Restoring American Energy Dominance Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. HUFFMAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman who is bringing the receipts today, and I appreciate this conversation.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 6009, the Republicans' polluters over people act 2.0.

For anyone following the work of team extreme, the Republican majority, in the 118th Congress, Mr. Speaker, you have probably figured out the pattern by now. Things like governing are really hard for team extreme: funding the government, avoiding a catastrophic debt default, and having an orderly legislative process so you are not continuously improvising and keeping the whole world in limbo while Congress sputters.

Team extreme has failed miserably at the basics of governing because they are too busy sowing chaos, fighting with each other, and competing for who gets the most bookings on FOX News and Newsmax.

Passing serious legislation that tackles pressing issues and solves problems is definitely out of favor in this Congress. I suppose to look busy for the C-SPAN audience, they give us warmed over versions of their polluters over people act every few weeks.

When you can't govern and you can't legislate, Mr. Speaker, this performative stuff is what you do over and over. It is rinse, lather, and repeat with team extreme in this Congress.

It is reminiscent, really, of how they operated when Donald Trump was President and they had a Republican majority in both Houses of Congress. We kept hearing about infrastructure week every few months without any serious proposals and certainly without any serious legislation. However, when Democrats took back Congress and the White House, we showed them how to do it. We delivered results: an historic bipartisan infrastructure law that is making transformative differences in communities all over America.

Nonetheless, we have swung back now with team extreme back in charge here in the House, and it is the old performative playbook again. In this Congress, it is usually involving cheerleading for Big Oil and Gas. That was H.R. 1. That is clearly what this spin-off bill before us today is all about. It is political performance art for the fossil fuel industry.

Since we have seen all of this several times before and since these bills, thankfully, will go nowhere, let's just take a moment to remind those who get all their news from rightwing media that team extreme's entire energy narrative, that this poor fossil fuel industry is struggling under the oppressive burden of environmental regulations, and that unless we provide even more financial and regulatory giveaways to this industry, America will fall behind in the competition for global energy dominance. All of this is a complete fiction.

America is already the world's dominant producer of oil and gas. We are the top exporter of oil and gas. We are awash in oil and gas, and those poor fossil fuel companies are awash in record profits thanks to price gouging the American consumers. They are rolling in so much money that they are giving massive executive bonuses and dividends, and they are doing stock buybacks. In addition, of course, they continue to lobby to protect their Federal subsidies and to oppose climate action.

This is not an industry that needs more of our help. Nonetheless, American consumers who are paying at the pump for all of these profits and stock buybacks do need our help. They need an alternative to the fossil fuel roller coaster and to the tyranny of the pump. They also need a planet that their children and grandchildren can live on, and so they need Congress to get serious about tackling the climate crisis and accelerating the clean energy transition.

With these bills today, and, frankly, with all of the stunts and antics that we have seen from team extreme in its dysfunctional Congress, Republicans are saying that they don't care about any of that.

With H.R. 6009, they are trying, once again, to repeal parts of the historic climate actions we took in the last Congress and take us back. They want to repeal the modest fossil fuel royalty reforms we enacted in the Inflation Reduction Act to protect taxpayers.

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Mr. HUFFMAN. They are trying to repeal a very modest royalty reform and claw that back, and all that this reform would do is give taxpayers a fair return on the public resources on public land that this industry has been extracting on royalty rates that hadn't been touched for a century.

Mr. Speaker, the reason that we increased those royalties was to finally confront the problem of fossil fuel companies with their subsidies extracting these public resources and sticking taxpayers with the bill to clean up their messes.

This is not controversial. It is popular. Ninety-one percent of Western voters want to see oil and gas companies, not taxpayers, paying the bill for this cleanup.

With these performative bills we are back at it again: a fake narrative that exalts the fossil fuel industry above everything and everyone else.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no.''

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