 Good afternoon, congressional climate campers. Welcome to the 117th Congress and welcome to this session, our first of 2021, all about budget appropriations and stimulus. I am Dan Bressette, the Executive Director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. EEI was founded in 1984 on a bipartisan basis by members of Congress to provide science-based information about environmental energy and climate change policies to policy makers. We've also developed a program to provide technical assistance to rural utilities interested in on-bill financing programs for their customers. Whether briefings or fact sheets, everything we produce is freely available and accessible online. As always, the best way to stay up to date, never miss a thing, is to visit our website at www.eesi.org and sign up for our bi-weekly newsletter, Climate Change Solutions. Congressional Climate Camp is all about bringing together experts and practitioners to help inform policy makers, stakeholders, and concerned citizens about the basics of environmental energy and climate policies. We have a fantastic series of presentations and discussions lined up for you during the next two hours. But let me take a moment to orient everyone to the plan for Congressional Climate Camp and explain all the resources that are and will become available between now and about the end of April. First, what is Congressional Climate Camp? It is a four-part introductory online briefing series. We're obviously not able to meet or to be meeting in person on Capitol Hill right now. But that should never be an impediment to urgent to climate action. So Climate Camp is one way we're doing our best to provide that education that would otherwise be done in person. What topics will we cover during Congressional Climate Camp? Today, we will learn about the budget, appropriations, and the potential for future stimulus activities to advance climate solutions. Next month, we will provide high-level overviews of the emissions profiles of the top-emitting sectors of the US economy. In March, we will learn about climate policy near misses, like Waxman-Markey and the Clean Power Plan that represented the best thinking of climate leaders at the time and still helped shape the debate about how best to reduce emissions and adapt to impacts. In April, the fourth installment will take a look at what we call double whammies, policy options that provide near-term mitigation and adaptation benefits, many of which enjoy bipartisan support. What does Congressional Climate Camp involve? Well, of course, we have the online briefings. We're also structuring our sessions so we can slice and dice up the presentation so busy staff can target their learning if they want and cut right to the chase. The full webcast and its component parts will be posted online at www.esi.org, and we'll be posting written summaries and presentation materials as well for easy reference. For the first time, we'll also be releasing audio-only excerpts via our bi-weekly podcast, The Climate Conversation. If you like fact sheets and web articles, well, you are in luck because a veritable mountain of nonpartisan science-based content will spill forth on the topics covered during the camp sessions and related issues. With the new Congress and administration sworn in and getting down to work, EESI is set to ensure that policymakers have the information, analysis, case studies, and success stories necessary to motivate them to take action on climate change. There's a critical time in the fight against climate change. From here, we embark on the coming decade, the 2030 goals looming and the need to reduce emissions and transition justly and equitably to a decarbonized clean energy economy. It's only becoming more and more urgent. I think that about covers it. As always, the best way to stay current with all manner of EESI goings on is to visit us online at www.esi.org and sign up for climate change solutions. And if you crave daily updates, you can follow us online at EESI online. Two last bits of logistics before we get started. First, a reminder. If you miss anything from today or you wanna learn more, you'll be able to access an archived webcast if you visit us online at www.esi.org. And that is also the home of the full collection of EESI briefings, fact sheets, and other coverage from past years on environmental energy and climate topics. And second, while we have a packed agenda, you can still send us questions that we'll try to incorporate into the discussion. If you have a question, you have two options to ask it. First, you can send us a message on Twitter at EESI online or you can send us an email to EESI at EESI.org. Just to set realistic expectations with the number of you watching right now, we will not be able to get to every question. But that should not be a deterrent. So ask away. We will follow up and do our best to answer every question submitted during congressional climate camp. And now I get to turn to the first of our three speakers today. Kari Clark is an analyst in energy policy in the Congressional Resource Service, Resources, Science, and Industry Division. Her issue areas include energy efficiency and renewable energy, including appropriations. Before joining CRS, she was a department head in principal environmental systems engineer at Argonne National Laboratory, where for eight years, she conducted research and analysis on the environmental impacts of energy technologies and the impact of environmental policies on the energy industry. She studied chemical engineering at the University of Virginia and environmental energy engineering at the University of Michigan. And that is where she earned her PhD. So Kari, welcome to congressional climate camp. I cannot wait for your presentation and the discussion that we'll have afterwards. Thank you. Can you see my slides? We can, Kari, but we cannot see you. Oh, yes. Okay, is that better? Great. Thank you. Thank you for the introduction. And for those who are not familiar with CRS, we are part of the Library of Congress and we provide Congress with authoritative, confidential, objective, nonpartisan, and timely research and analysis. Today, I'm going to provide an overview of the annual appropriations process and discuss the fiscal year 2021 appropriations process for the Department of Energy and the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, or EERE. So to begin, this is an example of how the process would work in a normal cycle or a normal year. That is not always the case and it frequently is not the case. But if all things were working normally, the president submits a budget to Congress and that initiates the annual budget cycle. The president is required to submit the annual budget on or before the first Monday in February. Congress has, however, provided deadline extensions, both statutory and sometimes informally. Often submission is delayed, particularly in presidential transitions like years, such as the FY 2022 appropriation cycle. For FY 2021, President Trump submitted his budget proposal to Congress on February 10th of 2020. In the budget, the president recommends spending levels for various programs and agencies of the federal government in the form of budget authority. Budget authority refers to authority provided by federal law to enter into contracts or other financial obligations. The budget authority must be obligated in the fiscal year in which the funds are made available, but outlays or financial expenditures can occur over time. After the president submits the budget proposal to Congress, each agency generally provides additional detailed justification materials to the House and Senate appropriation subcommittees with jurisdiction over its funding. So the second step, this Congress adopts a budget resolution. You may have heard reference to budget enforcement or limits for appropriations measures. And under the congressional budget process, enforcement has both statutory and procedural elements. The statutory elements are derived from the Budget Control Act of 2011 or BCA, which established separate limits for defense and non-defense discretionary spending. The limits on discretionary spending are in effect through this fiscal year, FY 2021. The limits are primarily enforced by an automatic spending reduction process called sequestration. The procedural elements for budget enforcement are normally associated with the budget resolution and generally stem from requirements under the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 for CBA. The budget resolution is Congress's response to the president's budget. It is a concurrent resolution and not law because it is an agreement between the House and Senate that establishes overall budgetary and fiscal policy to be carried out through subsequent legislation. Through the CBA process, the appropriations committee in each chamber, as well as their subcommittees, receive a procedural limit on the total amount of budget authority for the upcoming fiscal year. That kind of sets their baselines. Within each chamber, the total new budget authority and outlay for each fiscal year are also allocated among the committees with jurisdiction for spending. So the House and Senate committees on appropriations receive allocations for the upcoming fiscal year because appropriations measures are on an annual basis. Once they receive their spending ceilings, they then separately subdivide the amount among their respective subcommittees. Providing spending ceilings for each subcommittee. Generally, the CBA has established April 15th as a target date for congressional adoption of the budget resolution, although Congress has frequently not met this date. There's no penalty if the budget resolution is not completed before April 15th or not at all. If Congress delays completion of the annual budget resolution or does not adopt one, each chamber could adopt a deeming resolution to address any procedural difficulties that could otherwise arise if that deadline is not met. So they're workarounds. So after the resolution has set the spending limits, then Congress can consider the appropriations measures. And traditionally the House of Representatives initiated consideration of regular appropriations measures. And then the Senate would consider and amend the House passed bills. However, more recently, the Senate appropriations subcommittees and committees have sometimes not waited for the House bills and they instead have reported their own original Senate bills. Under this approach, the House and Senate appropriations committees and their subcommittees have often considered the regular bills simultaneously. The House appropriations committee reports the 12 regular appropriations bills separately to the full House. The committee generally reports their bills in May and June. Generally, the House starts floor consideration of the regular appropriations bill in May or June as well. Again, these are when things are normally following this procedure, which is not always the case. The Senate appropriations committee typically begins reporting the bills in June and generally completes committee consideration prior to the August recess. The Senate typically begins floor consideration of the bills beginning in June or July. Consideration for the House and the Senate of this process can continue through the fall. And while Congress has traditionally considered and approved the regular appropriations bills separately, depending on any delays in the process, one or more appropriations measures may not receive separate initial consideration. And that can mean that several appropriation bills get combined into a single legislative vehicle prior to enactment. If and when that happens, that's typically referred to as an omnibus appropriations measure. If this process isn't completed before October 1st, which is the start of the fiscal year, Congress may need to enact one or more measures to provide temporary funding authority to prevent a funding gap that could require an agency to cease non-accepted activities. So temporary funding is typically provided in the form of a joint resolution to allow agencies or programs to continue to obligate funds at a particular rate. So for example, the rate of operations for the previous fiscal year might be applied. And that's applied for a specific period of time. Generally, these measures are known as continuing resolutions and they can range in length from a single day to an entire fiscal year. So that's step three. And step four, once the measures have been run through the House process and the Senate process, the House and Senate have to confer to resolve differences. The Constitution requires that the House and the Senate approve the same measure and precisely the same form before it may be presented to the president for his signature or veto. Consequently, the Appropriations Committee and each chamber will try to negotiate a resolution of the differences between the respective versions. That practice has generally been for the House and Senate to convene a conference committee to resolve differences between the chambers. Alternatively, you can reach an agreement potentially through an exchange of amendments between the houses. So once they have agreed upon a measure, they'll send it to the president. And step five, the president may sign or veto the measure. The president has 10 days to sign or veto the measure. If he takes no action, the bill automatically becomes law at the end of the 10-day period, if Congress is in session. If he takes no action when Congress is adjourned, he may pocket veto the bill. And if the president vetoes the bill, he sends it back to Congress. Congress has a chance to override the veto by a two-thirds vote in both houses. If they're successful, they override the veto, the bill becomes law. If Congress is unsuccessful, the bill dies. So that's the overall cycle and the overall typical time frames. Now that you have an understanding of that process, I'm gonna discuss the responsibilities and the appropriations committees. As I mentioned, the House and the Senate committee on appropriations have jurisdiction over the annual appropriations measures. Each committee is organized into 12 subcommittees and the subcommittee that is responsible for appropriations for the Department of Energy is the subcommittee for energy and water development and related agencies. Each of these has, there are multiple agencies in these bills and they're spread throughout the 12 bills, but DOE is in the energy and water development related agencies. So that's the one that I'll focus on through the remaining part of the presentation. But after the president submits the budget, the House and Senate appropriation subcommittees hold hearings on the segments of the budget under their justification. They'll focus on the details of the agency's justifications which provide supporting materials for the budget submission. Agency officials primarily testify at these hearings. They can also be supplemented by meetings and communications between subcommittee staff and agency officials. In addition, subcommittees can solicit requests from members of Congress for programmatic levels and language to be included in the appropriations bills or the committee reports. And that raises a point I just wanted to explain there's appropriations bills and their committee report language that accompanies that. The appropriations bills provide budget authority for and direction to agencies. Additional guidance is usually contained within the appropriations committee report language. And that guidance is usually more detailed. So looking at EERE, EERE receives an appropriation and the energy and water development related agencies bill and recommendations for funding for various programs within EERE are contained within the report language or explanatory statement. That report language does not have the same effect as law although agencies usually follow much of what is contained in the reports. So after conducting the hearings, the committees make their sub allocations and the subcommittees begin to draft markup and report the regular bills under their jurisdiction to their respective full committees. Both appropriations committees consider each subcommittees recommendation separately. The committees may adopt amendments to subcommittees recommendation prior to reporting the bills and making them available for further consideration by the respective chambers. So as I said, I was gonna focus kind of stepping down into energy and water related agencies. So this slide includes the different parts of the energy and water development related agencies appropriations bill. That bill includes funding for civil works projects as part of the US Army Corps of Engineers. That's title one of the bill. Title two is the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Reclamation and Central Utah Project. Title three is the Department of Energy. And there are a number of different independent agencies including the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Appalachian Regional Commission that are included in title four. DOE typically accounts for about 80% of the Spills funding. And the figure that I have on the screen includes the enacted level for FY 2020 and the FY 2021 amounts at the various stages of the appropriations cycle. So President Trump submitted his FY 2021 budget proposal to Congress on February 10th of 2020. That budget request included for energy and water development totaled about $42.6 billion including budget offsets. The House Appropriations Committee approved its 2021 energy and water development appropriations bill on July 13th of 2020. The bill was included as division C in the second FY 2021 Consolidated Appropriations Bill. So it was combined with a couple other appropriations bills. And that was passed by the House in July 31st of 2020. The House Passed Bill would have provided total non-emergency energy and water development funding of $49.6 billion including offsets. And that's about 3% above the FY 2020 enacted level and 17% above the request. In addition to that, the House Passed Bill also included $44.1 billion in emergency funding for energy and water appropriations in FY 2021 for a total of $93.7 billion. That emergency appropriations was included in a separate title, title six, and it's not reflected here. The Senate operated in a little different manner this year. The chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee released a draft of the FY 2021 energy and water bill and a draft explanatory statement on November 10th of 2020 did not go through the scheduled subcommittee or committee markup process. That Senate draft included $51.9 billion for energy and water development programs about 7% above the FY 2020 enacted and 22% above the request. And that Senate draft excluded emergency appropriations. So there are a series of continuing resolutions and a total of five that were required as part of this process to get the legislation over the finish line. And the FY 2021 omnibus appropriations and COVID relief and response act was signed by the president on December 27th. That provided about 49.5 billion for energy and water development. So within the energy and water development bill, I mentioned that the DOE typically accounts for about 80% of its funding. And so I wanted to provide a background or kind of a breakdown of what is included in DOE funding. While the Department of Energy is energy in its name, the department's mission is much broader. It includes maintaining and enhancing the nuclear weapons stockpile, managing complex environmental projects that address historical contamination from weapons development. It includes basic science and applied energy research development demonstration and deployment. So this figure presents DOE appropriations from FY 2019 through FY 2021. And over these three years, total appropriations for DOE have increased, although not all programs within DOE have moved in the same direction or at the same rate. For example, the National Nuclear Security Administration funding has increased by 30% from FY 2019 to FY 2021, while ARPA-E increased 16% from FY 2019 to FY 2020, but it remains stable for FY 2020 and FY 2021. EERE is captured within the applied energy category in this figure. And in addition to EERE, there's also the fossil energy, nuclear energy, office of electricity and cybersecurity, energy security and emergency response or CSER. Overall, those offices have increased by about 9% between FY 2019 and 2020 and 2% between 2020 and 2021. The other category on this slide includes loans and loan guarantee programs. And of note is in FY 2021, the appropriations included recisions for emergency balances. So that's why that is negative. That changes the change between FY 2020 and 2021. So, whoops, I think I went too far. So EERE receives its appropriation within the bill and then the guidance for programs within EERE are usually contained within the explanatory statement. That explanatory statement will include recommendations for the different components of EERE, including the three R&D focal areas for sustainable transportation, renewable energy and energy efficiency. The majority of those funds are for R&D projects. The energy efficiency program includes grants to states and territories for weatherization assistance and state energy programs. Funding increased by 3% for FY 2020 to 2021 for EERE. And Congress recommended that the majority of that increase go to energy efficiency and it went largely to those grant programs. In addition, title six of the House passed bill included $44 billion in emergency funding. According to the House bill, these additional infrastructure investments were intended to, quote, support the economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, end quote. DOE would have received about 24 billion of that and the largest amounts of the DOE emergency funding would have gone to EERE. So that the House recommended 8.3 billion in emergency funding for EERE. So several, in the FY 2021 appropriation cycle, there were several funding issues that drew particular attention. I've highlighted three examples here to demonstrate the differing opinions at the various stages of the appropriations process. One of the issues was the termination of energy efficiency grants. The FY 2021 budget request proposed to terminate two programs, the weatherization assistance program and the state energy program. The weatherization assistance program provides formula grants to states to fund energy efficiency improvements for low-income housing units to reduce energy costs and save energy. And the state energy program provides grants and technical assistance to states for planning and implementing energy programs. Both the House passed bill and explanatory statement and the Senate appropriates majority draft bill and draft explanatory statement included funding for the grant programs. In addition, the House passed bill included emergency funding in Title VI, which would have provided funding for these programs, including over 3.2 billion for weatherization grants, 730 million for state energy program grants, and an additional 2.25 billion for energy efficiency and conservation block grants, or EECBG. Now the EECBG was not funded in the normal, the regular appropriation for FY 2021. It's a block grant program designed to reduce fossil fuel emissions and total energy use through the implementation and management of energy efficiency and conservation projects. And it was authorized in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 and funded under the American Reinvestment Recovery Act of 2009. So ultimately though, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, Division D explanatory statement did not include that emergency funding, but included funding increases for the Weatherization Assistance Program and the state energy program. Another topic that received attention was the proposed reduction in energy research and development. The Trump administration proposed reductions to energy R&D to primarily affect the later stages of energy research. According to the request, quote, the budget focuses DOE resources toward early stage R&D, where the federal role is strongest and reflects an increased reliance on the private sector to fund a latter stage research development, commercialization and deployment of energy technologies, end quote. The House Appropriations Committee responded to that and said, quote, the committee rejects the short-sighted and limited approach, which will ensure that technology advancements will remain in early stage form and are unlikely to integrate the results of this early stage research into the nation's energy system, end quote. In addition, the House Appropriations Committee also included language stating that the department shall not fund projects within EERE, Office of Electricity, Nuclear Energy, and Fossil Energy that, quote, do not demonstrate potential for emissions reduction or improved environmental performance, end quote. So then you have the Senate Appropriations Committee and they provide their response. Their majority draft explanatory statement also responded to the president's request by saying, quote, the committee directs the department to support a comprehensive strategy that includes early, mid, and later stage research development and market transformation activities in each applied energy research and development program office, end quote. So the Division D explanatory statement of the Consolidated Appropriations Act harmonizes aspects of these opinions and states, quote, the department is directed to maintain a diverse portfolio of early, mid, and late stage research, development, and market transformation activities in each applied energy research and development program office, end quote. And then regarding the emissions reductions, it also has a statement. It says, quote, the department is directed to take into consideration the projected reductions in greenhouse gas emissions when selecting activities and projects for funding within EERE, NE, nuclear energy, and FE, fossil energy, end quote. So the reports have an opportunity for a back and forth discussion between the executive branch and the legislative branch on the priorities for these issues. And the final funding issue that arose that I want to highlight for FY 2021 is the idea of a renewable energy grid integration and storage initiative. There's been a lot increased interest in addressing cross-cutting energy issues, both the House past bill and explanatory statement, the Senate draft bill and statement support cross-cutting energy issues. But in addition, the Senate Appropriations Committee majority draft bill and explanatory statement would have established a new line, funding line of $40 million for renewable energy grid integration, which would, in their words, facilitate the oversight of grid integration activities among renewable energy technologies. That would be distinct from the other, like EERE or the other funding lines within the bill. Instead, the Consolidated Appropriations Act Division D explanatory statement provides that 40 million, but says it's to be provided from across the existing renewable energy programs. So these efforts are to include development and demonstration of an energy shed management system to address potential renewable energy curtailment issues. But they're really, they're saying to borrow funding that would be allocated within these renewable energy programs like solar, wind, water, geothermal to then contribute to this idea. And the select issues that I've discussed pertain only to the FY 2021 appropriations process. Some have appeared over multiple fiscal years, but with a new administration engaged in FY 2022 appropriations and a new Congress, priorities and funding issues may be different going forward. I'd like to thank you for my time. And I think we have a few moments for questions, but I also want to highlight that if you want to learn more about the FY 2021 appropriations process or any other legislative topics, you're welcome to visit CRSreports.Congress.gov and read our reports. Thank you. Great presentation. So much for that. Thank you so much for that. Yeah, it's funny you mentioned some of these funding issues are recurring the proposed elimination of weatherization and state energy program. That was a, that was a common request over the, I think every budget request of the Trump administration, for instance. So in every year, Congress rejected it. So we do have time. I think we have in the order of about 15 minutes before we will move on to our next segment. And I've got lots of questions because I love appropriations. Let me just make one quick reminder. If you have questions in the audience, if you're live streaming us right now, there are two ways you can send them to ask now or we'll do our best to incorporate them later or after the fact. You can follow us on Twitter at ESI online. You can send us an email ESI at EESI.org. But Card gave us a wonderful foundation to build the rest of the discussion on. And if you missed anything or if you want to go back and you want to see the slides, just as a reminder, everything is available at ESI, www.ESI.org. So Card, before I get into my main questions, I had one, my questions are mainly follow-up questions. My first one is I'd like to ask you when your slide showed the process, when you were talking about the appropriations committee and the subcommittees, and there were different allocations. That's the 302A and the 302B number, correct? Which is the one that applies to energy and water and which is the one that applies overall to the appropriations committee? The three, so let's see. We look for the 302B allocations are usually what we pay attention to. I'm trying to look up the actual numbers for, I don't know if I said what the allocations were. Let me just look that up really quickly. So for the energy and water bill, the house allocated 49.6 billion, the appropriations committee, and then the Senate committee draft included 51.7 billion for that. And that's, so those are, the allocations are given to the appropriations committee and then they provide the subdivision to the subcommittee allocations to work with. And those subcommittee allocations are spread across everything, right? Everything the government funds, not just energy and environment. Yes, yes. So the appropriations committee will receive those allocations and then that they use those, they're different budget categories within the allocations for certain types of spending, whether it's defense or agriculture or transportation. And then the appropriations committee sets those allocations and gives directions to the subcommittees on what they can spend or what they can establish, negotiate within that framework. Great. Thank you for that. You mentioned that there, you explained in your presentation the difference between a bill and a report. And I'd like to dig into that a little bit. The bill is the, the bill is the thing that becomes law, becomes law. And the report is the thing that accompanies the bill on its journey to becoming law. And you use the word recommendation, the committee recommends these sorts of things. But I'm, I'd like to ask about sort of what are the, what are the, how recommended are the recommendations, especially ones where the two subcommittee or the two houses agree. And, you know, why is the report, like what function does the report play? Like how much, how much is detail, how much detail is typical? What are the kinds of things that are in these reports or the recommendations that are in the report? And I think, you mentioned a few of them with respect to our D and D, but there's really many more than that, right? So each report is going to be, well, the energy and water and development agencies report a several hundred pages. And it walks through each kind of item that's highlighted in the bill and expands upon it. So the, the number will be a top line in the bill and a short paragraph. In the report, it's going to be several pages upon pages that kind of break down, not just what's in sustainable transportation and the priorities that Congress sees, but also with sub programs within that and recommendations for perhaps spending levels with, within those sub programs. It's, it's not law. It's a guidance. It's a recommendation and yet the agencies will have to answer to the committee next fiscal year if they don't take that direction. And so there's a, it's understood that it's their best effort and it makes sense to, for the agency to follow the recommendations that are, that are in that report language. They also will provide a further direction in addition to just the levels and the, for R and D perhaps areas that Congress sees that they should focus on. They'll also make requests for reports and so expectations of the agency should respond within so many days to the committee to explain where they are on these couple of items. It may also talk about revisiting memorandum of understanding like the energy star program is sometimes included in report language and that's a joint program. Between EPA, which is in a different appropriations bill and DOE, but they might ask DOE where they are in that process and how, how that sharing of jurisdiction for the program is working out. Great. And that's a great point because when we think of appropriations, right, we tend to think of dollars, but in fact, appropriations is a, is a major way Congress conducts oversight of the administration to make sure that this stuff is happening and happening on a timely basis. So we chose to discuss the energy and water bill today because it's relatively less dysfunctional than some of the other appropriations bills that are out there. It makes its way through the process from time to time. A couple of years ago it was even signed into law before the end of the fiscal year, which was the first time in the better part of a decade that it happened, but it's just one of many, right? There are, you mentioned the interior bill. There are other bills. When we work a lot on the ag bill because of the rural energy savings program, the kinds of resources and information and analysis that you just provided around energy and water, those are all available for other bills too, right? For staff who, who may be tracking their boss's interests, in energy and environmental and climate issues across the entire spectrum of appropriations, right? Right. So I handle, I am, I'm one person who handles one small portfolio and piece of the appropriations portfolio. I cover energy efficiency and renewable energy. And I work on those topics within the energy and water bill. I have colleagues who work on labor H issues who work on Ledge branch who work on energy environment and interior. And so there, there are specialists who, and analysts who work on, work closely on all of these appropriations bills and are tracking them at each of the stages that I talked about here. We have most of, most of our, I think all of our products are on the CRS website, but I'm not sure if that's what you're talking about. Most of our, I think all of our products are on the CRS website. And you can, we have appropriations trackers. You can track during the legislative process where, where we are with what bills and what reports. And all of that is available to our congressional clients and staff. Great. I remember being a staff person in the Senate and yeah, it's invaluable. And for the general public, right? You can always go to congress.gov. And you can go to congress.gov. And you can go to congress.gov. And you can go to congress.gov. And you can go to congress.gov. And you can go to congress.gov. And the appropriations is on the top right. And you get pretty much a rundown of everything. You have to kind of know what you're looking for. But that's why we have congressional climate camps so people can watch it and learn all about sort of how to navigate it. Like to revisit the issue of a, of a continuing resolution. So Congress finds itself at the end of. The fiscal year from time to time, the fiscal year between a continuing resolution and the regular appropriations bills while the CR is in effect. So, so the CR is a kind of a stop gap. It allows, it's a mechanism that allows agencies to continue their operations at a, an assumed level. And then while the rest of the appropriations bills are trying to work their way through the process and the houses are trying to come to an agreement. It is usually, it doesn't necessarily, it doesn't influence the language of those bills. It's kind of, it's a distinct mechanism that is used as that stop gap to kind of carry it forward. And when you say it doesn't affect the language, does that apply to what happens to the report language? Does a report language from the previous fiscal year tend to carry forward as well? Or is there like a default that it kind of retreats to? Oh, no, to clarify, it's, so it keeps things going at the status quo from the previous fiscal year, if that's the point of reference that the CR is referring to. That doesn't influence what is, at least from, from within energy and water, they'll still have opportunities, but the chambers to put in report language and direction for the fiscal year once those agreements come into place. Until then though, agencies are directed to continue as they were under previous direction. So, yes, there are potential, that may have an effect on what ultimately agencies can do within a given year, but Congress can put into the report language and the bill what they want going forward for the fiscal year that they're still discussing. Great, and just since this is being recorded, that was not intended as a jinx for the FY22 process in any way on my part. Just love to see everything get through. Last question, I think for you today. So Congress appropriates the dollars, the bill gets signed into law, the administration and the agencies, they get the dollars. What happens after that? So does the administration have to spend the dollars? Is there a way for them to spend more? Is there a way to spend less? Like how final are the dollar amounts and how final is the report language and what kind of discretion does the administration have to either spend up, you know, spend up to, spend lower, spend, you know, higher than? So the agency has the authority to spend to the level that Congress has directed them to. If they do not, if they want to rescind certain funds, that has to be, they have to make a request for that. And then Congress has an opportunity to say yes or no. Oftentimes the numbers might, they may account for different sorts of rescissions or budget adjustments. And so sometimes the numbers will vary as the procedure, as the process goes through. For example, the president can also modify the budget request so that they may issue a first budget request and there may be subsequent adjustments to it as they're sorting out what all has been spent in the previous year and what they, what their needs are for the following fiscal year. Well, that was an excellent overview of the appropriations process through the lens of the energy and water bill. You gave us a great, I think, baseline understanding of what all of this looks like. And I really thank you and all of your colleagues at CRS for all the hard work you do. It's invaluable to staff people. And, you know, the best part is if there's something that's not in one of your analyses, your phone numbers are listed and staff can give you a call and ask additional questions, right? I used to do that all the time. So thank you so much. It was a real pleasure to see you today and for you to join us. We are going to move to the second segment. And what we will do for the second segment and the third segment, we're going to build on what Kari just had to say. We're going to hear different perspectives from people outside the legislative branch to, we'll talk about how this looks, what this looks like from the staff person's perspective and we'll start with appropriations and then we'll turn to our third segment eventually, which we'll look forward looking at stimulus. Real quick, we are getting questions in from our audience. And thank you to everyone who's streaming and thank you to everyone who is sending in questions. If you like questions asked, whether we get to them today, we will do our best to incorporate them into the conversation or after the fact, we'll do our best to get back to you. You can send us a question on Twitter at EESI online. You can send us an email. EESI at EESI.org. And if you missed anything, if you want to go back and listen to any of that Q&A or see Kari's slides, everything is available. www.EESI.org. And now it is my distinct pleasure to introduce our second speaker. Franz Warfman's Dobler has worked in public service for more than two decades. He has had the privilege of working for several Democratic senators from West Virginia, North Dakota and Delaware, as well as for the Senate Appropriations Committee. His portfolio has included climate change, energy, environment, science, and technology and appropriations to issues. Throughout his career, he sought to find common ground approaches to advance major legislative initiatives. And he continues to engage in that work at the President's Policy Center. He's there focused on efforts to build bipartisanship and improve public discourse. Franz, it's great to see you today. Thank you so much for joining us. I'll let you kick off our second segment, and then my colleague, Amber, and I will join you after that for a discussion. Thanks a lot, Dan, and hello to everyone out there for climate camp. This is a great opportunity to learn about the budget appropriations process. What I thought I'd do is provide a few introductory comments, and then I know that there are some questions out there. I thought we could talk more about that and build on a great introductory presentation by Kari about the process. So just a couple of first thoughts. One of the most important things that I think that people want to know is that the Budget Committee, the Appropriations Committee, both in the House and the Senate, are in parallel. They essentially have the same jurisdiction. And one of the reasons that that's important to know and understand is that there are a number of authorizing committees that are in the House and the Senate, and they don't have exactly the same jurisdiction. And so what I mean by the House, that in terms of the House and Senate for authorizers, there's the Energy and Natural Resources Committee in the Senate, but some of that jurisdiction is in the House Resources Committee, some of that jurisdiction is in the House Energy and Commerce Committee. A key part about making appropriations work is that the Budget Committee and the Appropriations Committee have parallel jurisdictions. So that is a key point. And just understanding also the calendar, this is an annual cycle, and understand that there are certain things that happen at various stages. We'll get into a little bit more of the details as to why things may be delayed, but knowing the calendar. Part two here and Kari and Dan talked a little bit about the 12 appropriation subcommittees, but one of the ways I like to think about appropriation subcommittees, which is different also than the authorizing committees, is that they have a lot of power. Each subcommittee has a lot of power. They are essentially siblings of one another. There's 12 siblings. They get an allowance, they get assigned specific chores, and they have different personalities. There's the big kid, which is the defense subcommittee. There's the really little kid, which is the ledger branch subcommittee. There's kids that are a little bit more troublemakers and there's kids that are really good kids, but they all are important. They cover different jurisdictions, but you should just know that that's kind of one of the ways that the appropriations process works. For anyone who works as a professional in Washington elsewhere or works on Capitol Hill, understanding the budget and appropriation process, in my opinion, is one of the most important skill sets you can have in terms of being successful and advancing ideas and things you care about. As mentioned by Kari and a bit of the discussion with Dan, there are key important things you need to know about. Some of that includes the 302A, the budget committee, allocation to appropriations, which is discretionary spending, the 302Bs, which are the division among the 12 subcommittees. What are the jurisdictions of the subcommittees? What is mandatory spending versus discretionary spending? What are defense and non-defense levels? And the way that I like to describe how authorizing versus works with appropriations is more of the checkbook idea. The authorizers create a program, they give guidance in terms of what that program should look like, and a checkbook is set up. There could be zero dollars in the checkbook. There could be some dollars in the checkbook or could be all the funds that were desired in the checkbook. And then that's how the program is administered. So that's just one way to look at it. Other ideas have come up that are a little bit more complex, but it gets to the budget authority and outlays, riders, chimps, recisions, impoundments. These are other issues which are very much a part of the process. So just three thoughts to begin the discussion, but again, the budget appropriations process is really important in terms of an important role of Congress and its engagement with the administration. Fantastic. Thank you for that. And I can't wait for this discussion because there are a few people that are more interesting to talk with about what this looks like from a staff's perspective. And you, Franz, so thank you so much for joining us. It is my privilege to introduce my colleague, Amber Todorov. Amber is going to kick off our Q&A with Franz. So Amber, I'll turn it over to you. Thanks, Dan. And thanks, Franz. So first question. What are some of the elements that make the federal appropriations process unique and challenging from your perspective? And are there any issues that we should be aware of as the 117th Congress gets started? Sure. Just as a basic introduction, the appropriations process is a bit different than the parliamentary type system that many people are aware of, where executive and legislative are the same. And that basically the prime minister decides what the budget is. And the Constitution, this is sort of known as the article of the power of the purse. It's an article one. It gives Congress direction to determine what the president has proposed in his budget or her budget request and then decide if that's valid or not and make changes. This system, this entire system that we're talking about now is essentially a construction of what was put in place in the 1974 Budget Control and Impoundment Act. So the budget committee, the president submits a budget. There begins, the deliberations begin, the budget committee begins a process of working on a budget resolution to give guidance and a blueprint. The authorizing committees can begin work on certain things. The Appropriations Committee begins work. Once it has an allocation, the 302A and the 302B process. So understand that there's a structure, which is basically close to 50 years old. It's been strained at times, but that is our structure. A key part which makes this year a little bit different is that for 10 fiscal years, FY 12 through FY 21, the Budget Control Act was in place. I'm not going to go into the details of that or how we got there. But essentially the takeaway here is that there were caps in place. And so some of that budget committee process was not, didn't happen or wasn't necessary. There have been many new members of Congress. There has been a lot of staff turnover in that 10 year period. And what we're left with is people who were not used to the old slash new process. So I just want to make folks aware that in fiscal year 22, the original system is back in place. As with any president, this has happened many times before. The budget usually comes to Congress by the executive branch early in February. So we're almost near that time period. Every new president has delayed the request that they send with President Obama and President Trump. Their first budget request came up in May of their first term. And so I don't speculate when that might be, but it could be several months delay before the real budget is sent to Congress. Appropriations is also an item that requires bipartisan cooperation. This is an area where it's the federal funding. It's where the rubber hits the road. And the authorizing process is very important. Tax policy is very important. But a lot of the programs, a lot of the federal agencies, a lot of the mission of the federal government happens through the appropriations process. We've hear more and more these days about continuing resolutions, about omnibus processes, about brinkmanship with last minute negotiations. This is more common, honestly. But there was a period when different appropriations bills passed on their own through Congress when we were signed into law. Part of the challenge too has been that the oversight process, the authorizing process hasn't worked so well. So because of appropriations, they must pass process. A lot of policy and a lot of issues get pushed into that cycle. So there are certainly political divisions and partisan issues right now. And it will be important to try to overcome some of those as you look to the fiscal year 22, the 117th Congress. Thanks. A quick follow-up question. So if we don't get a budget for, let's say, let's just, for the sake of argument, say May, does that affect what the appropriators are able to do in the meantime? Do they have to wait as well? Well, they would not be able to act until the president actually submits a budget to Congress. Yes. And that counts if we get a so-called skinny budget? It would be whatever the president officially submits as his budget. Okay. Cool. Thank you very much for that. So you've worked for multiple members. You've worked for the committee. For folks in our audience today who are staff people, maybe they're new. Maybe they are working for a personal office that's not, for a member who's not on the appropriations committee. What should a staff person be thinking about right now to prepare him or herself for the upcoming budget and appropriations process? Where, where should they be at right now? Yeah. Well, as I really mentioned that there will likely be a delay. So there's some time to get up to speed and get ready. I think it's important to know if you're new to the office or you're maybe a new office. What is the system that your office is set up to receive input to make recommendations? So in many cases, just to be, give you some examples, sometimes there's a point person in that office who's like an appropriations coordinator who receives that information working with staff. Sometimes it's done in a more individualized way. Sometimes some members offices honestly don't make appropriations requests and that's their right. And then knowing that as a part of this, this annual cycle, it'll be a little bit different. And this go around, but there are what are called fly-ins or you'll hear from a lot of constituents who will identify issues that are important to them as they have looked at the most recent budget. It's also really important and very beneficial to work with your state or district staff. They have a lot of input and they know what's going on on the ground and what's important to help identify that member's interests and that member's priorities that they would submit. The appropriations committee issues guidance and they give deadlines in which they want to receive information so they can begin their process. This is an opportunity for members to submit requests. So that's what a lot of the preparation is at this point. Many members offices put some sort of form on their website to receive information from outside groups. And all of that goes into formulating their priorities and the member requests. There's a portal that the appropriations subcommittees have set up. And that is how offices officially submit their requests to the committee. So they're all preparing for that. That is very important as what I was saying earlier about being aware of what's the status of the calendar, where it is at that point. So if there is a delay and the president submitting the budget there will be a slight delay in the committees holding their oversight hearings and a slight delay when they decide to set their deadlines for their requests. It's also important to know and think about as you had talked previously, you can have a couple of different types of requests and they can be in combination. So a funding request, report language request and bill language request. Honestly, in terms of looking at the, the request is sort of the sense many, many offices will make a funding request. Oftentimes they will make a report language request on guidance or direction. And in some cases, the few will make a bill language request. And then another element to think about is there are individual member private letters that a member will submit to the committee, but there's also something called a multi member letter. This is usually on an important topic or theme that a number of members will care about. Those tend to be a little bit more public facing, but ways to, you can put your efforts into a private personal letter and you can also have your member signed on to a multi member letter as well. So if your member isn't on appropriations that does not exclude you, you certainly could make budget appropriations requests. The secretary or usually the lead of the federal, of that federal agency comes before a number of authorizing committees also to present their budget once a year. It's an opportunity to ask questions at that point. Certainly there's opportunities if an, if a regular order type process is working. And I know that's sometimes challenging, but to also offer amendments on the House or Senate floor. So those are a couple of things to be thinking about for the coming year. Thanks. So do you have any suggestions for both Hill staffers and outside stakeholder groups on tips and tricks to be aware of and utilize when engaging in this process? Sure. That's a, that's a big question, but I'll try to tackle a few of them. Well, I would say first of all, I was thinking about personal offices, especially it goes back to just knowing how your own office works best. There's many different types of ways to set it up. There's not one specific way that works best. It's, but it's important to be organized and to be prepared. It's hard to do this well last minute. And it's, it's a lots of different information is coming in. And so you need to be organized to be able to receive the information to be able to process it, to be able to deliberate on it, to be able to, you know, put it in front of your boss to get the information ready to submit it. So it's, it's important to be prepared. Definitely know your members interests. Some members may offer one offer lots of ideas. Some members want to focus a little bit more on a certain area. So if you're a member of the appropriations, if it members on the appropriations committee, they may have particular interests for the committees, they subcommittees that they serve on. And if you're not on the, on the sub subcommittee, certainly you can, you know, still express your interests. And that's one of the important ways that there's frustrations by a lot of rank and file members that they're not able to get involved, but the appropriations process is one way that they can get involved in the, in the annual process. Know that the subcommittee. It can be your very helpful to you. It can be a little intimidating at times. Talking to folks, these are, these are professionals. These are people that know the agencies that understand the process, but they can be your guides. They can be your friends. You need to be straightforward with them. You need to work with them. Don't try to trick them. They will figure it out. So just know that. And over time, if, if again, if you're new to this, just begin to learn the process. You're not going to figure it out in one year. Or maybe even two years and everyone's always learning a little bit more. The intricacies and there's always some fun zingers that come from a year to year process. And so it's okay to take time. One of the things that came up in the earlier conversation, which I think is important to think of both for this year and any, any time going into the future is messaging and context for audiences. The two, two, two programs are brought up, the weatherization assistance program and the state energy program. Those are really important. They're long standing programs. They've been in place for more than 40 years. They, they import, provide federal state, local cooperation. But I bring this up more from the standpoint that there's a lot of discussion about how we define things. This is called climate camp. But these are beneficial programs on the energy front. There's supply chain issues here. There's workforce issues here. There's equity issues here. Knowing the division among the parties, it's sometimes that it could be beneficial to be careful how you describe things. The weatherization program could have many climate benefits, but it doesn't necessarily always need to be defined as a climate program. So it's just an important thought to think about as there are a lot of conversation about some opportunities for energy, for climate change going forward. Also think through the opportunities mentioned, personal letters, the multi-member letters. It's, if you don't want to put as much focus and you feel you need to prioritize certain things, a multi-member letter is a good way to go forward because it shows an expression of support. It can be an easier way to get a lot more people on board. And that way. And then know that with the, with the oversight, with the budget oversight, whether it's an authorizing committee or an appropriation subcommittee, there are ways, whether you're on the, if you're not on the appropriations committee to put question suggestions into those offices who are, they can take them, they can reject them, they can modify them, but there are opportunities to do that. And I guess the last point that I put out there is most of the focus we've had so far is about on Congress, but the executive branch is formulating the budget process throughout the year. So they have, they're still reviewing the Biden-Harris administration, reviewing the FY22 bill. There will be a point when the executive branch begins to think about fiscal year 23. And as an office, as a member of Congress, as an outside organization, there are opportunities to go into those federal agencies as they're beginning to formulate the next fiscal cycle to talk to them about priorities. It is certainly a lot easier to have a program to have an item in the budget, of the president's budget request, then try to insert it in later. So just a bunch of things to keep in mind for now and then as the next fiscal cycle is being considered. I think that's a really important, sort of better perspective there, because there are, I don't want to say countless ways to engage in appropriations, but when you think about all the different members there are, all the different requests you can make, all the different types of requests you can make. And then when I've been sort of more primarily focused in advocacy, you don't start thinking about how to engage in January or February, right? You start thinking about FY23, as far out as you can, and you want to get, if you care about the issue, you want to give it your best. And I think one thing too that I've found is that you were saying that the staff and the subcommittee staff are your friends, and they're all different, right? Each sibling has its own personality and you can't expect to approach the energy and water folks about, say, Energy Star and the interior folks about Energy Star in the same way, because they think differently about their bills. Their reports are written differently. They say different words. They like different verbs. So yeah, it's a lot. It's something that, but it's still, it's an incredibly impactful way to potentially make a difference. I think, so, I mean, Franz, you've worked for lots of members. You have lots of different perspectives. In your time on the Hill, do you have any stories or experiences that when you look back on your Senate service, stick out as noteworthy or especially instructional in terms of how you think about this process and what staff people might want to take away from that going forward, considering sort of we're at the beginning of a very important Congress when it comes to climate change. Sure. I definitely appreciate at the time that I worked on Capitol Hill and made amazing friendships and appreciate all the work of staff, especially in members for that commitment in public service. One of the key points that I definitely take away was the 2009 Recovery Act. I had the opportunity to be on the Appropriations Committee at that time, so it was fortunate as we were coming out of a financial crisis and there were conversations about how to help stimulate the economy. Certainly it was definitely as political than it is now. There are different circumstances. History doesn't always repeat itself, but it sometimes rhymes. And it may be harder to do, there's different ways and perturbations about some sort of stimulus now. But one of the ways that is a little bit similar was that the 2009 Recovery Act came about from a financial crisis. This is a pandemic and other challenges. But in 2005 and in 2007, Congress passed two major energy bills. And those provided a lot of guidance and were very instructive for the energy portion of what became the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. One of the key things that I remember taking away from this, which is also potentially a little bit of guidance, is that stimulus legislation is very much that it is supposed to be kind of a shot in the arm. It is hard to enact brand new programs to do something that's very new and edgy through that type of stimulus effort. Not that that couldn't be done and not that that's not important, but it's just you need to think about what are your tools that are currently there to help provide some pockets to put money into as you do that. And certainly that's the same kind of discussion that could be happening on the tax side as well. Because the tax funding was just as important as the appropriated money from the Recovery Act. So it was honestly the hardest I ever worked in Congress. There was a lot of late nights. It was very hectic. It was January and February of 2009. It was interesting, it was challenging, but it was definitely worth it as well. Over your time, your members at some point were in the majority, some points they were in the minority. How did that change things? How did your bosses, how did that change your boss's perspective? Did that change at all your as a professional? Did that change your approach to working with the subcommittees or the committees? Honest, there is difference if you're in the minority or the majority. I felt fortunate that I worked for three members who had strong bipartisan sentiments and recognize that that was very important. And so you have relationships. You try to maintain those relationships. You work with those members with similar interests. It has all three of the members I worked for were also on the Appropriations Committee. And as I said, the committee itself works in a very bipartisan way. They may not always be unanimous, but they definitely care about trying to build consensus and trying to make sure that the members on the committee, as well as the larger body are going to be in as much agreement as possible going forward. So it was beneficial to work for members and in offices that valued and understood the importance of bipartisanship. Yeah, I think that's really important. And I think the bipartisan thing, the bipartisan part of your answer, I think is really important. And it reminded me of what you were saying about weatherization, for instance. You know, for some folks, that's going to be a emissions reduction program. For some folks, it's actually a workforce program. It trains and supports the training of a lot of contractors in a lot of parts of the country without, especially, you know, robust energy efficiency programs, for instance. And I think that's something that I think a lot about is how do we, how do we talk about these issues so that, you know, there is a little bit of something in it for everyone from a messaging perspective. And your last boss, especially, I remember him being, you know, incredibly out in front on weatherization. So that's, I think that's a really important point. I wrote it in my little notes, but since this is a video medium as well as an audio medium, I didn't want to be too obvious that I was typing and I forgot about it. So I just wanted to mention that again. So, you know, I think that, you know, I think that, you know, Frans, our next, our next segment is going to be focused future looking focused and stimulus focused thinking about funding, but also the nexus between policy and funding. Do you have any final remarks about sort of where you see this Congress going in terms of the ability to pass appropriations above and beyond maybe what was passed last year or what was passed last year? I think that's, you know, we're not going to have time today to get into budget reconciliation. That was a question that actually just came in because that would require, you know, a week long congressional climate sleep away camp to get to the bottom of. So maybe we'll revisit that, but I'm looking forward. So what do you see in the offing from Congress on the, on these issues? Yeah. Well, as I say on the appropriations front, you know, there have been, it's, it seems to be a different roller coaster every year. And we, we just have to accept that a key point and raise for raising the issue about the budget control act is again, that this is the first year and 10 years that it's back to Congress's, it's back in Congress's lap to determine what that discretionary funding level should be. That could be an opportunity. That could be a way to potentially provide some additional direction and funding for, for programs like energy climate legislation, but it also requires consensus to get there. And so that, that will be part of the challenge given some of the partisan divisions. So I could see, I can both and a very optimistic scenario for this, but also just being realistic to, and the limitations within some of those budgets and concerns that people can have on that front. It is great that the end of the year legislation last year included a portion for energy policy at energy policy act. Those were authorizations that were many years in development. Just like in 2005 and 2007, they will add to the policy portfolio in terms of addressing energy climate change and other, other important missions. And we just need to continue to work on that as well. It doesn't stop. That's great. Thank you so much friends for joining us today. It's always great to hear what you have to say about these issues. And something that didn't get mentioned in your introduction, but I think deserves a bit of a shout out is you are a member of ESI's advisory board. And so thank you very much for supporting ESI generally, as well as specifically today and helping us in our audience understand more about this process. So thank you so much. It's great to see you and it's, it's, you know, it's always great to talk with you about this stuff. So thank you very much. Thanks for the opportunity. I find appropriations in the budget process fascinating. And I love talking about it. I'm a little geeky about it. It's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. Speaking of advisory board. I want to also just recognize all the hard work of Amber taught her off today. She manages our advisory board and helped put today's session together. So thank you very much, Amber, for joining Franz and me for this middle segment of our first edition of climate camp. Couple quick reminders before we pivot to the third segment. Like I said, which is going to be forward looking, looking at stimulus and stimulative activities. First, if you missed any of our first two segments, if you missed any of Kari's presentation, if you want to go back and revisit Franz's remarks, everything is available online at www.eesi.org. You'll find the webcast, all of it, but also broken up. And you'll find written materials, including slides, which Kari had, but Franz's not. And you can also ask us questions. We're getting lots of questions, which is great. Thank you very much. We hope you'll be able to, you can, you can, you can, you can incorporate those as we go, including the one who just asked about budget reconciliation. And like I said, we're not really going to be able to get to that today, but, but we'll, we'll do our best to revisit that over the course of our series. If you have questions, it's not too late. You can ask, follow us on Twitter at ESI online. Can also send us an email. EESI at EESI.org. I think that's not a deterrent to asking questions because we'll do our best to get back to you after the fact. And make sure that we do our best to let no questions go on answered. I think now we will move to our third segment. And I think again, I don't want to jinx anything, but I think we're more or less on time according to our published schedule, which is always a good thing. And we are joined now by Karen Wayland. Karen is a recognized expert in national energy and environmental policy. She served in leadership positions at the highest levels of government and nonprofit organizations. Karen provides strategic consulting on policy development, coalition building and communications for major clean energy companies, national environmental organizations, local officials and foundations. She recently launched KW. That's how you say it, right, Karen? KW? It's not kilowatt, right? Well, it's a play on that. My initials are KW and it's energy, so kilowatt. I just wanted to make sure. Energy strategy is a boutique shop offering. It's one of those things where you see it, but you never say it. Right. You know how it's pronounced. Offering services to businesses, states, nonprofits and others. She applies for deep substantive policy and government experience, broad network of relationships across the energy sector, and issue advocacy experience to accelerate the clean energy transformation. Karen, we're going to hear some introductory remarks from you, and then we're going to invite my colleague, Anna McGinnon to join us for a discussion. So I will turn it away. I'll turn it over to you. I'm really looking forward to your presentation. Okay. Well, I'm going to share my screen. So bear with me for a second. Let's turn this into a slide show. Oops. Okay. So first of all, I should give you a little context. I worked for Speaker Pelosi for the years following the enactment of the recovery act in 2009. So I worked very closely with the agencies overseeing how they implemented the recovery act. So a lot of what I'm saying is based on that experience, but more recently, one of my clients is a grid wise alliance, which is an association of utilities and vendors and equipment manufacturers. And we sort of, I saw the parallels in 2020 to what happened in 2020. To what happened in 2008 with the economic crash and started thinking about what kind of investments, federal investments in the grid space would help stimulate the economy. So I did another deep dive back, looking back at the recovery action, what happened there and started thinking about how I could apply those lessons learned to the package that we were developing for a potential 2021 stimulus package. So that's, that's where I have been thinking about what happened and what could happen. So the first thing to think about, but what is stimulus funding? It is, it is tech tax policy or taxes, tax credits or direct spending. And then we'll get into a little bit more of that later, but the big question I think for me is, are we talking about relief? Are we talking about stimulus? And I've listed some of the, the four big packages that passed last year in response to the COVID crisis. And, and then the recovery act, and I would distinguish the first four from the recovery act, the first four I believe are kind of relief or rescue. And the recovery act was indeed a true stimulus package. A relief funding is really support for people while they're following the public health guidelines and staying at home and they've lost their jobs. That kind of relief funding, the rescue funding is to help the goal is to help people while we work out trying to reduce the spread of the virus. And the predictable outcome of that obviously is that we're actually reducing economic activity by, you know, staying at home by, by closing businesses. Whereas, and therefore that, that funding is really relief funding. A true stimulus funding provides incentives for people to increase their spending and for businesses to increase investment and create jobs, which will allow people to go back to work. So rather than being a drag on the economy, true stimulus spending actually increases economic activity. And I think it's very important to, to understand that staging. So the virus is not under control right now. So the first priority has to be to contain the virus and that COVID policy is really economic policy because we can't recover until people can return to work. So I think the staging of, of a potential stimulus package is not now, but later in the year. And I think that's what we're hearing as well. I think the other thing to think about is the interplay between monetary and fiscal policy. Monetary policy is the interest rates, the supply of money in circulation, and that's governed by the Fed. And then fiscal policy is what Congress can do. And that's the taxation and direct government spending. There, there is an interplay here, particularly now, because we're at record low interest rates. And so the options for monetary policy, the Fed does not have a lot of options for stimulating the economy because they can't really lower their rates any further. So really it is up to Congress to leave. Congress is going to have to exert its fiscal policy in order to stimulate the economy. But the benefit of those really low interest rates is that it'll cost less in the long-term and, and have a much less of an impact on the long-term debt. So stimulus funding for economic growth. If we're thinking about what a package might look like this year, there are three characteristics of stimulus funding that are different from regular appropriation. It has to be timely, targeted and temporary. You'll hear those that that was a kind of a paper that came out in 2008, the middle of the crash by Doug Elmendorf, who was the former CBO director and another research researchers are talking about this timely, targeted and temporary. I think it's worth visiting that and making sure that we're focused on that for the next package targeted, meaning that higher spending should raise output in the short-term. And we need to focus on the sectors and employees that have been most vulnerable and affected by the downturn. And the benefit of, of, well, that's the target. The timely is we can't delay enactment and we have to craft these tax cuts for quick implementation using, and Franz mentioned this, using existing programs. And you're going to hear me come back to that again. In order for relief and rescue and stimulus to be timely, you've got to make sure that it's going flowing through existing programs so that the money can move quickly. So then the targeted, you know, making sure that we're addressing those who've been most affected in the sectors that have been most affected. And the benefit when you're targeting those sectors and, and people who are the most vulnerable is that they turn out to spend the money quickly. And that is another way that we can ensure a quick economic growth is to make sure that the money doesn't sit in a savings count. And then temporary, temporary is really critical. We don't want to create a situation where the bill that is a true stimulus bill ends up enacting permanent tax credits or permanent increases in appropriations. We don't want to create long-term debt that will, you know, end up burning the future generations and also raise interest rates. There is a risk of inaction, which gets to the timely part versus imperfect action, which gets to the targeted and temporary. And I'm going to talk a little bit about that, that kind of the risk of inaction versus imperfect action a little bit later with a very specific example from the recovery act. So let's talk about the recovery act. This is a quick look back. It was one of the largest packages that had been passed by Congress since, you know, by 2009, it seems small in comparison to what Congress did last year for COVID relief, but it was $831 billion in tax cuts and direct spending. I'm not going to go through the breakdown of that. The one thing that's important here, and this gets to the timely, is that there was a requirement that 92% of the total appropriated funds had to be spent in three years. So there was a three-year window. And the benefits, we track the benefits were much longer than three years, but the agencies were required to spend the money in three years. And actually the Obama administration did pretty well in meeting that goal. And the results were pretty significant in 2009. So many of you probably weren't around in Congress. So let me, let me say that in 2008, there was a massive economic crash. And in fact, Congress was alerted by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson on a Thursday, Wednesday or Thursday, that the economy was in danger of the tanking by Monday, if they didn't act. So there was very quick response with the troubled asset relief program, which was a rescue bill. It was a bill that was a bipartisan bill that George Bush signed in October of 2008 that allowed Congress to purchase toxic assets and equity from failing financial institutions. And, you know, that, that was a necessary thing. And the parallel here is that we're, we're again trying to rescue the economy, trying to rescue people. It was not a stimulus package that France mentioned working in January, February, the hardest he'd ever done to craft the stimulus package that happened. And Congress came together and passed the recovery act on February 17th, 2009. So January 20th, Obama was inaugurated within just a couple of weeks. He had all of his cabinet secretaries confirmed and Congress was debating this, this massive bill. So it's, it's largely viewed as a big success and lifting the economy out of the Great Depression. There was a Moody's estimate that about 3% of, there was an increase in 3% of the GDP in 2010. And you can see here how dramatic that crash was and affecting the 2009 economy. We had, you know, negative 6.7% GDP growth. By the end of the year, we had gone up significantly to 3.8% GDP growth. And that is directly related to the recovery act spending. So it does work and it does create jobs. And I'm going to talk a little bit about the job numbers that we have around the recovery act a little bit later, because it's going to be really important for how we track and measure the progress and success of any coming stimulus package. So I, I'm just going to, I'm not going to spend a lot of time going through the, the way the recovery act is crafted, but I, I'm going to show you something here. This is a chart on the, the 2009 and 2010 obligations and outlays. And these are the columns that, that show you what happened in Q4 and then what happened in, in the following quarter of 2010. And it's important to look at this obligations versus outlays. We can see that, you know, the obligations in the end of 2009. So after the bill passed was, was significantly more than the actual outlay. So that's the money that went out the door and arrived in a recipient's hands and their bank account was 10% of what had been obligated. And so it's important to think about, you know, this timely aspect that Congress will pass a bill. And in 2009, they passed the bill on February 17th. And the first funding opportunity announcements related to that funding came out at DOE in early March. So only a few weeks after the bill passed, they had funding announcements that they could, they could open for applications. Then there's an application period. Then there's a review period. And then there's the obligation. That takes time. And then the actual outlay of the transfer of money takes even more time. So this is why it is absolutely critical that if you want money to stimulate the economy, you have to go through existing programs. One of the things that I worked with the agencies on was really trying to figure out what the bottlenecks were for getting money out the door. And Franz mentioned that, you know, Congress had passed these two large energy bills in 2005 and 2007. I'm going to talk a little bit about the smart grid investment grants program that was created in the 2007 EISA bill. So it hadn't really had any major appropriations. The state energy program, the recovery act had a number of requirements for, you know, Davis-Bacon wage and other requirements that the states also had to work out. There were rules that were not in place or there were new requirements on funding that took a lot of time to come in and iron out. And like I said, we spent a lot of time trying to smooth those bumps in the road so money could get out into the economy. So again, you've got to focus on existing programs. So I mentioned the state energy program. I want to talk more broadly about using the states as a delivery mechanism for stimulus money. There was a significant amount of money in the recovery act that went out to the states. And I've just listed a few here, but if you're interested in the full, it's not even a full suite, the EPA has an archived report that shows a number of the existing programs that states can take advantage of. It doesn't capture all of them. For example, it doesn't have the USDA, but it's a pretty good resource for trying to figure out where you could put money, where the states could take advantage of it. And I want to emphasize the importance of including funding for state and local governments in any stimulus package. This is not about bailing out state pension plans. I know that aid to states has been fairly controversial in the discussions over the rescue packages, but state agencies can very effectively distribute federal funds and deliver them with very locally appropriate outcomes and often without requiring cost shares. So whereas some of the programs in the recovery act or in a stimulus package, you'll want to use the leverage private funding. There are the ability to use the state programs for investment that where the coming up with that private cost share might be more difficult. And the states right now have been extremely hard hit by the reductions in revenue as a result of the economic crash. And because they have balanced budget requirements, many of them cannot engage in deficit spending. So that federal funding is going to be critical to state investments in infrastructure and buildings and other sectors that have traditionally received some state funding because those investments are not going to happen without that state injection of cash. So I mentioned that I would spend a little bit of time on the smart grant investment program. I just want to show you here that if when you add up what what do we actually spend. So there's a smart grant investment grant program that got $3.4 billion of federal money. And then there was some additional money that you could put in a smart grants program. But the matching grant program awarded 99 projects of in the range of either $100,000, although we have to $200,000, the majority of them were extremely large matching grants. But what they did is and they went mainly to utilities. There were 99 projects and they went for real technology deployment. And this is where Dan when you were talking about the kind of the interplay with public policy, you know, the rescue bills have been to save people and to just make sure that people, you know, are have food on the table and that businesses can keep people employed. There were smart. The stimulus package actually resulted in in advancing policy objectives. It didn't include really any new authorizations. And this is again the difference between an authorizing and a kind of appropriations bill. But the actual awarding of money to projects furthered the goals of the authorization. And so again, that's why you want to focus on existing programs, not just for the ease of getting money out the door, because using that money actually allows you to deploy the technologies to create the job workforce to actually move public policy forward using appropriations. And again, it leveraged a really significant amount of private capital to accelerate and and increase the impact. And here's the idea of this grid technologies that were employed. It was, it was massive, you know, synco phasors or sensors and controls that were put on transmission. I will get into all the details. I do want to focus here on the 16.6 million AMI. That's advanced meter infrastructure or smart meters. And that was a huge focus of the smart grid investment grant program. And this is going to be an example of, you know, the risk of inaction versus imperfect action that we're looking at. And I think the funding for smart meters in the Recovery Act has been criticized because the first meters that were deployed in 2009 were not as smart as the meters that were deployed two years later, that technologies is rapidly changing. And in addition to having, you know, much more advanced technology a couple of years into the Recovery Act spending, we still in 2020 are not using all the capabilities of smart meters pricing for, you know, data sharing and customers being able to manage their energy. There's a lot we could do in really building out the usage of smart meters. However, let's not lose sight of the fact that the purpose of the Recovery Act was to save the economy and it was to create jobs and get money into the economy. So we always knew that there would be two bumps in the benefits from this smart meter funding. The first would be in the economic stimulus factor, creating jobs. And then later on, there would be benefits around taking advantage of the benefits that you can use smart meters for. So those are things like the elimination of manual monthly readings, meter readings, the ability to monitor the electricity system in real time and respond more effectively to power outages, avoiding truck rolls, providing customers with more granular data about their energy use and allow them to respond to price signals. So those are things that we're still going to be working on to capitalize on the benefits, but let's not lose sight of the fact that this massive investment actually created jobs. And speaking of jobs, here's a table of the total number of jobs that were kind of reported to the agencies. This is mainly to DOE actually, but there's some tax funding in here too. So there's some treasury reporting. And the total number of jobs that the Obama administration reported in the clean energy category was a little over 700,000. We knew even as these job data were coming in that they were significant underestimations of the jobs that were actually created with this money. And that was in part because of the way that the agencies required the recipients to report the jobs. They could only report the jobs they themselves created or the subcontractor jobs. And that's a big limitation on really tracking the economic impact. So for example, as part of the work that I'm doing with the grid wise alliance, we were originally projecting a 25 billion dollar or recommending a 25 billion dollar investment. And that got wrapped up in some other recommendations that other groups were putting together for renewables and energy efficiency. And in a report that environmental entrepreneurs put together, they estimated that if Congress directed about $99 billion towards clean energy investments in the stimulus package, that's 11 years later, that's only $9 billion more than the 90 billion that was in the recovery act, that we would get a total of 4.3 million job years. And they were looking at the direct jobs, the indirect jobs, and the induced jobs. And you can see the difference in the recovery act where the reported jobs for a 90 billion dollar investment in 2009 was about 719,000, let's see, 700 million jobs. Sorry about my job numbers there. But it's 719,000 job years. The new stimulus package is 4.3 million job years. So it's a six fold increase in the kinds of jobs that could be created. I'm not saying those jobs didn't get created in 2009. It's just that we didn't have a system for tracking those job numbers. So that's going to be very important. Going forward, if we do another stimulus package, is the direction to the agencies about how they collect the data and report the data about the economic impacts. So with that, I'm going to stop and turn it over to Dan. Fabulous. Lots of memories. I was working in the state energy office in Annapolis in 2009, we had a lot of work with the state energy officials. We had a lot of different applications and public service commission proceedings and grant funding and trying desperately to figure out what the difference between SCP guidance and EECBG guidance was. So here's another thing, which is that in talking to the state energy officials that helped you smooth out the guidance between the different programs, money into the state energy program for all these where you know and then the energy efficiency conservation block grant programs the rules we've worked out how to spend the money so don't change it no no no no no no no no no criticism with that at all it was very difficult. I am going to invite my colleague Anna McGinn to join us and she is going to kick off our discussion with Karen after that wonderful presentation so I'll turn it over to you Anna. Great thanks Dan. Hi Karen. Karen thanks so much for that really really useful presentation. Clearly there's a lot to say and you rolled through it really quickly so we'll start try to round some pieces of it out with a couple more questions for you. The first is so we have a lot of congressional staffers watching today and I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about from the perspective of a staffer working in a personal office on Capitol Hill what should they be thinking about in preparation for what we can expect with upcoming stimulus conversations. Yeah I think I think the thing to do I I know that when Congress was initially thinking through you know back in the summer I was talking to people on the Hill and they were thinking through what they could do with a stimulus package and they kept looking at all of the bills that had had been put together in an energy package and thinking through how which of those bills ought to be in a stimulus package and I will go back to like like a broken record let's not try to do anything new let's use existing programs to get the money out the door so that's really you know to keep in mind that we'll still do energy bills but the stimulus package is not the place to do the new things it's that those are authorizations that need to take time. I think the second thing is around timing and I'm actually glad that you know when we started thinking about this last year I was looking at the timing of the Recovery Act in the February 17th passage that's not going to happen. I think it's going to be you know summer or later before there's you know some sort of movement on a stimulus package but that's actually good because we can't go back to work right now and the second thing is that the agencies don't have staff and people move the money not computers and so they there are people who have to review the grant applications have to write the funding opportunities who have to you know oversee you know for example the 48c tax credit that that that was in the Recovery Act that had a cap on it and so Treasury managed the tax credit but DOE actually evaluated the applications for the tax credit and and that those are people people had to approve which projects got the 48c tax credit and right now the agencies have you know frankly been decimated and there's a new political staff that's just rolling in when the Recovery Act passed the Department of Energy had to hire a whole series of consultants and they brought in Matt Rogers from McKinsey to oversee to be the person at the agency to oversee how the money got spent so it's going to require people and a really strong understanding of all of the contracting and funding processes in the agencies in order to effectively move the money out the door so I think timing is important and then again I mentioned the state and local funding I would not look at that as a bailout in the Recovery Act the money that went to state and local governments was really new money it really went to new additive projects that actually resulted in in deployment technology of massive weatherization initiative that actually improved the energy usage of buildings there was real tangible results and so I hope that people don't think about the funding in a stimulus package that goes to state and local governments as it's just a bailout it's it's really additive and will benefit all 50 states no matter the whether they're red or blue great yeah I totally agree I'd like to come back to this idea of states and local governments there's a lot of variation across the country especially when you think about the territories and others as well that would be eligible for such stuff how would you suggest Congress approach sort of the accessibility of stimulus so my the idea is how do we make sure that a stimulus package is accessible to state and local governments that may not have the capacity or resources to take advantage of it maybe they've wound down a lot of that capacity and that's a great the great question and I'd like if you if it's if you could I'd like to also like think about it in terms of navigating federal support and how to access it but also how what those considerations might do to advance equity and sort of further some some pretty critical environmental justice goals as well right right so I'm going to take the equity question separate from the state local so there's a couple things that can be done the first is that when I was at Department of Energy I set up a state local tribal policy office as the under Secretary Moniz that was one of his top priorities was to raise the game with the states and one of the things that we did was we coordinated there's a lot of technical assistance at the Department of Energy and but it's very siloed and so we developed a single page for technical assistance for the state and a single request form so and we also regularly gather all the different offices and their technical assistance program people so that we could coordinate the asks with the state and I think something similar should be set up at the eight by all of the agencies so that you're tracking the incoming requests from states and also very proactively going out to the states to let them know about the opportunities and to that end I think that the the national the national associations of the state officials so not just the energy officials but the regulatory officials so Nehruk Nazio the the air you know any of those national associations that represent state energy officials can do two things they can help as a mouth you know as a as a voice for getting the word out about the opportunities but they can also help the state identify projects and identify applications to pull forward so there's a technical assistance piece that they too can do so there ought to be some parallel funding for those organizations to be able to ramp up their ability to help the states take access of of the funding and then on the equity piece it's critical that the equity discussions happen in the very beginning as the bills being written I don't think it's going to be possible for you know you to put at the very beginning of a stimulus package a commitment to the EJ 40 you know 40% of the benefits going to communities you know it is a commitment that the Biden administration has made but effectualizing that actually how you implement that can't be done with just a single directive to make sure 40% of the spending goes to you know frontline or disadvantaged communities whatever the definition is I think it's going to be important to work on definitional issues depending on the agencies you know the EPA has some definite issues about communities so really making sure that you're including good definitions of the communities that you want to target I also think that for some for example the grid spending I've really been grappling with how we make sure that investments in the grid the controls the sensors the data analytics that make the grid more resilient more reliant how you build equity into that because those are going to be utility investments they're going to be across the distribution and transmission system there are going to be benefits to those communities because costs will be lower because we'll have you know climate benefits because we'll have a you know better reliability and resilience those are hard to quantify so I think you know it can't be an expectation that 40% of the dollars will go to you know dealing with equity but but from the beginning if you start thinking about it so for example if I suspect that senator Schumer is going to be introducing a bill very shortly on electric vehicles and electric vehicle charging infrastructure and he's gonna want to see that in a stimulus package well if you start from the beginning thinking about how you structure the tax incentives for new and used electric vehicles so that you're reaching people with lower incomes how you think about where you will install electric vehicle infrastructure and whether you add some sort of criteria into the funding that ties to the kinds of communities that you want to target so you make sure that the charging stations aren't just in downtown businesses or along the freeway you know that there are things you can do if you're very intentional up front about having those conversations and I you know I'm sorry to say that they haven't happened in a lot of legislation in the past but I think I think that's changing the fact you're asking me the question means that there's a greater recognition of the need so Karen you've talked a bit about the grid both in your presentation and in your response to our last question here and I'm wondering if you can also comment on some other areas in the energy and environment space that policymakers should be thinking about have front of mind when they're designing a stimulus yeah energy efficiency investments those energy efficient when you think about the multiplier and the number of jobs that can be created the highest multipliers are in the energy efficiency investments those are jobs that have to be done in the United States they are construction jobs they're often union jobs they're often very high-paying and and they are you know it's it's a little dicey and that's why again COVID policy is economic policy a lot of people are not going to let workers into their homes to do energy efficiency upgrades if they are worried about you know COVID still so we have to get a handle on COVID but then you know absolutely energy efficiency is is a place where you'll get a lot of economic stimulus by making those investments and those actually can be done pretty quickly too if you don't have to wait for then that money can go out into a program again it's an existing program where they know how to move that money there are some thought that those the programs that are dealing with weatherization assistance can be expanded to do some other work without a significant change in their mandate and whether you know that they could move potentially other money I I am not an expert in how you might direct the weatherization programs in the States to do other things but they know how to move money out the door I think that transportation is another place where it's this pretty pretty conventional you know when we talk about infrastructure everybody immediately thinks about transportation but there's a lot that can be done that both you know builds infrastructure addresses you know climate and clean energy goals addresses you know pollution and addresses equity issues to making sure that that we're investing in transit and that we're investing in you know there's a whole suite of things over at the transportation department that would be included in a stimulus package so and then and then put we're not just talking about the Department of Energy we were talking in the Recovery Act almost every single agency had a place to play in the Recovery Act so I didn't even go into how that money the 800 something billion dollars was spread out across the agencies but there's a lot that can be done in the energy and environment space not just at EPA and DOE great yeah I I mean we we've sort of talked more about energy today but in fact you know all of the Department of Energy I should say but in fact it's a government-wide effort and like you said there's a little that everyone has a role to play so I'm thanks for making that point again do you have any this is sort of as we wrap up it's similar to the question that I asked Franz at the end but do you have any sort of thoughts about sort of what the bounds of a package might look like how sort of what shape it could take in terms of timing and size and I know you cited the 99 billion dollars before but do you have any thoughts or speculation about sort of what direction that might go and well I think the 99 billion I actually think it would go it could go higher than that in the energy space but you know President Biden has a plan for $2 million investment in in kind of infrastructure and and and is broader than infrastructure but in a climate package that's a that's a big chunk of money it didn't seem so big in the context when you add up all of the COVID relief it's it's going to be less than that but it's going to be coming on any kind of proposal for infrastructure spending is coming on the heels of the rescue bills and I think that what we've seen from the Recovery Act what we've seen from the experience of Japan trying to address their economic crash was that if you quickly pivot to austerity you you slow the economy and the problem if we don't do a stimulus package is that we will have spent all this money to largely you know keep people at home and keep food on the table without the actual stimulative nature and if we don't stimulate the economy then we won't have the tax revenues that actually come back in and help us pay down the debt we won't you know see businesses start up again and hire people and it's just really going to be critical that this year we do these timely we do a timely targeted and temporary stimulus package and the timely is it's got to be done this year because the economy is already you know in in dire streets great well thank you Karen that was an excellent presentation and thank you for engaging with me and Anna now discussion and I appreciate all of our speakers today everyone teed each other up perfectly and everyone followed up and had callbacks to what other people had to say and just a great sort of presentation set of presentation so thank you to Kari and to Franz and to Karen for joining us today if you have if you think about what we've heard you know one of the key takeaways is that this is a big challenge and it's going to take a lot of work on the part of a lot of folks on and off the hill and so to the extent that climate camp can congressional climate camp I should say can can be a resource there's a couple different things that I have to suggest one is if you missed anything from today you can go back to our website www.esi.org the full web archive presentation materials written summaries links to other ESI resources it'll all be there and nicely laid out so you'll have no problem at all finding it the other is we are always looking for suggestions to improve and so in just a moment we're going to put a slide up to with a link to a survey and so while we have a really good idea of the the next three editions or installments of climate camp we know roughly what will be covering we're always open to suggestions and how to do better if there were things that you saw today that you want to learn more about or if there were technical issues that you had we read every response that we get and so it means a lot to us for whenever anyone is able to take those two minutes and participate in our survey there's also the link also our social media handles and a hashtag if you would like to help us get the word up that way we are just about out of time but I'd be remiss if I didn't take a moment to once again thank our speakers Cari Franz and Karen also need to thank all of the staff at ESI who put in lots and lots of time pulling off this first installment of congressional climate camp I'd like to thank Dan O'Brien, Sidio Shaughnessy, Amber Todorov and Anna McGinn as well as Omri Laport our communications director for all of the work that went into this and for all of the work that's about to start going into the next three installments this is also as the first briefing of the year this is also the first briefing for our five intrepid interns Kimmy, Jocelyn, Hamza, Selene and Rachel thank you so much for all the work that you're putting in whether it's helping us with slides or helping us with time or helping us with social media or with notes thank you so much for all the work that you've contributed to the effort we will be back in about a month with the second installment of climate camp congressional climate camp excuse me we're going to be looking at the profiles of top emitting sectors of the US economy in March we will be back to learn about climate policy near misses things that happened in the past except they didn't happen but they still are important things to know about and they represented good thinking then and good thinking now that we can learn from and then the fourth one which will be in April is going to be looking at what we call double whammies things that we can be doing that deliver near-term emissions or mitigation as well as adaptation benefits you I've only plugged this about a zillion times today but please visit our website www.esi.org take a moment to sign up for our bi-weekly newsletter climate change solutions take a moment to subscribe to our bi-weekly podcast the climate conversation our next episode I think we'll include some excerpts from what we heard today so it'll be a great way to keep fresh and refresh what you've learned and the newsletter is also really the best way to keep up to date with all of our writing all of our fact sheets and all of our upcoming briefings and we have a really really robust briefing schedule for the first half of 2021 we know how critical this first six months of the year will be for climate for climate policy beyond appropriations beyond stimulus everything we have so much work to do so with that thank you congressional climate campers for joining us today we hope to see you back in about a month and until then happy Friday afternoon I hope everyone has a great weekend stay safe and stay healthy and we'll see you next time thank you so much