Wealth for the Working Class: The Clean Energy Economy (House Small Business subcommittee hearing, July 27, 2021)
Summary
Printed record of a hearing of the House Committee on Small Business, Subcommittee on Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Workforce Development, held July 27, 2021, titled Wealth for the Working Class: The Clean Energy Economy, Small Business Committee Document Number 117–028. Opening statements came from Hon. Jason Crow and Hon. Young Kim. Witnesses were Leticia Colon De Mejias, chief executive officer of Energy Efficiencies Solutions and co-chair of the Building Performance Association; James Hasselbeck, director of operations at ReVision Energy, Inc.; Samuel Gilchrist, western campaigns director of the Natural Resources Defense Council; and Tom Greer, proprietor of Hub City Brewing Co., testifying for the Consumer Energy Alliance. The appendix prints their prepared statements and material from ClearFlame Engine Technologies.
Summary drafted by a model from the document's text below and checked by script against that text before publication. It is a navigation aid, not a reading of what the document proves. Where AI is used
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“Wealth for the Working Class: The Clean Energy Economy (House Small Business subcommittee hearing, July 27, 2021).”
Original at www.govinfo.gov. Archived at Pandemic Darlings, https://pandemicdarlings.com/source-documents/wealth-for-the-working-class-the-clean-energy-economy-house-small-busi-73d301eb3c/
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WEALTH FOR THE WORKING CLASS: THE CLEAN
ENERGY ECONOMY
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON INNOVATION,
ENTREPRENEURSHIP,
AND WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS
UNITED STATES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
HEARING HELD
JULY 27, 2021
Small Business Committee Document Number 117–028
Available via the GPO Website: www.govinfo.gov
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
45–131 WASHINGTON : 2021
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HOUSE COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS
NYDIA VELÁZQUEZ, New York, Chairwoman
JARED GOLDEN, Maine
JASON CROW, Colorado
SHARICE DAVIDS, Kansas
KWEISI MFUME, Maryland
DEAN PHILLIPS, Minnesota
MARIE NEWMAN, Illinois
CAROLYN BOURDEAUX, Georgia
TROY CARTER, Louisiana
JUDY CHU, California
DWIGHT EVANS, Pennsylvania
ANTONIO DELGADO, New York
CHRISSY HOULAHAN, Pennsylvania
ANDY KIM, New Jersey
ANGIE CRAIG, Minnesota
BLAINE LUETKEMEYER, Missouri, Ranking Member
ROGER WILLIAMS, Texas
JIM HAGEDORN, Minnesota
PETE STAUBER, Minnesota
DAN MEUSER, Pennsylvania
CLAUDIA TENNEY, New York
ANDREW GARBARINO, New York
YOUNG KIM, California
BETH VAN DUYNE, Texas
BYRON DONALDS, Florida
MARIA SALAZAR, Florida
SCOTT FITZGERALD, Wisconsin
MELISSA JUNG, Majority Staff Director
ELLEN HARRINGTON, Majority Deputy Staff Director
DAVID PLANNING, Staff Director
(II)
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CONTENTS
OPENING STATEMENTS
Page
Hon. Jason Crow ...................................................................................................... 1
Hon. Young Kim ...................................................................................................... 3
WITNESSES
Ms. Leticia Colon De Mejias, Chief Executive Officer of Energy Efficiencies
Solutions and Co-Chair for the Building Performance Association, Energy
Efficiencies Solutions, Windsor, CT .................................................................... 5
Mr. James Hasselbeck, Director of Operations, ReVision Energy, Inc., South
Portland, ME ........................................................................................................ 7
Mr. Samuel Gilchrist, Western Campaigns Director, Natural Resources De-
fense Council, Denver, CO ................................................................................... 9
Mr. Tom Greer, Proprietor and Owner, Hub City Brewing Co., Belen, NM,
testifying on behalf of the Consumer Energy Alliance ..................................... 11
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Ms. Leticia Colon De Mejias, Chief Executive Officer of Energy Effi-
ciencies Solutions and Co-Chair for the Building Performance Associa-
tion, Energy Efficiencies Solutions, Windsor, CT ....................................... 30
Mr. James Hasselbeck, Director of Operations, ReVision Energy, Inc.,
South Portland, ME ...................................................................................... 40
Mr. Samuel Gilchrist, Western Campaigns Director, Natural Resources
Defense Council, Denver, CO ....................................................................... 44
Mr. Tom Greer, Proprietor and Owner, Hub City Brewing Co., Belen,
NM, testifying on behalf of the Consumer Energy Alliance ...................... 53
Questions for the Record:
None.
Answers for the Record:
None.
Additional Material for the Record:
ClearFlame Engine Technologies .................................................................... 56
(III)
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WEALTH FOR THE WORKING CLASS: THE
CLEAN ENERGY ECONOMY
TUESDAY, JULY 27, 2021
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS,
SUBCOMMITTEE ON INNOVATION, ENTREPRENEURSHIP,
AND WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:02 a.m., in Room
2360, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Jason Crow [chairman
of the Subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Crow, Davids, Phillips, Newman,
Bourdeaux, Luetkemeyer, Williams, Tenney, Garbarino, and Young
Kim.
Chairman CROW. Good morning. I call this hearing to order.
Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare a recess at
any time.
Let me begin by saying that standing House and committee rules
and practice will continue to apply during hybrid proceedings. All
members are reminded that they are expected to adhere to these
standing rules, including decorum.
House regulations require members to be visible through our
video connection throughout the proceedings, so please keep your
cameras on. Also, please remember to remain muted until you are
recognized to minimize background noise. If you have to participate
in another proceeding, please exit this one and log back in later.
In the event a member encounters technical issues that prevent
them from being recognized for their questioning, I will move to the
next available member of the same party and will recognize that
member at the next appropriate time slot provided they have re-
turned to the proceeding.
Those members and staff physically present in the committee
room today, we will continue to follow the most recent OAP guid-
ance. Masks are no longer required in our meeting space for mem-
bers and staff who have been fully vaccinated. All members and
staff who have not been fully vaccinated are still required to wear
masks and socially distance.
In the first half of 2020, extreme weather events rocked the
United States and countries worldwide. Historic winter storms in
Texas, raging wildfires in Oregon, and unprecedented floods in
Michigan remind us of the imminent danger that climate change
poses regardless of location.
Just last week Secretary Holland was in my home State of Colo-
rado meeting with local leaders about the worsening drought and
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wildfire conditions. These extreme weather events in the U.S. are
mirrored by similar episodes across the globe. This wealth of evi-
dence makes it abundantly clear that a climate crisis is a threat
to human lives and to economic prosperity. That is why we must
act now to protect our plant and create a more sustainable econ-
omy.
Developing the clean energy economy won’t be a small task and
comes with its fair share of challenges. At the same time we must
understand the many benefits that going green can deliver to small
businesses and the American economy.
For businesses relying on renewable power generation or in-
creased energy efficiency can lead to lower costs and consumption
and ultimately a higher bottom line. By increasing investment in
renewables on a macro basis we can transform the U.S. into a glob-
al leader in clean energy, reducing our dependence on foreign na-
tions.
Going green also has the potential to reinvigorate the labor mar-
ket by creating millions of good paying jobs spread across tens of
thousands of businesses. In fact, across the country, we already see
the ways that clean energy can benefit our economy.
Clean energy firms account for roughly 35,000 businesses across
the country and employ over 3 million workers. Small businesses
dominate the clean energy sectors, with nearly 90 percent of busi-
nesses employing fewer than 100 employees and nearly a third of
those with fewer than five.
These jobs also pay well with medium hourly wages 25 percent
higher than the national average, and they tend to hire local work-
ers as well. Yet these small firms often lack access to capital nec-
essary to expand their operations and meet the clean energy de-
mand. That is why I am planning on introducing the House com-
panion version of the 504 Green Energy Enhancement Act which
would increase 504 loan amounts for energy efficiency and renew-
able energy projects.
With fighting the climate crisis being one of the top priorities for
the President and the 117th Congress, the clean energy economy
will likely continue to grow and create more better paying jobs for
the American people. Unfortunately, if Americans don’t have the
requisite skills to fill jobs in the clean energy economy, they won’t
experience these benefits. Many firms in the sector already report
difficulty finding workers. Without adequate investment in work-
force development to ensure qualified workers are available, we
run the risk of grounding the clean energy economy before it has
a chance to take off. This would have profound consequences for
the health of our economy and our decarbonization goals, so it is
vital that Congress works to ensure workers have the skills and
credentials needed to fill these roles.
Today’s hearing will allow us to explore different types of work-
force development initiatives and what Congress can do to facilitate
their implementation.
With that, I want to thank all of our witnesses for being here
today, and I look forward to our conversation.
I would now like to yield to the Ranking Member, Mrs. Young
Kim, for her opening statement.
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Mrs. YOUNG KIM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this
hearing. And I also want to welcome and thank the members for
participating in person or joining us via Zoom today.
Prior to the pandemic and under the previous administration’s
pro growth and deregulatory agenda, an extraordinary 160 million
Americans were employed, and the unemployment rate fell to a 50-
year low. Additionally, wages for rank and file workers and non-
supervisory employees were rising faster than the wages for man-
agers or supervisors. Now 3.2 million Americans are unemployed,
all while small businesses place help wanted signs on their store-
fronts and struggle to find the labor force to meet heightened de-
mand.
As we safely reopen our communities and transition to recovery,
I hope we can continue to work together to help small businesses
stay afloat while also supporting American workers.
Despite the tremendous amount of financial relief flowing to
small businesses, many continue to endure a challenging recovery.
Since January of this year, inflation has increased every single
month and is climbing at the fastest rate in 13 years. We cannot
continue the current path of reckless spending which in turn is be-
coming a tax on America’s workers, middle class families, and
small businesses.
In May, roughly half of small businesses, 48 percent, were forced
to raise their prices. This is the largest percentage reported in 40
years. Small businesses and workers are particularly vulnerable to
changes in the price of fuel, food, and materials, and now they are
simultaneously experiencing a decrease worth of their paychecks.
To pay for this administration’s spending plans, the President
has proposed various tax increases that will impact small busi-
nesses and workers. Within the American Jobs Plan, which focuses
on items, including the Green New Deals, climate change initia-
tives, the President is proposing to pay for the spending by increas-
ing the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent. This will
impact over a million small businesses organized as C corporations.
I think it is worth noting that 55 percent of subchapter C corpora-
tions have five or fewer employees and 85 percent have fewer than
20 employees. So among the outsized effects, a corporate tax in-
crease will directly cause utility costs to surge across the country
and, as a result, millions of small businesses will face higher elec-
tric, gas, and water bills.
The Biden administration has paired government spending with
government regulations that further hinder America’s small busi-
ness recovery. The costs of regulatory compliance is disproportion-
ately burdensome for small businesses who operate on thin mar-
gins with less staff and tight budgets. We should empower small
businesses to innovate, not add the additional costs of regulatory
compliance to their balance sheet.
I believe we can return to the booming economy we had before
the pandemic, but any efforts to increase regulations and impose
additional requirements on small businesses will further hinder re-
covery and jeopardize the state of our nation’s smallest firms.
Small businesses have the flexibility, the agility, and the cre-
ativity to overcome anything. But, Congress, we need to allow them
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to do that by continuing to provide pro growth, pro business poli-
cies.
So I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today and let’s
discuss on how we can support them and work across the nation.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Chairman CROW. Thank you, Mrs. Young Kim. The gentle-
woman yields back.
I would like to take a moment to explain how this hearing will
proceed. Each witness will have 5 minutes to provide a statement,
and each committee member will have 5 minutes for questions.
Please ensure that your microphone is on when you begin speaking
and that you return to mute when you are finished.
With that, I would like to introduce our witnesses.
Our first witness is Ms. Leticia Colon De Mejias—am I pro-
nouncing that right, Ms. Mejias—the founder and CEO of Energy
Efficiencies Solutions, a Connecticut based full service energy con-
servation company. EES provides comprehensive energy efficiency
services, like home energy assessments and energy education.
Ms. Mejias cofounded Green Echo Warriors, a nonprofit youth
ecology and conservation group. She is also a longtime workforce
development expert, having developed and coordinated ESL and
adult-based education courses for the staff at Hartford Hospital
and created the Your Education Success Foundation to support
adult learners who desire to return to school.
Welcome, Ms. Colon De Mejias. We look forward to your testi-
mony.
Our next witness is Mr. James Hasselbeck, the director of oper-
ations at ReVision Energy, a solar installation company in Port-
land, Maine. He has been involved in the development, engineer-
ing, and construction of public and private renewable energy
projects since 2006.
After joining ReVision Energy in 2012, he became director of op-
erations for all three locations in Maine, Massachusetts, and New
Hampshire. He is also board member of The amicus Solar Coopera-
tive.
Welcome, Mr. Hasselbeck.
Our third witness is Mr. Sam Gilchrist, the western campaigns
director for the National Resources Defense Council where he fo-
cuses on State and local policies to ensure a just transition for
Colorado’s energy workers. Before joining NRDC, he worked as the
executive director of Colorado’s AFL-CIO and now resides in my
district in Colorado.
Thank you—actually I will go back. I skipped a page.
Welcome, Mr. Gilchrist.
I will now yield to the Ranking Member, Mrs. Young Kim, to in-
troduce our final witness.
Mrs. YOUNG KIM. Thank you, Chairman.
It is a pleasure to introduce our first witness, Mr. Tom Greer. He
is an owner and proprietor of Hub City Brewing Company. He is
here on behalf of the Consumer Energy Alliance. Mr. Greer cur-
rently resides in Belen, New Mexico.
In 2013, Mr. Greer opened Hub City Brewing Company at the
Belen Rail Runner Station in the heart of downtown to support
local tourism and economic development. Many have referred to
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Hub City Brewing Company as Belen’s Cheers. This is a commu-
nity gathering place where everyone knows your name.
Prior to Hub City Brewing Pub, Mr. Greer had an extensive ca-
reer in television and marketing and held numerous leadership
roles, including president of the board of directors of the Greater
Belen Chamber of Commerce, also serving as Vice President of the
Belen Main Street Partnership, and New Mexico State director of
the Concerned Veterans for America.
Mr. Greer is passionate about revitalizing the economy and en-
suring prosperity for all communities, including rural areas. His
entrepreneur background and dedication to economic development
will be extremely beneficial to our hearing today.
So thank you, Mr. Greer, for taking time to testify and share
your experience with us today.
Chairman, I yield back.
Chairman CROW. Thank you very much. The gentlewoman
yields back.
Ms. Colon De Mejias, you are now recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENTS OF LETICIA COLON DE MEJIAS, CHIEF EXECU-
TIVE OFFICER OF ENERGY EFFICIENCIES SOLUTIONS AND
CO-CHAIR FOR THE BUILDING PERFORMANCE ASSOCIA-
TION, ENERGY EFFICIENCIES SOLUTIONS, WINDSOR, CT;
JAMES HASSELBECK, DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS, REVISION
ENERGY, INC., SOUTH PORTLAND, ME; SAMUEL GILCHRIST,
WESTERN CAMPAIGNS DIRECTOR, NATURAL RESOURCES
DEFENSE COUNCIL, DENVER, CO; AND TOM GREER, PROPRI-
ETOR AND OWNER, HUB CITY BREWING CO., BELEN, NM,
TESTIFYING ON BEHALF OF THE CONSUMER ENERGY ALLI-
ANCE
STATEMENT OF LETICIA COLON DE MEJIAS
Ms. COLON DE MEJIAS. Thank you, Honorable Chairman Crow
and Ranking Member for the opportunity to be here today with
you. It is so important that small businesses be allowed a space at
the table as you work to lift our nation, people, and our economy.
I am Leticia Colon De Mejias. I am the owner of Energy Effi-
ciencies Solutions, President of the Building Performance Associa-
tion policy Co-Chair, and Chair of Equity and Opportunity for
Latino Affairs in the State of Connecticut Commission on Equity
and Opportunity, and board member for the initiative board. But,
more importantly, I employ 27 people in energy efficiency careers.
Twenty-three of them are minorities and people of color, ten are
women in leadership roles, and all are earning between $32,000
and $75,000 annually, with the potential of an increased $100,000
a years with sales commission.
I have helped four other people start companies just like my own
that are now owned by minorities and women, and I left my career
in healthcare and workforce for 16 years to start this business after
seeing a film called ‘‘Kilowatt Hours’’ that informed me on the cli-
mate and energy crisis which is polluting the world we live in
today. As a mother and grandmother, I felt compelled to leave the
industry I work in and start this energy efficiency job to open op-
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portunities for people in my community to find better sources of
employment with higher rates of pay and more flexible schedules.
I leveraged my good credit to purchase tools and get certified in
the demand reduction field to both literally and figuratively close
gaps in my community, estate, and our energy bills. My first year
yielded about $150,000, which was more than I made at the hos-
pital, and my second year I began to struggle to find qualified
workers. That is the struggle that I am dealing with today. It is
the thing that ails my industry overall because, despite these ca-
reers being viable and accessible and offering excellent pay in bene-
fits, we are not finding Americans who want to work or have the
skills needed to work in these careers.
What we need is more Federal support directly to help small
businesses afford the costs of training and reskilling our current
employees because our technology has continued to change rapidly
daily to meet the consumer market demands and Federal law
changes. We need to have resources and take intentional steps to
close the workforce disparities as they relate specifically to people
of color, women, minorities, and underrepresented populations that
have been historically left behind, for so many Americans are un-
aware there is growing opportunities in energy efficiency and the
clean energy economy. And how can someone be prepared for some-
thing that they don’t even know exists? Unfortunately, we have not
put enough emphasis or resources behind science and public
schools, and we have done very little to communicate broadly on
the benefits of social skills and soft skills as they relate to critical
workforce success.
We also have not invested in simplifying our workforce programs
to help career transitions or get Americans back to work in these
careers which they are ready for Americans to be hired in today.
As a person of action, EES has a motto, ‘‘We are here to help.’’
And when we see a gap or a crack, we seek to fill that gap aptly,
and so we use our Ts, time, talent, tenacity, and teamwork to solve
problems together, and we have served over 14,000 households and
over 10 million square feet of multifamily housing to draw down up
to 30 percent of that building’s energy demand, allowing them to
use that money for their families, businesses, education, or
healthcare, drawing down demands for energy and pollution at the
same time and employing our communities as we go because if you
have buildings with a B, we have careers for you.
We can drive down the cost of energy and drive up the access to
renewable resources, and we help our staff buy cars, homes, and
live the American dream. And as I said, finding workers is the
most difficult part. And I suggest that we push forward with robust
investments in programs which offer direct supports to small busi-
nesses. An example of this is the Blue Collar to Green Collar Jobs
Act which seeks to offer short-term training programs and equip
Americans with the skills to fill the jobs and earn higher wages
right now.
We need to give priority to companies who hire minorities, vet-
erans, and women and help them transition people from the fossil
fuel industry into clean energy careers by leveraging the skill sets
they have already.
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And Congress can support robust efficiency rebates to help Amer-
icans lower their bills and demands all the while increasing local
job opportunities because, frankly speaking, efficiency overlooked is
just efficient.
We must ensure that these activities support the workforce de-
velopment that are accessible to small businesses and include flexi-
bility and use of funds for on-the-job training programs because
there is no Department of Labor code for energy efficiency, making
it very difficult for us to access apprenticeship programs, particu-
larly in the residential sector, and this is a major barrier to our
work expansion or growth depth. The Department of Energy has an
understanding of this industry, and there needs to be supports for
residential business. It is usual. We need ensure more leaders and
Federal staff and departments understand the value of efficiency as
a drawdown to close gaps in bills and health in our climate crisis
and to provide stability for our clean energy economy and success
for all Americans.
At Efficiency for All, we are currently conducting a 12-week pro-
gram to train individuals on all of the certified skills needed, as
well as soft skills so they may get jobs immediately in the Energize
Connecticut Program, and this program connects them directly to
on-the-job training and a 6-week training internship.
In conclusion, it is time that we diversify our clean energy work-
force. Most of my staff came from at-risk populations and they
were underserved, but that did not hold us back. We have contin-
ued to grow, all the while supporting the communities we came
from because we know our work helps everyone. And the sooner we
educate our communities on how to draw down energy demands
and ramp up clean energy resources, the better off we will all be.
As a proud American and small business owner, I know that to-
gether we can create a responsible path forward to ensure inclusive
transitions to clean, resilient, stable clean energy economy which
could benefit all Americans regardless of economic or social stand-
ing.
Thank you.
Chairman CROW. Thank you, Ms. Colon De Mejias. And I will
remind all witnesses to please stick with the 5-minute time limit.
I appreciate your testimony.
Mr. Hasselbeck, you are now recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF JAMES HASSELBECK
Mr. HASSELBECK. Chairman Crow, Ranking Member Young
Kim, and members of this committee. My name is James
Hasselbeck, and I am director of operations of ReVision Energy, a
renewable contracting company in northern New England. I am
grateful for this opportunity to provide testimony on behalf of my
300 employee owners.
My goal today is to illustrate how ReVision Energy is disrupting
traditional business norms as we confront the rampant climate
damage resulting from 8 billion people burning fossil fuels. At the
same time, we are trying to alleviate the social injustices and in-
equities historically inflicted on our by bot communities.
The shear scale of modernizing our national grid, electrifying
transportation, and transitioning to beneficial electrification is
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reminiscent of the public works projects that revitalized America
after the Great Recession. The private sector is recognizing the eco-
nomic opportunity and is investing hundreds of billions of dollars
in this effort. This influx of capital, often catalyzed by early State
government R&D support, has resulted in wind and solar becoming
the most cost-effective electricity generation sources available
today.
Lazard’s most recent levelized cost of energy analysis objectively
demonstrates solar and wind being the lowest cost source of power
generation available. This analysis is proven by ongoing massive
investments in renewables, with solar projects alone making up
over 40 percent of power plants brought on line in 2020. This man-
ufacturing capacity for batteries continues to expand and prices
continue to fall. We are also seeing increased adoption of energy
storage. This is evident in the rapid expansion of electric vehicles
and associated low carbon transportation infrastructure.
My construction teams are thrilled at the idea of charging their
power pools and laptops on a remote job site using battery from
their F-150 Lightening of lugging a heavy generator around.
The technology works, the money is flowing, and the public and
private interest and desire for renewables is expanding at a rapid
base, so rapid that our collective barrier to increased adoption is
increasingly less economic or technological but instead due to a
lack of skilled labor. You cannot outsource clean energy project in-
stallations.
Our workforce today includes over 230,000 Americans at 10,000
small businesses in solar alone according to the Solar Energy In-
dustries Association. This same workforce needs to expand to over
900,000 to achieve the ambitious but necessary clean electricity pri-
orities President Biden has set for 2035.
The women and men on ReVision Energy’s installation team are
electricians, plumbers, and apprentices. They are supported by en-
gineers, system designers, project managers, procurement and
warehouse staff, sales reps, financing pros, and legal experts. To-
gether we self-perform millions of dollars of construction work in
New England with our in-house teams and work closely with our
subcontractor partners to build many more megawatts of clean
power.
This also creates millions of dollars in revenue and corresponding
jobs for our many domestic suppliers and vendors, and as hard as
we try, even with the support of our incredible allies, we cannot
meet the demand for highly skilled tradeswomen and men.
In response to this workforce challenge, in 2018, we created the
ReVision Energy Training Center and Electrical Apprentice Pro-
gram. In partnership with State regulatory agencies and the Fed-
eral Department of Labor, this 4-year program helps our team
achieve the on-the-job and classroom electrical training to provide
each individual a trade license and the skills to secure a high
standard of living for the balance of their careers.
Organized labor’s focus on worker benefits, safety, and career
training is an admirable and critically important part of any work-
force development program. We highly value our historical partner-
ship with the IBEW and especially our good friends at the local
Ford plant who invited President Harris to their new facility in
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April. However, we want to be abundantly clear in highlighting
that there are additional methods to facilitate workforce develop-
ment, safety, and worker benefits outside of conventional organized
labor structures.
We think our 100 percent employee-owned certified B Corp. com-
pany structure shared by many of our Amicus Solar Cooperative
partners provides an equally valuable platform for workers’ rights
and benefits. We encourage the committee to look for opportunities
to provide funding and support to alternative workforce develop-
ment initiatives, in addition to the important and well established
union programs.
In 2015, ReVision Energy became a certified B Corp. B corpora-
tions are companies that make explicit our commitment to multi
stakeholder capitalism. The impacts on those multiple stakeholder
groups are annually reviewed and certified by the objective third-
party B Labs to assure compliance and continuous improvement.
Our deep commitment to our workers, communities, and the
planet earn ReVision Energy best for the world in the workers cat-
egory recognition from B Labs this year.
Building on that, in 2017, the cofounders of ReVision Energy de-
cided to sell the company to our employees through an employee
stock ownership plan or ESOP——
Chairman CROW. Thank you, Mr. Hasselbeck. Unfortunately,
your time has expired. We will have more opportunity during the
Q&A for you to fully flesh that out.
Mr. HASSELBECK. Thank you.
Chairman CROW. Mr. Gilchrist, you are now recognized for 5
minutes.
STATEMENT OF SAMUEL GILCHRIST
Mr. GILCHRIST. Thank you, Chairman Crow, thank you, Rank-
ing Member Young Kim, for inviting me to testify today, as well
as thank you to the distinguished members of the House Com-
mittee on Small Business.
My name is Sam Gilchrist, and I am the western campaigns di-
rector of the Natural Resources Defense Council. NRDC is an inter-
national nonprofit organization of scientists, lawyers, and environ-
mental specialists dedicated to protecting public health and the en-
vironment.
As Chairman Crow stated, prior to joining NRDC, I served as the
executive director of the Colorado AFL-CIO. There we represented
over 130,000 workers, many of whom worked within the broader
energy sector, including the coal and fossil fuel industries. Together
we now work to develop policy solutions to ensure these workers
and their communities have a future in the clean energy economy.
The climate crisis is affecting communities across this nation in
terms of both our economic and physical health. The decline of coal
is being accelerated by the urgent need for us to reorient our en-
ergy policies away from burning fossil fuels in favor of cleaner,
cheaper renewable energy.
Communities largely dependent on coal for high-paying jobs and
local tax revenue are facing uncertainty as market forces make it
less economical to produce energy from fossil fuels. The closure of
coal mines and power plants can be economically catastrophic and
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socially disorienting. The trauma caused by shifting economics is
long lasting and involves the entire community. We have seen this
before in many places across the country, but we have not always
been prepared to address the situation proactively. This leaves
many communities behind as their industries shutter.
The bottom line is that the clean energy transition is happening,
and there are many opportunities to create good jobs in the clean
energy future, and clean energy jobs are good jobs. According to the
Environmental Entrepreneurs E2 Clean Energy Jobs America 2021
report, the clean energy sector now employs more than 3 million
individuals nationwide. Median hourly wages are roughly 25 per-
cent higher than the national average. More than 2/3 of clean en-
ergy jobs are in energy efficiency, while the remainder are in re-
newable energy, engineering, smart buildings, HVAC, electric vehi-
cles, clean fuels, et cetera.
These jobs are hyper local, and they really aren’t just con-
centrated in major metropolitan areas. Nearly 400,000 workers,
which is about 13 percent of the clean energy workforce, exists in
rural regions. Most clean energy jobs are in small businesses. As
was already mentioned, more than 60 percent are employed by
companies with fewer than 20 employees and about 90 percent of
companies with fewer than 100. And I think it needs to be reiter-
ated that these are jobs that cannot be exported or outsourced to
our foreign competitors.
To ensure a prosperous future for many small businesses and
local economies, we must support these companies and incentivize
them to create more clean energy jobs. In Colorado, we have cre-
ated the Office of Just Transition to help determine this path for-
ward. The office created an action plan that recognizes that to suc-
ceed in economic diversification, small business growth, tax rev-
enue protection, and good jobs for workers, communities must de-
sign their own futures and have adequate lead time and resources
to do so, and we are in the process currently of building that model.
Colorado’s Governor Polis has called on the Federal administra-
tion to do three things to help workers in their communities
through the transition to clean energy accounts: First, develop a
national strategy for impacted fossil fuel workers; two, address
local budget shortfalls due to the loss of property tax and other rev-
enues; and, three, finance long-term State and local economic de-
velopment resiliency and diversification.
The Clean Jobs Report outlines further steps that the federal
government can take to grow jobs and drive investments in States
which are further detailed in my written testimony.
Investing in clean energy is a win-win for our country. We can
reduce emissions that impact our climate and negatively affect our
health while also creating good jobs, jobs that are largely in small
businesses. We need Federal action to ensure these investments
benefit everyone.
The bottom line is there is no better time to make these invest-
ments than now as we slowly recover from the ongoing pandemic.
The clean energy transition is happening. It is going to affect work-
ers and communities across the country, and we need to develop a
national strategy. The strategy should focus on worker support and
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community-led solutions to create more diversified communities
where small businesses can thrive.
Once again, thank you very much for this opportunity to testify.
Chairman CROW. Thank you, Mr. Gilchrist.
Mr. Greer, you are now recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF TOM GREER
Mr. GREER. Thank you, and good morning.
My name is Tom Greer, and I am the owner of Hub City Brewing
Company in the small rural town of Belen, New Mexico, 25 miles
south of Albuquerque. I grew up in East Lansing, Michigan, and
my family was typical in those times, 1950s through the 1970s of
the American middle class, two kids, dad with a solid job, and a
mom who was highly underrated as a homemaker.
I attended Michigan State University, began my career as a pro-
fessor at Lansing Community College as the media Department
curriculum coordinator during the economic recession of 1974 and
1975. I worked directly with hundreds of union blue collar auto
workers, many of whom could only fall back on their veteran’s edu-
cation benefits and unemployment to keep their family afloat.
I moved to New York City to be a professor at Long Island Uni-
versity’s Brooklyn Campus. My students were predominantly Afri-
can American, and I will never forget them regularly walking me
to the subway station after my night classes to make sure I got to
the train safely.
I was recruited by J. Walter Thompson in 1980 at the time home
shopping and new satellite delivered TV industry was launched
and became vice president and director of new media development
where my job was to introduce the JWT clients to new media op-
portunities. Since leaving JWT in 1982, I created and ran numer-
ous television production and tourism-related businesses in New
York, Colorado, Montana, and currently New Mexico.
We moved to Belen, New Mexico, in 2005. Climate, proximity to
a large city, airport, interstate highway access, and the southern
terminus of the new Rail Runner commuter train presented an ex-
citing challenge, and we thought we could make a difference.
The Rail Cafe opened in 2007. Then housing collapse of 2008 hit
Belen very hard. The cafe closed in 2008, but we kept the building.
A booming microbrewing industry in New Mexico led to our open-
ing Hub City Brewing in 2016. Then came the pandemic in 2019,
15 months of struggles with being open, closed, carry out only, out-
door seating at 25 percent during the height of the winter, on again
off again. Despite that, we have made it through to today.
So how do small businesses like mine continue to operate and
thrive in this post-pandemic world? We are currently facing food
and supply shortages, transportation issues, big spikes in the costs
of supplies and services and, as a lot of the rest of you, difficulties
in finding reliable employees.
We need to make improvements and repairs, and the cost of
building supplies are at an all-time high. The last thing we need
are more Federal and State regulations, higher business taxes and
higher energy costs. Profit margins in the restaurant and building
industry are slim. We already face increased insurance costs, an
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unpredictable labor market, and a cumbersome regulatory environ-
ment.
We use a lot of electricity in our food and brewing process and
are blessed with an abundance and affordable clean energy source
in natural gas here in New Mexico. Natural gas plays a role in the
all-of-the-above smart plan, along with wind and solar that I
strongly support here in Mexico. We have plenty of natural gas and
petroleum domestically, so we don’t want to be held hostage again
by other producing countries, many of whom are not our friends.
We have in the past seen what $4 plus gas prices do to the econ-
omy and particularly to our low wage earners as a larger percent-
age of their income.
We need Federal regulations that are predictable so we can plan
long term. We can’t just change the rules in the middle of the
game, which seems to happen too often.
We can’t afford higher Federal tax rates for businesses, particu-
larly small ones like mine that are already struggling to stay open
and serve their communities. Small family-owned businesses are
the backbone of both our rural and minority owned intercity busi-
nesses.
Refunding the SBA Restaurant Revitalization Grant program is
essential. Eliminate the special class designation that got funding
as it hurt many communities it was intended to help. While I am
an old White guy, likely last in line and not funded, I serve a pre-
dominantly blue collar, rural Hispanic community.
We have made a difference in this community. We have survived
COVID, but it is sad so that so many businesses around our State
have not. Many have failed, not because they didn’t have a good
idea, but rather the mandates of local State and federal govern-
ments were simply impossible to overcome.
Thanks again for letting me share the Hub City Brewing story
with you today.
Chairman CROW. Thank you, Mr. Greer.
I will begin by recognizing myself for 5 minutes.
Starting with Mr. Gilchrist, I am wondering if you could just
flesh out further for me the issues of kind of just transition as it
relates to small businesses? What does that look like in Colorado
in particular? What has been successful?
What can we do better to make sure that as this transition,
which is actually largely at this point market driven as we go to
clean energy, renewable energy, that is a largely private market
driven process since that energy is increasingly cheaper than fossil
fuel energy, what can we do better to help those small businesses
and communities during that process?
Mr. GILCHRIST. Thank you, Chairman Crow. That is a great
question.
And I think one of the many things we need to focus on is com-
munity investment, you know, aligning State and Federal pro-
grams to assist local strategies, really community driven strategies
that are ultimately led by many of the small business owners who
are leaders in their communities.
We need to target early successes in business startups, you
know, expansions, retention, and attraction, empower communities
with resources to drive their own economic transitions as I men-
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tioned, coordinate infrastructure investments to support local and
regional transition strategies, and identify and support State, re-
gional, Federal, and local institutions to facilitate needed invest-
ments. A lot of this work can help drive, you know, and attract
grants and investments to power that local economic growth.
So ultimately, I think it starts with the community—reaching
out to the community, learning what that community needs, what
those small business owners need, what sort of investments they
need and allow them to drive those solutions locally.
Chairman CROW. Thank you, Mr. Gilchrist.
And I am going to—instead of using the rest of my time, I am
going to yield early to Mrs. Young Kim who has a competing hear-
ing right now, make sure she has an opportunity to get her ques-
tions in, and then I can loop back later.
Mrs. YOUNG KIM. Oh, thank you so much for your consider-
ation, Chairman.
I also, before I ask my questions to the witnesses, I wanted to
recognize the presence of our Ranking Member of the committee,
Mr. Luetkemeyer. Thank you so much for joining us, and our vice
Ranking Member, Roger Williams, thank you for joining us.
You know, I want to pose a question to Mr. Greer. As I men-
tioned in my opening statement, corporate tax increases will di-
rectly cause utility costs to surge across the country and, as a re-
sult, small businesses will face higher electric, gas bills, like gas
and water bills. So how would that impact your business, if you can
be specific in terms of how, give me the numbers and how it will
impact you?
Mr. GREER. Well, the utility costs as part of our operations is
one of the largest, particularly in brewing beer. I use a tremendous
amount of electricity. So however we are funded and however this
energy is generated plays a major role on my bottom line.
Mrs. YOUNG KIM. Thank you.
You know, I want to talk about—we are talking a lot about the
energy and infrastructure, but I think the infrastructure is met
with a lot of burdensome regulations and red tape, and you talked
about in your testimony that we need Federal regulations that are
predictable so we can plan long term. I couldn’t agree with you
more on that. And you also said we can’t just change the rules in
the middle of the game, which seems to happen too often.
I also agree with you on that. I mean, it is really important that
as Members of Congress, as policymakers, we need to set the poli-
cies that is predictable so our businesses can plan and, you know,
succeed according to that.
So as a small business owner, can you explain to our committee
how costly regulatory compliance is for small businesses?
Mr. GREER. Well, when you add together local, State, Federal
regulations, just keeping up to date on the changes that are made
in them is very burdensome for me because I am actually a—I
make beer.
I don’t have—I am a sole proprietor, along with my wife. I don’t
have a large staff who can keep me attuned to all of the idiosyncra-
sies.
We also, in the process of this, beyond running a small business
and having the regulations of a lot of common businesses like ours,
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we manufacture alcohol, so we have a whole other level of insur-
ance regulations at the local, State, and Federal level for that and,
of course, increased insurance costs and increased liability because
of the product that we manufacture, so it is very difficult as things
change around.
And one of the things that I have always been the most con-
cerned about is as administrations change in Washington, we tend
to have very quick steps taken in one direction or another that
tend to influence what we are able to do, and we definitely need
to have an opportunity to do a long-term plan and to be able to
stick to that. And in a lot of respects with that, we are stuck in
the middle.
Mrs. YOUNG KIM. You know, as Members of Congress continue
to examine small businesses’ recovery after COVID-19, is there
anything that you can tell us that we should be doing to focus our
efforts going forward?
Mr. GREER. Well, one of the things, the Restaurant Revitaliza-
tion Grant Fund was very well written by the Small Business Ad-
ministration, and I think it was very helpful to a lot of people. Its
biggest problem was that it ran out of money, and I believe that
there is some conversation going on in Washington about refunding
some of that to be more useful to the rest of us. It is not large
amounts of money, but as an example, for me I could double my
capacity if I could spend $4,000 that I don’t have and drop another
utility pole in to service my food truck. Right now I can run the
truck or the brewery or the dish machine or my portable kitchen,
but I don’t have enough utilities at my disposal to be able to run
any of them simultaneously.
And while that looks like a very small amount of money, my wife
and I have been running this business as volunteers for the last
15 months just in order to be able to stay afloat. So that may seem
like pocket change to some people, but that and demands for other
things, food prices, transportation, the fuel costs of our truckers,
you know, we are looking at $4 a gallon fuel again, it is very dif-
ficult with the regulatory environment that we live in to make beer
and serve my local community well.
Mrs. YOUNG KIM. Thank you so much.
I know my time is up. I will yield back. Thanks.
Chairman CROW. Thank you. The gentlewoman yields back.
We are going to go back and use my remaining 3 minutes now.
I want to start by just stating a few facts at the outset on the
issue of taxes. I am obviously somebody, you know, that has a
background in counseling small businesses and regulatory compli-
ance and taxes. And a couple of just facts are that 95 percent of
small businesses operate as passthrough entities and are exempt
from the corporate tax rate. That is fact number one.
Fact number two is that there is a lot that goes into a business
besides just the corporate tax structure, like skilled workforce, good
education system that feeds that business and helps them grow,
roads and bridges that can move their products to port, reliable en-
ergy, and an infrastructure grid, clean water to make beer and do
other things with an increasingly degrading water system, all of
which requires public investment. And if we don’t have the revenue
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to invest those things, we can’t have growing and thriving busi-
nesses.
And I also say that, you know, the corporate tax rate was 35 per-
cent in 2017, and going up to 28 percent for that small segment
of non passthrough small businesses that would be impacted
would, you know, not be devastating for those businesses. That is
what business owners uniformly have been telling me. In fact,
those investments that it would make would actually help the larg-
er ecosystem and help them grow their businesses.
So I just wanted to set the record straight on that.
Before I go back to the members, I also wanted to ask Ms. Colon
De Mejias, I am a huge fan of apprenticeship programs, and I know
I see Mr. Garbarino on here who similarly shares my passion for
apprenticeship programs. But I would love to hear from you very
briefly on the role that apprenticeship programs in particular
would play for helping workforce development because so many of
these businesses just can’t find employees. People are transitioning,
and apprenticeships are really one of the best ways to do that.
Ms. Colon De Mejias.
Ms. COLON DE MEJIAS. Thank you.
We don’t—in energy efficiency, we don’t have a labor code so we
don’t have an apprenticeship program. We have kind of been work-
ing to advocate for a labor code so that we could start programs
to have apprenticeships, so we kind of have to create our own
training. I would be hopeful that there would be a tandem path to
allow both to exist.
I think it is important to have an apprenticeship program in re-
lationship to informing people that a business opportunity exists.
Oftentimes people graduate school and they want to start an ap-
prenticeship program and be an electrician or an HVAC person,
and they don’t know there are other lines of careers in our indus-
try.
So I think it would be important to develop those labor codes and
ensure that there was that opportunity for apprenticeship pro-
grams.
But I also think there are other conduits besides apprenticeship
programs, like on-the-job training through an actual business, that
could be just as well served and are much faster to get up and
going. So in Connecticut, we have a program just like that that is
starting actually in a week from now that will train people for
these jobs. It would be great if there was a way to register them
for those opportunities.
Thank you.
Chairman CROW. Thank you. I appreciate that, Ms. Colon De
Mejias.
I will now go to the gentlewoman from Georgia, Ms. Bourdeaux,
for 5 minutes.
Ms. BOURDEAUX. Thank you so much. Thank you, Chairman
Crow and Ranking Member Ms. Young Kim, and thank you to our
witnesses today.
Clean energy jobs are powering the economic recovery in Georgia
and across the country. After an initial decline due to the pan-
demic, Georgia had one of the fastest growing clean energy sectors
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of any State, growing over 29 percent between June and December
of 2020, the second highest rate in the nation.
One thing I talk about with my business community is that we
really have a chance to do well by doing good in Georgia, both tack-
ling climate change and also building new opportunity for Georgia
businesses.
The United States and Georgia have an opportunity to lead the
world in clean energy technology, but it will require investment on
the part of our policymakers to make that a reality.
I was very interested in hearing about the apprenticeship pro-
grams or the lack of those, and an issue also near and dear to my
heart is workforce development, and I have recently visited some
of the technical colleges in Georgia looking at some of the programs
that they are putting in place.
And I wanted to just circle back to that issue with—actually, Mr.
Gilchrist, I don’t know if you have any insight on this, but at least
since you sort of have a national view on it, you know, what do we
need to be doing to build out the workforce for small businesses in
this kind of clean energy technology space?
Mr. GILCHRIST. Thank you, Representative Bourdeaux. That is
a big question, and I do have a bit of experience in this area.
The first thing is really investing in training programs and ap-
prenticeships. You know, a lot of the union apprenticeships that we
work alongside here in Colorado are already training their workers
in clean energy. You know energy efficiency, as I mentioned before,
is 2/3 of the workforce in clean energy. So, you know, those are jobs
like insulators, you know, things that we don’t necessarily think
about in the trades. But the electrical workers especially are doing
a lot of energy efficiency, the pipefitters (the United Association of
Pipefitters and Plumbers) they are doing HVAC installations,
which is a major energy efficiency upgrade. You know, the mechan-
ical systems, updating and upgrading mechanical systems for
buildings is extremely important, and that is a lot of work that can
be done by highly skilled workers.
So, I think we often categorize clean energy jobs with solar in-
stallers, installers, you know, wind technicians. And while they
really are oftentimes good jobs, they aren’t necessarily always the
highest paid or the highest skilled. So you have to look at really
the vast majority of where those workers are, which is in energy
efficiency and, like I said before in my oral statement, that you
know, it goes way beyond our typical understanding of clean energy
jobs.
But some things that we have done in Colorado, just this year
we passed a bill helping to drive some innovation within training
pathways for clean energy jobs. State Representative Dominique
Jackson, who also resides in Congressman Crow’s office, helped
drive that bill which will work with the community college system,
as well as a number of other stakeholders, to help create those
pathways.
And, you know, frankly, we have been thinking about this for
quite some time. Colorado has really been an innovator in creating
non-traditional sector training partnerships, you know, through
things like a group called Career Connect or through our Denver
public schools and school systems around the State to help stu-
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dents understand the breadth of opportunities, including in clean
energy down the road.
So, you know, they like to think of it as sort of a way to marry
the vocational system with the traditional college system so that
students can get an understanding of what sort of other vocational
jobs are out there that are earn while you learn, high-paying jobs
that are really career oriented and especially those in the union
building trades sector.
Another thing that we have done this year, which is sort of inter-
esting, is to further incentivize, since we can’t always predict the
future, training programs, especially at the IBEW, and the pipe
trades, which often take, you know, 5 to 6 years. So you have to
start training those folks early on, and you can’t do that without
some understanding of what will be coming in the future. And so
creating those incentives to invest in that cleaner, cheaper tech-
nology is really important.
And I understand we are running close on time, but I definitely
have more to say about that, so——
Ms. BOURDEAUX. Okay. Well, I hope some other folks will ask
some questions about that because I think we need to flesh that
out and see to what extent we just need to bring the community
together to put those pieces in place or to what extent, you know,
we need to make some Federal investments in getting that training
pipeline set up.
Thank you so much. And I yield back.
Chairman CROW. Thank you. The gentlewoman yields back.
I will now recognize the gentleman from Texas, the Vice Ranking
Member of the committee, Mr. Williams, for 5 minutes.
Mr. WILLIAMS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
In full disclosure, I am a small business owner, I have been for
51 years, and I am in the automobile business, and I am from
Texas.
So under President Trump’s pro growth policies and the Tax
Cuts and Jobs Act, small businesses were able to keep more of
their hard-earned profits. They used this money to reinvest in their
businesses, hire new employees, and increase purchase orders. Un-
fortunately, President Biden and my colleagues on the left are try-
ing to undo this progress and increase taxes on corporations, pass-
through entities, and capital gains in order to pay for their social
and environmental agenda. These tax increases will put our small
businesses at a disadvantage, there is no doubt, as they are they
are still trying to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
And I have heard today from some of our witnesses that it is
hard to find people to work. Well, if we quit paying people not to
work, we would have people to work.
And I can also say this too, in due respect to our Chairman, I
don’t know a person in my district, not one, that wants to pay more
taxes to the federal government with what we see how the federal
government spends. So you cut taxes, it is more employees. You
raise taxes, you have less employees.
So, with that in mind, Mr. Greer, can you elaborate how these
tax hikes will affect your brewery and any pauses you have had to
put on business investments due to this looming increase in taxes
that the Democrats propose?
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Mr. GREER. Well, one of the things, to be clear, is that the taxes
on me individually as a small business are a struggle for us at the
best because our margins are so small. The thing that is most crit-
ical to me are Federal, State, and regional taxes on all of my sup-
pliers across the country that continually drive the price of the
goods and services that I purchase from them up and continue to
increase our costs in transportation and supply in our brewery
work, kind of the end producer of this.
So taxes directly on me, the first year we were in business, when
we added insurance, taxes, regulations, fees and all of the things
together, 51 percent of my gross income in my first year went to-
ward those expenses. So that will give you kind of an idea of the
expenses at a small, small level. Every time we turn around, we
find another fee or another tax or even, more importantly, changes
in the taxes or the codes that we haven’t been able to plan for or
haven’t been predictable.
Mr. WILLIAMS. Well, and certainly don’t talk about making
things retroactive. I would suggest you move to Texas. We don’t
have a lot of those fees. You might think about that.
Mr. GREER. I have been told that before.
Mr. WILLIAMS. The private sector is going to be the ones who
bring the emission reducing or carbon capture technology to market
which will ultimately help the environment and not increase gov-
ernment mandates which don’t help the environment. Many compa-
nies are already investing their own capital and putting resources
to achieving this objective without the government telling them
what to do, but if companies are forced to pay more taxes or hire
additional compliance officers to deal with the burdensome new
mandates, they will have less money in their business to bring for-
ward these new initiatives to find a solution for the climate change.
So, Mr. Hasselbeck, how can—in short, I am running out of time.
How can the federal government better utilize resources to assist
small businesses like yours to encourage investment and move in-
novative technology towards commercialization?
Mr. HASSELBECK. Thank you for the question.
And I think there is three fairly simple ways we can do it: A na-
tional training and incentive program to help us develop and coach
600,000 highly paid licensed electricians and clean energy techni-
cians in a 15-year time frame; collaboration with the fossil fuel in-
dustry to map out an orderly transition to clean renewable energy,
one that does right by the thousands of fossil fuel workers who
have devoted their lives to powering our economy.
And then a national focus on elementary and high school pro-
grams which teach the benefits of a career in the trades. These
must be supported by investments in trade schools and community
college programs specifically geared towards the clean tech work-
force while also avoiding massive levels of student debt.
Mr. WILLIAMS. Okay. Thank you.
Mr. Greer, since President Biden took office, main street America
is facing a new threat of inflation, whether it is higher gas prices,
increased cost of raw materials, or higher utility bills, small busi-
nesses are among those hit hardest again by these spikes. To effect
the rising operational expenses, business owners have often had to
shift the burden on to the consumer and raise prices for goods and
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services, which you cannot do that much. You can’t just raise
prices.
Mr. Greer, how have these cost increases affected your brewery
and what kind of adjustments are you making to make sure you
can stay ahead of this inflation that has been created?
Mr. GREER. At this current time, the adjustment we have been
forced to make is that my wife and I have been volunteers running
our business for the past 15 months. The costs are not real control-
lable for us, and I live in a small rural, one of the poorest counties
in the State of New Mexico, and we don’t see any practical way
that we could raise our prices.
Chairman CROW. The gentleman’s time expired. We can loop
back around for a second round.
Mr. WILLIAMS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Chairman CROW. I am going to recognize the gentlewoman from
Illinois, Ms. Newman, for 5 minutes.
Ms. NEWMAN. Well, good morning. Thank you, Chairman.
Thank you, Ranking Member Young Kim. This has been a great
discussion this morning.
I want to start by lifting up some leaders from my home State
of Illinois. In light of today’s hearing, I ask that the committee—
offer unanimous consent to submit a statement from Clear Flame
Engine Technologies into the record. Clear Flame——
Chairman CROW. Without objection.
Ms. NEWMAN. Thank you.
Clear Flame Engine Technologies is a Black and women founded
small business dedicated to decarbonizing technologies in the en-
ergy sector. Their statement can serve as a blueprint for small
businesses in the energy sector, so so entered.
A couple of other comments, if I may, Chair.
So I would like to associate myself with Chair Crow’s comments.
Just to reiterate 95 percent of all small businesses will not be af-
fected in any way by any tax increase and, again, it would be to
28 percent not to 35 percent, to be clear.
But I do have a couple of questions, and I think our witnesses
today have offered great ideas. So my first set of questions would
be to Mr. Hasselbeck, if I may. I love the notion of a national work
training program. Do you envision this being a partnership of pub-
lic and private and unions?
Mr. HASSELBECK. I do. I think, you know, the need for skilled
workforce development is so great and so urgent, we need to ex-
plore any and all viable opportunities. And as I mentioned before,
we’ve gotten a lot of advice and support from our local IBEW part-
ners here, but there are other alternative passes as well like our
own apprenticeship program which, you know, meets the same
technical requirements, job site training, getting paid while learn-
ing, but it is a 4- and a 5-year program. So, as I think Mr. Gilchrist
had mentioned, these take some foresight in investment to make
sure that we are setting folks up for success right from the begin-
ning.
A really common piece of feedback we get from our new employ-
ees is, man, I wish I knew that there was this opportunity when
I was going to college or when I was starting out in my careers.
And this is often a second career as they get into the trades. So
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I think where the public and private partnership can come together
is really that education at the early stage, and helping kind of real-
ly support these high school starting trade-based educational pro-
grams is a real career opportunity for long-term wealth creation.
Ms. NEWMAN. Thank you for that. And if you have any other
materials on what you have done locally there, we would love to
see that on the committee level. So please share if you can.
Mr. HASSELBECK. Yeah. We would be thrilled to.
Ms. NEWMAN. And then, Mr. Gilchrist, I am very excited about
Just Transition. I started BlueGreen Alliance and Just Transition
council in my district. So we will be reading your materials in ear-
nest. But a couple of questions for you around how has played out
in Colorado. Have you worked primarily with small businesses on
this? Or who all participates, and who is seeing the most success
and benefit right now?
Mr. GILCHRIST. Thank you, Representative Newman. That is
also a good question. Also as you know, by being a lawmaker your-
self, a robust stakeholder process is extremely important.
Ms. NEWMAN. Yeah.
Mr. GILCHRIST. And we work alongside a number of groups
that bring small business voices to the policy discussions, you
know, environmental entrepreneurs to—there is also the Colorado
Outdoor Business Alliance, Good Jobs for Colorado, and many of
our rural roundtables that, you know, all of those groups are con-
vening across the State.
I think what has been fairly unique about this year, as you
know, we are testifying virtually here, is that there has really been
a great opportunity to bring in those voices from other parts of the
State, those small business owners from places like Mesa County,
from Pueblo County, which are, you know, are a lot further away
from Denver than, you know, than we usually see.
You know, one of the things that has been really useful for them
in developing this transition process, which, by the way, was cre-
ated by the first in the nation legislation creating the office in
2019, and the action plan, which actually focused on community
engagement, community listening sessions around the State, hear-
ing from a lot of those voices, has led to some of these policy solu-
tions we are seeing today.
So, we try to bring in, as you know, myself, you know, the work
we do at NRDC, as well as all the legislators we work with trying
to bring in those voices from across the State.
Ms. NEWMAN. Thank you. And more, please. And I yield back.
Mr. CROW. The gentlewoman yields back. I now recognize the
gentleman from New York, Mr. Garbarino, for 5 minutes.
Mr. GARBARINO. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you for holding
this hearing. And thank you to the witnesses for coming today. My
first question to Mr. Greer, businesses on Long Island where I rep-
resent have suffered during, and in the aftermath of the COVID-
19, especially our restaurants and taverns. Since being sworn into
Congress, I have attempted to help many small businesses. In fact,
one of my first acts as a member of this committee was offering an
amendment to increase the funding available for the Restaurant
Revitalization Fund. And the American Rescue Plan, unfortunately,
was defeated.
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Now, I am proud co-sponsor of the Entree Act, which is being of-
fered by the Ranking Member, which would utilize unspent funds
from the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 to assist American res-
taurant owners who are working tirelessly to serve their employees
and communities.
Mr. Greer, you touched upon this a little bit in your testimony.
How would the Entree Act and a properly funded restaurant revi-
talization fund program support you and your employees in the re-
covery, in addition to what you had already stated?
Mr. GREER. Well, I am not familiar with the new plan you were
talking about, but the SBA revitalization——
Mr. GARBARINO. It would fund that bill up to almost about $70
billion from where it is now.
Mr. GREER. Well, anything—you know, one of the concerns I
have is I am seeing a lot of people who have taken advantage of
loan programs over the last past year, and have not been able to
grow their businesses coming out of this who are now in a position
where they are having trouble about thinking about how to pay
that back.
So small grant programs are, obviously, useful. One of the things
that I—and we can use all the help that we can get. The res-
taurant industry was one of the hardest hit, along with tourism.
The—I wanted to make a comment in here because a couple of
times I have heard that small businesses like mine won’t be af-
fected by the changes in the tax rate, which may very well be true,
except that all of my suppliers fall into that category of those who
will be taxed, and that will increase my costs because there is cer-
tainly going to pass those on.
All the help we can get in getting this industry and the tourism
industry out of this pandemic is useful.
Mr. GARBARINO. Right. I appreciate that, but the money that
would come directly from the restaurant revitalization fund, if you
would—did you apply for that, sir? Did you apply for a grant? Or
did you not because you didn’t know if you were going to get
money?
Mr. GREER. No, we did apply. We qualified for a small amount
of money, but it would have been enough to do the one task that
I had of increasing our ability to power more of our building simul-
taneously. We did, and we were not—we were not picked. They
said they ran out of money before they got to us.
Mr. GARBARINO. Okay. So you need more money to go into that
program. Okay. Thank you.
Mr. GREER. Yes. Thank you.
Mr. GARBARINO. And this is just a general question. We are
talking about—so far if anybody who wants to answer. We are talk-
ing renewables, renewable energy. I have spoken to small busi-
nesses in New York. I don’t know if you know this, but by 2030,
70 percent of the energy that we produce has to be renewable en-
ergy, as well as 3,000 megawatts have to be produced by energy
storage. I have spoken to small businesses, union shops that are
going to be—they are very excited to work on the wind turbines
and other projects that are going out there. But my question is a
two-part question. Should nuclear energy be considered part of
clean energy, and will that help with jobs?
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And for the battery storage, something that I am running into,
or our companies are running into that want to do it, are local mu-
nicipalities and zoning laws, they are not being treated as public
utilities, at least not in New York right now, so they have to come
up with specific zoning laws, or comply with zoning laws. And a lot
of people don’t—a lot of NIMBYers, they don’t want it in their area.
So is that a problem—are you seeing—one, should nuclear be in-
cluded in clean energy? And, two, the battery storage, are we see-
ing that kind of problem with local municipalities and zoning? So
whoever wants to jump in. Mr. Hasselbeck, I see your hand up.
Mr. HASSELBECK. I would like to start with the battery storage
question. ReVision Energy operates in four different States. And in
those four different States, we have four different sets of jurisdic-
tions and codes and standards. And it is certainly a significant
challenge to have a single product offering, and insulation program
that meets varying code standards, especially for new technologies.
We, too, like Mr. Greer, are often in a very rural area, and our
local authorities having jurisdiction often struggle to apply codes
and standards for technologies they don’t have legacy experience
with. So we spend a lot of our time and energy educating our local
AHJs.
So additional support from the Federal level to streamline the
permitting process for energy storage installations, and other tech-
nologies for that matter, is really helpful. Just last week——
Mr. CROW. Unfortunately, the gentleman’s time has expired. I
will now recognize the gentleman from Minnesota, Mr. Phillips for
5 minutes.
Mr. PHILLIPS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do appreciate it.
And, Mr. Hasselbeck, I want to congratulate you on your recent B
Corps designation. And I hope you could just elaborate for this
committee why you decided to take that step to become a B Corps
and an ESOP, as I consider that to be perhaps one of the most
compelling possibilities for this committee to inspire for businesses
across the country. If you could share a little about that journey
in your decisions, we would appreciate it.
Mr. HASSELBECK. Well, absolutely, and thank you for asking.
We think that additional Federal support for companies or organi-
zations would prioritize both social and worker benefits as highly
as profit margins is really important. So whether it is ESOPs, co-
operatives, B Corps, those are all different strategies to achieve
that goal.
Something that is particularly neat about ESOPs in general, is
that not only the ESOP companies have, on average, a higher level
of wages for all of their staff, they also perform better financially
just as individual businesses. So we think that that is at real cata-
lyst to growth.
Since 2017, when ReVision Energy became an ESOP company,
we have seen our ESOP share values increase roughly 3,000 per-
cent. And that benefits every single co-owner of my company, re-
gardless of their job title, role, or responsibility level. So, we think
that that is a really key long-term aspect of wealth creation. It is
not just wages, it is wealth creation in the event of ESOP values.
And making sure that the people doing the actual work, climbing
up around on the roofs or out in the muddy fields, they need to
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share the financial benefits of their company’s success, and we
think ESOPs are great.
We think the B Corps opportunity is great way to provide third-
party objective certification to our different approaches. And that
is really important for us. I am a construction guy, so I would ap-
preciate metrics and goals and standards. And what we think is
great from the B Corps, it is a very specific and a very detailed set
of qualifications. And you are either doing this stuff or not, and it
allow uses to be objectively measured and allows our consumer
bases to take that objective measurement to say, You don’t have to
listen just to me, in my opinion. You can look at this third-party
certification process that shows that, not only are we doing good for
our employees and the workforce, but also our local social justice
initiative. So it really just helps us kind of crystallize our indi-
vidual company mission.
Mr. PHILLIPS. I love it. And as someone who believes deeply
that businesses can and should be positive forces for good, Rep-
resentative Chrissy Houlahan, my friend and colleague and I just
started a caucus called the Stakeholder Capitalism Caucus, trying
to encourage fellow Members of Congress to participate in encour-
aging such things.
So share with us, from a policy perspective, what can and should
we be considering to inspire more ESOPs, more B Corps, and,
frankly, more sharing from those enterprises that generate success
with the people that help make it possible?
Mr. HASSELBECK. Sure. I think it is education. I was looking
at the Committee for Employee Stock Ownership Programs, and I
think there is somewhere around 6,700 ESOPs in the United
States today, covering about 15 million workers. That is a tiny drop
in the bucket. I think we have several million individualized small
businesses throughout our country right now, and a lot of folks are
just unaware.
I talked to industry peers and other businesses all the time who
are very interested and curious about our ESOP transition process.
And it is great story, but they just are not aware of the financial.
There is really compelling tax benefits as well to becoming an
ESOP, which helps us put our profits directly back into our people
and our mission.
So I think education, and then of the opportunities out there—
and it is still—it is—it is a regulatory challenging process to be-
come an ESOP. It took us about 18 months. We had to reach a cer-
tain scale before we as a company had the capital to apply to the
ESOP transition.
So, perhaps, some additional support for smaller businesses who
want to become an employee ownership, who want to cover the em-
ployee ownership model, but don’t yet have those excess dollars in
their budget to dedicate to the time.
Mr. PHILLIPS. Terrific. Well, we would love to work with you
towards that end, and encourage my colleagues to join us in this
important mission. Sharing success is the most beautiful outcome
of capitalism. With that, Mr. Chair, I see my time is drawing to
a close, I yield back.
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Mr. CROW. Thank you. The gentleman yields back. I will now
recognize the gentlewoman from New York, Ms. Tenney for 5 min-
utes.
Ms. TENNEY. Thank you, Chairman Crow and Ranking Member
Young Kim for holding this important hearing. And thank you to
the witnesses for your time and expertise and insight into this im-
portant issue. Obviously, as a small business owner, the middle
class is essential to this country. But my big concern, coming from
a State like New York, is that supporters of the Green New Deal
too often actually ignore the science of energy, and push economics
that end up hurting our energy sector and our independence, and
raise prices on consumers all the way through the line. Unfortu-
nately, this administration has taken some of the Green New Deal
priorities to heart, destroying our energy sector, making us more
dependent again on OPEC, causing the gas prices to go up, and
devastating families, and having among the highest energy costs in
the nation.
In New York State, it has not helped our small business commu-
nity, along with high taxes and over regulation. And on top of that,
there seems to be very little effort on sourcing some of the essential
materials we need for batteries, such as for solar panels. Our en-
ergy supply chain is more reliant on countries like China for our
rare earth elements and those types of things. That is why I just—
I would like to just ask a couple of questions.
As a small business owner that relies on a municipal power
source to keep us going in New York, thankfully for that, but we
have sort of a Green New Deal, actually, in New York State. But
I would like to pose my first question to Mr. Gilchrist. In your tes-
timony, you said how clean energy transition in Colorado has been
a win-win for the State. However, Xcel Energy, Colorado’s largest
utility, has announced it is seeking a rate increase of nearly 13 per-
cent next year.
So politicians keep hyping up the power grid that is completely
reliant on solar and wind is cheaper than fossil fuels, nuclear and
hydro, and some of those other resources, but those savings haven’t
seemed to pan out. What do you think has gone out with Colorado’s
clean energy transition? And how can we keep prices down and af-
fordable for small business owners?
Mr. GILCHRIST. Well, I thank you, Representative Tenney. You
know, I am not sure I can comment too much on Xcel’s rate in-
creases, but I can comment on what will help save small businesses
money. And one of the things that I think Mr. Hasselbeck was get-
ting at is another policy solution is creating a national building
standard. You know, 13 percent of building—13 percent of overall
emissions in the country come from commercial and residential
buildings. So, if you create a national standard rather than a
patchwork approach, then you can allow businesses to plan for
that.
In addition, creating clean energy incentives, also on a national
scale, where more folks across the country can take advantage of
that, is literally putting money into the pocket of small business
owners.
So that is where I think we have the most opportunity to really
drive that investment. You know, as I mentioned before, clean en-
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ergy businesses are small businesses. So, you are directly helping
them create the micro capitalism where small businesses are lit-
erally helping other small businesses thrive.
Ms. TENNEY. I would like to reclaim my time. I come from a
State, New York State is an original colony. We have buildings
that some are 100 years old or even more. Our small business com-
munity is already overtaxed, overwhelmed with regulation. I am
not sure how we would be able to invest in new building. We have
a sea of buildings for sale, actually, in upstate New York, that peo-
ple are looking to sell or to use that space, as a commercial prop-
erty owner as well. So I am not sure that imposing another stand-
ard on building is actually going to be helpful for small businesses.
But another issue, I just want to address this to Mr. Hasselbeck
as well. In your testimony, you advocate on behalf of wind and
solar stating that in some circumstances, it is the lower cost source
of domestic power generation than nuclear, coal, and natural gas—
you know, nuclear being completely emission free. However, the
manufacturing of solar panels and batteries are heavily reliant on
rare earth minerals often sourced in China.
Would you also advocate for updated Federal regulations to make
it easier to source those raw materials for batteries and solar that
we need for those indications?
Mr. HASSELBECK. I would. We would advocate for that, be-
cause we think having a strong domestic supply of all materials
within the supply chain is a critical part to create additional jobs,
as well as to allow the United States to manage our costs. You
know, similar to Mr. Greer’s supply chain challenges, this is the
most challenging year to be a construction company that certainly
we can remember with rapidly increasing costs as well as increas-
ingly delayed fabrication timelines.
Some of that, not all of that, some of that manufacturing is do-
mestic. We buy a lot of U.S. steel. And that stuff is great, but I
think some of these rare earth minerals would help us continue to
reduce the costs and control our own supply chain.
Ms. TENNEY. Thank you. I think my time has expired. But I do
know that most of these rare earth minerals are actually mined in
the United States, sent to China to be processed and sent back. It
would be great if our small business community could actually do
the type of work on these rare earth minerals and keep it here and
keep our jobs here. But thank you very much to the witnesses. I
appreciate your testimony. I yield back.
Mr. CROW. Thank you. The gentlewoman yields back. I will now
recognize the Ranking Member, Mr. Luetkemeyer, the gentleman
from Missouri for 5 minutes.
Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, a good hearing
today. And I just want to comment on a couple of a comments that
you made earlier with regards to, yeah, 95 percent of the busi-
nesses out there, S Corps passthroughs of some kind. But out of
the C Corps, 1 million of those are small businesses. They are con-
cerned about increasing taxes. And a statement where increasing
taxes is helpful smacks to me of changing economics when you
think taking money from people and redistributing it is a good
deal. Changing economics has never worked in the history of this
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country or this world. Increasing people’s taxes, in my mind, is not
helpful.
Mr. Greer, would increasing your taxes be helpful to you?
Mr. GREER. No.
Mr. LUETKEMEYER. I understand your comment about being a
volunteer. I appreciate that very much. Being a small business
owner myself, I understand that you are the one that gets the last
paycheck on the stack. And if you run out of money, that doesn’t
get to cover your check, so you don’t get paid.
Mr. GREER. We are still here because we took a big cut of work-
ing as volunteers. We are lucky that we could do that. I am un-
lucky in that the paid staff still isn’t working.
Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Yeah, it is interesting, you know, the
studies show that these tax increases, for instance, for sure on C
Corps are passed on to the customers, employees, as well as the
owners. So tax increases are devastating.
Just a curious question here for you, Mr. Greer. I know that you
talk about inflation. I will get to that in a second here. But there
is a lot of other hidden costs that you have to pay, the things that
have gone up. Has your unemployment insurance taxes gone up?
Has your workman’s comp gone up? Has your liability insurance
gone up? Because I know because of the COVID pandemic, there
is a lot of States that have raised their unemployment insurance
rates to make up for the losses to the unemployment fund. Have
you seen that in your State?
Mr. GREER. We have seen it in the State, a lot of it, because
I have virtually no staff. And my staff that works for us are all
owners in the business.
Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Okay.
Mr. GREER. But one of the things that is difficult for us is we
have so many multiple tiers, particularly in liability, serving alco-
hol that it appears that the consumer of the alcohol is the last one
being held responsible for any of the liability.
We just approved recreational marijuana. I know there is a con-
versation among the workman’s comp insurance companies about
whether, in anticipation of that, it might be a great opportunity for
them to raise people’s workman’s comp, just in anticipation that
there could be a problem. And I know that that has a lot of build-
ing trades really wondering about what is going to happen to them
in the future.
Mr. LUETKEMEYER. That is a very huge issue, depending on
industry. And thank you for your comments. With regard to the
restaurant program, this is something that we are looking at in
trying to fix, quite frankly. You are one of the victims of the
prioritization that was in the bill. In the bill, there was three sepa-
rate groups that were prioritized over others. Unfortunately, you
were not one of folks who were in the three initial priorities. And
the bill has been viewed as unconstitutional by Texas and by Ten-
nessee courts.
So that is hung up. Half the money has not gone out. Half the
money has gone out. And all of the money is committed to all of
those folks in those three first groups. We would like to fix that.
There is a bill to do that. We want to try and find some sources
of funds to be able to fund that at a level that you would be in-
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cluded in that, sir. So hang with us. We are going to—we haven’t
forgot about you. We are going to work with you here to try and
continue to help you along the way to keep your business going.
With regards to inflation, small businesses are getting creamed
with inflation right now. And it started with, you know, restricting
the pipeline up north and restricting permits. And as you saw, im-
mediately, there was an increase in gas prices. That is a rippling
effect to the entire economy. I think you mentioned it a couple of
times already, the increased inflationary prices of energy that you
faced with putting in your—the parts of your product that you need
to make it work.
Mr. GREER. Well, the—I am heavily reliant on outside suppliers
for raw materials. I am not a big business, but I still which, in
itself, is difficult because I can’t take advantage of some of the
economies of scale that the larger brewers can. The transportation
costs are also impacting this fuel. One of the things we have with
the workforce is we don’t have enough truckers out there running
as well. It has been a very difficult supply chain thing for us be-
cause we truly are the end of the line.
Mr. LUETKEMEYER. The ripple effect of increased energy
prices is across the board, across all of your increased costs that
you have for your inputs in your product as well, then you have
to pass it along on the end game for the price that you charge for
your product.
Mr. GREER. Energy is one of my biggest expenses.
Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. CROW. Thank you. The gentleman yields back. I believe we
are out of additional members for questioning. So we will start to
wrap the hearing.
So with that, you know, I always appreciate this committee’s ro-
bust discussion on how to create jobs, how to grow businesses. The
bottom line is, these are challenging issues. There is no doubt
about it. Building a business, creating jobs, and spurring growth is
not an easy thing to do. And I always appreciate that. The legisla-
tive process that this committee goes through to actually find the
best way to do that. And part of that is just, you know, just the
facts. And one thing that I will say in closing here is, I love facts
because they just happen to be true. And a couple of those are that
95 percent of small businesses operate as passthrough entities and
will be exempt from the corporate tax rate. Another one is that the
administration’s proposal, corporate tax rate structure proposal is
that, number one, we actually spend—we actually pay for what we
spend. We know that we have to make investments in infrastruc-
ture in this country. We know we have to do that. But there are—
infrastructure is falling apart, and we cannot be a 21st century
competitive economy and compete against China and others with-
out strong infrastructure.
This proposal would actually pay for those investments. You
know, unlike the record deficit spending that we saw under the
Trump administration, we believe in fiscal prudence, we believe in
being able to pay for what you spend.
The second thing this proposal really does is novelly that treats
everyone equally under the law. We believe that if you are a huge
corporation, that you should pay for some taxes. That you should
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actually pay for the roads and the bridges and the things that you
use as a major corporation, and not be exempt, because, frankly,
it is the small businesses that end up paying those taxes and pay
for that. And it is the large businesses they could exempt. So we
believe in enforcement. We believe in making sure that everyone
pays their fair share. And I think it is really extremely important
component of this proposal.
The next one is when President Biden took office 6 months ago,
the economy was just fluttering along, adding only 60,000 jobs per
month. Today, we are creating over 600,000 jobs per month. The
fastest growth at any point in any administration’s history. Just
dwell on that one for a moment. The unemployment rate is down
to 5.9 percent after one of the worst employment crises in this
country’s history. What an accomplishment that is.
And then on the issue of inflation, almost unanimously, most
economists say this is a natural blip post-recession, right? You al-
ways see, after recessions, an increase, because demand is out-
pacing supply. The supply chains are ramping back up, manufac-
turing is ramping back up, the supply chains are reaccommodating
that, and that costs—that causes the increase in costs. And you al-
ways see that leveling out after those changes. Those are just facts,
folks. That is what is happening. That is the assessment. I think
it is extremely important that we talk facts so we can make good
policy, and we can legislate appropriately. So with that, I look for-
ward to continuing the work with——
Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Chairman, I would
like to reclaim some time in opposition to make a rebuttal state-
ment in closing.
Mr. CROW. No, we are going to close out, Mr. Luetkemeyer.
Mr. LUETKEMEYER. We are always offered the opportunity. As
you were able to articulate here for several minutes, we have the
opportunity to also have our own voices heard in a closing.
Mr. CROW. Are you going to do the closing for Ms. Young Kim,
the Ranking Member?
Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Yes, I will do the closing.
Mr. CROW. Okay. When I am done, I will do that. One moment.
Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Okay.
Mr. CROW. The gentleman is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Thank you. Well, I appreciate the Chair-
man’s reiteration and emphasis on facts. It certainly is important.
As I have stated earlier, you know, increasing taxes is not helpful.
Those taxes are passed on to customers, employees, and the less
dollars are returned to the owners of companies.
When you talk about the jobs that are being created, we are still
hundreds of thousands of jobs short from where the projections
were by the administration, because we are not growing the econ-
omy as fast as it needs to be, and could be growing if we were to
fix this $300 check that is out there that doesn’t allow people, or
incentivizes people to stay home rather than go to work.
Again, the comments made about the supply chains. Yeah, sup-
ply chains are a problem, but they are broken because the people
are not going back to work, and as a result, there is a shortage of
parts, and there is a shortage of people, everything from truck driv-
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ers to manufacturing employees, to people serving folks at res-
taurants because they are incentivized to stay home.
1.8 million people decided not to take the job they were offered
as by the Morning Consult Poll just last week. Forty percent of the
people can make more money staying home than they can going to
work. Twenty-six States so far got rid of that $300 check, and you
have seen an increase in the employment in those States. That is
why the numbers you see are going in the right direction from the
standpoint of unemployment going down. That being said, we still
have a huge problem with the labor participation rate in this coun-
try. It continues to go down because people do not go to work be-
cause they are incentivized to stay home.
So the programs and policies of this administration are not work-
ing. We are limping along. And being successful in spite of them,
not because of them. I think that is the point we need to make.
Also, with regards to the tax bill and the infrastructure as you
were talking about, it is interesting that—you know, I have talked
to multiple electrical utility companies, an electrical generation
company, executives who are talking about if we went to all electric
vehicles, we don’t have enough electrical capacity to provide the
amount of electricity it is going to need to make this work. We
don’t have the power grid built up to make it work. And for us to
then spend—and our numbers I have seen, anywhere from 120 to
$170 billion for electrical charging stations. That is like about
building a bridge to nowhere because only 2 percent of the cars are
electric right now. It would be much better spent if you wanted to
spend 120-, $170 billion to put in the roads and bridges, which im-
prove the maintenance and ability of cars to run efficiently on
those roads and over those bridges, or make energy efficient gas
pumps. Why not make more energy efficient gas pumps instead of
electrical charging stations that is costing $150, $200,000 apiece,
and nobody is going to use them.
Mr. Chairman, this is the folly of this administration. This is the
fallacy of the policies that are out there with. The American people
are seeing this nonsense. And Mr. Greer on here today had some
very salient observations about some of the problems, and he, as
a small business owner, is directly affected because he has to wait
for his paycheck until we finally make some money and get this
economy going. With that, I yield back.
Mr. CROW. Thank you. The gentleman yields back. I always ap-
preciate a robust debate and discussion. So I appreciate the com-
ments and look forward to working with all of the members to fig-
ure out how we do what we all want to do and that is create jobs,
grow our economy, and address the climate crisis at the same time.
So with that, I would ask unanimous consent that members have
5 legislative days to submit statements and supporting materials
for the record. And, without objection, so ordered. And if there is
no further business to come before the committee, we are ad-
journed. Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 11:34 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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APPENDIX
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Æ
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File and source
- File
- CHRG-117hhrg45131.pdf
- Size
- 20,746,172 bytes
- SHA-256
- 4310acf24a57277497b89c7f57952cd7ab018124a7f48084fa7adea7bc80315f
- Our copy
- CHRG-117hhrg45131.pdf
- Original
- www.govinfo.gov