energy tax - they want energy independence.  The House Republican plan is the comprehensive energy solution that this country desperately needs.

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My Response to President Obama on National Journal’s Energy Blog

Yesterday President Obama delivered remarks at the White House in support of Speaker Pelosi’s national energy tax, which House Democrats narrowly passed last Friday. In response, I posted the following on National Journal’s energy blog:

The President likes to say this “cap-and-trade” bureaucratic nightmare is a jobs bill, and he did so again today.  But this comes from the same Administration that said its trillion-dollar “stimulus bill” would keep unemployment from going over 8 percent.  This is a jobs bill alright - for China and India.  Here in the United States, it will destroy 2.3 to 2.7 million jobs each year.

Let’s call it for what it is: a huge tax that will punish middle-class families by will raising gasoline and electricity costs.  Even prominent Obama supporter Warren Buffett calls it a “huge” and “regressive” tax.

It creates a slew of new government programs to take and redistribute trillions of dollars from families and small businesses, overseen by a confusing web of government agencies that will ultimately answer to the Environmental Protection Agency.  Even my Democratic colleague from Minnesota, Rep. Collin Peterson, admitted in the Washington Post last Friday that: “The truth is, nobody knows for sure how this is going to work.”  How encouraging.  That night, I went to the House floor and spent an hour raising serious questions about the bill - questions that no one in the House could answer, because the bill was substantially amended at 3 AM, meaning that not one single Member of Congress actually read it. 

Republicans believe there is a better route to clean energy and a clean environment than the national energy tax that passed the House passed on Friday night, and we have introduced legislation embodying our “all-of-the-above” energy reform strategy.  Our American Energy Act will increase environmentally-responsible production of American energy, promote the use of alternative fuels to reduce carbon emissions, such as clean coal and nuclear, and encourage increased efficiencies and cutting edge technologies to maximize America’s energy potential.

Our plan is also the fastest route to a cleaner, more reliable energy future,  by reinvesting billions of the royalties from increased American energy production into development and expanded us of clean, alternative energy across our country like wind, solar, and geothermal, just to name a few.  It’s a strategy that will create American jobs instead of destroying them; one that will lower costs for American families and small businesses rather than raising them at a time of economic hardship.  Unfortunately, Democratic leaders did not allow a vote on our plan.  Instead, they chose an approach that will ensure higher costs and higher taxes for every middle-class family and small business owner.

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Boehner: Pelosi’s National Energy Tax Will Be the Defining Vote of This Congress

Last Friday, the House narrowly passed Speaker Pelosi’s 1,500 page national energy tax.  At 3:09 am the morning of the vote, House Democrats dropped a 300-page amendment to their massive energy tax legislation.  Clearly, House Democrats didn’t want the American people to understand the true impact of their national energy tax.  So House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) took to the House floor and read portions of it to the American people, explaining how it would raise electricity prices, increase gasoline prices, and ship American jobs overseas to countries like China and India.

The full transcript of Leader Boehner’s remarks are as follows:

Mr. BOEHNER. My colleagues, we’ve been through a very difficult time in our economy. We’ve had the great economic shocks of last fall, and we’ve seen unemployment climbing month after month after month. It is now at some 9.4 percent.

Earlier this year we passed a 1,100-page bill that no one read. It was supposed to be about putting the American people back to work again. It was supposed to be about stimulating our economy. And all we heard during that debate was about jobs, jobs and jobs. It’s pretty clear that what the bill really ended up being was nothing more than spending, spending and more spending, because since that bill passed, some 1.7 million Americans have lost their jobs. So when we look at the legislation that continues to go through here, the American people are seeing an awful lot of spending, an awful lot of money going to government, but they’re not seeing new jobs.

Now we come to what I believe is the most profound piece of legislation that has come to the floor of this House in the last 100 years. It’s hard to say in the first 6 months of the new Congress that this could be the defining vote and the defining bill for this Congress, but I really, truly believe that this is the defining bill.

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Newspapers Blast Pelosi’s National Energy Tax as a Job-Killing Attack on the Middle Class

This afternoon, the House is slated to vote on Speaker Pelosi’s job-killing energy tax.  In a press briefing yesterday, House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) said: “Mark my words: The American people are going to remember this vote.  This will be a defining moment and a defining vote in this Congress.” 

Newspapers across America have ripped into Speaker Pelosi’s energy tax this week, slamming it as a bill that will raise electricity prices, increase gasoline prices, and ship American jobs overseas to countries like China and India.  A roundup of newspaper editorials from across America follows:

The Denver Post:

The debate on such a transformative issue ought to continue and broaden.  How is it possible the 1,200-page American Clean Energy and Security Act is being rushed through Congress in a repeat of what happened with the stimulus package?  Has anyone read this one?…

Largely left out of the current debate are questions about nuclear power.  House Republicans say reducing CO2 depends on more atomic development.  And for good reason.  Nuclear power generation produces zero greenhouses gases and the technology far outpaces renewables like wind and solar in the amount of electricity it can add to the grid.”

Investor’s Business Daily:

Not since a misguided piece of legislation imposed tariffs that turned a recession into a depression has there been a piece of legislation as bad as Waxman-Markey.  The 1,000-plus-page American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) is being rushed to a vote by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi before anyone can seriously object to this economic suicide pact.

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Job-Killing Energy Tax Vote Nearing; Will Democrats Support the Middle Class or New Taxes?

Speaker Pelosi will try to ram her national energy tax through Congress tomorrow, with Roll Call quoting one senior staffer saying that “she’s going all out” despite the fact that Republicans and “many moderate Democrats said they still have questions or concerns about the package and either cannot yet say whether they support it or are leaning against it.”

Members of Congress aren’t the only people who are expressing concerns about the Speaker’s job-killing tax; a Washington Post/ABC News poll released this morning found that a majority (54 percent) opposed the Speaker’s energy tax if it “raised your monthly electrical bill by 25 dollars a month” - $300 annually - even if it “significantly lowered greenhouse gases” (question 36).  The fact is higher electricity costs are just one of the consequences of this burdensome national energy tax.

Pelosi’s national energy tax is a 1,201 page convoluted mess of new regulations and punitive taxes, as the following chart illustrates:

Any wonder the Wall Street Journal stated in an editorial today that Speaker Pelosi’s bill “defies the laws of economics.”  The Journal continued:

The hit to GDP is the real threat in this bill.  The whole point of cap and trade is to hike the price of electricity and gas so that Americans will use less.  These higher prices will show up not just in electricity bills or at the gas station but in every manufactured good, from food to cars.  Consumers will cut back on spending, which in turn will cut back on production, which results in fewer jobs created or higher unemployment. Some companies will instead move their operations overseas, with the same result.

Speaker Pelosi and her cohorts in Congress won’t admit that their “cap-and-trade” bill is nothing more than a giant energy tax on the middle class.  But many prominent Democrats have spoken out against “cap-and-trade” and aren’t afraid to call it by its name - a national energy tax.  Yesterday, Warren Buffett led the charge in an interview on CNBC where he stated that “cap-and-trade”  is “a huge tax and there’s no sense calling it anything else.”  Even the longest serving Member of the House, former Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell (D-MI), has called Pelosi’s “cap-and-trade” bill for what it is: “a tax and a great big one.”

House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) said in a press conference today: “Mark my words: The American people are going to remember this vote.  This will be a defining moment in a defining vote in this Congress.  And the real question is:  Where are the Democrats going to stand on this?”

It’s a good question - one the Democrats will have to answer tomorrow.

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Speaker Pelosi Will Bring Job-Killing National Energy Tax to the Floor this Week

Speaker Pelosi is barreling ahead with her national energy tax by bringing the bill to the floor of the House of Representatives by the end of the week, The Hill reported this morning.  The Democrats’ energy tax will strike a blow to American families and small businesses, costing jobs and raising taxes in the midst of a deep economic recession.  House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) wrote in an op-ed in today’s Washington Examiner that: “under the guise of reducing carbon emissions, Democrats are poised to force anyone who drives a car, buys an American-made product, or flips on a light switch to pay a national energy tax.”

Even President Obama has admitted that the Democrats’ energy tax will cost the middle class jobs, when he stated in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle during the campaign that: “Under my plan of a cap and trade system electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”  The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis found that under the Democrats’ national energy tax: “by 2035 gasoline prices would increase 58 percent, natural gas prices would increase 55 percent, home heating oil would increase 56 percent, and worst of all, electricity prices would jump 90 percent.”

Speaker Pelosi is trying to sell her new energy tax on the grounds that it will reduce carbon emissions - but the only thing it will reduce is the amount of jobs created here in America.

Americans need to look no further than to Europe to see the effects that implementing a national energy tax has on job creation: “According to GAO, observers have said that the first ETS [Emissions Trading Scheme] phase, which ended in 2007, did not decrease emissions, imposed high costs on both consumers and industry, and may have decreased the international competitiveness of European industries.” (Source: Republican Staff, Oversight and Government Reform Committee)  Even with their energy tax, European carbon emissions still grew by 4.9 percent from 2000 to 2006.

Liberals seem fine with promoting policies that result in an inverse relationship between job creation and protecting the environment.  Certainly, their disastrous “cap and trade” proposal would result in millions of Americans losing their jobs.  One estimate, by Heritage Foundation scholar David Kreutzer, puts the number at three million jobs lost in the manufacturing sector alone by 2029. 

House Republicans don’t buy the notion that we cannot protect the environment and create jobs here in America at the same time.  The House Republicans have introduced the American Energy Act, which will increase production of American-made energy in an environmentally-sound manner; promote new, clean and renewable sources of energy such as nuclear, clean-coal-technology, wind and solar energy; encourage greater efficiency and conservation by extending tax incentives for energy efficiency and rewarding development of greater conservation techniques and new energy sources; and, cut red-tape and reduce frivolous litigation.

If Democrats believe that the American people will support imposing a new tax on the middle class, they are sorely mistaken.  House Republicans are opposed to new taxes on job creation, and will continue to propose better solutions to the Democrats “tax, spend, and borrow” agenda.

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Democrats’ National Energy Tax is a Job-Killer

The Obama Administration is christening next week as “energy week,” where it will unload all its political firepower on Capitol Hill in an attempt to pass Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s new national energy tax which would raise taxes on every American family and small business by up to $3,100 a year.  Politico reported yesterday that: “The White House plans to dispatch Cabinet officials to push the administration’s energy agenda and urge Congress to pass climate legislation currently under siege from skeptical Democrats in the House.”

Some of those skeptical Democrats - which Politico reported stands at “roughly 50″ - have broken ranks with Speaker Pelosi and President Obama by questioning the need for imposing a national energy tax.  Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN), the chairman of the House Agriculture committee “has questioned whether there is enough data to support the need for cap-and-trade legislation,” according to a New York Times story published yesterday and has stated in the past that: “In my district, a ‘no’ vote would be a good vote.”

Even White House Budget Director Peter Orszag stated in 2007 that a national energy tax would be a job-killer: “Job losses could occur throughout the economy but would probably be especially large in industries associated with high-carbon fuels.”

The Democrats are ready to impose new punitive taxes on the American middle class and small businesses - the very engine of the American economy - at time when we continue to see job losses and rising unemployment.  Just this morning, “The number of U.S. workers filing new claims for jobless benefits rose slightly…suggesting that while job losses have moderated since the beginning of the year, a rapid turnaround in labor-market conditions is unlikely,” the Wall Street Journal reported.  And the Journal noted in another story that: “Personal income fell in 37 states in the first quarter.”  (See related chart below from the New York Times)

  

Since the beginning of this year, nearly two million Americans have lost their jobs, and the only response from Democrats in Washington is to penalize the American middle class and subsidize irresponsible behavior.  At time when the American middle class is taking it on the chin - from job losses to bank bailouts, auto bailouts, and global bailouts - the Democrats’ national energy tax adds insult to injury. 

The American people deserve better.  The government should be fostering economic growth, not stifling it with a new national energy tax.  Unfortunately, Democrats seem deaf to the concerns of middle class Americans.

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Dem Leaders are Continuing to Push Their New National Energy Tax

Congress returns from its Memorial Day district work period this week, and the Democrats are ramping up the pressure to pass their new national energy tax that could cost American families up to $3,100 per year. 

The only problem is, Democrats are running into opposition within their own ranks.  Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson (D-MN) has slammed the Democrats’ national energy tax, saying: “I will not support any kind of climate change bill…because I don’t trust anybody anymore.  I’ve had it.” And Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-NY) recently said: “We have concerns about leaving the pain of increased costs to the lowest-income families.”

Moreover, Europe’s “cap and trade” tax scheme, which the President and his allies in Congress have long touted, is under fire from the German government.  The Germans are  lobbying the European Union to suspend its “cap and trade” rules, as the Financial Times reported last week, arguing that: “energy-intensive industries should be not be forced to buy emission permits between 2013 and 2020 because companies would shift production overseas.”

On this subject, the Germans have it exactly right.  As the Washington Examiner noted in a recent editorial: “There’s no getting around it: Higher energy costs will inevitably lead to higher consumer prices and fewer jobs.  And any new ‘green’ jobs created will likely be lower-paid manual labor and service jobs, not higher-paid manufacturing positions.”

The new national energy tax that the Democrats are pushing would be devastating to the entire country, particularly the South and Midwest, as the following Heritage Foundation map illustrates:

 

This past weekend, Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-IN) delivered the Republican Weekly Address, which highlighted the challenges the national energy tax would impose on the industrial Midwest:

The national energy tax imposed by Speaker Pelosi’s climate change bill would double electric bills here in Indiana, working a severe hardship on low-income families, but that’s only where the damage starts.  In a state where we like to make things, like steel and autos and RVs, it would cost us countless jobs, many of them heading off-shore to China and India.  Our farmers and livestock producers would see their costs skyrocket.  And our coal miners would be looking for new work, while we leave affordable, homegrown energy idle in the ground.

One thing is for sure: the Democrats’ new national energy tax will further burden the American people, will not stimulate jobs or the economy here at home, and will end up shipping American jobs overseas. 

House Republicans have a better solution than raising Americans’ taxes.

This past week, House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence’s (R-IN) American Energy Solutions Group traveled to Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, and California touting the cornerstones of the House Republican’s “all of the above” energy  strategy.  The House Republican plan includes:  increasing environmentally-safe energy production; promoting nuclear, clean-coal, and renewable energy technologies; and, encouraging increased efficiencies and cutting edge technologies to maximize America’s energy potential. Expect to hear more in the coming weeks from House Republicans on their better solutions to health care, energy, fiscal responsibility, and transparency in government.

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Author of National Energy Tax Hasn’t Even Read His Own Bill

Last night, Democrats on the House Energy & Commerce Committee approved their National Energy Tax out of committee on a 33-25 vote.  The bill, at over 930 pages long, is so long that even the author of the new energy tax, Energy & Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA), admitted under questioning by Ranking Republican Member Joe Barton (R-TX) that: “I certainly don’t claim to know everything that’s in this bill…I don’t know the details…” 

The House Republican Conference, Chaired by Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN), put together this video highlighting the exchange between Reps. Waxman and Barton:

Chairman Waxman isn’t alone in his assessment of the massive National Energy Tax proposal, which would cost every American family thousands of dollars.  The Economist noted that:

Another problem with Waxman-Markey is its complexity.  At 932 pages, it is half as long again as an already-bloated previous draught.  It includes a dizzying array of handouts, mandates and technical standards for everything from hot-food-holding cabinets to portable spas.  It allows for a huge increase in ‘offsets’- where a polluter pays someone else to stop polluting instead of curbing his own emissions. These are open to abuse, as Europe’s experience shows.  There is little to stop foreign factories from starting to pollute just so that someone will pay them to stop.

Despite the complexities of the massive National Energy Tax legislation, one thing is clear: the National Energy Tax is emblematic of the Democrats’ governing philosophy that simply spends too much, taxes too much, and borrows too much from our kids and grandkids.

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