Rep. Mike Kelly (PA-3) Joins SFR on the Paris Climate Summit

FG: Welcome to Secure Freedom Radio, this is Frank Gaffney your host and guide for what I think of as an intelligence briefing on the war for the free world. A man I have come to admire greatly for both his intelligence and his leadership on some very tough issues in the United States Congress, is our first guest. He is Rep. Mike Kelly. He hails from my home state of Pennsylvania. He represents the people of the third district of Pennsylvania. He also serves on the House Committee on Ways and Means and also on the Education Committee. He is a go-to guy on a couple of things and I want to talk to you about several of them. Mike Kelly, welcome back, it’s good to have you with us.

MK: Thank you Frank and thanks for all that you’re doing. We have to have a much more informed public that’s watching what’s going on.

FG: We do indeed and again one of the privileges of doing this radio program is talking to people like you who’re both leading as I say and also trying to inform us about what you’re doing. Let me talk to you a little bit about this Paris climate change event and what’s come out of it. The President doesn’t seem to think he needs your approval in Congress for this rather sweeping agreement. Tell us about the agreement itself and whether that sits well with you?

MK: Sure, we’re still going through this agreement. The President chooses to paint this as a treaty because being a treaty, he would have to come before the Senate to get their advice and consent, 2/3rds of it. But this is pretty much indicative of how he picks and chooses the things he has powers to do and things that he doesn’t have powers to do. This is one though Sen. Lee and myself have concurrent resolutions together, that say, this must come back to the Congress, has to be treated as a treaty and get 2/3 Senate approvals. Well we’re pushing that very hard. Without that, this president will try to make commitments to people around the world while giving up hard-earned American tax payer dollars, subsidized for poorer nations. And by the way Frank, this agreement is totally unenforceable. The President says “here’s the real advantage, we get to review these things every five years to see if people are actually keeping their promise”. I think that all of us at this point would look at that and say, “really Mr. President? You really don’t need to come before us and make that statement”. Well it’s totally unenforceable. We know that the greatest harm when it comes to polluting [inaudible]. They’re not going to do anything about it unless we do heavy subsidies. So I think we need to have had a terror control summit and not a climate control summit.

FG: Yes and Paris would have been a good location for that given what it has just been subjected to. Lets just drill down for a few minutes on a couple of these points Congressman Kelly. First of all, there are some rather draconian changes that the President is talking about making to our own energy consumption and emissions of greenhouses gases and so on. You come of course, from a state that has for many years provided, with relatively inexpensive sources of energy, albeit some that produced a lot of those gases, namely coal. How do you feel the American people should look at the kinds of changes that the President is proposing to reek upon us what the other countries are going to get out of this? But just what does it likely mean for our economy and perhaps our national security?

MK: Well you should know the agreement that the President would like us to be a part of, puts us at levels that were almost totally unattainable. We can’t measure them. We’re talking at least 10 to 20 years out for some of these goals. But Obama will cripple our economic recovery. Our ability to have energy self- sustaining products out there: fossil fuels, coal, oil, and natural gas. This is a president that before when he was running as a candidate said in order to use coal to make electricity, you can do it but it will bankrupt you. He’s closing down coal; he’s closing down big parts of the country. 40% of our electricity is produced by burning coal and that’s what produces electricity. So whenever you do that, you’re going to drive up the cost of energy, lower our position in the world, our economic recovery and our ability to lead the world will be greatly hampered. Our cost of operation will go up, we’ll be using products that aren’t as sufficient, not as effective, much more expensive, which will drive the cost of everything up. And then we’re going to subsidize other countries with American tax payer money for them to try and reach their goals? Totally unenforceable timetable that really isn’t realistic but its a feel good exercise for the President. When one man’s legacy causes this kind of suffering, to me its absurd. Whenever we can develop geopolitical relationship we would cut that away. [inaudible]. We could retake the leadership as the top country when it comes to exporting energy, so why would go away from that? To even have the conversation is absurd, even more absurd to think that the American people will sit back and say “well this won’t effect me”. It will affect all aspects of life, economic recovery at a time when we should be leading the world. [Inaudible].

FG: Let me just ask you about a couple of other details of this Rep. Kelly of Pennsylvania again. We’re told that China and India are the two countries that are polluting the most in the world at the moment, I believe are going to be able to continue to do so for years to come. There’s some talk about capping it down the road but that would seem to be a bit of a mugs game when we’re obliged to make these changes up front and then there’s this other question, you’ve talked about on Ways and Means that we’re going to be contributing billions of tax dollars to this green climate fund, I think its called, that will supposedly encourage these other countries to exercise some kind of control over these greenhouse emissions. Again, where’s that money coming from and do you think Congress ought to be consulted about that rather than committed without its say so?

MK: Well the President as you know he will act the way he wants. He thinks things should go his way because Congress is taking too much time. I think he conveniently forgets from time to time, it’s hard to understand, being a former constitutional law professor; he’s limited in what he can do. He does not have the ability to go shower the world with hard-working American tax payer dollars. By the way, anybody that doesn’t understand where the money comes from needs to wake up and smell the coffee. It comes out of the pockets of American taxpayers, it comes out in many different ways and it adds another layer of cost to everything that we produce. So you look at this, so what’s the advantage here Mr. President? Why are we going in this direction and why would we subsidize countries in which we’re in direct competition with? Globally when it comes to market share, why would we let them operate at a much lower cost of operation and raise our prices up and say that “hey we’re the only ones that’re going to comply with it”. In the end, the others have already said, “if it interferes with our economic success, we will not do it”. And that’s just foolish. In negotiations with somebody says “well as long as it works for me, as long as you keep subsidizing me, I’ll go along with this ruse”. But at the end of the day, it’s Tom Foolery

FG: Very quickly and we don’t have much time Congressman just in a minute what is going on with respect to your efforts to try to assure that we retain control of another very important national and international asset namely the network we know as the internet?

MK: Well you know when I say our office has put together a good piece that ensures that we have oversight and we have the ability to make sure that the internet doesn’t go off the rails. Among government organizations, they would be able to run and do things to eliminate people’s access to it. Unfortunately, our piece did not get passed. I think the piece that did get passed was about simply doing another study on it. But quite frankly, I’m so tired of doing study after study to come up with the same conclusion. Whenever America doesn’t lead, America loses and in fact the whole free world loses. If we don’t understand that, we’re fools.

FG: Congressman Mike Kelly, you’re leadership on all of these fronts, as I say, is deeply appreciated. Thank you for it, keep coming to us with reports if you will. In the meantime, stay well.