WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) today delivered the following opening statement at an Environment and Public Works' (EPW) Clean Air and Nuclear Safety Subcommittee hearing entitled, “Climate Change: The Need to Act Now.” Witnesses for the hearing include Hon. William Ruckelshaus, strategic advisor for Madrona Venture Group and former administrator for U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); Hon. Christine Todd Whitman, president of The Whitman Strategy Group, former governor to the state of New Jersey, and former administrator to EPA; Hon. William Reilly, senior advisor for TPG Capital, chairman emeritus of the Climate Works Foundation, and former administrator for EPA; Hon. Lee Thomas, former administrator for EPA; Dr. Daniel Botkin, professor emeritus of biology at University of California in Santa Barbara; Hon. Luther Strange, attorney general of Alabama; and Joseph Mason, professor at Louisiana State University, and senior fellow at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

As prepared for delivery:

Thank you, Chairman Boxer, for holding this hearing today.  While I think it is important for us to conduct oversight of the ESPS rule, we need to be hearing from Gina McCarthy and Janet McCabe at EPA and from those who will be affected by the rule, which includes utilities, major manufacturers, and consumers.  We need the record to reflect the whole picture of this rule.  We also need to hear from the experts on electricity reliability, like FERC and NERC.  I’m disappointed those hearings haven’t yet been scheduled.

During his time in office, this President has pursued a systematic strategy of using the government to take over major sectors of the economy.  He started with Obamacare, nationalizing the healthcare system.  Then he went on to Dodd-Frank, making bank bailouts a permanent fixture in American society.

Now we have the first round of the global warming regulations, which will nationalize the electricity market and force Americans to live out the President’s Green Dream.

We do not have to look any farther than Obama’s model, Germany, to see where this path leads.

Starting in about the year 2000, Germany began implementing an aggressive alternative energy agenda where they hiked subsidies and set a goal of generating 35% of their electricity from renewables by 2020.  By 2050, this goal increases to 80%. 

In the course of doing this, the price of German retail electricity per kilowatt hour has doubled to levels that are 3 times higher than those here in the United States.

The Administration may claim that this is unlikely here in the United States because we have an abundance of cheap, domestically sourced natural gas.  And while that’s true, I’m not naïve enough to believe that the Administration will stop with coal. 

In fact, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz recently said that natural gas power plants will soon need carbon capture sequestration technology installed on them to comply with global warming rules.  This would put them out of business.

Ultimately, President Obama’s electricity takeover will force Americans to use less and less electricity at higher and higher prices.

The motivation for this agenda is clear: politics.

Tom Steyer is a California billionaire who has promised to pump up to $100 million into the midterm elections to help Senate Democrats get elected if they’ll help make global warming a national issue.

And they’re delivering.  We have already had two global warming slumber parties on the Senate floor, and now we have the President’s greenhouse gas regulations. 

But the reason guys like Tom Steyer have to go to such lengths to make this a political issue is because the American people don’t want anything to do with it.

Poll after poll show that the more Americans learn about the impact greenhouse gas regulations will have on the economy, the less they care.

Gallup, in a recent poll, showed that Americans rank global warming as the 14^th most important issue out of 15.  The most important issue?  The economy, and these rules will have a detrimental impact on the economy.

We know that previous versions of cap-and-trade are estimated to cost between $300 billion and $400 billion per year, which amounts to over $3,000 per family.

And this version is going to have a similar impact.  The Chamber of Commerce estimated that one final construct of the rule would cost $51 billion in lost GDP a year.  The Heritage Foundation estimated it would decrease household income by $1,200 per year.

These are the facts, but they’re not talking points we’ll hear from the other side because the last thing they want to talk about is the cost of the regulations, even though the evidence is so clear. 

I thank the witnesses for coming today and look forward to hearing your testimony.

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