E-mail a friendRep. Henry Waxman
airdate April 13, 2009
Rep. Henry Waxman has represented California since ‘75. In January, he became chair of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, which has oversight of various functions, including energy policy, consumer protection and interstate and foreign commerce. A longtime champion of environmental and public health protection, Waxman introduced the first bill in Congress (in '92) to stabilize the climate. Prior to his election to Congress, the Los Angeles native served three terms in the California State Assembly.
House Energy & Commerce Committee chair describes how the U.S. can provide jobs while working towards energy independence. (2:34)
Full interview. (14:19)
Rep. Henry Waxman
Tavis: Congressman Henry Waxman is the chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and in that new role is working on a new clean energy bill, a bill he hopes will create jobs and increase U.S. energy independence, that is. As Congress is now on their Easter recess, he is actually here at home in L.A. Congressman, nice to have you on the program again.
Rep. Henry Waxman: Thank you, good to be home.
Tavis: Let me go right at this and make the most of my time. How do we do these two things simultaneously - that is, provide jobs for the economy and energy independence?
Waxman: The way we have to do it is to change and transform our economy by moving to a low carbon emission economy. For example, we've got to be more efficient in the use of energy; we've got to use more renewable fuels; we've got to invest in technologies that will allow us to reduce or eliminate the sulfur in something like coal, which is a heavily polluted source of energy.
We've got to do all of these, and one of the best ways to accomplish the overall goal is through what's called a cap-and-trade mechanism. We unleash the competition and the entrepreneurial spirit of Americans to develop technologies and try to figure out how to accomplish the goal, especially when there's a cap on the total amount of pollution that will be going down over the years.
I think this will transform our economy. We won't have to import so much gasoline and oil from a lot of countries that certainly don't look out for our interests, and it will do something about the dangers of global warming, which scientists are telling us is getting out of control and we've got to act now or we're going to have irreversible damage.
Tavis: A few follow-ups on what you've just said now. In no particular order, number one, if part of the solution is, to your point, American innovation, what's making Americans more innovative now than we have been in the past where this issue is concerned, since you're banking on American innovation?
Waxman: Well, I think we're going to be a lot more innovative when we put the profit motive - the market mechanisms in place that will give a very clear incentive. If we raise the price of energy, which will happen if we're reducing the amount of carbon emissions, and industries have to figure out how to live in a carbon-constrained environment, they are going to have to figure it out because it's in their profitable interest to figure it out.
If we can do these things in a coordinated way, a lot of the businesspeople want it because it will give them certainty for their investments for the future and it will also show them a way to make money accomplishing the good goal of reducing the carbon pollution in the air.
Tavis: How do you move toward a carbon - to use your phrase here again, Congressman - how do you move towards a carbon-strained environment when you have an economically strained environment? Can you do those two things?
Waxman: I think we can. For example, if we give an incentive for electric cars, we're reducing the amount of oil that needs to be gasoline, that needs to be put in those cars. That could be plugged in. When we look at the utilities that we use for electricity, that electricity doesn't have to be coal-burned electricity, it could be used with renewables - renewable fuels, solar energy, wind energy, and there are a lot of other sources that we need to diversify.
At the same time, while we're using a lot of coal, because coal is a domestic resource; we don't import it, we've got it here. But it's so polluting when we burn it that we've got to figure out a way to sequester the carbon and bury it. And there's a lot of effort going on in that area right now. We need to give more money to that effort in order for it to succeed.
We're not expecting to have that done overnight. We're going to have to give a transition period to protect the rate payers, to protect the industries from any kind of dislocation. But while we're doing this, I think we transform the economy into millions of new jobs that will help us recover from the recession or depression that we're in now, but also make us more independent in terms of our national security and reduce the environmental threat.
Tavis: I want to come back to those jobs, those millions of jobs that you're banking on in just a moment and ask about that specifically. Before I do, though - and don't laugh when I ask this question, because given your point of view on this issue I know that you will find this laughable while at the same time you also know it's real, and that is this: That when we talk about global warming there are still folk in this country who debate whether or not that's a real issue, whether or not it's manmade or created some other way or caused by some other sources and forces, I might put it that way.
But there is this debate, however you break it down, about whether or not there really is global warming, and there are people who scoff at Al Gore and others who make that case, and you all the time, for making that case. Talk to me about where we are in that debate on the science, because there is this tension around this.
Waxman: Well, there have been scientists brought together to see if they could figure out the science and make it clear whether this is a danger or not, whether it's a danger that's a great one or one that we can postpone for a while, and the overwhelming consensus of all the leading scientists that have looked at this issue is there is a warming of the planet, it's manmade, caused by our burning of carbon fuels, and it's happening faster than anybody ever thought it would happen.
We're seeing the reality of a lot of the North Pole starting to evaporate, and we could get to a tipping point. Because if it evaporates to a certain point - they have lanes now where ships can go that couldn't ever sail through before. And if it gets to a point where it evaporates too much, there's a lot of tundra that's being held down by that ice cap.
If that gets released we'll have more carbon emissions and methane gas in our atmosphere than we have now. We see a lot of destruction happening because of global warming, climate change problems, so we've got enough warning signals and enough of a scientific consensus to take this seriously.
Tavis: Back to those jobs you talked about. I bring in now your own personal history in this city because you know this part of the city well. You were born and raised in Watts; you represent the wealthiest, most affluent part of the city, the west side, now in Congress for many years now. But you were born and raised in Watts so you know what the inner city is all about - that's where you come from.
I raise that, Congressman, because I want to ask how it is that you, as the chairman of this powerful committee, can ensure that these jobs get to the people who need them. You know as well as I do when we talk about the environment in this country, most often it's a conversation of White folk, to be frank about it.
How do we go about greening the ghetto first? It's the people at the bottom who need these jobs. How do we ensure that these jobs to turn around the environment and turn around the economy go to the people in communities of color who could use these jobs and do the work that needs to be done, quite frankly?
Waxman: Well, there are a lot of different levels of activity that we're going to generate for jobs. In order to become more efficient in our use of energy we're going to have to do a lot of remodeling of houses and use global panels and provide greater insulation. A lot of construction work.
We're able to get billions of dollars in the stimulus bill that President Obama had pushed for and succeeded in getting through to provide jobs and an investment in our energy future. So we're going to get jobs for moving toward a more efficient use of energy, we're going to get more jobs in terms of the new technologies that we're going to have.
Just the construction - we see jobs in the automobile industry evaporating now. Well, those are jobs that have been the mainstay of a lot of working people, White and Black and Hispanic and otherwise. We need those kinds of jobs to build cars that are going to be meeting the standards for the future.
We need jobs to develop the batteries. A lot of these things are being done in China. Well, we don't want it done in China if we could be building the infrastructure for these kinds of activities right here in the United States.
One of the things I've learned over the years on environmental issues, we always get told that it's going to cost so much more than ever turns out to be the case in reality. We're always saying that - we're always hearing people say that it's going to hurt the economy, and we can't have environmental protection and jobs at the same time.
And invariably it's wrong, because industry, when it remodels and makes its changes, becomes more efficient, more competitive, better employers, providing more jobs, and accomplishing important environmental gains.
Tavis: What I thought I heard you say in all of that was that there are enough jobs to go around.
Waxman: Well, we've got - we don't know what the future's going to be in our economy but we've got to get out of the mess we're in now and that's going to happen when people go to work and we have the demand side stimulated to make our economy function as well as the liquidity in our banking system and all of that. But more important than anything else are jobs.
Tavis: Which raises the question I want to go to now, which is essentially why you think the time now is right or different to accomplish what you're talking about. I'm a few years younger than you - just a few - and in my lifetime, I kid you not, you've heard this longer than I have, every presidential election I have ever voted in, somebody in that campaign, usually both persons, Democrat and Republican, were talking about we have got to end our dependence on foreign oil.
And whether a Democrat or Republican, whenever they say that, it's always a great applause line. I've heard this every presidential election I've ever voted in. What makes this moment different?
Waxman: Well, we heard that on a few occasions from President Bush, but then he always said, "We're going to develop a silver bullet. We're going to have some new thing way out in the future that'll solve our problems." Of course, he never invested to get there. He never did anything.
We've had eight lost years on a problem that is now, this among other problems, far much worse. But President Obama campaigned on this issue. He campaigned on getting healthcare, and perhaps we can even go into that because that's another topic that's important to me; it's in my committee, and energy independence.
We see that we're more and more dependent on foreign oil and we see the instability of the Middle East and other places - Hugo Chavez and others from whom we have to get our fuel. This is not a place where the United States should be, and even when we had Jimmy Carter and we had the energy crisis, we vowed we'd not be in that situation and now we're more dependent than we've ever been before. So I think this is the time we've got to get serious about it.
Tavis: Very quickly, about a minute to go. Since you mentioned healthcare, and I wanted to go there right quick, President Obama, as we know, has already convened at least one meeting inside the White House about healthcare, and not 24 hours after the meeting a couple of people went to the media and said, "I'm walking away from the table." How do you wrestle this dragon down?
Waxman: Yeah. Well, we've got more people losing their jobs, which means they lose their healthcare, because our insurance is tied to our jobs. We have 47 million people without insurance, millions more who are underinsured, and the people now who are in the system, whether the doctors or the hospitals or the insurance companies, they're all saying we've got to change things.
When the Clintons tried this, each group had their own view of what should be the result. The second choice was nothing if they didn't get their way. President Obama didn't hand a bill down and say, "Pass it." He called people in and said, "Let's work together to accomplish it, but you're not all going to get everything you want."
And I think he's handled this superbly. The American people overwhelmingly want this. He has a mandate for this issue alone, and now many other issues as well, and he's worked out an ingenious way of doing it without being threatening by saying we're going to throw everything out and start all over again. He's saying, "Let's build on what we have. If you have insurance you like, you can keep it, but we've got to get people all covered if we're going to really hold down the costs of healthcare.
If we want affordable, good quality healthcare for all Americans, we've got to bring everybody in. Otherwise, costs are shifted back and forth. You go to a hospital; hospitals' emergency rooms are treating a lot of people that have no insurance. They pass on the costs, if they can, to people who do have insurance, and those insurance companies don't want to pay that extra burden anymore.
It's a mess, and so we've got to work our way through this issue and we've got to do both of these big projects now because the new president only has a short time in which to get something big through, and these are two big things he wants to accomplish.
I wasn't scheduled to be chairman of the energy committee - the Energy and Commerce Committee - but I ran for it because I wanted to help President Obama succeed. And this may be that window of opportunity that comes once in a generation where the American people are ready for change, real change, that will mean big things to be accomplished.
Tavis: Two big issues. You couldn't get two bigger issues - energy and health - and both of them run through this committee. Congressman, good to have you on the program.
Waxman: Thank you very much.
Tavis: Good to see you.
Waxman: Delighted to be with you.
Tavis: My pleasure.
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