On the recordMay 24, 2016
I believe with this new structure of this amendment we have now addressed the procedural issue around deficit reduction. We are now, again, with this amendment, seeking to reduce the fossil energy subsidies back to the level requested by the President and return the savings to our Federal coffers, namely, by not spending them in the first place. So, again, in previous amendments, we talked about spending some on renewable energy. In this case, it doesn't increase any of those lines. What it does do is simply decrease the subsidies to the fossil energy industry, including some of the research priorities we talked about, which private companies are welcome to pursue. But I don't want to go back to Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer in my district and say, guess what, your hard-earned tax money is going to subsidize these multi-billion dollar international corporations to do their research for them. This amendment would do that. It would then allow the savings to not be spent and to reduce our deficit. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
