Mazie Hirono on Energy & Oil

Ratify Kyoto; raise CAFE and apply to SUVs

A: We must lead the world in environmental protection. This means we should ratify the Kyoto protocol and should participate fully in the international agreements that will preserve our world for our children. Nationally, it means we must build cleaner cars and invest in cleaner energy. I would support increases in the CAFE standards to 40 miles per gallon, and eliminate the loophole that allows SUVs and light trucks to have weaker CAFE standards.

Increase solar power; wean ourselves from oil

Voted YES on tax incentives for renewable energy.

• Production Incentives: Extends through 2011 the tax credit for the production of electricity from renewable resources (e.g., wind, biomass, geothermal, and hydropower).
• Extends through 2016 the energy tax credit for investment in solar energy and fuel cell property.
• Allows a new tax credit for the production of plug-in hybrid vehicles.
• Extends through 2010 the tax credits for biodiesel (including agri-biodiesel)
• Allows an alcohol fuels tax credit for the production of qualified cellulosic alcohol fuel.
• Denies the tax deduction for income attributable to domestic production of oil, gas, or any related products.

SUPPORTER'S ARGUMENT FOR VOTING YES:Rep. MATSUI: Today's debate is about investing in renewable energy, which will chart a new direction for our country's energy policy. This bill restores balance to our energy policy after years of a tax structure that favors huge oil companies. Today's legislation will transfer some of the massive profits enjoyed by these oil companies and invest them in renewable resources that will power our economy in the future.

OPPONENT'S ARGUMENT FOR VOTING NO:Rep. SMITH of Texas: I oppose H.R. 5351. While it is well and good to encourage alternative energy development, Congress should not do so by damaging our domestic oil and gas industry. In 2006 all renewable energy sources provided only 6% of the US domestic energy supply. In contrast, oil and natural gas provided 58% of our domestic energy supply. The numbers don't lie. Oil and natural gas fuel our economy and sustain our way of life.

Furthermore, almost 2 million Americans are directly employed in the oil and natural gas industry. Punishing one of our Nation's most important industries does not constitute a national energy policy.

LEGISLATIVE OUTCOME:Bill passed House, 236-182

Voted YES on investing in homegrown biofuel.

Proponents support voting YES because:

Rep. PELOSI: This bill makes the largest investment in homegrown biofuels in history. We know that America's farmers will fuel America's independence. We will send our energy dollars to middle America, not to the Middle East.

Rep. TIERNEY: This bill incorporates the Green Jobs Act, which will make $120 million a year available to begin training workers in the clean energy sector. 35,000 people per year can benefit from vocational education for "green-collar jobs" that can provide living wages & upward mobility.

Opponents recommend voting NO because:

Rep. SHIMKUS: I'm upset about the bill because it has no coal provisions. What about coal-to-liquid jobs? Those are real jobs with great wages. Energy security? We have our soldiers deployed in the Middle East because it's an important national security interest. Why? We know why. Crude oil. How do we decrease that importance of the Persian Gulf region? We move to coal-to-liquid technologies. What is wrong with this bill? Everything. No soy diesel. No ethanol. No coal. Nothing on nuclear energy. No expansion. There is no supply in this bill. Defeat this bill.

Rep. RAHALL: [This bill omits a] framework to sequester carbon dioxide to ensure the future use of coal in an environmentally responsible fashion. We can talk about biofuels all we want, but the fact is that coal produces half of our electricity for the foreseeable future. We must aggressively pursue technologies to capture and store the carbon dioxide.

Voted YES on criminalizing oil cartels like OPEC.

Proponents support voting YES because:

Gas prices have now reached an all-time record high, $3.27 a gallon, topping even the 1981 spike. This won't be the end of these skyrocketing price hikes either.

OPEC oil exports represent 70% of all the oil traded internationally. For years now, OPEC's price-fixing conspiracy has unfairly driven up the price and cost of imported crude oil to satisfy the greed of oil exporters. We have long decried OPEC, but have done little or nothing to stop this. The time has come.

This bill makes fixing oil prices or illegal under US law, just as it would be for any company engaging in the same conduct. It attempts to break up this cartel and subject these colluders and their anticompetitive practices to the antitrust scrutiny that they so richly deserve.

Opponents support voting NO because:

• We can only affect OPEC subsidiaries in the US. So the result of this bill would be to hurt US companies while not affecting OPEC itself.
• OPEC is a cartel, but we have to deal with it diplomatically. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act was designed for US monopolies, not international state-run cartels.
• We should focus on domestic policies to affect gas prices. We cannot respond to a short-term crisis with a long-term response.

Voted YES on removing oil & gas exploration subsidies.

• Title I: Ending Subsidies for Big Oil Act--denying a deduction for income attributable to domestic production of oil, natural gas, or their related primary products.
• Title II: Royalty Relief for American Consumers Act--to incorporate specified price thresholds for royalties on oil & gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico.
• Title III: Strategic Energy Efficiency And Renewables Reserve--makes the Reserve available to accelerate the use of clean domestic renewable energy resources and alternative fuels.

Proponents support voting YES because:

This legislation seeks to end the unwarranted tax breaks & subsidies which have been lavished on Big Oil over the last several years, at a time of record prices at the gas pump and record oil industry profits. Big Oil is hitting the American taxpayer not once, not twice, but three times. They are hitting them at the pump, they are hitting them through the Tax Code, and they are hitting them with royalty holidays put into oil in 1995 and again in 2005.

It is time to vote for the integrity of America's resources, to vote for the end of corporate welfare, to vote for a new era in the management of our public energy resources.

Opponents support voting NO because:

I am wearing this red shirt today, because this shirt is the color of the bill that we are debating, communist red. It is a taking. It will go to court, and it should be decided in court.

This bill will increase the competitive edge of foreign oil imported to this country. If the problem is foreign oil, why increase taxes and make it harder to produce American oil and gas? That makes no sense. We should insert taxes on all foreign oil imported. That would raise your money for renewable resources. But what we are doing here today is taxing our domestic oil. We are raising dollars supposedly for renewable resources, yet we are still burning fossil fuels.

Regulate wholesale electricity & gas prices.

The Problem

The Progressive Caucus Solution: Wholesale Cost-based Pricing with Refunds

The Progressive Caucus advocates:

• Implement wholesale cost-based pricing of electricity & natural gas to ensure consumers are not gouged. Require refunds when necessary.
• Grant FERC new powers to regulate heating oil prices at the wholesale level. Cost-based pricing of heating oil will ensure consumers are protected from heating oil price spikes.