In House floor remarks on Wednesday, Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-CA) decried a California trucking rule, aiming his ire at Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA).
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00:01The gentleman from Virginia is recognized.
00:04Thank you, Madam Speaker.
00:05I now recognize the gentleman from California for three minutes.
00:10The gentleman is recognized.
00:12Thank you, Madam Speaker.
00:13Our governor in California, Gavin Newsom,
00:15likes to say that California leads the nation.
00:18And unfortunately, President Biden enabled him to do just that,
00:23to lead our nation down a path of total insanity in a way
00:27that puts us at war with common sense, with American consumers,
00:31and with our fantastic truckers.
00:34California has come after truckers in every way you can imagine,
00:39whether it's by far the highest diesel tax in the country,
00:42the regulation after regulation after regulation
00:45that makes more and more trucks unusable,
00:48or AB5 that went after the independent owner-operator model
00:52and threatened to put thousands of truckers out of work.
00:56But with this regulation, the state came after the whole wall of wax.
01:00They said, we're going to take your truck itself.
01:03With this regulation, the state said that by just the year 2035,
01:07but we're going to have for some classes of trucks,
01:1055% have to be zero emission vehicles, for others 75%, for others 40%.
01:16So what is the practical consequence of this going to be?
01:19Well, first, trucks are going to be a lot more expensive,
01:21thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars more expensive.
01:25Companies, they're either going to have to buy more trucks
01:28or they're going to have to carry less in their trucks
01:30because there's less capacity because of the weight of the battery.
01:34And by the way, they're going to have to rely on use infrastructure,
01:38charging infrastructure that doesn't even exist at this point in time.
01:42So American consumers, as we're seeing already in California,
01:47we'll see the cost of just about everything, certainly the cost of groceries go up,
01:54and this will only contribute to the fact that we have a shortage of truck drivers in our state and in this country.
02:01And yes, California is being allowed to create policy for the whole country
02:06because 11 states are tied to California's actions here
02:09and because it puts manufacturers in a dilemma if they have to manufacture one truck for one state
02:14and another truck for another state.
02:15So today, we are restoring common sense.
02:18We are restoring uniformity when it comes to interstate commerce.
02:23We are restoring support for our truckers, and we are lowering costs for consumers.
02:29And by the way, we believe fully in innovation, and we believe in a clean energy future for this country.
02:38We believe in clean air.
02:40But it is through innovation that we will get to clean air.
02:43It is not by government fiat.
02:45Indeed, it is an odd approach to innovation that says we are going to somehow magically fiat innovation
02:52by banning any and all available alternatives.
02:55That is not the way it works.
02:57And finally, to the notion from the gentleman from New Jersey that this sets a dangerous precedent.
03:02I will note that no California legislator ever voted on this or the car ban.
03:07No member of this house has voted on it.
03:09No individual citizen has voted on it.
03:11There has been no vote whatsoever on a policy of profound personal consequence
03:16to 40 million Californians and tens of millions other Americans.
03:20I think that is precisely the precedent actually putting this to a vote of the people's representatives that we need to set today.
03:26The time has expired.
03:27I yield back.
03:28I reserve.