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Climate Progress

GOP Lawmaker Laments [GOP-Led] ‘Congress Is Not a Reliable Partner’ To Cleantech

By Climate Guest Blogger on Feb 7, 2013 at 11:31 am

Rep. Steve King (R-IA)

by Stephen Lacey via GreenTechMedia

It’s nearly impossible to get Congress to agree on anything.

But at a clean energy policy forum today, two congressmen — one Republican and one Democrat — agreed on three things: renewable energy is necessary, government should help leverage private investment in the sector, and the upcoming congressional showdown over sequestration and the debt ceiling may seriously hurt what’s left of federal support.

“We’ve got to be a more reliable partner,” said Iowa Republican Congressman Steve King. “We do all of this [wind, solar, biofuels] and our country becomes more energy secure. […] It’s the right thing to do.”

King was speaking to a packed crowd of policymakers, renewable energy companies, and investors on Capitol Hill at the American Council on Renewable Energy’s yearly policy forum.

His comments come after a political fight over the production tax credit, which pitted conservative Republicans like Rep. King against their own party during an election year. King was one of a handful of Republicans representing states with high wind penetrations who stood firmly in support of the tax credit. He has also been a major proponent of keeping the renewable fuels standard in place, even as members of his own party seek to repeal that target as well.

His speech touched on the importance of federal clean energy policies — mostly on biofuels, but also on wind and solar — that weren’t nearly as controversial five years ago as they are today among conservatives in Congress.

“The central theme that I’d like to address here is that we want to attract risk capital. Wise investment money. There has to be a reliable partnership. [...] When you hear people on the other side say, ‘Just cut out all the subsides’ and ‘Free enterprise will sort it all,’ you think about all the money for M16s and bulletproof vests we spend [to get energy]. That’s a subsidy.”

But when talking to reporters in the hall after his speech, the Congressman didn’t have much good to say about Congress’ ability to ensure that reliability.

“Congress has a lot of important things to do and we aren’t very good at multi-tasking. We’re sitting here looking at sequestration, the debt ceiling and the national debt. [...] I don’t think it becomes less politicized.”

King’s Democratic colleague, Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, agreed wholeheartedly. The intensifying debate in Congress over automatic budget cuts and the country’s borrowing limit — commonly described as a “self-inflicted wound” — could end up hurting existing federal programs for clean energy.

“We’ve got some rocky moments ahead, most of them self-inflicted,” said Van Hollen in a speech. “The across-the-board cuts at the Department of Energy will hit ARPA-E, hit important efforts for renewable energy at EERE, and also have a negative impact on the 1603 [grant] program.”

Those cuts — part of $1 trillion in automatic spending reductions — will occur because of the 2011 Budget Control Act Congress passed in order to force an eventual deal on deficit reduction. However, because lawmakers haven’t yet agreed on a deficit reduction package, those cuts could happen after a self-imposed deadline of March 27.

Along with cuts to R&D programs and scaling back grants to companies that have already qualified, the “overall hit to the economy” of such a drastic measure will decrease demand for clean energy, said Van Hollen.

“In this era of divided government, it’s going to be hard to deal with these issues. But that doesn’t mean we can’t look longer-term. And I would encourage you all not to give up. If we stop talking about it, we’re never going to get it,” said Van Hollen, ending his otherwise gloomy speech on the state of congressional politics.

– Stephen Lacey is a senior editor at GreenTechMedia.  This was reprinted with permission.

Related CP Posts:

Health

House Republicans Can’t Find Any Co-Sponsors For Their Latest Obamacare Repeal Bills

By Sy Mukherjee on Jan 15, 2013 at 1:50 pm

Earlier this month, Tea Party darling Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) admitted that his plan to introduce yet another Obamacare repeal bill would be unlikely to pass in the wake of President Obama’s decisive re-election. As it turns out, that was an understatement.

In a sign that the GOP’s anti-Obamacare fervor may finally be giving way to political reality, Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-MN) latest Obamacare repeal bill doesn’t have a single co-sponsor in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. Bachmann made introducing the repeal bill her first order of business for the 113th Congress, even as millions of Americans waited for House Republicans to act on a disaster relief package in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.

And two other anti-Obamacare bills — one to repeal the law’s individual insurance mandate and another introduced by Rep. Steve King (R-IA) to repeal the whole law — also do not have any co-sponsors. By contrast, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s (R-VA) so-called “Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act” had a total of 182 cosponsors by the fourth day of the 112th Congress, and House Republicans successfully voted to repeal Obamacare a staggering 33 times during the last session — costing taxpayers an approximate $50 million. Public support for repealing the reform law has plunged to an all-time low as Americans begin experiencing its positive effects.

But the latest repeal efforts’ lack of co-sponsors should by no means be taken as a sign that Republicans will embrace health reform altogether. House Republicans can still try to obstruct Obamacare’s implementation by putting the law’s funding mechanisms on the chopping block and attempting to repeal measures such as the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). In fact, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) recently advocated for doing exactly that in an editorial for his hometown paper, and former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) went as far as to suggest “civil disobedience” and breaking the law in order to stymie Obamacare.

Still, the full Obamacare repeal effort’s newfound loneliness in the House is a powerful demonstration of the difference an election can make.

Economy

Fox News Host Fed Up With GOP Refusal To Offer Specific Debt Ceiling Plan

By Igor Volsky on Jan 15, 2013 at 10:10 am

Tea Party Congressman Steve King (R-IA) appeared on Fox News Tuesday morning to argue in favor of shutting down the federal government and breaching the debt ceiling if President Obama does not agree to drastic spending reductions. “We can start shutting down the appropriations. We can dig in,” King explained. “We must have cuts to go along with any debt increase. They must be substantial. There must be a line.”

But when pressed for specific spending cuts the GOP could support by host Martha MacCallum, King demurred, arguing that any details Republicans offer would simply be attacked as political fodder:

MACCALLUM: I guess what I’m asking for is in terms of a plan, I mean, are you going to put forth something that says, we, the House Republicans believe that this program should be cut, this agency should be cut, these are the spending cuts that we would outline in order to offset the increase in the debt ceiling? We believe that there needs to be cuts and these are what they would be? Are you going to do that?

KING: You know Martha, we’re going to get together this weekend and we’re gona crunch all that out. So I don’t want to presume that there is consensus there I might adhere to. [...]

MACCALLUM: You need to sell that idea to the American people with specifics and with a plan and say we’re the House GOP. Here’s what we would do. Here are the programs we would cut in order to reach parity over the next five years. We may never get this, but we want the American people to understand what we stand for. Is that something we can expect?

KING: Well, Martha, I take your point that we need to sell it with specifics. But you also understand as soon as a specific is put out there, it is attacked by the spending piranhas on the other side.

Watch it:

King’s approach mirrors the tactic of the Republican leadership, which refused to offer spending specifics throughout the debate over the so-called “fiscal cliff,” instead demanding that Democrats detail reductions the GOP might agree to.

Republicans point to the Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) budget as evidence of the cuts they’ve proposed, but that document is not an appropriations bill that specifies where the cuts will come from.

Justice

Obama Administration To Seek Citizenship Pathway For Immigrants

By Sy Mukherjee on Jan 13, 2013 at 12:53 pm

According to the New York Times, the Obama Administration will not back down on its calls for comprehensive immigration reform that addresses all aspects of the issue, including provisions for high-skilled workers, students, and a pathway to citizenship for immigrants who achieve legal status.

Bucking GOP calls for a piecemeal approach on the issue, the administration will insist on a holistic solution that includes the promise of citizenship in conjunction with punitive measures against undocumented immigrants, according to administration officials:

The president and Democrats will also oppose measures that do not allow immigrants who gain legal status to become American citizens one day, the officials said. [...]

Mr. Obama is expected to lay out his plan in the coming weeks, perhaps in his State of the Union address early next month, administration officials said. The White House will argue that its solution for illegal immigrants is not an amnesty, as many critics insist, because it would include fines, the payment of back taxes and other hurdles for illegal immigrants who would obtain legal status, the officials said.

The president’s plan would also impose nationwide verification of legal status for all newly hired workers; add visas to relieve backlogs and allow highly skilled immigrants to stay; and create some form of guest-worker program to bring in low-wage immigrants in the future.

Since President Obama won his decisive re-election with a staggering 75 percent of the Latino vote, conservatives have been undergoing a collective epiphany on the status of their relationship with the Latino community. Influential Republicans such as Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Colin Powell have called out the contemporary GOP on its borderline xenophobia and asserted that, barring significant changes, it will not be able to attract support from one of America’s fastest-growing demographics.

Still, that hasn’t stopped some Republicans — such as Rep. Steve King (R-IA) — from pursuing extremist policies such as an unconstitutional ban on birthright citizenship.

Security

Steve King: I Don’t Know What Happened In Benghazi But It’s Worse Than Watergate

By Hamed Aleaziz on Dec 13, 2012 at 11:45 am

Rep. Steve King (R-IA)

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) has no idea what happened in Benghazi but he does know that it’s worse than Watergate and the Iran-Contra scandal times 10. Here’s King from a Washington Times article published on Wednesday:

“I believe that it’s a lot bigger than Watergate, and if you link Watergate and Iran-Contra together and multiply it times maybe 10 or so, you’re going to get in the zone where Benghazi is,” Mr. King said. “I don’t think the public has any idea, and I tell you, I don’t either, of the chronology of the events — what took place, and who was where doing what and why. And all the way down through — we still haven’t seen an autopsy report on the ambassador yet. Simple questions that you would ask in the first 24 hours have not been asked yet.”

Of course, mainstream media outlets have extensively reported emerging details about the assault, many of which have undercut Repubican attempts to create a faux-scandal out of the events, over the past three months.

And perhaps King should consult ThinkProgress’ comprehensive timeline on Benghazi to get the details on what is publicly known about the attacks and their aftermath.

Politics

Steve King: Democrats Will Win Over Hispanics By Giving Them ‘A Great Big Check’

By Jeff Spross on Nov 29, 2012 at 8:12 pm

Rep. Steve King (R-IA)

Since President Obama’s re-election and Mitt Romney’s poor performance among Hispanic voters, a number of prominent conservative lawmakers and commentators have come out in favor of immigration reform. But Rep. Steve King (R-IA) appears to have not gotten the memo, if his first comments on immigration since the election are any indication.

Echoing Mitt Romney’s now-infamous complaint that Obama won by handing out “gifts” to women and minorities, King told radio host Janet Mefferd yesterday that Republicans should not fixate on winning back the Hispanic vote because Democrats can always counter offer with “a great big check.” Right Wing Watch and Huffington Post’s Nick Wing picked up the exchange:

JANET MEFFERD: How in the world do you out-left the left anyway? If we go to the left on amnesty, do you think the Democrats are going to sit still and just go ‘oh I guess that they’re more caring than we are’? It’s a zero-sum game. I don’t know how in the world the Republicans expect to get votes when the Democrats are already farther along than we are.

STEVE KING: There’s no possible way. Whatever we might say we are going to do, reduce the enforcement of the rule of law, waive the rule of law, Democrats will find a way to hand deliver citizenship papers along with a great big check from money borrowed from the Chinese.

King has already amassed quite the record of derogatory comments towards hispanic immigrants, suggesting failure to pass voter ID laws would “turn this country” over to undocumented immigrants, and once analogizing immigrants to birddogs — then later claiming the latter was a compliment. King has also threatened to sue President Obama for his executive policy forgoing deportation for the 1.4 million young immigrants who would be eligible for the DREAM Act.

King closed out the discussion of the Republicans’ relation to Hispanics by lamenting that “the election really was about expanding the dependency class in america. More americans voted fore dependency, less voted for personal responsibility. And you don’t beat Santa Clause with amnesty.”

LGBT

Rep. Steve King Admits Marriage Equality Is Here To Stay

By Zack Ford on Nov 9, 2012 at 11:45 am

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) is staunch opponent of LGBT equality. He has proposed bills preventing military chaplains from performing same-sex marriage ceremonies and he believes private business owners should be able to discriminate against LGBT employees. In an interview airing tonight on Iowa Public Television, however, he admits that he is no longer optimistic that his side will win — conceding that same-sex marriage is now the law of the land:

KING: That’s, I think, the kind of prediction that we can expect from looking at these results around the country. Here in Iowa, there’s not going to be a vote on it that I can see and if that’s the case and another two years go by, I would never say never…but it doesn’t look very optimistic for people who believe in traditional marriage as I do.

King also isn’t sure that the Supreme Court will uphold the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act:

KING: Justice Roberts has delivered us a decision on ObamaCare that will forever cause us to wonder and speculate as to how he might come down, and he right now is the swing vote on the Supreme Court.

His perspective on the Court seems to be limited to just the ObamaCare case, because most advocates expect that Justice Anthony Kennedy, who has ruled for gay rights in the past, is the most hopeful swing vote against DOMA, as the Baltimore Sun noted this week.

Diminishing opposition is just as important to progress as increasing victory, but it remains to be seen if King will continue to use his power in Congress to push for more discrimination against the LGBT community.

Election

Steve King: Obama’s Response To Libya Attack Is ‘Worse Than Watergate’

By Igor Volsky on Nov 3, 2012 at 11:56 am

Republicans and conservative media outlets like Fox News began blaming the Obama administration for “covering up” the events that led to the deaths of four Americans in Libya just moments after the raid on the U.S. consulate on September 11th. But even as their various accusations and conspiracies have fallen to close scrutiny, the GOP is still making Obama out to be the next Richard Nixon.

“Benghazi is a far worse situation than Watergate,” Rep. Steve King (R-IA) said during an event earlier this week. “I have more questions than I have answers about that one. Who told the Seals to ‘stand down’? We will hold hearings. We will get answers. This is disgraceful. But if Obama is re-elected, it’s going to take longer to get facts about this than it has to get facts on the Fast and Furious.”

An investigation into Fast and Furios — a gun trafficking operation gone wrong — criticized federal officials, but “exonerated Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., whom many Republicans have blamed for the scandal.”

Election

GOP Congressman Warns Of Hurricane Sandy Relief Aid Going Towards ‘Gucci Bags’

By Adam Peck on Oct 31, 2012 at 9:13 am

Rep. Steve King (R-IA), the tea party darling with a history of anti-minority rhetoric, responded to a question about disaster relief for the estimated 10 million victims of Hurricane Sandy by suggesting that any federal money be carefully disbursed to ensure none of it is spent on “Gucci bags and massage parlors.”

The comment, first flagged by The Huffington Post, came during a debate with his Democratic opponent Christie Vilsack on Tuesday night, as New York City, New Jersey and other communities along the East Coast struggled to put out devastating fires, remove boats and trees from train tracks and rescue hundreds of critical care patients from hospitals that lost power. Radio Iowa provided some context for the remark:

When Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast in 2005, King voted to immediately send $10.5 billion to the disaster zone, but King balked at a second installment of nearly $52 billion for things like temporary trailer homes and preparing for future disasters.

“Can you imagine in the middle of a disaster to ask for appropriations for mitigating future disasters?” King says. “That’s why I said no on that second round of appropriations for Katrina…because they spent it on Gucci bags and massage parlors and everything you can think of — in addition to what was necessary.”

King was one of just 11 congresspeople to vote against the second round of funding for the city of New Orleans. Early estimates of the damage caused by the storm are as high as $20 billion, and as much as half of that figure may not be covered by insurance companies, leaving states, local municipalities and the federal government responsible for a significant percentage of the cleanup costs.

Since the tea party swept into Congress in 2010, Republicans have repeatedly attempted to block federal disaster aid unless Democrats agree to spending cuts elsewhere in the federal budget. And Rep. King defended his vote against Katrina relief, calling it one of his proudest votes in Congress.

Vilsack responded to King’s comment, calling it “heartless.”

You can listen to the full debate here.

Election

GOP Congressman Relied On Millions In Government Contracts To Build His Company

By Aviva Shen on Oct 23, 2012 at 5:32 pm

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) has enthusiastically embraced the Romney campaign myth that Obama attributes businesses’ success to government, exemplified by the RNC slogan “We Built It.” When it comes to his own construction business, however, it seems that King did not in fact build it. Salon reports that the construction company King prides himself on building “up from one bulldozer” was in fact sustained by more than $1.66 million in government contracts between 1994 and 2011:

But, as King now acknowledges, government contracts were a key part of his business going back some time. In 1987, he sued a client who had not paid him. An affidavit King filed includes a letter the future congressman sent to a customer in 1985 requesting payment. Explaining his urgency, King wrote at the time, “as you are aware, we are in a very depressed farm economy and my only other market for my works is contract work from various government agencies.”

Documents show that King’s company worked regularly for various local governments throughout the 1990s and 2000s. In 1994, he demolished a firehouse for the City of Odebolt for $15,500. In 1998, he took about $82,000 from the same city for a memorial walk. In 2002, the company made $64,000 from Crawford County to stabilize a building, followed a few months later by a $141,000 contract with the City of Battle Creek for wastewater treatment improvements.

The next year, King was elected to Congress and his son took over the company, taking in at least 10 other municipal contracts through 2011 worth up to $200,000 each for everything from road construction to water treatment improvements. Altogether, from the firehouse demolition in 1994 to through a grading job for a local utility last year, King Construction made at least $1,665,000 in government contracts.

When asked about his company and its substantial government assistance, King told Salon, “I built it. I built it on low-bid — both private and public — contracts. I created jobs and saved the taxpayers money on every road I built.”

King is just the latest Republican whose anti-government rhetoric is tripped up by a personal experience of how important government assistance can be to business owners. Even vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) family business relied on government contracts, while almost every small business featured by the Romney campaign has had some financial help from the government.

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