I would also like to thank our DOE witnesses, Assistant Secretary Daniel Simmons and Mr. James Campos, for appearing before us today. Daniel actually testified at our last Subcommittee hearing, so we welcome him back for another round of questioning.
Before I get into the substance of the eight bills before us today, I need to make a point about regular order and process. As yet another week goes by without a single substantive legislative accomplishment, the Democrats are still struggling with the basic principle of regular order.
We are familiar with three of the bills before us today from last Congress, and they are bipartisan. The rest of these bills have been jammed through without regular order. In fact, some of them were just introduced on Monday so they could be squeezed into this hearing.
There was no technical assistance sought from the Department of Energy. There were no Republicans included in the drafting process at all. This is not regular order, and it is certainly not a process that Democrats should be proud of.
The estimated price tag for all eight bills is a staggering $26 billion dollars. This includes more than $500 million for a green collar jobs training program; $15 million for a new energy and water efficiency pilot program; $500 million for energy efficient public buildings; $1.75 billion for the weatherization assistance program; $1.25 billion for a new home energy savings retrofit rebate program; and, last but not least, an astounding $21 billion for energy efficiency block grants.
Mr. Chairman, we owe it to our constituents and to consumers across the country to give this a more serious effort. Rather than rushing to authorize tens of billions of dollars in additional spending, we should have real oversight hearings to better understand the needs, and to discover if there are gaps that require Congress to provide DOE with additional statutory authorities. With all of these new grant programs for efficiency, we have no idea if they are actually necessary or even if they are duplicative of other existing programs.
Since several of these bills provide grants to state and local governments, Member of the Subcommittee should hear from them directly to identify gaps and see how the federal government can better support their efforts on energy efficiency and workforce development. And since several of these bills revive expired programs, we should gather lessons-learned from past experiences, before determining whether the programs should be reauthorized, and if so, how much we should spend.
Unfortunately, at the rate we are going, we are not going to get the opportunity to explore these issues more deeply. As a result, we are going to have partisan bills that pick winners and losers and reward special interests over consumers. Worse yet, we are going to repeat the mistakes of the past by doubling down on failed efforts from President Obama’s Green Jobs program.
Republicans are focused on solutions to encourage energy efficiency and workforce development. We should not be wasting our time reviving old, expired efficiency programs - some of which have not received funding in years.
We are ready to get to work when the Democrats are willing to reach across the aisle and make a serious effort. I am disappointed that we’re starting off this way, but I continue to remain hopeful that we can get back on track.
With that, thank you for holding this hearing, and I yield back the balance of my time.
