Huffman at Budget Hearing: Shouldn't We Be Discussing the Budget?

June 27, 2013

WASHINGTON­—Congressman Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) slammed the House Budget Committee leadership for wasting time while refusing to take the necessary steps to move forward on a long-overdue federal budget resolution.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi today appointed Huffman and all other Democrats on the Budget Committee to serve on a conference committee to negotiate a budget compromise between the House and Senate, but Speaker John Boehner has refused to appoint Republican conferees. Meanwhile, the Budget Committee held a hearing on “America’s Energy Revolution,” which Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan admitted in his opening statement “isn’t a big part of the federal budget.”

“We continue to have these pep rallies for the oil and gas industry while real problems are simply, for some reason, off the table. We don’t even have a conference committee so we can move forward and try to negotiate a federal budget, but we’re here to have a pep rally for the oil and gas industry,” Congressman Huffman said at the hearing. “We’ve got student loan interest rates about to double in less than a week, but we’re not talking about that. We’re not talking about any number of things, like the sequester and the people that are actually suffering. We’re here to talk about folks who are experiencing record profits. There are real problems that we need to be solving, and we need to be working together.”

Footage of Congressman Huffman’s statement may be found HERE.

 

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A transcript of Congressman Huffman’s statement may be found below:

Congressman Huffman: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have waited around here not because I have any searing, probative questions of the witnesses, but rather to express a little bit of dismay as a freshman member of Congress, and of this committee.

The testimony that we’ve heard, the statements that we’ve heard today, are very familiar to me. In fact, it’s déjà-vu over and over and over again, because I’m also a member of the Natural Resources Committee, and we have seen this theater in hearing after hearing in that committee, where witnesses from the oil and gas industry are brought in, and —in the face of all sorts of irrefutable fact — they talk about how there are all these problems with this administration’s energy policy that are holding back growth.

When we actually look at the facts, and hear from people like CRS that have used the right baselines and benchmarks, we know irrefutably that production is up, that times, frankly, in this industry, have never been better, profits are up. We are on the verge of becoming an energy net-exporter for the first time in a generation because of the policies that we’ve had in place under this administration. And yet we continue to have these pep rallies for the oil and gas industry, while real problems are simply, for some reason, off the table. We don’t even have a conference committee so we can move forward and try to negotiate a federal budget, but we’re here to have a pep rally for the oil and gas industry, who is experiencing record profits.

We’ve got student loan interest rates about to double in less than a week, but we’re not talking about that and the overhang of that rising student loan indebtedness on our economy. We’re talking about something  —the public leases that might be made available — that would have a tangential, at best, effect on our economy, because we already have all sorts of public leases that are not even being used under the policies of this administration. We’re not talking about any number of things, like the sequester, and the people that are actually suffering. We’re here to talk about folks who are experiencing record profits.

So I guess I just want to express dismay, as a Member of Congress who would like to see this body solving problems, instead of rehashing these types of pep rallies for highly profitable industries that we’ve seen in the Natural Resources Committee. We’ll go on this week to have a similar experience with a bill to expand oil and gas drilling off our coast and the Arctic that has no chance of becoming law. And in the face of all that theater, there are real problems that we need to be solving, and we need to be working together.

And I just want to express my hope that the next time we come together, we might be able to talk about something like the budget. We might be able to have conferees that actually go to work on getting things done. We might be able to talk about solutions to the student loan indebtedness problem, or maybe even the real costs that some of our failed energy policies are foisting on the federal government, such as the fact that we’re experiencing more severe weather incidents that have costs of greater than a billion dollars than ever before, and the federal share of picking up the tab for that is rising very dramatically. We don’t seem to ever talk about things like that.

So, I would invite any of the witnesses who perhaps want to speak about the cost of a failed climate policy and an energy policy that has swung too far in the direction of carbon emissions and fossil fuels.

Mr. Weiss: Thank you, Mr. Huffman. In the last two years, the United States has experienced twenty-five  extreme weather events that each cost at least $1 billion worth of damages, for a total price tag of $188 billion, and that also includes 1100 fatalities. During this time, the fed spent $136 billion in disaster relief and recovery. Meanwhile, we spend only 22 billion or about 1 dollar for every 6 for recovery, to help make communities more secure from future extreme weather events. So, it has a huge impact, both on our economy, and on the federal budget.

Congressman Huffman: Thank you, I yield back.

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