[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 1] [House] [Pages 389-390] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]OPTIONS FOR STIMULATING THE U.S. ECONOMY THROUGH EFFICIENCY AND CLEAN ENERGY The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Yarmuth). Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader. Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I come to the House floor today to address the two issues that we have a chance to really move forward on, and that is the difficulties in our economy and the difficulties in our energy policy; and we think we have an opportunity, and I met this afternoon with a good number of my colleagues about how to do something about both, the slow-down in our economy and our need to rejuvenate our economy by adopting some new clean energy strategies for the country. We think this is an ideal opportunity for the House of Representatives to lead a short-term plan economically to help stimulate our economy, while at the same time directing our economy towards a clean energy future which can really grow jobs, millions of jobs in our country. What the group of my colleagues and I discussed is the hope that in our upcoming stimulus package, which is now under development, that our stimulus package can hew to the values set forth by Speaker Pelosi of being timely, targeted, and temporary. We think if we follow those three guidelines, we can do things to help our short-term clean energy revolution really take off in the United States. I have come to the floor to talk about that night, about some options that are available to us. We know that we want to make sure that our stimulus package is timely, that it in fact gets into the economy very quickly, because that is what we need. This is not something that can wait 5 years. We need to have a stimulus now. But we also need that stimulus to be targeted. This is not a moment where it would be wise for us to simply sort of spread butter across America very thinly in the hopes that somehow it will help the economy blossom. We need to target our strategies so that it will be really driving economic growth in the United States and, importantly, make sure that that economic growth takes place in the United States. It won't do us much good to just short of spread a thin layer of relief, because a lot of that would end up buying products from China, frankly. We want to look for targeted stimulus that will really help the growth in the American economy and create jobs in America. If we have a choice between two activities, one of which would be simply to allow buying retail products from China, and one which would really grow jobs in America, we should pick the latter. A group of my colleagues and myself want to make a proposal that will ensure that we target some of the stimulus into a clean energy future for America that really grows jobs in this country and doesn't simply buy retail products from China. So we are going to make a proposal that will suggest that we adopt some measures that in a very timely fashion can inject growth into the American economy this year and will ensure that we target that strategy to the development of clean energy jobs, and I want to talk about some of the things that can accomplish that in our stimulus package. The first thing that we will propose is a very down-to-Earth, extremely commonsense expansion of an existing program that helps low- income Americans weatherize their homes. We currently have a program that is working very well, very efficient, and extremely popular to help Americans put in insulation, fill in cracks, get energy-efficient windows, essentially just quit wasting heat that filters out through the cracks of our homes. That right now is a $250 million program to help Americans do that. We suggest we boost that by $100 million this year in a program that can immediately put people to work. We know we have people that are losing their jobs today because the home construction industry is slowing down, something I am familiar with. My oldest son is in the home construction industry, and he is doing okay in Washington State, but we know in other areas, particularly, they have had a real slow- down in the home construction industry. We can put those people that are being laid off back to work in the home weatherization industry, and we can do that today if we boost the funding in the home weatherization industry. If we do that, and we have checked with the Department and it can easily accommodate another $100 million right away so that we can get that work being done in the next several months. So we are proposing that we add $100 million. It sounds like a lot of money, but in the course of a 50 or $100 billion stimulus package, it is actually a very small amount of money. It can make a big difference for people to make their homes more weather efficient. They reduce their energy costs. At the same time, we are putting people back to work who are being laid of in the construction industry. This is really a golden opportunity for us. It's the first thing we'd propose. The second thing we'd like to propose is that we stop the hemorrhaging that is going on right now in the renewable energy industry. Now, we allowed, in a huge failure by our Congress, frankly, the lapse of some tax incentives which have created thousands of jobs in this country in the renewable energy industry. Those lapsed this past December, essentially. Any project that is not done this year would not be able to take advantage of them. We have projects right now that are just crying out for this tax relief as an incentive in the wind industry, in the solar energy industry, and several of the other renewable energy industries. Because those tax credits lapsed, and I just got off the phone this afternoon with a leader in the solar energy industry who told us we are already seeing a decline already in the number of orders for some of these renewable energy industry projects, and that is a terrible mistake at the very moment where we need to stimulate growth, and we know we need to do it in these advanced energy growth segments of our economy. So we would propose that we have a short-term, a 1-year extension of the production tax credit and the investment tax credit, which would allow these industries to again get on the growth track that they have been on with such great success. These industries are tremendously beneficial in creating jobs. They actually create twice as many jobs. For every $1 of economic growth, they create twice as many jobs. They are very, very labor intensive in growing these technologies. Now, it would be a terrible moment to allow us to go backwards in solar and wind and other associated technologies. The reason is we are just starting to lead the world in these technologies. Last Friday was the first commercial shipment of what we call thin cell photovoltaics by the Nano Solar Company in Palo Alto, California. Thin cell photovoltaics are extremely cost effective. It's a new type of photovoltaic cells. People are now familiar with the silicone-based cell. The thin cell photovoltaic cells, as its name suggests, it's thin, and it can be made with great cost advantages. The very first commercial sale in world history took place a week ago last Friday. So we hate to see these breakthroughs taking place and not see the possible expansion of their application. [[Page 390]] The very first permit for a wave power buoy, and we have buoys now that can generate electricity as they bob up and down in the waves, the very first permit off the Washington State coast was issued in the last two weeks to the Finavera Company, a company with offices in the Northwest. So at the moment we see these technologies, we'd hate to see a decline in the orders for these technologies taking place, which is now taking place because we allowed these production and investment tax credits to lapse. We should simply restore them and renew them for at least another year, short-term relief, and this is very timely if we do this, because if we do this, there's an immediate, an immediate demand by people when we know these tax credits will be available to go out and order these projects that get these jobs going, putting the pedal to the metal. You don't have to wait. The third thing we would propose is a renewal and partial extension of the solar tax credit for residential homes. That also expired, and it has been historically limited to $2,000. Frankly, it hasn't cut the mustard. It simply hasn't been enough to really get residential customers engaged to get going on ordering these products. If we simply renew that for 1 year, we recommend expanding it to $4,000 per consumer. If we do that, we are going to have an immediate burst of orders and at least continuation of the growth in orders in solar, as we have had historically. Fourth, we propose to essentially extend the otherwise lapsed consumer credit for solar for the same reasons that we just talked about. It just makes a lot of sense. Fifth, we'd suggest extending the expired energy efficient credit both for homes and commercial buildings. It makes no sense to have allowed these tax credits to expire. When they exist, they create this demand for the type of work we talked about in the weatherization program, only it's larger in its application, because this is not just low-income people. It's now the entire United States, folks who can take advantage of it. It creates a demand. It happens immediately, because once people know they are going to be able to have access to these tax credits, they can go out and make the orders right away to get this done. We also hope to propose a Green Fund proposal. Frankly, we are working on this right now to discuss how we can create ``green collar jobs'' in this country, and a ``green collar job'' proposal is something we think we ought to pursue. {time} 1615 We want to find a way to do that to make it timely. But as a package, these proposals as a package have the capacity to make sure that our stimulus package is targeted to something that is really going to get spent in America. Frankly, a lot of the other proposals out there are going to get spent buying retail products from China. You know, that is fair and Americans do that. But if we want to stimulate the economy, these proposals we have now proposed have the added advantage of spending money right here. This will happen immediately, and we know it works, because all of the things we have proposed have been tested. These are not avant-garde proposals. These are things we know that work because they have been in the field, we know the economic growth they have produced, we know they create jobs. The weatherization program is doing it today. The production investment tax credits for several years we know created great growth. The most rapidly growing part of the economy right now has been the wind turbine industry, and we hate to see that slow down, and the same can be said about the solar industry. So we simply want to continue apace the success we have had, and we are going to urge our colleagues to include at least a portion of our proposal in this package. We also want to note that we don't want to bust the bank on this. The proposals we have talked about, cumulatively, if this is a $100 billion stimulus package, this would be about 1 percent. We are proposing just maybe 1 percent of the package would include the provisions we have included. If it is $50 billion, it would be 2 percent. So the items we have suggested today are relatively modest portions of this package, but they are very important, because we are going to lose the momentum the United States is starting to develop as a world leader in clean technology. We have just started to gain that momentum. We don't want to give it up. It would be a shame to see these industries start to plateau just when they are on the growth curve of new technological development. That is not the American way. The American way is to innovate, to grow and have a confidence in our economy and our inventive talents. This is part and parcel of that, and in the spirit of the New Apollo Project, something I have been advocating for a long time, that we should have the same confidence that Kennedy had in the original Apollo project that took us to the moon, we ought to have the same confidence in a clean energy economy. I am not the only one talking about this. I was listening to Senator Clinton talk about this the other day in the Senate, about the need for an Apollo project. She has made some proposals about a stimulus package that are very similar to some of the ones we are proposing in the House. I think that is the right attitude we should have, because it is based on confidence. Her larger program for clean energy also tracks the New Apollo Project that I have proposed in the House that would really on a major league basis propose major investments in clean technology. She has proposed a major league weatherization program to weatherize 20 million homes, and that is the scale that we ought to be thinking about. She has proposed 55 mile per gallon standards for our cars, and a $50 billion pool of funds to be financed by transferring some of the tax benefits that have been given to the oil and gas industry and put it back into the clean energy industry and create a multi-billion dollar fund for the research to expand this technology. That is the type of thing we need. We appreciate that going on in the Senate, and we are going to continue to push these ideas in the House. But let's start on the stimulus package. It is one small step for man, maybe not quite a giant leap for mankind, but it is commonsense for Americans that we do this. I appreciate my colleagues working with me, Lloyd Doggett, who has been a long time leader on this, Tom Udall and others. We are going to push this ball. We hope we are successful. ____________________