Texas Insider

Senator Hutchison: “[Cap-and-Trade] is the worst possible bill for Texas and for America”

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Yesterday U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), Texas’ senior Senator, spoke with KTSA-AM’s Kevin Wall about her opposition to the cap-and-trade legislation that recently passed the House of Representatives and her concerns about health care reform. Excerpts from Senator Hutchison’s interview are below.

Senator Hutchison Speaks In Opposition To Obama-Pelosi Cap & Trade Legislation:

WALL: Let me just ask you, because we know the House bill on global warming, climate change, Speaker Pelosi’s energy tax, whatever you want to call it, it barely passed the House of Representatives, Senator James Inhofe today on Fox calls it “Dead on Arrival,” your thoughts on exactly what this bill is about?

SENATOR HUTCHISON: It is the worst possible bill for Texas and for America. It would tax the oil and gas industry to pay for the new forms of energy that we would all like to have but that are not going to produce sufficient energy in our country.  It is going to raise the cost of gasoline at the pump, it will raise the cost of our utilities, and it is not going to keep jobs in America. We estimate that Texas alone would lose 600,000 jobs from oil and gas companies moving their jobs overseas because it will be too expensive to do business in America. This is just outrageous, and we hope we can kill it in the Senate.

Senator Hutchison Rebuts Speaker Pelosi’s Assertion Regarding Jobs Created By Cap & Trade:

WALL: Again, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison joining us on our Newsmaker line. This is what Nancy Pelosi said on the house floor Friday:

SPEAKER PELOSI (AUDIOFILE): Just remember these four words for what this legislation means: Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, and Jobs. Let’s vote for jobs!

WALL: Senator, you’re saying that House Speaker Pelosi is dead wrong on this?

SENATOR HUTCHISON: I’m saying that the jobs are going to be overseas. They aren’t going to be jobs in America.  What you are going to see is a loss of jobs in America, because unlike oil and gas, any other business is able to write off their expenses-that’s part of free enterprise…

We will really be in an economic downturn if this goes through. Every family is going to face higher energy costs. I would rather try to do the things that we have already set up, which is to encourage exploration and production in our own country with American jobs; that’s what we ought to be doing. We ought to be trying to encourage nuclear power. We have three places in Texas right now that have applications in for nuclear power because three years ago Congress passed an incentive with loan guarantees. But now the Obama administration is trying to stop the loan guarantees, and that’s just not going to be helpful. 

Senator Hutchison Fights Democratic Healthcare Bill:

WALL: … We’re rushing health care, it’s urgent that we get climate control done, it’s urgent that we get Sotomayor up in front of the judiciary committee, what seems to be the rush, and does the rush that the Obama administration seems to have on all these issues, does that worry you, I mean, does it bother you?

SENATOR HUTCHISON: I’m very worried about this health care bill, not because we don’t need health care reform, but because it is trying to reform the wrong part. We need more access to health care to bring down the cost and have more people covered with insurance. But we don’t want to damage the quality of our health care, which is the best in the world.

That’s what this proposal is going to do. And I fear that the rush on health care reform and cap and trade is so that we can’t study it. We can’t ensure that we’re doing it right, and when you have this kind of impact on our economy, and the loss of jobs that it will create in both the health care industry and energy industry, I think you need to take the time to do it right rather than rushing through and twisting arms to get the votes.

That is what Speaker Pelosi had to do with the energy bill. She didn’t have the votes. The reason it came up so fast is because she started twisting member’s arms and really putting pressure on them – even some from Texas who were really forced if they wanted to keep their committee chairmanships or subcommittee chairmanships to vote against what they knew was best for Texas…I think that this will hurt our economy and our country for a very long time if we allow it to happen….