Tamar Hallerman
GHG Monitor
7/12/13
The House of Representatives approved this week its version of the Fiscal Year 2014 Energy and Water Appropriations Act, after a Democratic lawmaker was successful in amending the measure to move $20 million from the Department of Energy’s Fossil Energy R&D program to an Army Corps of Engineers construction account, reducing the funding available for the program to $430 million. Following two days of debates on the $30.4 billion measure, House Republicans had rebuffed half-a-dozen amendments aimed at moving funding from the FE R&D program to other clean energy priorities or deficit reduction. But late on July 10, House Democrats won one of their only amendment victories, when the House voted 217-206 in favor of an amendment from Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) that moved $20 million out of the FE account.
In a floor speech, Lynch said the money is needed to protect constituents in coastal communities like his district, south of Boston, that have recently experienced damaging storms further intensified by climate change. “It seems like we are having 100-year storms every three-or-four years now in my district, and I’m sure it’s like that in a lot of places across the country. I think it’s entirely appropriate that we balance this out, that we rebalance the priorities here … I think that most of us realize that the impacts of climate change are at least increasing the intensity of the storms that we’ve seen in recent years, and we need to provide the Army Corps of Engineers in our communities with the resources they need to protect against these natural disasters,” Lynch said.
The House passed the amendment over opposition from Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.), who argued that the budget for the FE R&D account should not be reduced below the amount set by the Subcommittee. “The bill already reduces funding for fossil energy by $84 million below the fiscal year 2013 level. That’s a 16 percent reduction,” he said in response to Lynch. “Research conducted within this program ensures we use our nation’s fossil fuel resources well and as cleanly as possible … We simply cannot take a further reduction to this account.”
GOP Rebuffs Other Amendments
Lynch’s amendment was the only victory for Democrats who aimed to move funding from FE R&D. House Republicans defeated amendments from Reps. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.), G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.) and Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) that would have reduced the FE account between $29 and $40 million and transferred the money to DOE’s Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and Advanced Projects Research Agency-Energy programs, or moved money to fund general deficit reduction, respectively. In a floor speech in support of her amendment, Speier said allocating funding to the FE R&D program was akin to “wasting” money in a time of budget cuts and fiscal restraint. “Budget challenges are forcing us to reexamine our investments. Adding $30 million beyond the President’s request to support fossil fuel research is a foolish waste of taxpayer dollars that are better used to invest in the future and paying off our deficit,” she said. “We simply cannot afford to spend taxpayer dollars on research the private sector can do better, and taxpayers should not be asked to provide additional support to an industry that consistently has record- breaking profits.” Frelinghuysen responded by saying that funding the program could help “prevent future high gas prices” and boost energy security. “To cut it further would be dangerous and counterproductive,” he said.
Some House Republicans had earlier joined with Democrats to defeat an amendment brought forward by Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) that would have zeroed out DOE’s FE R&D and Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy programs, as well as slashed substantially from the Department’s Nuclear Energy office, to put $1.5 billion toward deficit reduction. “If we’re serious about an all-of-the-above energy policy, we have got to stop using taxpayer money to pick winners and losers based on their political connections and, instead, require every energy company to compete on its own merits as decided by the customers it attracts by offering better products at lower cost and by the investors it attracts, as well,” McClintock said. “The actual research and development should be paid for by the companies that will profit from these long-promised breakthroughs. And if they’re not willing to finance them with their own money, we have no business forcing our constituents to finance them with theirs.”
That proposal saw criticism, though, from both Democrats and Republicans on the Appropriations Committee, who said the cuts were too draconian. “Fossil energy, whether people like it or not, provides 82 percent of our nation’s energy needs, and we need to find ways to refine and make it even more productive,” Frelinghuysen said. “It just doesn’t happen by magic that one moves a technology forward. Most businesses don’t have the interest or the funding to put into this basic research,” said Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), ranking member on the Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee.
With the amendments in place, the House bill now allocates $430 million for Fossil Energy R&D, $10 million above the President’s request, which cuts deeply into the CCS and Power Systems program, slashing budgets for the Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnerships, as well as Applied Energy and Cross-Cutting research programs in favor of boosting funding for Carbon Capture research and a new natural-gas capture inducement prize. The House version of the spending bill does not include funding for natural gas capture projects.
House Clears Bill on Party-Line Vote
The House ultimately passed the $30.4 billion Energy and Water measure late Wednesday on a party-line vote of 227-198. The bill was passed despite protests from the White House, which threatened to veto the measure. “The bill drastically underfunds critical investments that: develop American energy sources to build a clean and secure energy future; develop and commercialize the emerging technologies that create high-quality jobs and enhance the Nation’s economic competiveness; and improve resilience against current and ongoing climate impacts that threaten our economy, public health and natural resources,” the White House said in a statement of Administration policy released this week. “The bill would leave U.S. competitiveness at risk in new markets for clean energy industries such as advanced vehicles, advanced manufacturing, energy efficiency for homes and businesses, and domestic renewable energy such as wind, solar and biomass.”
The White House has issued a blanket veto threat of all 12 of the House’s spending bills since they fall under a top-line discretionary funding level of $967 billion. Democrats in the Senate are instead working under a $1.058 trillion spending cap for Fiscal Year 2014, the level agreed to by the President and Congressional Republicans during 2011 debt ceiling negotiations.
