Angus King Grills Deputy Energy Secretary Nominee On Maintaining Research Budget Amid Agency Cuts

2 days ago

During a Senate Energy Committee hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Angus King (I-ME) stressed the importance of maintaining the Department of Energy's research funding.

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Transcript

00:00Senator King, you're up next. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ms. McGregor, one of my

00:06principal concerns as the ranking member on, we call ourselves co-chairs with

00:11Steve Daines on the National Park Subcommittee, is staffing at the National

00:15Parks. Ten or fifteen years ago, let me just put it in perspective, in the last

00:2115 years, staffing at the National Parks has fallen by 15 percent, not counting

00:29the cuts that have been made in the last couple of months. Visitation at the

00:33National Parks has gone up 15 percent. So we already had a staffing problem. So my

00:39request to you is stop cutting people at the National Parks and start hiring them

00:45because the parks are a gem of America. People visit them, they expect them to be

00:51maintained, they expect them to be open, they expect to be able to not have to

00:56wait in long lines in order to get into a park. So can you commit to me that

01:00we're going to stop cutting in the National Parks and we're going to start

01:03to rebuild that very valuable staff? Sir, so many members of this committee raised

01:08that issue because I think they and we understand how important it is to keep

01:14those parks open, especially for tourism and economic dollars that are flowing

01:18into your communities. So I absolutely will commit to you on making sure that

01:21we work to have the appropriate staffing levels to keep those parks open and get

01:25as many people as possible into them. Well I would I would hope that the

01:29appropriate staffing levels being somewhat higher than they are today

01:32given the fact that we already have a 30 percent gap in what's happened,

01:37forgetting about the recent cuts. So this is this is essential and I think it is

01:43it would be a great disservice to the American people to compromise the

01:47availability of our National Parks. Second thing on National Parks is

01:52maintenance. As you and I discussed the Great American Outdoors Act I think was

01:57one of the signaling achievements of the first Trump administration which had a

02:02big piece of money for deferred maintenance. The problem is we're still

02:06deferring maintenance and I fought all the way up to the Office of Management

02:10Budget in the prior administration to try to get the maintenance budget

02:13increased. It's a false economy to not make repairs. They're only going to have

02:19to be done in the future and they're going to cost more. We work with us and

02:23work with the Congress to increase the maintenance budget at the National Parks.

02:27It's not very exciting but it's something we have to do. Sir coming from

02:31the private sector I understand the importance of O&M dollars on an

02:35annualized basis but I will say this it's interesting and there's a lot to

02:39dig in on on the implementation of the Great American Outdoors Act. I find it we

02:43talked about how you know we work to advance this amazing legislation and now

02:49maintenance backlog has somehow gone up. We have a lot of work to do together on

02:54this and I absolutely commit to working with you on it. Well one way to keep it

02:57from going up is to quit digging the hole and that's what we're doing right

03:00now. Mr. Danley I agree with you about

03:03permitting reform. I was one of the supporters of the bill here. I'm hoping

03:07we're going to be able to bring that bill back to life and perhaps improve it.

03:11I assume you agree that part of the permitting reform has to be transmission

03:15to permitting reform because we're all talking about increasing electricity. The

03:20electricity has to get somewhere and transmission is one of the one of the

03:24real serious bottlenecks right now and in sort of reinventing our electric

03:29system. Do you agree? So to date the the real problems with federal permitting

03:34haven't been seen in transmission because other than the backstop siting

03:37authority. Are you serious about that because we've got transmission projects

03:41in the West that have been pending for 20 years. So for the most part other

03:46than when you have federal land crossings which do of course occur in

03:49the West far more than they do in the East but the places where we have the

03:53greatest sets of constraints the highest congestion costs are in the East more

03:56than the West. This is typically obviously there are examples where

03:59that's not true. Those are most siting and permitting happens at the state

04:03level for transmission. There's only for transmission lines generally there's

04:07the backstop siting authority that was reenacted again. But of course

04:11transmission has to be part of the solution or part of the discussion

04:15because as the demand grows and we have to have a more robust transmission

04:19system both to meet NERC reliability standards and simply get real power to

04:23its destination. We're going to have to increase transmission lines all over the

04:27country. And that's got to be part of the solution. Quickly research you talked

04:32about research. One of the things that disturbs me that's going on now in the

04:35administration is cutting research money all over the place. Department of

04:40Health and Human Services even research on Alzheimer's which I absolutely don't

04:44understand. The Department of Energy is one of the leading research parts of our

04:50government and I think you mentioned basic research being important that's

04:53not immediately commercially valuable so it's not going to be done in the private

04:57sector. Fracking was invented under a Department of Energy research grants

05:03back in the 80s. Do you agree that we've got to maintain the research budget not

05:08only at the national labs but at places like NREL and other work that the

05:12Department of Energy is doing in in research on energy development generally?

05:17Yes the Congress has charged the Department of Energy with conducting

05:22this research. As I mentioned my opening statement the the number of

05:26advances we've had has changed America's commercial outlook and has created new

05:30industries and the the money spent on basic research whether it I mean the

05:36national labs found quarks. These are things that are not commercially viable

05:41on their own but have improved the science of the world. I myself wouldn't know a quark if I fell over one but I understand.

05:48Nevertheless they are important and the yeah I absolutely agree with you that

05:52this research is important and and is central to the function of the

05:57Department of Energy. Thank you thank you Mr. Chairman. I hope we can have a second

05:59round because I have a few more questions.

Angus King Grills Deputy Energy Secretary Nominee On Maintaining Research Budget Amid Agency Cuts

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