[Pages S2905-S2906]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                         Budget Reconciliation

  Mr. President, now, let me talk to the broader issue, the Republican 
bill that just came out of committee on the House side.
  What is happening with Equinor is, frankly, part of a larger pattern 
of clean energy destruction--clean energy destruction--from Donald 
Trump and Republicans.
  Before our very eyes, Republicans want to kill American clean energy 
in its tracks. They want to use their so-called ``one big, beautiful 
bill'' to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act.
  Most of all, they want to cut taxes for the ultrarich and big 
corporations and make Americans pay for it with higher energy costs by 
rendering unusable wind and solar tax breaks that were put into the 
legislation in the IRA.
  What will the American people need to know? Republicans are raising 
taxes on Americans' electricity. One independent study--it is raising 
costs on Americans' electricity as well.
  One independent study shows families and businesses will see their 
electricity bills go up by 10 percent as soon as next year. Hear that 
America? This ideological craziness that we shouldn't have wind and 
solar--some people don't think--there are some, I guess, who feel we 
shouldn't have coal, oil, and natural gas.
  But actually, if we are going to meet America's energy needs, we need 
clean energy. It is the only way to go, even if you are for natural gas 
and oil to be used, even though those are far less efficient and 
productive than solar and wind energy.
  But to do this, to meet the ideological thirst to shut this process 
down--to shut clean energy down--they are going to raise your electric 
bills, Mr. and Mrs. America--all Americans--as much as 10 percent by 
next year.
  States like Kansas, Missouri, and South Carolina could see prices 
rise by 15 percent. Wyoming--I saw my friend from Wyoming in the back 
there--could see nearly a 30-percent increase in energy costs, hundreds 
of dollars a year extra for families and businesses, for a family or 
small business already dealing with inflation and a trade war. An extra 
10 percent in costs could mean the difference between staying open and 
shutting down.
  If Republicans repeal the IRA, a generation of American manufacturing 
jobs will also be at immediate risk, most of them in red States, 
although, they will be in red States and blue Sates alike.
  The IRA has already spurred more than $270 billion in clean energy 
investment, and that is in addition to the $100 billion in domestic 
manufacturing to build these projects right here at home.
  All of this will be shut down if the House Republican bill passes the 
House and passes the Senate and is signed into law.
  Here is something for my Republican colleagues to think about: Nine 
of the ten top congressional districts receiving manufacturing 
investment from the IRA are Republican districts. Those investments are 
over $5 billion each.
  For a party that claims to be pro-business, what they are doing with 
Ecuador is so anti-business and so disruptive of business decision-
making, and what they are doing here is just the same--just the same.
  The restrictions they have put in the bill are such that if a 
project, as I understand it--if a project is not completed by 2028, it 
loses all its credits, which means project after project after 
project--clean energy projects for wind and solar and others--will be 
shut down.
  So I have a message for the House Republicans in the Ways and Means 
Committee who just passed the bill on a strict party-line vote: To 
approve these cuts is to approve a death sentence for energy and 
manufacturing jobs for your communities.
  These investments include a $700 million battery manufacturing plant 
in Fort Worth, TX; the more than $5 million in battery manufacturing at 
new and existing facilities in Fayette County, OH; or multiple solar 
manufacturing facilities in the Phoenix metro area of Arizona.
  Mark my words, if Republicans gut the IRA, it would be a gift to the 
Chinese Communist Party. Jobs that should belong in America will go to 
cities like Chengdu, China, because China is not cutting back on clean 
energy. No way. They are going to get way ahead of us on this industry 
like they did on electric cars, and Americans will pay the price in 
higher energy costs, in fewer jobs, and in losing the leadership on 
another industry to China.
  But this one didn't have to happen. The IRA did a great job getting 
America moving and ahead of China, and now they are taking it away.
  So putting it all together, the Republican bill, what does it mean 
for the middle class: higher electricity bills, hundreds of thousands 
of good-paying jobs erased around the country, rising insurance 
premiums, particularly in States by the water--Florida, Texas, 
Mississippi, South Carolina. Their insurance premiums are going up now 
because we don't have enough clean energy, and there is too much 
climate change with tornados and hurricanes and floods and, Lord, what 
else.
  So insurers, they don't want to insure anymore. They want to insure 
at such high prices that people can't sell their homes in those States 
and across the country. And people--young people--want to buy a home 
but can't because the insurance is too high, and it is too high because 
we don't have enough clean energy. And they are cutting it off.
  So these are all terrible prices to pay just to lower taxes for the 
ultrarich, just to satisfy the ideological thirst of oil and gas and 
coal barons who hate clean energy because they know it is the future, 
and they know they are not the future.
  The broken Republican agenda is a political loser. Americans are 
learning that, whether it is on Social Security or Medicare or Medicaid 
or veterans' benefits or housing, and certainly it is here on clean 
energy, which has the broad support of the American people, Democrat 
and Republican alike.
  So the warning signs, my Republican friends, are flashing. Last 
night, in Omaha, NE, the 3-term Republican mayor was voted out of 
office. The Washington Post described how ``disquiet over Trump's 
agenda produced a surge of Democratic energy.''
  So the three-term Republican mayor lost to a Democratic candidate. 
People

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don't like what Republicans are doing. It is energizing people, not 
just Democrats but people across the board, to participate in more and 
more elections of all kinds.
  And here in Congress, Republicans are pushing forward on an agenda 
that will make their political fortunes all the more obvious.