[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]



                    FIELD HEARING ON THE STATE OF THE
                      AMERICAN ECONOMY: APPALACHIA

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               before the

                      COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS
                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                            FEBRUARY 6, 2023

                               __________

                            Serial No. 118-1

                               __________

         Printed for the use of the Committee on Ways and Means





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                               ______
                                 

                 U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE

53-014                    WASHINGTON : 2024








                      COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS

                    JASON SMITH, Missouri, Chairman

VERN BUCHANAN, Florida               RICHARD E. NEAL, Massachusetts
ADRIAN SMITH, Nebraska               LLOYD DOGGETT, Texas
MIKE KELLY, Pennsylvania             MIKE THOMPSON, California
DAVID SCHWEIKERT, Arizona            JOHN B. LARSON, Connecticut
DARIN LaHOOD, Illinois               EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon
BRAD WENSTRUP, Ohio                  BILL PASCRELL, Jr., New Jersey
JODEY ARRINGTON, Texas               DANNY DAVIS, Illinois
DREW FERGUSON, Georgia               LINDA SANCHEZ, California
RON ESTES, Kansas                    BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
LLOYD SMUCKER, Pennsylvania          TERRI SEWELL, Alabama
KEVIN HERN, Oklahoma                 SUZAN DelBENE, Washington
CAROL MILLER, West Virginia          JUDY CHU, California
GREG MURPHY, North Carolina          GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin
DAVID KUSTOFF, Tennessee             DAN KILDEE, Michigan
BRIAN FITZPATRICK, Pennsylvania      DON BEYER, Virginia
GREG STEUBE, Florida                 DWIGHT EVANS, Pennsylvania
CLAUDIA TENNEY, New York             BRAD SCHNEIDER, Illinois
MICHELLE FISCHBACH, Minnesota        JIMMY PANETTA, California
BLAKE MOORE, Utah
MICHELLE STEEL, California
BETH VAN DUYNE, Texas
RANDY FEENSTRA, Iowa
NICOLE MALLIOTAKIS, New York
MIKE CAREY, Ohio

                       Mark Roman, Staff Director
                 Brandon Casey, Minority Chief Counsel

                              ----------                              








                         C  O  N  T  E  N  T  S

                              ----------                              
                                                                   Page

                           OPENING STATEMENTS

Hon. Jason Smith, Missouri, Chairman.............................     1
Hon. Don Beyer, Virginia, Ranking Member.........................    12
Advisory of February 6, 2023 announcing the hearing..............     V

                               WITNESSES

Tom Plaugher, Vice President of Operations, Allegheny Wood 
  Products (Truth in Testimony)..................................    17
Ashley Bachman, Owner/Operator, Cheetah B's Restaurant (Truth in 
  Testimony).....................................................    22
Wylie McDade, Co-Owner, Devil's Due Distiller (Truth in 
  Testimony).....................................................    28
Jamie Ward, Itmann Prep Plant Manager, CONSOL Energy Inc. (Truth 
  in Testimony)..................................................    36

                           LOCAL SUBMISSIONS

Local Submissions................................................     4

                           PUBLIC SUBMISSIONS

Public Submissions...............................................    89





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             THE STATE OF THE AMERICAN ECONOMY: APPALACHIA

                              ----------                              


                        MONDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2023

                  House of Representatives,
                               Committee on Ways and Means,
                                                   Washington, D.C.
    The committee met, pursuant to call, at 11:00 a.m., at 
Allegheny Wood Products, Inc., 1454 Johnson Run Road, 
Petersburg, West Virginia, Hon. Jason Smith [chairman of the 
committee] presiding.
    Chairman SMITH. The committee will come to order.
    Without objection, the gentleman from West Virginia, Mr. 
Mooney, is authorized to participate in today's hearing and ask 
questions of the witnesses.
    So passed.
    Welcome to the first hearing of the Ways and Means 
Committee in the new Republican majority. Thank you to 
Allegheny Wood Products for hosting us. As you all may have 
noticed, the first full hearing of the Ways and Means Committee 
is not being held in the marbled Halls of Congress. Instead, we 
are in Petersburg, West Virginia, for the first of many such 
field hearings.
    The Ways and Means Committee has a connection to the 
American public that dates back to the founding of our country. 
Every family, business, farmer, senior citizen and, frankly, 
foreign nation, is impacted by our work. More importantly, our 
values are reflected in that work.
    But, over the last few years, this committee's work--and 
that of Congress--has drifted from the needs of these good 
people. We must course correct. We must prioritize the voices 
in rooms like this one and not those of the Washington 
political class.
    We will hear today about the state of the American economy, 
and it is in danger: historic inflation, high energy bills, 
declining real wages, labor shortages, spikes in interest 
rates, the supply chain crisis, China's unfair trade practices 
and so much more. These are some of the challenges confronting 
working families that Republicans will work to solve.
    If we want to put our Nation on sounder footing, we need to 
prioritize our most valuable resource: the American worker. And 
the first step is listening to Americans on the front lines of 
our economy, hearing their stories and their ideas for 
improving life for their families, their neighbors, and our 
country.
    The people of West Virginia are resilient, but life is 
undeniably harder than it was just 2 years ago. Communities 
like Petersburg have seen their voices drowned out by special 
interests in Washington calling for more spending and more 
regulation that has fueled the fire of inflation. For many 
Americans, it feels like Washington has forgotten all about 
them.
    In West Virginia, the cost of living has increased 15.1 
percent since President Biden took the oath of office, costing 
families a total of $7,000 and counting. For parents, it means 
choosing between new shoes for school or filling up your tank 
to get to work. For seniors, it means figuring out each month 
whether to pay for groceries or the heating bill. Gas prices 
have risen 42 percent in this State since Biden became 
President. Up and down the supply chain, farmers, businesses, 
and workers are being crushed.
    In West Virginia, there are two job openings for every 
unemployed person. Across this country, too many Americans have 
been incentivized by misguided Washington policies to sit on 
the sidelines of our economy and miss out on the dignity and 
the paycheck that came from a steady job. For small towns, it 
can mean treasured local establishments shutting their doors 
from lack of workers.
    Today, we will hear from Tom Plaugher, a 25-year employee 
of Allegheny Wood Products, our host today; Ashley Bachman, a 
mom of three and local restaurant owner; Wylie McDade, a 
veteran and co-owner of a local distillery; and Jamie Ward, 
West Virginia native and a 30-year veteran of the coal 
industry.
    The stories of our witnesses, Americans trying to make ends 
meet and provide for their families, tell the real state of the 
union. When President Biden gives that speech tomorrow, he will 
claim the Nation is finally turning a corner on inflation, the 
same inflation he spent a full year denying and which his chief 
of staff called a high-class problem.
    The truth is, is that inflation has risen 13.9 percent 
across the country since Joe Biden took the oath of office. 
Skyrocketing costs are even worse in rural communities, where 
inflation is 130 percent higher than urban areas, and real wage 
growth is 25 percent lower. And, after increasing government 
spending by $10 trillion with a T, he will ask the taxpayers, 
through this committee, to approve a clean increase of his 
ability to borrow more.
    President Biden will take credit for falling gas prices. 
Few things could be more insulting to the coal miners of West 
Virginia and energy producers across the country than to hear 
the President take credit for their hard work. In fact, this 
administration is shutting down fossil fuel production while 
throwing billions at green energy projects run by the 
Democratic donor class.
    Who knows if President Biden will bother to mention the 
supply chains. Small businesses waiting for parts and equipment 
on back order know that our supply chain issues haven't been 
solved. The struggle means lost revenue for businesses, smaller 
paychecks for workers, and higher prices for families.
    Instead of negotiating trade agreements to bring supply 
chains home and sell more American goods abroad, the Biden 
administration has been out to lunch. His speech will likely 
not mention the worker shortage, even though his party's war on 
work helped create the problem. The result has been ``help 
wanted'' signs everywhere and the lowest labor force 
participation rate since Jimmy Carter.
    We need to connect more Americans to work. That is how you 
help lift families out of poverty. Where I come from in 
Missouri, people work hard and play by the rules. They buy 
Always Save mac and cheese and they shop at Walmart to stay in 
their budgets. They get excited if a restaurant lets kids eat 
for free because it means they can afford to spend a family 
night out.
    They deserve the same opportunities as the people who walk 
the Halls of Congress. That is why we are here in Petersburg to 
partner with the American people to find the solutions. It is 
their voice that matters most in writing the next chapter of 
American history, not K Street lobbyists.
    To that end, for those from the community in attendance 
here that are not testifying and the employees of Allegheny, we 
want to hear from you too. We will be providing a notebook for 
you to share your thoughts with this committee and which we 
will insert into the official record of the hearing.
    So throughout the hearing those notebooks will be passed 
out, and I want more than just the four witnesses here to tell 
us about the issues you are concerned with in this country and 
your ideas for solutions, so that we can enter those into the 
official record and bring them back to Washington to help 
deliver results for each and every one of you.
    [The information follows:]

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    Chairman SMITH. I want to thank our witnesses for taking 
time away from their families and work to be with us today and 
share their stories.
    I am pleased to recognize the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. 
Beyer, who will serve as acting ranking member today, for his 
opening statement.
    Mr. Beyer.
    Mr. BEYER. Chairman Smith, thank you very much. And thank 
you for scheduling this hearing. Thank you for bringing us to 
West Virginia. I am so glad you chose an Appalachian and West 
Virginia specifically to host this first Ways and Means 
Committee hearing of this Congress.
    This may be the only time I ever get to be the acting 
ranking member on Ways and Means, so thank you. And I may be 
one of the very few Democrats around, but I want you to know 
how much I care about your children, your health, your family 
finances and especially your future.
    Communities throughout this region and my own State of 
Virginia have been the first to experience the direct effects 
of massive economic forces that have come to dominate policy 
discussions in Washington and in capitals around the world. The 
consequences of the energy transition and globalization have 
been felt first and often hardest in communities like this one. 
So, I am so grateful to have the opportunity to hear how local 
businesses have adjusted to these and the other trends 
affecting the U.S. economy.
    This is a particularly great time and place to host a 
hearing since businesses, workers, and families in West 
Virginia are beginning to take advantage of the numerous 
programs recently passed by Congress and signed by President 
Biden.
    Despite the expectations of many in Congress, last Congress 
was historically productive, at least from my perspective, and 
delivered a series of massive investments for Appalachia and 
West Virginia, in infrastructure, clean manufacturing, energy 
security, as well as R&D, that will make the region well 
positioned to compete in the 21st century.
    Companies in Appalachia are already capitalizing on the 
variety of tax credits and direct investments we made in those 
new bills. Multiple new large battery manufacturing plants have 
been announced in West Virginia in the last year, along with an 
electric school bus factory and a host of others throughout the 
region, bringing in thousands of high-quality manufacturing 
jobs.
    Furthermore, with Federal funding provided by the 
Infrastructure and Jobs Act and the tax credits in the 
Inflation Reduction Act, West Virginia is leading the way in 
diversifying and growing its energy portfolio. You are taking 
advantage of your high school workforce and existing energy 
infrastructure to establish a clean hydrogen hub that will 
supply the energy needs for the region as we move towards a 
wider variety of cleaner fuels.
    And individual taxpayers stand to benefit directly as well. 
The Inflation Reduction Act included a series of tax credits 
and rebates, which will provide much-needed relief to families 
dealing with inflation by dramatically lowering energy costs.
    Hundreds of thousands of low- and middle-income households 
in the State will soon be able to replace older, less efficient 
appliances with electric heat pumps, clothes dryers, water 
heaters at steep discounts that will save them hundreds of 
dollars per year on their utility bills.
    And other provisions in the IRA will make it significantly 
cheaper for taxpayers to make repairs and improvements to their 
homes that increase energy efficiency and reduce the cost for 
installing solar panels and battery storage systems.
    There is one final item in the IRA I would like to mention. 
I was extremely pleased to see a permanent extension of the 
black lung excise tax included in the bill, which support the 
Black Lung Disability Fund. This trust fund provides healthcare 
and a small stipend for miners disabled with black lung if 
their employers have gone bankrupt and no single company can be 
identified as responsible for a miner's disease. I know this 
was a tremendous relief to miners and their advocates, who are 
now able to turn their full focus to other important issues 
facing the mining community.
    There is a great deal of work that still needs to be done. 
Abandoned coal mines remain a serious problem for local 
communities in West Virginia and southwest Virginia, as they 
create polluted watersheds, hazardous erosion and land 
subsidence, underground mine fires and piles of coal waste.
    One measure that can help is the bipartisan RECLAIM Act, 
which Hal Rogers and I have worked on for a number of years, 
which would provide $1 billion in funding for Appalachian 
communities to restore polluted land and water resources, seal 
and fill abandoned deep mine entries and voids, and prevent 
erosion and sedimentation.
    This measure was advanced in previous years, and I hope to 
work with my friends and colleagues across the aisle to see it 
through this Congress.
    Again, Mr. Chairman, thank you so much for welcoming me 
here. It is wonderful to be back in West Virginia, and I look 
forward to hearing from the witnesses.
    Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Beyer. We greatly appreciate 
you being here.
    I will now recognize our two colleagues of West Virginia, 
welcoming us to their beautiful State, Mrs. Miller and Mr. 
Mooney, for some brief remarks.
    Mrs. Miller, you are free to go first.
    Mrs. MILLER. Thank you so much, Chairman Smith.
    And I would also like to thank our host, Allegheny Wood 
Products. And I want to welcome all of my colleagues to my home 
State of West Virginia. I truly believe there is no better 
place to live, work, and raise a family. As Dorothy would say, 
there is no place like home.
    I am really excited for the opportunity today to be able to 
highlight some of the stories of hardworking West Virginians 
and the unnecessary struggles that they face because of an 
overreaching Federal Government.
    I would like to especially thank our guest speakers, Mr. 
Plaugher, Ms. Bachman, Mr. McDade, and Mr. Ward, for taking 
time out today to join us. Your voices are essential for the 
Representatives who are here today to help fight for the 
policies that will empower our constituents.
    West Virginia faces so many challenges, and this is due to 
the constant attacks on our energy industry from unelected 
bureaucrats and uninformed lawmakers, which have caused untold 
damage to all of our communities in southern West Virginia in 
particular.
    The effects of bad policies have been devastating. 
Recently, high gas prices and soaring inflation have left the 
effect on our families as they are struggling to make their 
ends meet. An overzealous IRS has targeted working-class 
Americans. President Biden immediately broke his promise to not 
tax anyone making less than $400,000, and this administration 
has surrendered to foreign countries on international tax 
negotiations.
    The President has also failed to devise any coherent trade 
policy, leaving our exports uncompetitive. It is almost as if 
President Biden is more interested in shipping our jobs 
overseas than our products.
    According to the Economic Innovation Group, 48 million 
Americans reside in distressed communities, where nearly a 
quarter of the population are below the poverty line and more 
than a third of them are out of work.
    While the national economy has shown signs of recovery, it 
is slow to reach our communities, the ones like mine that have 
been hit the hardest by the Great Recession. Over a decade 
later, they are still far behind the rest of the country and 
are now reeling from the new economic crisis in front of us. We 
cannot let this happen again.
    Today's hearing provides the perfect opportunity to lay out 
our case for brighter days ahead under Republican leadership. 
The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was essential for the booming 
economy that we had under President Trump. Unemployment reached 
50-year lows, 50-year lows. Ordinary workers had the strongest 
wage growth of any group, and the businesses stopped leaving 
the United States for low-tax countries and, thus, keeping our 
jobs right here in the United States.
    The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act also included important 
provisions, like creating Opportunity Zones, which have 
promoted businesses to settle right here in West Virginia. 
According to a recently released report, close to half of all 
Opportunity Zone tracts have received investment between 2017 
and 2020, and even more since then. In fact, West Virginia saw 
4,000 last year compared to 2019. Modernizing and improving the 
successful Opportunity Zone policy will be essential to 
continue driving investments to the communities that need it 
the most.
    I want to thank you again for the opportunity to highlight 
my beautiful State, Mr. Chairman, and I hope you return soon.
    I yield back my time.
    Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mrs. Miller. There is definitely 
no place like home.
    I would like to recognize Mooney.
    Mr. MOONEY. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman Smith, and all 
my colleagues. As I look around, you may not realize, we got so 
many States represented here: California, I mean, the South. 
Our schedule in Congress is generally we work/vote 4 days out 
of 5, 3 weeks out of 4. And today is the first day we would 
vote on a Monday at 6:30 p.m. We have votes tonight. So what 
everybody here has done is come in a day early to hop the bus 
at 7 a.m. to come from D.C. to here to have this hearing with 
us, and then they are going to take the bus right back to D.C. 
and vote tonight.
    So I really appreciate the effort this committee made. It 
is quite unique. I don't know that I have come to a field 
hearing before, so it is really an honor to be with you.
    I live in Jefferson County with my wife and three kids, 
Charles Town. For my colleagues, it is a little less than 2 
hours north of here. And I can actually get to D.C., it is 70 
miles from my home in Charles Town to Congress.
    But welcome to the Ways and Means Committee, the powerful 
Ways and Means Committee here in Grant County, West Virginia. I 
thank you for the opportunity to join today's hearing and allow 
me to contribute to this important conversation.
    I am grateful that the hearing is in my district, and I 
hope today's discussion focuses on issues in rural America that 
Washington often overlooks. West Virginia families are being 
forced to make tough economic decisions.
    According to the Congressional Budget Office, which is the 
standard we all use to look at the numbers in D.C. and the 
spending, inflation, the price of consumer goods has risen, 
inflation, 13.9 percent in just the last 2 years since 
President Biden took office. The price of gas, groceries, and 
utilities remain high, and the value of hardworking West 
Virginian paychecks are decreasing due to inflation. The cost 
of living is skyrocketing, turning on the lights, heating your 
home, buying groceries for the week are now difficult choices 
that my constituents have to make.
    So helping small businesses get off the ground and expand 
is another challenge I hear when I travel the 27 beautiful 
counties in the congressional district I represent, the 
northern half of the State. You have your entire State 
delegation here, Carol Miller and I, the two Congressman from 
West Virginia.
    I listen to the feedback. It is so important to hear your 
feedback when we go to Washington, so that we know exactly what 
to focus on. I actually went and toured Grant County Hospital 
this morning before I came here. And transportation is an issue 
there because, unlike big cities, to get to and from a hospital 
or to another hospital, it is often 2 hours whereas in a big 
city it might be 2 miles. Those are different challenges that 
we have in rural America.
    I normally serve on the Financial Services Committee, and 
we just passed my bill last week, a bipartisan bill, called 
Expanding Access to Capital for Rural Job Creators Act. And 
that simply would survey the problems and challenges--the 
unique challenges, frankly--that small businesses have in rural 
areas when they are attempting to get capital to expand their 
business. I am glad the House passed it unanimously, and it 
will make it easier to navigate the needs and the bureaucracies 
that small businesses have to deal with.
    You see, here in West Virginia, we don't have any big 
cities. For 8 years, I represented Kanawha County, Charleston, 
and I now represent Morgantown. We don't even have a city with 
more than 50,000 people in West Virginia. Okay. This is a rural 
State.
    We have challenges. Internet access is a big challenge 
everywhere I go, with the exception of Hardy County, where 
Hardy does a great job with internet. But, you know, internet 
access is a challenge. Transportation. The weather is often a 
challenge.
    What we do have is hardworking taxpayers here in West 
Virginia, and we have great natural resources: Coal. And this 
beautiful wood you see around here, we have plenty of that. You 
can cut it down, plant it, cut it down again, plant it, cut it 
down again. We have great forests.
    We need, for our State to be successful, to harness our 
natural resources and not allow the Federal Government to get 
in the way of that, as they often do. West Virginia's small 
business owners create jobs. Okay. That is what businesses do. 
These are be job-creating businesses. You have hundreds of 
employees here that create good-paying jobs for West 
Virginians. Rural job creators face these difficulties 
obtaining loans, you know, workforce issues, inflation and 
regulatory challenges.
    There is much more that can be done, and I think that this 
committee will come away with valuable information from our 
witnesses here today. We can take that back to Washington, 
D.C., work together to chart the best path forward for a more 
prosperous America.
    Thank you and I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Mooney. It is a pleasure to 
be in your congressional district, and thank you for allowing 
us to come visit.
    I will now introduce our witnesses. Tom Plaugher is vice 
president of operations here at Allegheny Wood Products, our 
gracious host today. Mr. Plaugher is a native West Virginian 
and has 25 years of service with AWP. He currently oversees all 
operations for AWP's sawmills, dry kilns, IT, transportation, 
and exports.
    Thank you for sharing your time and this great facility 
with us today.
    Ashley Bachman is the owner of Cheetah B's Restaurant, a 
highly rated steakhouse right here in Petersburg, currently 
employing a staff of 35, a mother of three. Ms. Bachman is a 
West Virginia native and a veteran of the hospitality and 
special events industries. Her passion is entrepreneurship, 
with a goal of bringing more opportunity and growth to this 
community.
    Ms. Bachman, thank you for joining us.
    Wylie McDade is co-owner of Devil's Due Distillery, a craft 
distillery located in West Virginia's Eastern Panhandle. Mr. 
McDade works with local farmers, sourcing as much as possible 
from the surrounding land. Mr. McDade is also a veteran of the 
U.S. Navy.
    Thank you for being here, for your service to our country, 
and for sharing your experience and the story of Devil's Due.
    Jamie Ward is the preparation plant manager at CONSOL 
Energy, Incorporated. A father of three, Mr. Ward was born and 
raised in southern West Virginia and has a 30-year tenure in 
the coal industry.
    Mr. Ward, thank you, for taking time for us today, as a 
representative of an industry that is so critical to 
communities and families in this State.
    The committee has received your written statements, and 
they will all be made part of the formal hearing record. You 
each have 5 minutes to deliver your oral arguments, oral 
remarks.
    Mr. Plaugher, you may begin when you are ready.

   STATEMENT OF TOM PLAUGHER, VICE PRESIDENT OF OPERATIONS, 
                 ALLEGHENY WOOD PRODUCTS, INC.

    Mr. PLAUGHER. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, distinguished 
committee members and guests, allow me to welcome you all to 
Allegheny Wood Products and welcome to West Virginia.
    My name is Tom Plaugher, and I am the vice president of 
operations for Allegheny Wood. AWP is one of the largest 
producers of Eastern U.S. hardwoods. We operate sawmills and 
dry kiln facilities throughout the State of West Virginia. We 
don't make two-by-fours or two-by-sixes for framing.
    We manufacture hardwood lumber. Species like red oak, white 
oak, cherry, hard and soft maple, poplar and walnut, the lumber 
that goes into fine furniture, cabinetry, mouldings, millwork 
and flooring. We also manufacture hardwood pellet fuel from the 
byproducts of the sawmilling process. Our intent is to utilize 
every portion of the trees that we harvest.
    AWP is a family-owned company founded by John and Patricia 
Crites back in 1973. We will celebrate a milestone of 50 years 
in business this year. We started out with a small sawmill and 
13 employees, selling products within a 300-mile radius. Today, 
we have a dozen locations, 800 employees, and we sell our 
products all over the world. We have exported our products to 
over 30 different countries, and we loaded over 5,000 export 
containers last year alone.
    The forest products industry contributes $3.2 billion in 
economic impact to the State of West Virginia on an annual 
basis. There are over 30,000 people in this State that work in 
our industry. And it is the only industry that is found in all 
55 counties. AWP employs over 75 independent logging 
contractors and nearly 100 independent trucking contractors to 
support our operations on a regular basis.
    With that much economic impact, we are often asked, are we 
running out of trees? The answer is a resounding no. Recent 
U.S. Forest Service studies have shown that we are reliably 
growing two and a half times the volume that is being removed 
in the Appalachian region.
    There are a couple of key factors about our industry that I 
need for you to keep in mind. The first is that we are directly 
tied to housing. We need single-family housing starts and 
remodeling expenditures to be high, because those are the homes 
where people install high-quality hardwood products.
    The second is that we must have access to trade. Much of 
the secondary manufacturing in the hardwood industry left the 
U.S. in the early 2000s. For industries like ours to be 
successful, we must have access to markets and the ability to 
export our goods. The past 5 years have been extremely 
challenging for the hardwood industry, with a trade war 
beginning in 2017 and the COVID pandemic in 2020.
    American hardwood producers suffered because of retaliatory 
tariffs imposed on our products during the trade war, and AWP 
was forced to close two of our mills and lay off employees that 
had been with us for decades because business was so bad. The 
pandemic brought a new challenge nearly every day for months, 
as lockdowns were imposed, rules and regulations were made and 
changed repeatedly. Some businesses were shut down while others 
were allowed to operate, and some businesses and industries 
received government assistance while others did not. Our 
industry was hit hard during that period and not all companies 
survived.
    There are five critical problems that have materialized 
over the past 2 years that are poised to impact our industry 
once again in 2023: The first is dramatically increasing fuel 
costs. The war on fossil fuels has played havoc with the cost 
and supply of diesel fuel and all oil products. That hampers 
our industry at every link in the chain.
    The second is the supply chain crisis. Getting parts and 
supplies needed to operate has been very difficult and 
sometimes impossible. We sell our products internationally, and 
getting product to our customers timely, with the shortages of 
shipping containers and available vessel space, has been a 
major hurdle.
    Third is the inability to find qualified labor. Much of the 
workforce does not appear to have returned to work following 
COVID, and that is impacting the productivity of every 
industry.
    Fourth is rising interest rates. This is slowing down the 
housing market. It makes capital more expensive, and it will 
put the brakes on our entire industry.
    And last but certainly not least is increasing regulations 
and bureaucracy. Regulatory agencies have ramped up their 
efforts to come out with new initiatives and requirements that 
hamper permitting and place more burdens on businesses at every 
turn.
    A trip to the grocery store will convince you that 
inflation has gotten out of hand. And you might think that 
would be the case for all goods and services, but the fact is 
that the pricing for our products has fallen 40 percent, on 
average, over the past 6 months, due to the decline in the 
housing market and the lack of demand.
    I want to finish by saying that we here in West Virginia 
are blessed with an abundant natural resource. And our industry 
is made up of some of the finest, hardest working people you 
will meet, both at AWP and the forest products industry as a 
whole.
    Thank you again for this opportunity, and I am happy to 
answer any questions.
    [The statement of Mr. Plaugher follows:]

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Plaugher, and thank you for 
hosting us once again at AWP.
    Ms. BACHMAN, you are recognized.

   STATEMENT OF ASHLEY BACHMAN, OWNER/OPERATOR, CHEETAH B'S 
                           RESTAURANT

    Ms. BACHMAN. Hello, ladies and gentlemen of the committee. 
My name is Ashley Bachman, and I am a mother of three children 
and currently own a local restaurant called Cheetah B's. I have 
been a resident of Grant County for 11 years now. When I first 
moved to Grant County, I was working in Lanham, Maryland, for a 
trade show and special event company as a freight coordinator 
for a company called Hargroe Incorporated. The pay was far 
higher than any job I can do in our community, but after 
becoming pregnant with my third child, it became impossible for 
me to travel that way for this shop.
    I saw an opportunity to open my own business with a local 
restaurant when a local restaurant decided to close their 
doors. We opened Cheetah B's on June 15th of 2015. I didn't 
have any culinary training but always had a passion for 
cooking.
    It took us a couple years, but we built a highly successful 
restaurant. Right at the peak of our success, COVID shut our 
business down. My husband and I were employed through the 
restaurant, so this was terrifying to us. We had three 
children. How were we going to make it? How were we going to 
pay our bills, let alone feed our children?
    We couldn't accept the fact that we were forced to shut 
down due to COVID-19 regulations, so my husband and I put our 
thinking caps on. We have a window in our restaurant that faces 
the road. We decided we would try to operate a restaurant 
through what we called our drive-through. Luckily, we were able 
to keep our doors open during this trying time by pivoting our 
business model by finding different ways to serve our 
customers.
    Unfortunately, after COVID, we have been hit with another 
crisis, the crisis of rising cost of everything. This has 
proven to be a much tougher task than what we dealt with during 
the COVID regulations.
    The cost of goods has been steadily rising throughout the 
past couple years. It has been tough to stay ahead. We have had 
to change our menu prices countless times just to make sure 
that we don't go out of business.
    We are still not charging enough for our menu items, 
because we are afraid we will price ourselves out of business. 
We have and continue to struggle with the ever-increasing cost 
of goods. Of course, our customers suffer with us as well as 
they pay more for menu items that have gone up in price, the 
customers that still come out to eat, that is. We have taken a 
hit in business so far these past two quarters, having less 
customers come in.
    Just as the increasing cost of goods has required us to 
change menu prices and menus altogether, the failures in supply 
chain have caused the same. I can't tell you how many times our 
food reps have came into our establishment to warn us of which 
products were going to be out of stock for an unknown amount of 
time or which products were going to be increasing in cost to 
the point that we may not even want to order them. Just one 
example would be bone-in chicken wings. We used to sell one to 
two 40-pound cases a week. They used to be $40 a case before 
they skyrocketed to up over $150 for the same amount.
    Just as the cost of goods have gone up, so has the cost of 
our energy to cook those items. Our kitchen cooking equipment 
runs off of propane. This is the only utility that we pay in 
our establishment, as our leaser pays the others. During some 
months, the cost of propane has more than doubled the price 
that it was in the corresponding months of 2020. The rise in 
price in all other energy costs has caused our lease payment to 
increase from $2,000 to $4,500 a month in only 5 years' time.
    Our little restaurant has been bleeding money due to all 
the increased costs, and I don't know how much longer we will 
be able to continue with the prices the way they are. It is 
very worrisome.
    Our business has been very fortunate with workers during 
the past few years. We also pay a higher wage to keep these 
employees. We have, however, seen it has affected other 
businesses. We have heard through our food reps and other 
restaurants that have had to close or completely change their 
business hours because of lack of workers. Just last week, I 
saw at my doctor's office that CVS Pharmacy is no longer open 
on the weekends because of staff shortages.
    I believe that the amount of money that has been handed out 
throughout the years has definitely contributed to this. Around 
the same time stimulus checks were going out and added 
unemployment benefit money is when the worker shortage started 
to happen.
    Higher fuel costs affect our community probably more than 
most. It takes more fuel to get our groceries and other 
essential items across the mountains that we live in between. 
Our local grocery stores charge sometimes double to even triple 
on goods than other grocery stores in more populated areas. Our 
local gas stations charge 30 cents per gallon more than gas 
stations just 30 miles away.
    Some of the biggest financial worries I hear from my 
community is the cost of goods, price of gas, price of 
utilities and just life in general. The cost of everything has 
gone up. I see lots of my old customers at the grocery store, 
and they tell me they are sorry they haven't eaten at my 
restaurant lately because they are just struggling to live.
    My community is having a hard time right now. I have 
colleagues and powerful community members asking me for a 
second job, and, unfortunately, with the rise of inflation 
costs, I cannot run with any more staff members at the moment. 
Lots of my current staff members are using their employment at 
my restaurant as a second source of income and still find 
themselves struggling. My husband and I have even found 
ourselves struggling to keep up and are also taking on other 
business opportunities besides our restaurant.
    We have such a wonderful community that is trying their 
best to bring new business, to provide more job opportunities 
and fun things to do for our youth in the area, but 
entrepreneurs like myself are scared to make any financial 
decisions during this recession.
    We personally bought a 5,000-square-foot building to be the 
future site of Cheetah B's and Potomac Valley Brewery, but have 
put a hold on our project seeing other peers go through 
devastating financial hardships working on similar projects. We 
can only hope that things will normalize again and give our 
businesses and children hope for the future.
    It was a pleasure speaking with you today and thank you for 
having me.
    [The statement of Ms. Bachman follows:]

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    Chairman SMITH. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Bachman.
    Mr. McDade, you are new recognized.

  STATEMENT OF WILEY McDADE, CO-OWNER, DEVIL'S DUE DISTILLERY

    Mr. McDADE. First, I would like to thank you all for 
inviting me here today to speak. I am here with my wife, 
Cynthia, and lead distiller, Ken Walker.
    And I will tell you a little story. So I come to Petersburg 
today to tell you a story about our small business located in 
our small little town in America. The town is called 
Kearneysville. It is located in Jefferson County, West 
Virginia.
    This county is of incredible historic importance to the 
United States. George Washington didn't just sleep there; he 
lived there. His brother Charles, who in 1868 founded Charles 
Town at the heart of the county, lived there as well. The 
American Civil War started there at Harpers Ferry. West 
Virginia seceded from Virginia shortly thereafter in support of 
the Union. And I can tell you that the people of West Virginia 
are fiercely proud of their State.
    The people here come from all walks of life. Farmland 
abounds. So do small shops and boutiques and restaurants. The 
county is ringed by national parks: Harpers Ferry, Antietam, 
C&O Canal. The two great rivers, the Shenandoah and the 
Potomac, converge there and form the northern end of the 
Chesapeake Bay watershed, which flows under the Nation's 
Capital just about 40 miles away, as the crow flies.
    I think you guys probably thought, as the crow flies, this 
place was pretty close to you until you got on the back roads, 
and you found out that it is always twice as far to get 
anywhere in West Virginia, but it is also twice as beautiful. 
When you cross the border, it just feels different here. John 
Denver captured that perfectly. And I think that is why people 
come here.
    Nationally, a small distillery feels right at home here. It 
is true that, prior to the Whiskey Rebellion in the late 1700s, 
many, if not most, farms had a working still. It was 
logistically far easier and economically more profitable to 
bring grain to market by the barrel than by the bushel. 
Appalachia to the south and west of where we are, it wasn't 
always accessible as it is now today.
    Today, West Virginia's rich culture and tradition is 
showcased at our distillery. We aim to take local grains, the 
same ones that have been produced there for hundreds of years, 
and use that same tradition to produce a product that you just 
can't get anywhere else. We don't look to make products better 
there; we just look to make them different. Jefferson County 
proved to be the place that has everything we need to succeed.
    Geographically, our distillery is strategically placed in a 
small business park called James Burr near the I-81 corridor, a 
major north-south interstate and commerce artery. That highway 
bisects the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia and is in 
relatively close proximity to us, which we chose to help keep 
freight costs low.
    We are also a completely electrified distillery, due to the 
current unavailability of natural gas in our area. You know, 
natural gas boilers in the distillery industry are almost 100 
percent more efficient than electricity.
    At least 75 percent of our agriculture inputs are supplied 
by the local farms in the county. However, grain is only one 
part of a much bigger production process that we have there, 
and our inputs are freighted in from across the United States 
and sometimes around the world.
    Our whiskey is mashed and distilled on equipment produced 
in Missouri. Our whiskey, by Federal law, must be aged in 
American White Oak. The oak for these barrels is sourced from 
all over the United States: The Ozarks, which are known for 
their tight grain white oak; the Tennessee Valley, which that 
white oak is known around the world, a lot of Kentucky whiskeys 
are aged down there; and, of course, lots and lots of oak from 
right here in Appalachia is used in the production of our 
whiskeys.
    Our bottles are produced throughout the United States and 
abroad. Our label production occurs in Maryland and New York, 
and our merchandising is a mix of locally produced craft, which 
we love, but also national commercial products from around the 
United States. Nearly all of these products rely on freight and 
working supply chains.
    We started our business in 2021, and when we started diesel 
prices were in the mid-$2 range. Factories were producing at or 
near capacity. Warehouses were full. Choice in products--I will 
say that again--choice in products was plentiful.
    Much has changed in the past 2 years. Fuel prices and their 
fluctuations have made planning difficult, especially on 
already small margins. Due to factory closures, glass shortages 
have been and continue to be a scourge on our industry. Input 
costs on grains have risen sharply, something we are really 
actually pretty well-positioned to endure because we deal a lot 
with local farmers, but ever present on the commercial market.
    Lead times are up by at least a factor of 2 and sometimes 
up to a factor of 10. And, in particular, order minimums have 
gone up significantly. I have to buy more. And a guy like me 
who, you know, relies on just-in-time delivery yet can't afford 
an entire truck, now has to buy more product at one time or put 
in longer and longer contracts, contract out for the whole year 
instead of maybe for just the quarter.
    The enormous glass warehouses that feed our industry remain 
at minimum capacity with only minor gains in stocks, and supply 
chain logistics remain painful, to say the least.
    Despite input cost increases, we are reluctant to raise 
prices, and we haven't done so. And I believe that this is one 
of the main drivers keeping our clientele coming back. However, 
it comes at a great cost, growth. Our workforce should consist 
of 7 to 10 in order to work the distillery, the tasting room, 
and the distribution aspect of the business, yet we do so with 
five. Everyone works long hours. They wear many hats.
    My business colleagues in the area tell me that they have 
similar experiences and that hiring remains a challenge, a 
perceived shortage of available workers. That shortage is 
compounded by rising home prices, soaring rents, and 
inaccessible credit.
    In the face of all these problems, our outlook looks 
strong. And I believe our community outlook is also very 
positive, but this is West Virginia, and mountaineers 
inherently know how to do more with less.
    So we endure and hope that Washington can work to provide 
stability in our markets. We need lower and more consistent 
fuel prices to allow for planning on thin margins. We need 
choice in energy to achieve efficiencies in our industry. We 
need to strengthen national manufacturing and refill our 
national commercial warehouses.
    We need to pull back from intensive interest rate hikes and 
stabilize local housing availability. We are just one small, 
proud West Virginia business out of many thousands all looking 
for the same thing, an opportunity to succeed. Thank you.
    [The statement of Mr. McDade follows:]

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    Chairman SMITH. Thank you.
    Mr. Ward, you are recognized.

  STATEMENT OF JAMIE WARD, ITMANN PREP PLANT MANAGER, CONSOL 
                           ENERGY INC

    Mr. WARD. Chairman Smith, Ranking Members Neal, and members 
of the Ways and Means Committee, I would like to thank you for 
the opportunity to speak today.
    My name is Jamie Ward, and I am here representing CONSOL 
Energy, a 150-year-old thermal and metallurgical coal-producing 
company with operations in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, 
where I supervise the Itmann No. 5 preparation plant outside of 
Mullens, West Virginia.
    I have worked in the coal industry for almost 30 years. 
Growing up in southern West Virginia, I was surrounded by coal 
mines in the coal industry from the time I was young. I 
attended Independence High School in Raleigh County. There, I 
decided to enter the workforce after graduation, beginning my 
career at a local coal company where I conducted coal sampling 
and quality analysis. From there, I worked at the coal 
companies for several different operators before landing at 
CONSOL.
    As my career progressed, I watched as coal companies began 
to either consolidate, go bankrupt, or be bought out, at one 
time causing me to work for 6 different companies in a period 
of 13 years.
    I saw the coal industry decline further, to the point where 
I was forced to leave West Virginia to find work in the 
industry in Alabama for a time. I watched small towns in my 
home State fall on incredibly hard times, all because of 
anticoal policies that were being pushed in Washington, D.C., 
by people who had never even been here where I grew up. The 
result of these policies have been economic disaster to the 
people of Appalachia.
    In 2019, CONSOL Energy decided to reinvest in a thin seam 
coalfield in southern West Virginia, providing me the 
opportunity to move back to my State. My experience at 
preparation plants allowed me to join the CONSOL team in the 
position I am in now. I manage the day-to-day operations of a 
plant, including 25 employees and contractors. I also interface 
with customers and coordinate shipments on a daily basis, both 
domestic and international sales.
    CONSOL Energy owns and operates the largest underground 
high-BTU bituminous coal complex in North America. And now, in 
Wyoming County, West Virginia, we operate our new Itmann No. 5 
metallurgical coal mine and prep plant, which it produces coal, 
coking coal in the steel production.
    Itmann prep plant recently shipped its first trainload of 
coal to customers in October of last year. It was a truly 
exciting step in the right direction toward bringing the mine 
and plant up to full production, despite many supply chain 
challenges that were being felt nationwide, which was a result 
of policy decisions made at the highest level.
    Though CONSOL has brought jobs and economic stimulation to 
Mullens, Pineville, Itmann, and other little towns, all of 
Appalachia still faces staffing shortages. This is due to the 
variety of factors, including fuel costs making it hard to 
travel to work and Federal policies that attack our coal jobs.
    The coal industry is consistently under pressure from 
Washington, which makes it harder to do business and provide 
the materials needed for steel and other fuel with affordable 
electricity. Federal agencies make it difficult for the 
operators to even get off the ground, especially when agencies 
make the rules that are very hard to follow.
    I remember a time when someone could not drive more than 3 
or 4 miles without seeing a coal mine where you would be able 
to find work. Now I have employees coming from as many miles--
one of them drives over 75 miles from the State of Kentucky. 
Imagine driving an hour and a half every day to work with the 
gas prices we see as high as they are. You can see how 
something like that would prevent someone who wants to succeed 
from being able to simply get to the job site.
    In addition, the rising cost of groceries do not make 
things easier on my staff at the plant. The prices of milk and 
eggs, two items that most families need weekly, are through the 
roof. We pay our workers great wages, but the rising cost of 
basic needs is still deeply felt, no matter how much you get 
paid. There is only so much that can be done from the industry 
side to help ease the burden of high fuel and grocery bills 
that we are forced to pay.
    My team at the plant is incredibly hardworking every day, 
and we support the local economy through our work there. We 
have a local general store in Mullens, where we buy our boots, 
supplies, food, and whatever we might need because the nearest 
store to get these things is an additional 25 miles away.
    We also use a local service garage in Mullens to service 
the vehicles of our fleet. These things help keep our small 
economy in Mullens up and running, but, sadly, the same cannot 
be said about the thousands of other little towns that struggle 
because of the rising cost of living.
    CONSOL's Itmann operation has the capacity to mine 800,000 
to 1 million tons of coal output a year, with over 20 million 
in reserve. That amount of output is life-changing for West 
Virginians and the other Appalachia who need a stable job.
    We do our part. It is time for the Federal Government to do 
its part by lowering the costs rural Appalachians are forced to 
pay every day just to stay alive.
    I look forward to answering any questions that you have. 
Thank you again for allowing me to share my perspective of the 
state of the American economy in Appalachia.
    [The statement of Mr. Ward follows:]

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    Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Ward.
    And I want to thank all of you for your excellent testimony 
and for being here once again. We will now proceed to the 
question-and-answer session, and I will begin with the first 
question.
    My colleagues here today will certainly have a number of 
more specific questions as we dive into the impact of Federal 
policies and programs on the lives and livelihoods of folks 
here in Petersburg and families all across the country, but let 
me begin with a more general question for each one of you.
    If you were sitting on the side of this--if you were 
sitting on the side of this room with the ability that we all 
have to write the laws of the land, what is one thing, the 
first thing you would do or change to make your lives easier?
    I ask that question because this committee is committed to 
empowering all of you, to empowering the voices of citizens all 
over this country when it comes to creating and changing 
policy.
    So I ask, if you were sitting in our seats, standing in our 
shoes, what would be the first thing that you would want us to 
do?
    Mr. Plaugher, I will begin with you.
    Mr. PLAUGHER. Well, I am not sure if it would qualify as a 
law, but I guess the first thing that I would do is ask you to 
look at getting the inflation under control. The impact of 
inflation on our communities, on my employees is devastating. 
And their cost of living has gone through the roof.
    And, as Jamie mentioned, you know, we are in rural West 
Virginia. A lot of my employees drive a long way to get to 
work. So the price of gas, the price of fuel for them is a 
major factor in their cost just to get through, make it each 
month.
    So the inflationary pressures and the cost of fuel I think 
is something that you should be looking at immediately.
    Chairman SMITH. Thank you.
    Ms. Bachman.
    Ms. BACHMAN. I have to agree with the cost of fuel. I feel 
like we need to be more self-sustaining, have a more self-
sustained energy in here, the United States. This would allow 
the cost of logistics to go down and lower the cost of goods.
    I also feel like you should look at decreasing the current 
unemployment benefits that are being received. Currently, a 
Grant County resident averages around $21,000 a year. For an 
unemployed couple receiving unemployment benefits and 
ObamaCare, a spouse would need to make for a full-time job 
paying $73,000 a year to be better off. So those two things I 
think.
    Chairman SMITH. Ms. Bachman, would you repeat that last 
sentence?
    Ms. BACHMAN. Yes. A spouse would need to make $73,000 a 
year working full-time in order to receive the same amount of 
pay as somebody receiving, a couple receiving unemployment 
benefits and ObamaCare.
    Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Ms. Bachman.
    Mr. McDade.
    Mr. McDADE. I would agree with her on the problems with 
worker shortages in the country, getting people back to work. 
What policies can you put in place to get people back into the 
factories? Most of the issues I see are unavailability.
    When we call and ask for something, you know, for the 
inputs for my business, you know, I always seem to be--they 
always seem to be scraping the bottom of the barrel to get me 
the supplies that I need to make my business function.
    Chairman SMITH. Mr. Ward.
    Mr. WARD. Yeah, more focus on the inflation, gas prices, 
grocery prices. And, really, college isn't for everybody, but 
maybe some more focus on the high school education. When they 
come out of high school, they are more equipped for real life.
    A lot of kids now they come out and, in my opinion, they 
just are really not prepared to enter the workforce, but they 
so choose not to go to college. So there is an issue, the way I 
look at it.
    Chairman SMITH. Thank you.
    I will now recognize the acting ranking member, Mr. Beyer, 
for any questions he might have.
    Mr. BEYER. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much.
    And I think all of you brought up the issue of labor force 
availability, which is not unique to West Virginia, by the way. 
In northern Virginia, we have the exact same problem with 
virtually every business.
    It is fascinating that the labor force participation rate 
from 1948 through 2023 averaged 62.8 percent. It is now 62.4. 
So it is almost where it has been for all of our lives. In 
fact, before the recession--before the pandemic, rather, when 
Donald Trump was President in January 2020, 3 years ago, it was 
63.5, so up less than 1 percent more.
    It is fascinating that the labor force participation rate 
has come back for virtually every category of people except 
childbearing women, which is largely blamed on the absence of 
childcare.
    But, Ms. Bachman, I am fascinated by--economic impact 
payments stopped 18 months ago. The child tax credit stopped 13 
months ago. Unemployment insurance applications are at their 
lowest rate in 50 years. But your 21,000 versus 73,000 is 
fascinating.
    Do you pay healthcare for them, or why is it fair to add 
that to the benefit that they get that keeps them out of work?
    Ms. BACHMAN. Well, this is the average of--looking up 
statistics, that is the average of what the Grant County 
resident brings home. That is not necessarily my employees. I 
pay my employees a little bit more than that.
    But, unfortunately, I am unable to offer healthcare at this 
moment. Healthcare is just out of my means. I looked into it. I 
am uninsured. My whole family is uninsured at the moment. We 
are out-of-pocket pay. We just can't afford that monthly bill 
right now. And it is----
    Mr. BEYER. Is that an argument for getting rid of ObamaCare 
and making that insurance available to those people in your 
town?
    Ms. BACHMAN. Well, I personally don't have insurance. I 
know that, you know--I just--I fall in that middle class where 
I don't--I make too much to go and get certain benefits that 
the United States offers low-income people, but I just make 
enough to where I can't afford insurance for my family right 
now.
    Mr. BEYER. What you are clearly sort of affirming is the 
chairman's thought that we are paying people to stay home.
    Ms. BACHMAN. Yes.
    Mr. BEYER. Okay, great. Thanks.
    Commander McDade, you talked about inflation being very, 
very real, which I wholly appreciate. The good news, which is 
hard for us to appreciate right now, is that Wall Street 
Journal says inflation in the last 6 months has been running at 
less than 2 percent. However, still pretty high compared to 
what it was before the pandemic.
    And, of course, you also said that the interest rate is 
killing you, which I appreciate also, especially on housing and 
everything else. We have relatively few controls as a Member of 
Congress. We can't do price controls. The last person that did 
that was Richard Nixon. And the Fed, after the 578,000 jobs 
that were just announced for January, is likely to raise them 
again in March.
    What else should we be doing to hold down inflation that 
the Fed is not doing now?
    Mr. McDADE. Boy. Well, the first thing we should do is 
stabilize the interest rates, I think, in this country. You 
know, you have mentioned quite a few things, but I will give 
you an example.
    Over the last, say, oh, I don't know, 10 or 12 months, we 
have seen the housing prices in our neighborhoods go up, and 
they went up, they have gone up significantly. I have seen the 
neighbors when they sell their house.
    And you know who doesn't come house shopping anymore is 
families with children. We only see older folks come in and 
look at those houses, and I have seen them with my own eyes, 
people who have made their money in the world. And the biggest, 
I think, complaints I get is that forces a lot of people into 
the rental market, and the rents are now skyrocketing.
    And so it causes a problem. I mean, I know people who rent, 
and they say: Yeah, our rents are up significantly what they 
were just 2 or 3 years ago.
    And, to your point on inflation, I am more interested in 
how we are going to be drawing down prices now, now that--if 
inflation has crested, that is fine, but once those prices go 
up, how do we bring them back down to a level where we can all, 
you know, make a living?
    I told you we have a thin, a very thin margin. The liquor 
industry is the most regulated industry probably besides 
banking. I mean, it has been that way ever since Prohibition. 
And there are huge--we pay steep, steep fees in forms of excise 
taxes. And so our margins are--I mean, they are pretty small. 
And so anything that opens that margin up a little bit is going 
to help us out.
    Mr. BEYER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    I yield back.
    Chairman SMITH. Thank you.
    Mrs. Miller, you are now recognized for 5 minutes.
    Mrs. MILLER. Thank you, Chairman Smith.
    And it is nice to say ``chairman'' and have the gavel on 
our side.
    And thank you, Ranking Member Beyer.
    And, again, thank you all for being here today.
    I am so honored to have the first Ways and Means hearing of 
the Republican majority right here in my State, our State of 
West Virginia.
    You know, southern West Virginia has borne the brunt of 
attacks tax by President Biden's disastrous agenda. It is long 
overdue for our Nation to hear from real West Virginians on the 
impact of Washington's poor decisions on their lives, 
businesses, and communities.
    I have here an article, a statement from the Coal 
Association. Mr. Chairman, I would like to submit for the 
record this statement by the West Virginia Coal Association, 
explaining how the Biden administration's war on coal has cost 
thousands of jobs and devastated the social fabric of 
communities in this great state.
    Chairman SMITH. Without objection, so ordered.
    [The information follows:]

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    Mrs. MILLER. While I can go on and on about the successes 
that we have seen and the challenges we continue to face, the 
most important thing for us to do here is to hear your voices. 
You can hear ours all the time.
    So I just want to thank all of you for representing West 
Virginia so well in this hearing.
    Mr. Ward, thank you for being here today. I understand that 
you have three children and two of them are attending higher 
education in our State. One is at WVU, and the other is in my 
beloved Marshall. Go Herd.
    Our State for way too long has exported our educated 
children. What do you see as the greatest challenge into 
keeping them here right now?
    Mr. WARD. To keep the kids here, I mean, we educate them. 
But we do not offer them positions to use their education to 
stay in the State. So we have to create jobs that, once they 
are educated, higher-paying jobs, competing with other States, 
that would be our biggest hurdle to keep them here.
    Mrs. MILLER. That is so correct.
    I do have to mention basketball. One thing Mullens is 
famous for is their basketball.
    But your story is the story of way to many West Virginians 
whose lives have been impacted by the decisions of both 
lawmakers and bureaucrats in Washington. So I am glad that you 
had the opportunities to return home. In--the fact that you 
have to drive 20 miles to buy shoes or groceries or socks or 
underwear, it is amazing. The people that live in Washington, 
D.C., who only have to go down, like, half a block the buy 
those things, it is unusual.
    You know, the coal industry has been under heavy scrutiny 
by Washington and usually by people who are really ignorant of 
the importance and the history of the product that you produce.
    Can you at least tell them the difference between 
metallurgical and thermal coal and how important each type of 
coal is?
    Mr. WARD. Yes. What we do at Itmann or in the southern West 
Virginia part is the metallurgical coal. It is--we are after 
the coke, the carbon that is in the coal. So that is the 
metallurgical coal that is used to make carbon which goes into 
steel making. The thermal coal, which is--it is used. Its 
primary job is for electricity, to generate electricity.
    Mrs. MILLER. Electricity. Oh, my goodness.
    Thank you so much.
    Mr. Plaugher, thank you for hosting us here at Allegheny 
Wood Products. Again, the facility is a testament to all the 
hard work that you do. An important role of the Ways and Means 
Committee is overseeing our trade agenda, and I very first 
sought this seat on this committee after seeing your hardwood 
product while I was on a trip overseas in China and 
experiencing firsthand the importance of the trade, not just 
for our national interest but the impact that it has right here 
in West Virginia.
    Can you speak briefly to Allegheny's exports and what 
challenges the Federal Government has created in getting your 
products to market?
    Mr. PLAUGHER. Well, the two biggest challenges in recent 
years have been the effects of the trade war, when retaliatory 
tariffs were levied on our products, basically taking 25 
percent off the top of what we could charge for our products to 
our customers in Asia.
    The supply chain crisis is the second big issue. And over 
the last 2 years as the supply chain crisis has tightened, it 
has made it extremely difficult to get access to containers, to 
vessel space for us to reach our customers on time.
    If we have a customer in Asia who is doing--who is looking 
for just-in-time delivery, we have to be able to put that on 
the ground for them timely. And the supply chain crisis has 
made that extremely difficult.
    As steamship lines took advantage of the higher rates 
coming from Asia, they elected to ship containers back, empty, 
rather than load products here in the United States, and took 
advantage of those exorbitant rates coming back this direction 
and left American exporters high and dry.
    Mrs. MILLER. Thank you.
    I am so sorry I can't get to the other two. I have run out 
of my time.
    So I yield back my time, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mrs. Miller.
    I now recognize the gentleman from West Virginia, Mr. 
Mooney, for five minutes.
    Mr. MOONEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am just going ask 
two questions. I want my colleagues to have plenty of time.
    Actually, Mr. Plaugher, I am going to ask you first. Has 
Allegheny Wood Products been affected by any supply chain 
failures?
    Mr. PLAUGHER. Yes, Allegheny Wood Products has been 
effected by many supply chain failures. As one of the other 
gentleman mentioned, you know, just the ability to have the 
supplies on hand to run our plants has been dramatically 
affected by the supply chain crisis.
    Parts that we may have been able to get in a couple days, 
so we would keep one on the shelf because we knew order and 
have one here quickly, suddenly turned into things that we 
couldn't get for 3 months.
    So you had to increase your inventory of supplies just to 
maintain your regular production schedule, to have what you 
needed in order to be able to run, which means you had to sink 
more money into supplies.
    Mr. MOONEY. The next question will be directed to Ms. 
Bachman.
    And congrats. I read in your bio, your statement you are 
opening another business, a bouncy house for kids. As the 
father of an 8-year-old, we were looking for things like that 
the past few years. And we had one of those in Jefferson 
County. And when COVID hit, they shut it down. And the kids 
didn't have a place to go. So it was kind of a shame to be 
perfectly honest.
    So I hope there is a good clientele for that. There must 
be. I am sure you have done a market analysis, and hopefully 
the children will benefit from that. Particularly the cold 
weather, it is hard to go out to the parks.
    But so I guess my question to you, you had mentioned the 
jobs and how expensive it is for employees and finding 
employees. Do you think there is enough work opportunity in 
this part of the country?
    Ms. BACHMAN. I do think there is enough opportunity, but 
what you lack is motivated workers. Again, when you pay them 
more to sit at home, you know, there is no motivation to go to 
work, especially in a place like my restaurant. It is, you 
know, the kitchen is hot. You know, you are on your feet for 
hours. It is not a very fun job. So I personally experience 
issues getting employees.
    But, again, we are in a small town. I think I have a good 
reputation of being a good employer. So I have been able to 
retain employees. And, again, I have to pay good money to keep 
them.
    Mr. MOONEY. Yeah. Well, I guess it is better to have more 
jobs than people than more people than jobs, if you had to 
choose between the two. But it is still a problem, and I do 
think a lot of the policies government created has exacerbated 
that, made it too easy not to work. We need to get people back 
to work. They are able-bodied adults.
    Mr. Chairman, I am going to go ahead and yield back the 
balance of my time.
    Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Mooney.
    I would like to recognize the vice chairman of our 
committee, Mr. Buchanan, from Florida for 5 minutes.
    Mr. BUCHANAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    I just want to thank all of our witnesses for being here. 
There is nothing I am more passionate about than 
entrepreneurship and startups. So I am going to have two or 
three questions I want to have you weigh in on.
    I also want to mention AWP is celebrated, if the math is 
right, their 50th anniversary today. That is a great American 
story. Let's give them a round of applause.
    And I think they have close to 800 employees. So that is 
just an incredible story. Our goal as an organization is to do 
everything we can to get to you another level and help our 
startups as well.
    On the startup thing, I have got a bill that basically 
would quadruple startup expenses that you can deduct. Would 
that help you in terms of attracting capital or setting up your 
business? And part of the reason I say that, I read a statistic 
many years ago. It always sat here in my heart. Ninety-two 
percent of startups aren't in business 5 years later.
    You have talked about the struggles both of you are looking 
at, and that is why we need to do everything we can to help 
especially the two of you get to another level.
    But let me ask you, Mrs. Bachman. What do you think? Would 
additional write-offs up front in terms of attracting capital, 
if you could write that off and tell the investor you can write 
it off, would that make a difference?
    Ms. BACHMAN. Oh, that would make a huge difference. I mean, 
we have more power of buying supplies. I mean, we can employee 
more people, providing more income. I mean, I--that would 
definitely benefit my business.
    Mr. BUCHANAN. Mr. McDade, do you want to comment on that 
real quick?
    Mr. McDADE. Well, coming from an industry that gets taxed 
pretty heavily, I mean, absolutely, any sort of relief on that 
front, especially for us from being the startup perspective, 
would be outstanding.
    Mr. BUCHANAN. Yeah. The other thing is the Tax Cuts and 
Jobs Act. I don't know if you are that familiar with it.
    Mr. Plaugher, I am going to ask you. A couple of things 
that we did on especially on past years' subchapter S company, 
we, you know, decreased that 199 20 percent. But also in terms 
of we went to this idea of full expense. Instead of writing 
something off over 5 years, you can write it off now. Now some 
20 percent of--well, it is supposed to sunset. We are going to 
hopefully try to change.
    But can you address those two things, the tax cuts in 
general?
    And by the way, I will say with my Democratic friend here 
that the bill they passed or are trying to pass out of our 
committee, when you added it all up, it looked pretty good on 
math. It was 46.4 percent. It was gigantic. We can talk about 
that later, but that is reality of it.
    But what is the, in terms of adding taxes or full 
expensing, what is your thoughts on that?
    Mr. PLAUGHER. Congressman, I am a forester and a lumberman 
and probably pretty poor accountant. But just in general, the 
tax cut would be very beneficial to us, especially the bonus 
depreciation, the upfront depreciation. The line that is behind 
you is actually a test line for an automated lumber grading 
system. We will put the scanning equipment in place here in 
about 2 weeks. And at the end of the day when we finish this 
line completely, it will be about a $5 million investment.
    Mr. BUCHANAN. So you are able to write that off first year, 
it would probably be part of the reasons why you did it.
    Let me just jump over. I have got one big question I want 
to answer because I think we are not focused on it enough at a 
committee or just in general. I mentioned this to the chairman. 
But healthcare costs for small businesses, I know you are a 
bigger can. You guys absorb more. But a lot of small businesses 
can't, you know, can't do it.
    So let me just ask you in terms of your cost, because you 
touched on it a little bit, we talked about it a little bit 
earlier, in fact, Mrs. Bachman. What is--what is your sense 
of--why don't you tell your story? You wanted to get--look for 
insurance for your new company. You have got three children, a 
husband, and you wanted to be able to get healthcare. To me, 
this is unacceptable. If we do nothing else, we need deal with 
this.
    Why don't you mention what they quoted you on the 
government website?
    Ms. BACHMAN. For a family of four, it was $750 a month.
    Mr. BUCHANAN. Seven-fifty a month times twelve is almost 
$10,000 a year.
    What did you?
    Ms. BACHMAN. I didn't get insurance, and I am just out-of-
pocket pay. I pay myself $39,000 a year. So that would take a 
huge chunk of my wage.
    Mr. BUCHANAN. Yeah, it is all wages. I can tell you in our 
area, as someone mentioned to me, I heard your story, they are 
paying--a couple, they got an Italian restaurant, 20 years. 
They came up to me and said they are paying $3,000 a month for 
the two of them. They are in their early sixties. They don't 
get Medicare, but they thought it was outrageous. I thought it 
was outrageous until I heard your story.
    We got your back. Thank you.
    I yield back.
    Chairman SMITH. Thank you.
    I would like to recognize the chairman of the Trade 
Subcommittee, the gentleman from Nebraska, Mr. Smith.
    Mr. SMITH of Nebraska. Thank you.
    I appreciate all of our witnesses here today, the 
perspectives that you bring, that you share, that you 
experience.
    I think it is especially instructive, Mr. Plaugher. Thank 
you for touching on the trade issue. I think it is important to 
note that things can get really complicated really quickly as 
various policies might be pursued. We always, I think, need to 
keep that in mind, ultimately keeping the consumer in mind. It 
is the consumers that I think are touched by all of you.
    And so I think, as we look at inflation and as important as 
I think trade policy is, I also believe that the workforce 
shortages and the supply chain shortages, and the two being 
obviously related, are a significant driver for inflation.
    And it concerns me greatly. You know, it is tempting. Let's 
see. It is tempting to celebrate unemployment rates. I think 
West Virginia's is 4.1 percent. Grant County is 3.4 percent. 
That sounds great. But it is only part of the story.
    Our national workforce participation rate is only 62.4 
percent and Virginia's is 54--West Virginia--I am sorry--is 
54.8 percent. These are significant numbers that I don't think 
get enough attention.
    And we have realities that exist across our big country 
where there are different needs in different communities, 
different factors impacting various communities, small and 
large, rural and urban. And so we always need to keep that in 
mind.
    But if there is one thing that I think we can do is engage 
folks who might be receiving some benefits, and I think we 
always need to ask ourselves a question. Are we engaging the 
American people like we could in perhaps bringing them, 
encouraging them off of the sidelines?
    I have worked on--with many of my colleagues here what we 
call the JOBS For Success Act to engage States who administer 
these programs, to have to tell us more if they are making any 
progress, if they are actually bringing people off the 
sidelines, so we could improve that workforce participation 
rate.
    It should concern all of us that, for example, 45 percent 
of West Virginians are not in the workforce. And those numbers 
obviously can vary across the country.
    But when you look at where reality sets in, I would be 
curious, Ms. Bachman, you order supplies all the time for your 
operation.
    Ms. BACHMAN. Yes. We get food trucks at least twice a week, 
two separate trucks. So----
    Mr. SMITH of Nebraska. Right. I kind of think I know the 
answer on the cost eggs lately but that is a--involves a lot of 
things as well. But I would be curious to know, and from all of 
you, too, that, you know, there are high prices and then there 
is lack of availability across the board in some cases or at 
least temporarily.
    And I am just wondering how you, each of you, might 
experience that, what you do to deal with that, because it is a 
reality that can be pretty painful.
    Ms. Bachman, if you want to lead that off.
    Ms. BACHMAN. Unfortunately, things happen so quickly in my 
industry. So, you know, for instance, a case of lettuce, it was 
after average last year about $32 a case. That is for 24 heads 
of lettuce. It went from $32 to the very next week $100 for the 
same exact case.
    And, you know, we have up to our prices and then you have 
angry customers and it is hard to convey that, you know, I 
mean, we can't give--we have to charge these prices, you know. 
I am sure that everybody sees the same thing when they go to 
the grocery store.
    But, yeah, I mean, and it is constantly we are--we will 
order something or and our supply won't come in. So we will 
have to go locally and order items that are two, three times as 
much as they would have been through Cisco or US Foods, causing 
us even more costs that we should not have to endure.
    Mr. SMITH of Nebraska. Right.
    Mr. Plaugher.
    Mr. PLAUGHER. I guess early on in this supply chain crisis 
the real issue is being able to get things at all. So that 
caused the problem of just having what you needed in order to 
operate.
    But as the supply chain has come back together and things 
have come back in line, the prices have settled now on a lot of 
these items that have more than doubled where they were when 
it--when things start.
    So for us, for example, for parts and supplies in 2022, to 
run our operations, we more than doubled the cost from 2020 to 
buy the same things and produce the same amount of goods that 
the price has not gone up on.
    Mr. SMITH of Nebraska. Thank you.
    My time has expired. I yield back.
    Thank you.
    Chairman SMITH. Thank you.
    I would like to recognize the gentlelady from Minnesota. 
Mrs. Fischbach.
    Mrs. FISCHBACH. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    And I would like to thank you all for being here today.
    And I think Mr. Mooney at the beginning of the meeting said 
there is lots of States represented, and I will just tell you a 
little bit. In--in--I am from Minnesota. I am from rural 
Minnesota, from--yeah, you can tell by the accent. But you 
know, from Canada, almost all the way to Iowa, so we are very 
rural. We are very heavy ag. We are very heavy manufacturing.
    And so the workforce shortages are huge, and I can't 
remember. Who was it said they had to go 20 miles to get there? 
Mr. Ward at the end? I go about 30 miles. I have got a grocery 
store and a Dollar General. But other than, that you have to go 
about 30 miles to get in my area.
    But I just I wanted to ask a little bit about, I know that 
there was talk about the housing issues. And that is one of the 
things that I have been looking at in my district, you know, 
and we look at those workforce issues, because we are low on 
housing. We just can't get it. We can--we--sometimes we can 
attract people. We can't find the housing for them because it 
is too expensive. And in Minnesota I will tell you there is 
huge overregulation from the metro area on how to build a house 
in Minnesota. So that doesn't help us.
    But, you know, is it price? Is it availability? I mean, 
what are the issues with housing? And I will throw it out to 
everybody.
    Mr. McDADE. You know, about--I have had a couple of friends 
try to move into the area and it has kind of changed. When the 
market was hot, you--there wasn't anything in the Eastern 
Panhandle you could find in the $200,000 range. They were, at 
soon as they came on the market, they were gone. And so it was 
availability for a while. And then as the ramp-up increased, 
then it became price. And I feel like a lot of people felt like 
they got--they got locked out of the market.
    When you add the interest rates on top of that, if you want 
to move and you can find someone to buy your house for 20 or 30 
percent more than it was a year ago, well, then you have to 
move into another house that is equally expensive. And so it is 
just--yeah, it is a struggle and it doesn't look like it has 
any end to anyone. I think that is the feel I get when I speak 
to people.
    Mrs. FISCHBACH. Is there any issue with low-income housing? 
I mean, or it is not that. It is market rate housing that you 
are looking for.
    Mr. McDADE. Well, no, I mean, on the--I touched on it 
earlier. The rental market is also--you know, I have got--my 
sister rents and she has moved from one rental house to 
another. And those prices per square foot went up. And it is 
built in to--the people I talked to. When the lease is up, 
those prices will go up. And they will go up the maximum 
allowable by law right now is what--is the things I am seeing 
and so big step increases in rents and anytime they can be had.
    Mrs. FISCHBACH. And just--if anybody has anything else to 
add about the workforce shortage, if there is issues that, I 
mean, that we didn't touch on yet, I mean, because, obviously, 
you know, we talked a little bit about education and that is 
it.
    Generally, I talk about strong rural communities. And so it 
is not just--you know, it is not just the housing issue, not 
just the education, but there is a lot going on of those, they 
interplay. And they are all involved in making sure that we 
have the workforce we need and we have the folks we need here. 
So----
    Mr. PLAUGHER. Congresswoman, I guess I would say I 
appreciate Mr. Beyer's comments about workforce participation 
not having not changed.
    But in our communities, you know, we--I know that there are 
a lot of young people who are not working. We drug test for our 
facilities. We have a terrible problem in our communities with 
drugs. We have been doing that for over 20 years. It used to be 
we would find marijuana, softer drugs like that. Today we find 
fentanyl, heroin, cocaine in the most rural parts of West 
Virginia.
    And I know that is hampering a lot of our young people from 
and holding them back, ending their lives. So I know that is a 
huge part of our issue here in West Virginia.
    Mrs. FISCHBACH. Well, thank you.
    And I have a couple of seconds left, if anybody wants to 
jump in there. Otherwise, I will go ahead and yield my time.
    Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    Chairman SMITH. I thank the gentlelady.
    I would like to recognize the gentleman from Oklahoma, Mr. 
Hern, for 5 minutes.
    Mr. HERN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for moving this meeting 
out of the ivory tower that knows no recession known as 
Washington, D.C., and get out among the real people.
    Having spent 35 years in business before coming here in the 
restaurant business, I was talking to Mrs. Bachman about how 
difficult it is. For anybody that is listening, I would 
recommend nobody getting in the restaurant business. It is very 
difficult.
    Mr. Plaugher, thank you so much for AWP hosting us here. 
You know, one of the biggest issues that we have right now is, 
you know, not talking about things that really matter to the 
American people. And that is why we are here.
    In 2025, we have the expiration of section 199A which gives 
back some cash or cash flow to the businesses in American, 
small businesses in America, to be able to invest more, to do 
more for their people, to stay more competitive, to innovate. I 
know the chairman has carried the bill forward about making 
that a permanent fixture, as we go forward, to give security to 
our businesses as we go forward in America.
    The National Federal of Independent Businesses have talked 
about how important that is to the small businesses in America 
to be able to stay competitive as the economy around the world 
changes.
    Mr. McDade, I would like to say, first and foremost, to you 
thank you for your 24 years' service in the Navy, protecting 
the freedom so we can have these kinds of meetings. So we 
really appreciate you so much for doing that.
    I would like to talk to you about, you know, your testimony 
that you put forth. And if we remove this where you now would 
have 20 percent more income to be taxed on, what would that do 
to your business, removing that ability to produce that cash 
flow?
    Mr. McDADE. Well, let me give you an example of why we are 
even here in the first place. The excise, the Federal excise 
tax traditionally has been based on the proof gallon. That is 
100 proof gallon of liquid, 50 percent alcohol, 50 percent 
water. It is taxed by the Federal got at a rate of $13.70 a 
proof gallon.
    Now the Craft Beverage Act that was passed said that, well, 
the first 100,000 gallons of your production will be exempted 
and will be charged a rate of $2.70 per gallon. That is the 
reason there is a craft distillery industry in the United 
States. Jim Beam makes that on Thursday and so it is not a big 
deal to them, but it is everything to us.
    And that whole thing kind of underpins the growth of our 
entire industry, and that is why you see more and more of them 
popping up.
    And I would say there is--there are answers like that in 
lots and lots of industries. It is not necessarily that we want 
to cut that--you know, we want to cut taxes. But if you want to 
encourage growth from the bottom, it is excellent example that 
is now--that is--that is now being played across the entire 
United States.
    We went from, oh, in the eighties less than 200 
distilleries probably to an industry that was just still 
recovering from, you know, 80 years since prohibition to now 
over 6,000 and growing, back to something--it used to be 
something like before prohibition where nearly every town in 
the United States had a distillery making, you know, making 
something from the local grains.
    Mr. HERN. I appreciate. Your response is very similar to 
some other small business of all types across America, and we 
really appreciate. We will do everything we can as we move 
forward to get a bipartisan solution to this so that we can fix 
this for all the small businesses in America.
    Mr. Ward, I come from Oklahoma, an energy State where 40 
percent of our energy are fossil fuels. In fact, I always love 
to challenge my Democratic friends who talk about Google. 
Google's largest data server farm in America and around the 
world is 25 miles east of Tulsa, and it sits about a thousand 
yards from a coal-fired/natural gas-fired energy plant. And the 
reason it sits there, by their own admission, is because they 
need reliable energy.
    And then have you President Biden saying that the country's 
coal plants should be closed because they are too costly to 
operate and cannot be relied upon as a dependable energy source 
for future generations.
    Mr. Ward, what would that do to America and to your 
businesses to see that fulfilled, based on your mentioning that 
Consol Energy announced in October 2022 the commission of the 
Itmann Preparation Plant? Could you expound on how important 
coal has been and is today and will be in the future for 
American energy supplies?
    Mr. WARD. Yes. Coal is very important to southern West 
Virginia, really, in my opinion, the world. You talk about 
reliable. Ask Texans when they relied on solar source for 
energy and the ice storm came. They didn't have no electricity, 
and they needed heat. Coal-fired electricity just kept going. 
It was very reliable, and it is been reliable since it was 
invented. And it is cleaner now than it is ever been, and it is 
more reliable now than it is ever been.
    As far as the metallurgical coal, it makes strong carbon 
steel. So it is very important to us. It is very important to 
our economy.
    Mr. HERN. Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank the witnesses 
for all being here today and sharing their testimony.
    Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Chairman SMITH. Thank you.
    I would like to recognize the chair of our Subcommittee on 
Tax, Mr. Kelly, from Pennsylvania.
    Mr. KELLY. Thank you, Chairman.
    And thank you all for being here, and I know we have a lot 
of people who came today to hear what was going on.
    And I think that one of the common fixes today, because no 
matter where I go, whether I am going in church or coming out 
of church or going shopping, people stop me and say you know 
what, you guys in Congress got to do something to fix this. I 
say, you know what, until a month or 2 months ago we were in 
the minority. And when you are in the minority, you can't fix 
anything. And I--our inability to work with each other is 
probably the biggest problem we have.
    The other problem we have--and I don't mean to slight 
anybody or to make anybody feel, hey, wait, this guy is not 
talking the right way. I sat on the school board for 4 years. 
My personal opinion is that there is nothing more private than 
public education.
    The things that are being fed to our children today are so 
radical and so far away from the world that I grew up in and 
the culture that I grew up in. When I am the youngest guy in 
church, there is a problem. When our kids get fed things that 
are so unreal, there is a problem.
    I just want to let you know that every single person 
serving in any, any political position in your town, in your 
country, in your State is elected. They just didn't go in and 
sit down. And this is the thing that is driving me crazy.
    I talk to people every day, and I say I understand your 
frustration. I understand where, except you need, you need, you 
need to be careful who it is that you elect.
    And too many people tell me, I don't even bother voting 
anymore.
    And I say, Really? Why is that?
    They say, My vote doesn't count.
    I said, That is a correct statement. If you don't vote, 
your vote doesn't count.
    We are in the situation we are in today because of 
elections, not just the recent election but going back probably 
50 years. You have seen what has happened to our country since 
the end of World War II. And, again, thank you for your 
service. And there is a lot of people sitting out in the 
audience that have served.
    Ladies and gentlemen, I keep hearing this term about being 
woke. My answer to that is forget being woke. Wake the hell up. 
Your country is being stolen from you. Your country is being 
destroyed, not by an outside entity but by an internal rot.
    The most important elected position in any community is 
school board. I am tired of hearing that people can pick 
whatever--whatever book they want, whatever textbook, whatever 
curriculum they want and if you are parent questioning that, 
you are bad.
    Look, we are sitting here today because our chairman said 
we need to get out and get into the country and the country 
needs to get into us. Every single problem you are talking 
about goes back to what President Reagan said in his 
inauguration speech in 1981. It went something like this: The 
government is not the solution to our problem. Government is 
the problem.
    Ladies and gentlemen, to you and us, if we don't start 
standing up for what we know to be true, for what we know to be 
the way it must be, to what we know is wrong, please do not 
take another day off. Do not take a play-off and think that 
somehow this is going to get corrected.
    I am on a soapbox right now, preaching. But I don't think I 
have to ask any of you.
    Mr. Ward, we have talked about this. The Pittsburgh scene, 
40 percent of our electricity is through burning coal. Oh, my 
God, you can't do that. Look what happened in Europe. Shut it 
down. Shut it down. Shut it down. Shut it all down. Then we 
wonder about why we have the inflation we that have. Why, we 
wonder? We look at what happens to our schools. Where is that 
group? Where are those green peas? Where that is upshoot that 
is going to take over the rows?
    Every single problem we have can be going the person who, 
when you look in the mirror, looks back at you and say: What 
are you doing today to get this thing back on track?
    Our chairman has brought the committee into the countryside 
because the countryside needs to know that we are you. We 
represent you. That is all we do. We are Representatives. 
Please, I know what you are going through right now. I am also 
a small business owner. It is horrendous what you have to go 
through. We can't get talent. We can't get any relief. The cost 
of everything is soaring.
    And the answer is we need more government. No, we don't. We 
need less government. We need more people, American people, 
going back. And we were talking today. By the way, our business 
is 70 years old this year. My mother and father started it in 
1953 with absolutely nothing and went through a lot of 
sleepless nights, a lot of months where it was just hard making 
payroll and you paid everybody except you. That is how you kept 
your team together.
    So I want to thank you all for being here today, and I want 
to thank you for what this family has done for this area and 
the difference it has made in lives.
    And, Mr. Chairman, the more we do this, the more we get the 
feeling of who it is that sends us to Congress and why they 
send to us Congress, we have got to get the hell out of that 
town and get out here in the countryside and talk to people and 
make the changes we need to change.
    Thank you so much, and I yield back.
    Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Representative.
    I would like to recognize the subcommittee chair of 
Oversight, Mr. Schweikert, from Arizona for 5 minutes.
    Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    And thank you for doing this.
    You know, I am from the Phoenix-Scottsdale area. I passed 
more trees here than I think I have in my State. I noticed you 
have no sorrels. If you would like one, I will send you one.
    But here is the great irony. I am from the desert my whole 
life, yet many of the problems you have are very similar to us. 
I represent a community with the highest inflation in America. 
And yet, Mr. Plaugher, you were talking about the difficulty 
that has created in running the business and the production.
    So a couple of things I want to understand, because I am 
desperate to also figure out what we can do policywise that is 
great for West Virginia but also great for Arizona. You know, 
it is just good American policy.
    In the last--let's do 2 years--you, in your opening 
statement you talked about your cost of running the business. 
Can you give me, like, 30 seconds on where your cost drivers 
were and how much of it was also now your workers just 
desperately needing a salary change because they are getting 
poorer every day? You know, when your salary doesn't go up as 
fast as your inflation, you are poorer the next day. And that 
is happening, like, crazy in my district. Matter of fact, my 
folks are almost 5 percent poorer today than they were a year 
ago. And I am told rural America is every bit as brutal.
    First, tell me what is happening in just cost of making the 
business work.
    Mr. PLAUGHER. Well, costs of making the business work are 
rising in every way. Most notably, the biggest driver of that 
is the price of oil, whether that be what it does to diesel 
fuel and oil products or products that are made or derived from 
oil, you know, steel, plastic, anything like that. As the price 
of oil comes up----
    Mr. SCHWEIKERT. You run kilns.
    Mr. PLAUGHER. Yes.
    Mr. SCHWEIKERT. What does a big kiln end up consuming 
energy-wise?
    Mr. PLAUGHER. Well, our kilns are driven by steam. And we 
product that steam by running the byproducts of the saw milling 
process.
    Ms. SCHWEIKERT. Interesting.
    Mr. PLAUGHER. We burn sawdust. So we use biomass to fuel 
our kilns.
    Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Interesting. And your wages, how much wage 
pressure? Because, you know, you mentioned it in the 
restaurant. I am just curious. In the lumber industry, what are 
you seeing in your wage pressures?
    Mr. PLAUGHER. We have seen considerable wage pressure. And 
I have talked to a lot of other business owners across the 
country that, you know, especially depending on your location. 
Some of them have seen their wage structure double from what it 
was 2 years ago.
    And, again, you have to remember the prices of our products 
have not doubled. They have not gone up at all. In fact, they 
have dropped dramatically here over the last few months.
    Mr. SCHWEIKERT. And is that because of housing, or you 
think an international slowdown? Is it your products that are 
being exported, or is it domestic?
    Mr. PLAUGHER. It is both. It is due to lack of demand. You 
know, again, you need, for our products to do well, you need 
housing, single-family housing, remodeling to be doing well, 
because that is where that our types of products are put, 
hardwood floors.
    Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Okay. There is one off there I really want 
to ask you. Much of the hardwood or elegant furniture 
manufacturing design production is no longer in the United 
States.
    Mr. PLAUGHER. That is correct.
    Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Any idea what we could do to get that type 
of production back in West Virginia again?
    Mr. PLAUGHER. That is a very difficult question, sir. And 
the reason that most of that manufacturing left here was for 
cheap labor.
    And we face a situation where up until very recently I 
could put lumber in Shanghai cheaper than I could put it in 
Chicago with the freights. That is reversed itself somewhat 
here with ocean freights, but up until very recently that was 
the case. You know, the----
    Mr. SCHWEIKERT. And I know I am interrupting but it is--
time is a tyrant here.
    Mr. PLAUGHER. Yes.
    Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Have you seen some of the new automation 
that is starting to happen in furniture manufacturing and some 
of the sort of the new computer-driven CNC type equipment?
    Mr. PLAUGHER. Absolutely, sir, and it is fantastic 
equipment. But you have to remember that you are competing 
against a furniture plant in Vietnam where the average wage for 
that worker is probably $250 a month American.
    Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Can we arbitrage it through doing 
equipment?
    Mr. PLAUGHER. I don't--in my experience, I would say no, 
because we have actually tried that ourselves with our own 
furniture dimension plan. And at the end of the day, we could 
not compete against that cheap labor, you know, so cheap 
compared to our American labor or costs that it is worth that 
extra cost to send that material overseas, have it processed, 
and send it back here.
    Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Okay.
    Mr. PLAUGHER. And that is why these American furniture 
companies have turned into design and marketing companies 
rather than manufacturers. They have contracted that out to 
foreign entities.
    Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Okay. Tom, thank you.
    Mr. Chairman, that actually would be an interesting side 
project is if we could get energy, get young men back into the 
labor market, and the incentive to buy the equipment, how much 
of this could we actually move back domestically again.
    Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Representative.
    I would like to represent the subcommittee chair of Work 
and Welfare, Mr. LaHood, from Illinois.
    Mr. LaHOOD. Thank you, Chairman Smith. And I want to thank 
you for bringing us here today for this hearing.
    The more we can get to real America, which is what today is 
all about, the better we are going to be as a committee. And as 
we listen and learn and acknowledge the challenges that all of 
you have talked about today, it is going to be beneficial to us 
as we go back to Washington, D.C., and have to decide many of 
these issues. I want to thank each and every one of you for 
your valuable testimony today.
    Mr. McDade, thanks for your service to our country.
    And I want to thank AWP for having us at this wonderful 
location. I notice we got a lot of wood products here.
    Mr. McDade, I was hoping we could have had some Devil's Due 
product here, but maybe that will come later. But, again, this 
has been very, very helpful for us to hear this today.
    I want to--you know, just thinking about what each one of 
you have said in your individual businesses, as we think about 
coming through COVID, everybody knows we have lots of 
challenges and disruptions with COVID. But I think everybody 
thought, boy, once we get through COVID, it is going to be back 
to normal. We are going to have all our workers back, we are 
not going to have supply chain issues anymore, energy costs 
will be back to normal. And it has been just the opposite, and 
all those struggles you have had to go through have been 
related to that.
    And what has been frustrating about this current 
administration in the first 2 years is they haven't focused on 
any of these issues. Right? COVID was bad enough. And so as we 
think about our new Republican majority and this committee, in 
looking at all those issues you have articulated--supply chain 
issues, energy costs, how do we get back to energy 
independence, worker retention--we hear you loud and clear here 
today on those things. And that is part of why we are here 
today on our first hearing is to take that message back.
    Mr. Plaugher, I want to just touch on a comment that you 
made in your opening statement as it related to trade, your 
statement, American hardwood producers suffered because of 
retaliatory tariffs imposed on your products.
    I am not a fan of tariffs. To me, tariffs are taxes. They 
are taxes on businesses. They are taxes on consumers and, 
obviously, the trade war was detrimental to you. Can you talk a 
little bit about that period and what it meant for jobs 
production and profit to your company?
    Mr. PLAUGHER. Well, that period became a pure survival 
period for most of us in the hardwood industry because that was 
so devastating to our industry. To--it made our products 
uncompetitive in those marketplaces.
    And we are--we are not a business that can just pass along 
whatever additional costs come up to our customers. We are a 
supply-and-demand business. If our products get--our prices get 
too high on our products, our customers will simply look to a 
replacement product. And they will go to something else.
    So, you know, for us to operate during that period, most 
companies operating during that period, they were operating at 
a loss to try to keep their employees, to keep their business 
going, and just to survive that period.
    I understand the reasons for the tariffs and what was 
trying to be accomplished there. But when you are caught in the 
middle of that, it is an extremely uncomfortable place to be.
    Mr. LaHOOD. And I think you mentioned you had to close down 
two mills during that period?
    Mr. PLAUGHER. Yes, sir, that is correct.
    Mr. LaHOOD. Yeah. Maybe just a follow-up on that. We are 
dealing extensively on how we deal with China. If I understand 
your export market, about 60 percent of your hardwoods goes to 
China.
    Mr. PLAUGHER. That is correct.
    Mr. LaHOOD. Any--I mean, how do you--so as we look at 
policy decisions, we look at the malign activities that China 
has engaged in all around the world, any suggestions you have 
for us as we look at how you deal with China?
    Mr. PLAUGHER. I am afraid that one is probably way above my 
pay grade, sir. But again, that is where a lot of these 
secondary manufacturing for furniture is. That is where our 
furniture comes from in large part is those manufacturing 
plants, so--as well just about everything that we buy in the 
store.
    So I think that is something that America has got to take a 
hard look at is where our goods come from and that if you--if 
you are in a position of having to deal with a controversial 
power, where does that leave all of White House are depending 
on those goods and a company like us depending on that trade.
    Mr. LaHOOD. Got you.
    Maybe, Ms. Bachman, real quick here, we have heard a lot 
about reliable broadband and making sure we get that to our 
rural areas. It is a huge issue, that digital divide, how we 
bridge that, how we bring that connectivity.
    Can you talk about broadband as it affects maybe your 
children and their school or your business?
    Ms. BACHMAN. It affects our business constantly.
    So we have Square for a point of sale, and they guarantee 
that they can go and accept credit card payments when we are 
offline. But a lot of times when it comes back, we just cannot 
capture that payment. So we are losing actual, you know, whole 
sales because of internet.
    And, you know, in a lot of big cities I know that they are 
doing, like, the QR code menus in order to keep up with the 
inflation rates. And, you know, we can't rely on that because 
we don't have a good internet infrastructure in our area.
    Mr. LaHOOD. Thank you.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman SMITH. Thank you.
    I would like to represent--recognize the gentleman from 
Ohio, Mr. Wenstrup.
    Mr. WENSTRUP. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    I want to thank you-all for spending your day with us and 
your service to your community, your service to this great 
country of ours.
    And I am sure that you get up each day, wanting to make 
each day productive. And I am hoping that today will lead to 
some productive measures going forward, not only for you but 
for your workers and for your families.
    Ms. Bachman, I worked my way through school in restaurants. 
I--from dishes to cooking to waiting tables, it is hard work. 
But I did it all through school to reduce my students loans so 
that you, the taxpayer, wouldn't have to pay off my student 
loans, which you shouldn't have to pay off. They are my 
responsibility.
    You know, COVID hurt us all. Kids have lost years of 
education. We saw mandates coming down for vaccine, removing 
doctors completely from the conversation and your personal 
healthcare. And a lot of this has led to a decreased workforce 
including in our military.
    You know, I see--I am glad I live in a country where we 
have safety nets to help us out. You bring up a point where you 
are in this hole. Right? You know, because you know, we have 
Medicaid. I am glad we have a safety net. But you know what? 
Honestly, it has the highest mortality and morbidity and the 
least access to care of any health program in America.
    And we have one party that brags about putting more people 
in it and another participate that says we want fewer people to 
need it. And you fall into that hole where you make too much to 
get--so you don't get Medicaid but you don't make enough to 
actually afford $750 a month.
    These are the problems that we have to address because in 
that situation, unless you go from abject poverty to a number 
one draft choice in the NFL, you can't just skip over that gap. 
And you get stuck in it.
    You know, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act did a lot for this 
country. We had no inversions. We didn't see companies leaving 
our country. We actually had more coming back in. We encouraged 
domestic production which is vital to our supply chain. But 
let's just take energy, which every one of you have talked 
about being a cost and a problem and a burden.
    You know, we have, again, one party that is advocating that 
we go to electric vehicles. But all those take batteries that 
we rely on China for. We can't make them ourselves. We rely on 
China.
    We talk about solar panels. You know, I have got fields 
where farmers said, oh, okay, I will lease to solar--to a solar 
panel field and everything is built but there is no solar 
panels. We rely on China for those. This does not make us 
energy independent and it doesn't help us and it doesn't help 
your business.
    But these policies that we have been putting in place are 
rewarding China and punishing the United States and punishing 
your businesses.
    So, you know, and let's just talk about coal. China is 
burning coal. They don't do it cleanly like we do. You know? 
And why are we doing this to ourselves? Last time I checked, 
the Earth goes around every 24 hours. So what they do matters. 
And so this is the situation we are in.
    I served in Iraq for years as a surgeon. And I realize now 
my supplies, my protective equipment, my pharmaceuticals rely 
on China. How did we get here? How are we letting this happen 
to us and continue to make it even worse?
    What I would like to answer on the supply chain side is, 
you know: What is your number one or two supply that really 
holds up your business? And do you know where it comes from and 
how you are going to overcome this? Because the way to overcome 
some of it may be by the actions that we take.
    Who would like to answer what your number one supply chain 
concern?
    Mr. WARD. Ours would be electrical supplies and they--most 
of them are manufactured in China.
    Mr. WENSTRUP. Thank you.
    We can go down the line.
    Mr. McDADE. Ours is also a stable supply of electricity. We 
are an entirely electrified production facility. From the--from 
a farming perspective, though----
    Mr. WENSTRUP. Uh-huh.
    Mr. McDADE [continuing]. I mean, corn is king in my 
business. You can't make bourbon without it.
    And so I hear--I hear a lot from local farmers that--same 
thing you hear on the news but they see it in action--is 
fertilizer prices, fuel prices, seed prices, weed killer 
prices, all of those things have--you know, it is--they are 
kind of the root, the thing that underpins the entire--you 
know, corn underpins our entire economy. Everything is either 
fed on it or we eat it or it is produced to make, you know, 
used to make fuel.
    And so seeing that stabilized as well, I think, is pretty 
critical.
    Mr. WENSTRUP. Yeah, I am southern Ohio. I get the corn 
deal.
    Ms. BACHMAN. I would have to agree. Food, inflation costs 
are my number one concern. And I think, you know, if you fix 
fuel costs and getting energy here, then that would fix it.
    Mr. PLAUGHER. On the manufacturing plant side, electronics 
are the biggest issue that we run into. But we run sawmills, 
and we are entirely dependent upon contract logging companies 
to harvest the wood that we purchase and bring it to our mills. 
And that is dying breed, as those folks cannot get access to 
capital. It is a very capital-intensive business.
    So it is kind of the war on small business that is 
preventing folks like that from starting new businesses, 
growing existing businesses that affects our supply chain for 
the raw materials we need.
    Mr. WENSTRUP. Thank you.
    We need to continue to drill down on why those exist, why 
those are problems, and what we can do to encourage solving 
those problems.
    Thank you.
    Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Representative.
    Would like to recognize the gentleman from Pennsylvania, 
Mr. Fitzpatrick, for 5 minutes.
    Mr. FITZPATRICK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Thank you all for having us. You are very blessed to live 
in a beautiful part of America, and I know you know that. I 
think we all had the same collective reaction when we are 
driving out here. It is not that far in terms of miles, but it 
is like being in a totally different place, a very real place. 
So thanks for having us.
    You-all touched upon different economic forces that are 
posing challenges.
    You know, Mr. Plaugher, you zoomed in on taxes and tariffs.
    Ms. Bachman, you focused, at least your personal story, on 
healthcare.
    And both Mr. McDade and Mr. Ward talked about overly 
oppressive regulations affecting your respective industries.
    The common thread amongst all of you, which is really the 
American story, you have all taken chances and taken risks in 
order to do what you are passionate about, what you love, and 
what you are good at. And this is a televised hearing. It is 
all on the record.
    I would just like for you to share with us, if you could, 
let us know, when you are going through the rough times--and I 
am sure all of you have hit at different points and for 
different reasons with different levels of extremity, I should 
say, being one paycheck away from falling through the cracks, 
one medical incident from falling through the cracks, one lost 
customer from falling through the cracks.
    I think it would be helpful for us to bring back to our 
colleagues: What do those kitchen table conversations sound 
like for people like yourselves who have invested your entire 
life, all of your passion, all of your energy and, because of 
outside forces completely outside of your control, you got to 
start planning for alternatives? I think it would help me, it 
would help our country to hear that.
    We could start with you, Mr. Ward.
    Mr. WARD. Yeah, I have lived through some ups and downs. 
The coal market historically has highs and lows. My wife and I, 
we have faced them, many of them, day to day. You wouldn't know 
if, when I returned home, if I would have a job. Then the good 
times would hit, a change of administration. The coal company 
would see or the coal industry would see a little bit of 
relief. And then you would see people like me, you know, buy 
houses, buy this, buy that.
    And, generally, just one election would change all that. 
With policies that would just push down, it would spin out. And 
I always made fun of--not really fun but just made a comment 
that you could look at the local bank and see what the--what 
people are going through because the vehicle that they went and 
bought a month ago, they can't afford because of the decline in 
the industry and it is sitting there for sale, besides the 
ATVs, the houses for sale, the people moving away.
    That is--and I know that my wife and I, we have set--I have 
sliced bread just to make two pieces and then on the other side 
I have bought two loaves of bread at one time. So I have seen 
both sides of that. Fortunately, right now it is on the high 
side. So but all of the people that work for me, my employees, 
they go through the same struggle.
    Mr. McDADE. Yeah, I have heard it a couple of times. It is 
that we are all just trying to survive still right now. It is 
still at the same point. There is--you know, we are seeing 
things come back online a little bit. But my business, it has 
got to make money. And there is less and less money to be made 
not only from rising input costs.
    But, you know, over--I do a lot of forecasting. And I know 
how much my business should have made in December. I am sure of 
it because I saw the run up. I have done the numbers. We have 
been spot on many times and we were and it was 30 percent less 
than we thought we were going to make in December.
    And we just saw through this fault a tightening closer from 
last year's numbers to this year's numbers until we hit 
January, and then our numbers this year slumped under last 
year's numbers. And so that gap that we were above just kept 
getting smaller and smaller until it went inverse.
    Now there is some recovery going on right now, and I see 
good signs for a numbers of reasons, mostly because we try 
really hard. But growth right now is--you know, we got a lot of 
irons in fire and we are trying to figure out which ones we got 
to put on the back-burner.
    Ms. BACHMAN. We struggled a lot when we first opened our 
business. We--I was in the kitchen a lot. So and I didn't hire 
an accountant right off. And I lost $17,000 in a month and a 
half just with internet or the internet loss of that in the 
credit card transactions.
    We almost lost our home. My husband was working full time 
in D.C. still and we were paying--using all of his money just 
to pay for our employees and our cost of goods because we 
didn't have the money that we were supposed to make from the 
sales. And, again, it was poor internet infrastructure.
    But, you know, we just we almost threw in the towel. We 
almost gave up. But we just--I don't know what it is. It just--
we gave it everything we had. We started marketing heavy. We 
started doing all these share contests and giving away free 
dinners, and people would come in. And, you know, somehow it 
turned around our business. And I now have a wonderful team 
that works for me. But we almost didn't make it, but we are 
glad we stuck with it.
    Mr. PLAUGHER. You asked what--about the conversations 
around the kitchen table or the meeting table. And, with us, 
anytime we faced hard times, when we are discussing what we are 
going to do and which way do we go next, we are always talking 
about our people. I am fortunate. I got the greatest employees 
in the world. This room that you guys sit in was a construction 
site when I walked your team through here a week and half ago.
    And anytime that we have faced hard times, the conversation 
all boils down to how do we take care of our folks. We have to 
keep things going. So no matter what cards we are dealt, I 
guess, or what things are handed down from Washington, we have 
got to look at the hand we are dealt and say, okay, where do we 
go from here. We are going to win. So we just got to figure out 
how to do it.
    And like Wylie said, pretty much everybody I have got works 
really hard. As the founder of our company has always said, we 
are a bunch of C students but, man, we're not afraid to work. 
So that is where our conversations kind of boil down to.
    Mr. FITZPATRICK. I appreciate that.
    I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Representative.
    I would like to recognize the subcommittee chair of Social 
Security, Mr. Ferguson, from Georgia.
    Mr. FERGUSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    And thanks to each of you for being here today. Listening 
to your story, it hits really close to home because it sounds 
like this area has been through or is going through what my 
hometown of West Point, Georgia, went through.
    We were once home to the textile industry. The largest 
employer in our area was a Fortune 500 company, and we had 
about 35,000 people in our area working in the textile 
industry. And then, all of a sudden, some folks that were 
educated beyond their intelligence that had been elected to 
office in Washington came up with policies that destroyed our 
way of life there. And they passed NAFTA. And there were a 
series of promises about better jobs that would come and 
greater economic opportunity, and those promises were just 
simply empty promises. Never materialized.
    And then Washington's response was to send more checks, 
more government assistance, and more ideas from Washington to 
try to save our area. And, again, it left a generation in 
poverty. It moved people from the middle class into poverty. 
And, most importantly, it eroded hope in our area.
    And it seems like, listening to you all today, that these 
same sort of broken promises are being seen here in this area. 
This Green New Deal of energy just seems to be destroying a way 
of life here, whether it is in the cost of propane, as you 
mentioned, to run your business, the energy needed to harvest 
and process and distribute wood, the cost of energy to process 
your product, Mr. McDade, and clearly, the impact that these 
policies have had on the coal industry.
    It just seems like that these, again, are empty promises 
that are backed up with more checks that come through that 
disincentivize work, that put people on the sideline, and they 
just leave a generation behind the rest of the country.
    So I am sorry for what Washington has done to you, 
Republicans and Democrats. It is shameful, and it shouldn't 
happen. And that is why we are here, to understand the impact 
of it but also figure our way out of it. And it sounds like one 
of the most important things that we can do is to get D.C. out 
of these policies and let American small businesses run.
    So, with that, Ms. Bachman, first of all, I am sure running 
a restaurant, you probably look over to your left and probably 
need to buy some of Mr. McDade's product on a regular basis, 
because----
    Ms. BACHMAN. Yes.
    Mr. FERGUSON. Yes, exactly. But talk to me again about the 
cost of propane. I want to make sure I heard you right on that. 
You said it had doubled?
    Ms. BACHMAN. It has doubled since 2020 for us.
    Mr. FERGUSON. Okay. And the other energy costs that are 
wrapped into your lease have also gone up.
    Ms. BACHMAN. Yes. Our lease has gone up. We started our 
lease at $2,000, and it is today at $4,500 a month.
    Mr. FERGUSON. And a big part of that is the energy cost 
that is associated with it.
    Do these same costs around propane, do they impact a lot of 
your customers in this area that heat their homes with propane?
    Ms. BACHMAN. Oh, I am sure it does. I just had an employee 
last month borrow money off of me because she was--again, it 
was electricity, but she was behind $600 on her utility bill.
    Mr. FERGUSON. Wow, $600, that is a impactful.
    Ms. BACHMAN. And she is a single mother of two, two 
children.
    Mr. FERGUSON. Wow.
    Mr. Ward, I am sure you have heard an awful lot from the 
Biden administration about green energy jobs and how that is 
the wave of the future. How have those manifested themselves 
here in this area, as coal jobs go away and folks are left 
without income and hope? Have those green energy jobs 
manifested themselves here in this region?
    Mr. WARD. In southern West Virginia, where I am from, I 
haven't seen too much green energy jobs take any jobs that we 
currently have.
    Mr. FERGUSON. I don't believe I would hold my breath 
waiting on them. And it is a shame. It really is a shame that 
you talk about energy policy and do it in a theoretical way. 
And it is probably blissful ignorance, but, at the end of the 
day, it has an impact on families, and it is hard.
    Mr. Plaugher, again, talk to us about the cost of the 
product that I am--the cost of your product that I am paying 
for as a consumer, because of the energy cost.
    Mr. PLAUGHER. Well, again, our cost of manufacturing the 
product, our cost of operating has gone up dramatically because 
of the cost of energy, because of the price of oil, really, and 
how that translates to all of the other goods and services you 
have to buy, along with just the fuel to operate. Again, our 
prices on those things have more than doubled since 2020.
    Mr. FERGUSON. Thank you. And, listen, it just sounds like 
that the promises of the Green New Deal energy policies are 
just empty, and they are having a negative impact on folks 
here.
    With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Chairman SMITH. Thank you.
    I would like to recognize the gentleman from Kansas, Mr. 
Estes.
    Ms. ESTES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    I want to start off by saying how much I appreciate today's 
field hearing. You know, too often we are stuck in a bubble in 
Washington and away from Americans that really are impacted by 
the decisions we make. That is why I travel home every weekend, 
go to the grocery store, go to the gas station, fill up my van, 
and trying to make sure that I stay involved with the people 
that I represent.
    We hear stories every day from Kansans and Americans 
throughout our districts about the concerns that they face, 
similar to what we are talking about today. You know, the Biden 
administration and some of my colleagues have tried to paint a 
rosy picture about the economy, but that is not what people are 
saying in Kansas or you are saying here today in West Virginia.
    I had a woman in Wichita call my office a few weeks ago, 
was shocked to discover that her gas bill was $100 more than it 
was a year ago. And she was not knowing how she was going to 
handle it and angry that decisions and policy decisions in 
Washington, D.C., and people had openly attacked energy 
production in her area.
    I grocery stores, people are shocked to see the price and 
having to discover how much they have to pay for groceries. We 
have heard recently from the Biden administration that 
inflation is easing and that they were celebrating 6.5 percent 
inflation. Well, 6.5 percent inflation is not something to 
celebrate. That means prices were 6.5 percent more than they 
were a year ago, and that was on top of being 7 percent higher 
than they were the year before that.
    And so, in total, inflation is up 14 percent since 
President Biden took office. That is kind of a staggering 
number to think about, that, in the last 2 years, the same 
goods and services cost 14 percent more than they did before. 
And that is a permanent loss of American wealth through that 
cost. And wages haven't kept up. Real wages have dropped 3.5 
percent over the last 2 years. For 21 months in a row, 
inflation has outpaced wage growth under President Biden.
    The state of our economy is bad and Americans know it. In 
our first constituent service survey of the year, 71 percent of 
the respondents said inflation and the economy are the priority 
for us to address in Congress. It was the third highest issue 
for Kansans just behind Federal spending and the southern 
border.
    Kansans and West Virginians know that 14 percent inflation 
over 2 years is crippling for families and small businesses, 
and we need to implement commonsense solutions to help 
Americans struggling through this Biden economy.
    One way we can do that is stop attacking American energy, 
as we have talked about today. You know, one day in office 
President Biden and his executive order pen started attacking 
energy producers. And we have seen gas prices tick up ever 
since.
    The so-called Inflation Reduction Act allowed the Biden 
administration to sidestep rulemaking process, allowing the EPA 
to impose a methane fee, despite ongoing marginal well studies. 
These fees on small, often family-owned, wells could cost the 
economy up to $9 billion and as many as 90,000 jobs.
    That is why I have reintroduced a bill, the Marginal Welt 
Protection Act. The bill would prohibit the EPA from imposing a 
methane fee on marginal oil and gas wells. And to try to cover 
up the disastrous energy policies, President Biden has put our 
Nation at risk by selling off the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, 
including to companies controlled by the Chinese Communist 
Party.
    The SPR's level is at the lowest level since 1984. And, 
unfortunately, the administration has not created a reasonable 
plan to replenish the reserves, and they are dragging their 
feet to go through that process. We need to be responsible 
about refilling that so that we have that strategic safety net 
for us and the country.
    A couple questions before I run out of time.
    Ms. Bachman, have you had to increase your prices to 
compensate for some of those phenomenal food price increases 
you had?
    Ms. BACHMAN. Yes.
    Ms. ESTES. And so how have your customers reacted to that?
    Ms. BACHMAN. Well, most customers understand, but you have, 
you know, still a few that are angry that the prices have 
increased. They don't realize that we buy quality ingredients. 
So, you know, we are buying steak that has been aged for 21 
days. So you are going to pay a higher premium on something 
like that. So, I mean, we get good quality ingredients. But, 
for the most part, customers have been very understanding. And, 
yes, we have increased our menu prices.
    Ms. ESTES. Thank you. And, you know, I just want to say 
again thank you all for being panelists today, for spending 
your time with us and sharing some of the information about the 
issues that you are addressing and having to deal with so that 
we can make sure that we make good policies to help with that.
    So, with that, I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Representative.
    I would like to recognize the gentleman from Pennsylvania, 
Mr. Smucker, for 5 minutes.
    Mr. SMUCKER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    And hello, everyone. It is wonderful to be here. In fact, I 
feel a lot more at home here than in our Ways and Means 
Committee room where we all have to wear ties.
    I hung a lot of drywall in my life, and I built a 
construction company. So this is where real things happen, and 
I really appreciate the opportunity to do this field hearing.
    I do think it is worth pointing out who is not here. So 
this was intended to be a bipartisan hearing, as all of our 
hearings are. And, with the exception of my friend Mr. Don 
Beyer, not one Democrat has chosen to show up.
    They had access to the same bus we did. They could have 
driven their cars. They are coming from around the country to 
come to D.C. But I think they are more comfortable--they must 
be--in their bubble in Washington, D.C., inside the beltway 
than to be out here and really talk to real Americans about how 
their policies are impacting all of you.
    We heard it from them. We went to all of their hearings 
that they held when they were in the majority. And they kept 
blaming us, saying we didn't care because we didn't vote for 
their massive spending bills. And then they won't even show up 
to talk to each one of you and to hear from you. So I think it 
is a shame.
    Secondly, the other point I want to make--and Mr. Beyer is 
a good friend of mine. I know he is very serious when he says 
he cares about each one of you and your families, as he did 
initially. I have worked with him on a number of issues.
    But listen to his opening statement and contrast that with 
what we are talking about. They literally believe that 
Washington is the answer to your problems. He went down over a 
list of items that they spent taxpayer money to give to you. He 
talked about making it easier to install solar on your home. He 
talked about all the government handouts.
    And it is not what I heard you want. What I heard from you 
was get inflation under control. Get the cost of fuel under 
control. Unleash American energy independence. Find a way to 
get people back to work. Get people back into the factories. 
Again, more focus on inflation, a good education system. These 
are the things that you really want, not government handouts.
    And so I just want everyone to think for a moment about the 
difference in the approaches here and what the parties feel is 
important.
    And Mr. Beyer talked about rising interest rates as well. 
Well, you know what caused that, right? So, first of all, the 
trillions of dollars in additional spending caused the 
inflation. Their economists warned that would happen. We knew 
it was going to happen. We warned them.
    But spending money we don't have, by the way, printing 
money, trillions and trillions of dollars, spending about $10 
trillion just in the first 2 years of this administration over 
the trillions that are spent on an annual basis caused the 
inflation.
    And then, when they were not willing to cut back on the 
spending, the only tool we had was for the Federal Reserve to 
raise interest rates because you can't just keep inflation 
going up; it can quickly spiral out of control. And they are 
trying to tamp down the economy by raising interest rates.
    These are failed policies, folks. And we believe in you. 
They believe in Washington to solve your problems. We believe 
in the workers who are represented here today who are feeding--
who are building America. In my area, there is a lot of snack 
food. You know, if you have eaten an Utz pretzel, if you have 
had either the Peeps, you--I am from Pennsylvania so I say 
feeding the country.
    But here you are building America, and you are part of 
making this economy and this country what it is, and too often 
their policies get in the way.
    So I have lots of questions, but I went on a rant, but I 
just want you to know how much we appreciate the opportunity to 
be with each of you. We appreciate the work that you are doing 
every day. We appreciate the witnesses who are taking big risks 
to run a business, as I did. And you are the job creators in 
the country, and you are helping many people as you are doing 
that. So thank you so much for hosting us.
    Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Representative.
    I would like to recognize the gentleman from North 
Carolina, Mr. Murphy, for 5 minutes.
    Mr. MURPHY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    And I want to thank you guys for coming out and everybody 
for participating today. The lunch was pretty doggone good. I 
come from northeastern Carolina barbecue-wise, so we will have 
a little bit of a contest there, but it was pretty doggone 
good.
    We are driving up here in this big bus, and there are 
police following us, and I can only imagine what people on the 
road were thinking. They are thinking either, one, well, it is 
a bunch of Members of Congress or it is a bunch of criminals 
being escorted by the police. And I am starting to wonder if it 
isn't a little bit of each, because I think that is what the 
American public feels Congress is like, a bunch of criminals.
    And I am here to say, and I think you guys have seen this, 
we have some people that really give a damn, and both 
Republican and Democrat, I really mean that. Some folks that 
really, really care.
    Sadly enough, some of the philosophies are absolutely 
divergent because individuals don't come out and see how the 
rest of their world lives. I come from eastern North Carolina. 
It is flat. We don't have these kind of hills, but we have 
water. We have pine forests. We were talking about that a 
little bit earlier.
    And so I understand the pressures you guys are facing now 
with interest rates, a declining home industry, and the 
pressures you have to get rid of your product.
    You know, as my colleague Mr. Smucker said, you know, so 
much of the spending has gone into--we are a self-inflicted 
crisis one after another. We knew coming out of the pandemic, 
there was going to be pent-up demand. There was going to be 
decreased supply because people were locked out of their jobs. 
But, when you add fuel to the fire, you destroy the fabric of 
America.
    And that is what you guys are facing. I understand that, 
and I am sorry for that. I will tell you the way interest rates 
are going now--they just raised it a little bit--they are not 
going to change anytime soon, because we haven't gotten the 
fire under control.
    I look at what happened in our forestry industry, which is 
the same here. We are trying to export wood chips, but the 
world is going against that and pushed by the climate stuff.
    Second is, you know, I look at our fishing industry. That 
is a big deal for us in eastern North Carolina. Fuel prices 
have gone through the roof. The administration just attacks 
with rules and regulations. Now they want to put in a rule that 
no ship above 35 feet will be able to go more than 10 miles an 
hour. Try going 10 miles an hour on your own, see how long it 
takes you to get anywhere. So you won't be able to fish. And we 
take the vast majority of our seafood from overseas anyway.
    One thing, I am a physician by trade, and I look at the 
workforce, and I understand that this is one of the epicenters 
of the opioid epidemic. So I wonder if each of you could tell 
me a little bit about that, which, by the way, we had, in 2021, 
107,000 people died from the opioid epidemic. It is going to be 
easily over 120,000 this year. So those are people that could 
come and work in your workforce but cannot.
    I will also say just one aside before I ask you the 
question. One of the reasons you are having problems finding 
people to work is President Biden has continued the public 
health emergency, which, in my medical opinion, should have 
stopped a year ago. What is the result of that? Eighteen 
million people nationwide are now receiving Medicaid benefits 
who are not eligible.
    So those individuals are sitting home cashing a check that 
are not eligible under Federal law, and they are keeping out of 
your workforce. So think about that, all those individuals. And 
then, when I hear the 55 percent participation rate here in 
West Virginia, it just kills me. I am surprised you can even 
stay afloat.
    And so if you can, tell me a little bit of story just 
because you can, you got about a minute, if individuals in your 
workforce have been affected by the opioid epidemic.
    Ms. BACHMAN. I know, with the restaurant industry, I mean 
we are constantly dealing with it, especially in the younger 
days, because I didn't know what I was looking for. I had no 
idea what a drug addict looked like. But they go through 
lengths to go and do drugs at work. We found needles and stuff 
in our ice machines. It is crazy.
    I am pretty blessed now. They know that my stepfather, he 
is actually the chief of police here in the city of Petersburg. 
So, you know, I have got a no-drug policy. So we have cleaned 
it up. But we struggled for the first 3 years. We had tons of 
drugs in our restaurant. And, you know, that is just not the 
way I was raised, but this is my workforce that I had to choose 
from, unfortunately. Again, I have came a long ways since then, 
but that was the beginning.
    Mr. MURPHY. I will tell you I just hear this story over and 
over and over again: We can't get somebody because they can't 
pass a drug test.
    If you look at what is happening at our southern border, 
ladies and gentlemen, we are being invaded by drug cartels. And 
we are allowing that ourselves. And it is killing our Nation in 
so many different ways; not only people actually dying, but we 
are killing our workforce because we are addicting other 
individuals.
    I am over my time. Again, thank you so much for your 
stories. They meant a great deal. And don't give up the fight. 
We are the greatest country on Earth, despite our bumps and 
bruises. And thank you for your work.
    With that, I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Representative.
    I now recognize the gentleman from Tennessee, Mr. Kustoff, 
for 5 minutes.
    Mr. KUSTOFF. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for 
arranging the hearing today outside of Washington, D.C., and 
thanks to everybody at AWP for being great hosts, and also to 
the witnesses for appearing today.
    If I could, Mr. Plaugher, to you, as I understand, at AWP, 
companywide you have 800 employees. You are roughly about 50 
short. Am I right that, before the pandemic, for a starting 
wage unskilled worker, you were paying about $11.50 per hour, 
now you are over $14 starting wage?
    Mr. PLAUGHER. Yes, that is correct.
    Mr. KUSTOFF. And can you generally talk about, benefitwise, 
health insurance--I know there has been talk, Ms. Bachman, with 
you with health insurance--what you do for your employees 
health insurance-wise?
    Mr. PLAUGHER. Yes, thank you. When we hire an employee on 
full time for us, they become eligible for our 401
    (k) program and also our health insurance. And the founder 
of our company has always insisted that we try to keep health 
insurance for our employees and keep that as reasonable as we 
possibly can.
    If we were to look at not carrying that health insurance, 
we could certainly raise our minimum wages considerably by 
doing that, but my older employees--well, all of my employees 
with families, they really depend on that.
    It doesn't mean as much to the 18- or 20-something that is 
just out of high school. They are bulletproof at that point, so 
health insurance isn't something that they really consider too 
much when they are going to look for a job. But for my long-
term employees, it is a critically important thing. They have 
to have access to good health insurance.
    So we have tried to keep our health plan as robust as we 
possibly could and as cheap for our employees as we possibly 
can. And we are actually a finalist for Health Rosetta's Health 
Plan Heroes award and, if chosen, we will be ranked in the top 
2 percent of selffunded health plans in the United 
States.
    Mr. KUSTOFF. You are a good employer. You have a good 
starting wage in West Virginia, good benefits. Your opinion--
and you have been here a while--the enhanced unemployment 
benefits that were paid out to people during the pandemic and 
afterwards, stimulus payments, were they a disincentive for 
people to want to come to work?
    Mr. PLAUGHER. Yes, absolutely. It put businesses that 
continued to operate in the position of competing against the 
government for employees. You know, as the pandemic went on, we 
had employees that were coming to us for every reason to try to 
get out of work, you know, and to be eligible for those 
enhanced unemployment benefits when they realized they could 
actually make more money staying at home than they could coming 
to work.
    Now, that was a very small percentage of our employees. We 
have a very loyal workforce, and our crew has really stuck with 
us, and I can't say enough good about them. But a lot of the 
benefits that are still out there--I think Mr. Beyer commented 
earlier about a lot of those have ended at this point.
    But I can tell you from experience, I have had plant 
managers that tried to give a raise to an employee. I had this 
just very recently where an employee, he is a very talkative 
guy, and every time my plant manager would come near him, he 
was like: Hey, I need a raise. You need to give me a couple of 
bucks an hour. I really need a raise.
    So I happened to be down there the day that the plant 
manager came to him and said: Hey, you have done a good job. 
You have done everything I have asked you. You learned this new 
skill, and I am going to give you a raise. Here is where we are 
going to go.
    And the employee looked at him, and he said: Well, I am 
going to have to quit.
    And my plant manager was dumbfounded, and so was I. What do 
you mean, you are going to quit? You have been asking me for 
this raise every day for months. You have done what I asked; 
now you are going to get it.
    And the employee said: Well, it is going to jeopardize my 
medical card and the other benefits that I get. But don't 
worry; I will quit and come back to work for a temp agency. I 
will work for you, but I have got to quit.
    Well, there is something badly wrong when there is not an 
incentive for those employees, you know, to keep growing. You 
have done a good thing. You need to keep advancing. You need to 
keep learning new skills to try to earn more money.
    But there are programs in place, whether they be from the 
Federal Government or from our State, that cause us to compete 
against that, and they disincentivize those employees to 
advance, to get ahead. And that is wrong.
    Mr. KUSTOFF. In your opinion, the child tax payments that 
went to people over the last year or so, did they 
disincentivize people to want to work?
    Mr. PLAUGHER. I don't know about that. You know, and I 
don't know--I know that a lot of my colleagues that were doing 
well in life, their children got some of those payments too. 
And they felt like: Well, I really didn't need that, you know; 
there were people who needed it more than me.
    I don't know if that actually disincentivized people from 
working or not.
    Mr. KUSTOFF. Real quick, Mr. Ward, you talked earlier about 
West Virginia. You talked about the coal mines and how far you 
got to drive. Now, you got people all around the country 
watching today's hearing. What would you say about West 
Virginia and the importance of coal to this State and what it 
means to you?
    Mr. WARD. What coal means to the State, the taxes that coal 
pays. We pay a lot of taxes to the State, to the economy. So 
coal is a big provider for the State of West Virginia as far as 
keeping stuff going. And coal is important to me because it 
puts food on my family's table.
    Mr. KUSTOFF. Thank you.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Representative.
    I would like to represent the gentlelady from the State of 
New York, Ms. Tenney.
    Ms. TENNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you so much 
to you and Representative Miller for hosting us here, along 
with Alex Mooney, our colleague. You have great representation.
    I hale from the State of New York. I am a business owner. 
Our business was founded in 1946. We use paper products that 
are derivatives of yours. We do pharmaceuticals and packaging, 
and I used to run a newspaper.
    But I want to just say, first of all, I was an attorney for 
many years, and I have always worked in a business, but I want 
to just give a shout-out to Kelly Crites, your general counsel, 
because that is my job and my family business. And it is a 
tough job. And we know that you are the straw that stirs the 
drink when a lot of things come up, and we appreciate it. I had 
a great conversation with her earlier.
    But I really appreciate what I hear you saying today. I am 
from a very similar part of upstate New York. I am not from New 
York City. You will hear from our New York City Representative.
    But things are very similar in New York as they are here. 
We have many of the same problems that you are experiencing, 
having a hard time getting people to come to work, competing 
against government. As you said, Mr. Plaugher, just to talk 
about we have employees that don't want a raise and don't want 
to succeed because they are going to lose their benefits.
    And I think it is worth talking about, you know, Mr. 
Beyer's discussion of the employment participation rate 
compared to the seventies, where I believe it was about full 
employment, not people taking partial employment, and also so 
many people that left during the pandemic and never came back. 
So we have the same problem trying to get people to come to 
work, getting quality individuals.
    And you mentioned something that really struck me, as a 
person who does a lot of our human resources, is the drug 
testing aspect of it. We cannot get people to work. And I know 
this is also a problem with our Armed Services.
    So, Mr. McDade, you were there, and thank you for your 
service as well. This is a problem. And Mr. Murphy rightly 
mentioned the southern border.
    I have a question, though, on what happens with your 
unemployment insurance. And I want to ask each one of you, were 
you assessed in the State of West Virginia after the 
unemployment insurance or after you were--were you, number one, 
forced to shut down during the pandemic, and did you have to 
repay any unemployment insurance? Because I know maybe Ms. 
Bachman might have been hit more with the restaurants, but if 
each of you could just explain how your unemployment insurance 
worked and if you were forced to shut down during the pandemic.
    Mr. PLAUGHER. Well, we were not forced to shut down during 
the pandemic. We were an essential business, and we were 
allowed to run. I am afraid I don't know the answer to the 
unemployment insurance question.
    Ms. TENNEY. Ms. Bachman.
    Ms. BACHMAN. I am in the same boat. My husband helps a lot 
with that end of the business. I am kind of more on the 
handson side. And the restaurant had to shut down, but 
we were innovative, and we ended up opening up a drive-through/
grocery store for our community. And we didn't really charge 
anything extra for the groceries because, you know, my friends 
were going to Walmart, and we saw the shelves were empty.
    So we just used it as a service for our community that, you 
know, come and order some food from us, and we have some 
grocery supplies at no extra cost than what we got them.
    Ms. TENNEY. Did you get reassessed for unemployment 
insurance from the State of West Virginia, do you know?
    Ms. BACHMAN. I am not sure.
    Ms. TENNEY. Okay. Mr. McDade.
    Mr. McDADE. We built during the pandemic, and so we didn't 
start hiring until the April kind of 2021 timeframe.
    Ms. TENNEY. But I believe, rightly so, your industry was 
considered an essential business.
    Mr. McDADE. It was. And my colleagues in my industry, it 
was. It was an essential business. And you probably know that 
because you probably smelled whiskey in your hand sanitizer for 
a number of months during the pandemic.
    Ms. Tenney. If you could get it.
    Mr. McDADE. That is what most of the distilleries did.
    Ms. TENNEY. Yeah. No, thank you. I don't know if you were 
aware of that, if that affected your business, but the 
unemployment insurance was an issue.
    Mr. WARD. As far as Itmann CONSOL in West Virginia, we were 
just getting started during the pandemic, but my prior company 
that I worked for, we were deemed essential. And I can't 
comment on the unemployment.
    Ms. TENNEY. Mr. Ward, while we are with you, I would just 
like to ask you, so I just stepped off the plane on Saturday 
morning in upstate New York, and it was minus 12 degrees. We 
had record cold in upstate New York.
    And with the billions in subsidies that have been given to 
the Northeast and our region for solar and wind, only 3 percent 
of the electric grid had anything to do with sustaining the 
people who suffered during this recent cold. And I have to tell 
you that my own Buffalo Bills had 7 feet of snow at one point 
and had to end up playing in Detroit.
    So I really would love to know if you could tell us how 
much of West Virginia's energy grid relies on coal.
    Mr. WARD. I can't quite quote exact numbers, but I am 
assuming it is over 50 percent.
    Ms. TENNEY. Okay. Well, thank you so much. I believe my 
time is up. But thank you to all of you. Thank you for your 
service and for fighting the good fight as businesses. We are 
on your side. We want to see you succeed, and we want to help 
you. Just be glad you are not in New York. Things are worse 
there. Thanks so much.
    Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Representative.
    I would like to recognize the gentleman from Utah, Mr. 
Moore.
    Mr. MOORE of Utah. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you, Ranking 
Member Beyer.
    We are absolutely thrilled to be here. Washington needs to 
be constantly in the communities in which they serve and 
understanding these issues firsthand. Your testimonies were 
great, and I want to recap just a couple of things I learned 
from each of your testimonies. But I am going to pose the 
question that I am going to ask of you, and then I will briefly 
share just my appreciation.
    The question that I would love many of you to weigh in on 
is, if you could choose, if you could make sure we understood 
one to two things to get right and keep consistent for you, as 
business owners and crucial people working in our economy, what 
are the one to two things that we need to get right and keep 
consistent?
    As a few of us that are in our second term had the distinct 
honor of running for Congress for the first time as COVID was 
ramping up and, you know, there was a lot of confusion going on 
and a lot of really well-intended policies but ultimately had 
long-term effects took place, one thing hit me, because I came 
from 8 years--my previous 8 years were in management 
consulting, where all I did was try to help small businesses 
and businesses grow and navigate sort of tricky waters, right, 
and predict the future.
    And the thing that just stuck out to me, and it has even 
gotten worse over the last 2 years, is the policies we 
implement in Washington absolutely affect you all, and it makes 
it virtually impossible as things are constantly changing for 
you to do your job.
    I always joke that us politicians, we live our lives in 2-
year increments where you all, as CEOs and workers, you are 
looking 10 years out. And there is a disconnect there. So if 
there is one to two things that if you could have us get right 
and keep consistent, I would love to hear from you.
    Mr. Plaugher, your testimony actually inspired that 
question, just talking about the things that have been so 
difficult to navigate.
    Ms. Bachman, your emotional piece of how difficult it is to 
build a business plan, put it in place, and then have 
everything disrupted and having to make constant change to all 
the world around you when there should be more consistency.
    And, Mr. Ward, I constantly talk to people about building 
clean energy, and we have to have baseload power to build clean 
energy. And I appreciate the work that you and your colleagues 
do. I represented in my first term a energy-producing area, and 
the environmental issues that you all are leading out on it, 
and we need to make sure we support baseload power.
    And then, Mr. McDade, I will take it a little bit of a 
different direction. You served your country. The second half 
of your time in your career is something so productive. And 
there are so many veterans that are going through difficult 
times right now, and they are not finding that productivity and 
what you were able to find in starting your own business and 
engaging that way. And you have been a model, and I really 
appreciate your work there. And we need to make sure that we do 
that for all of our veterans.
    One to two things. Let's start here, Mr. Plaugher, and just 
quickly go down, and if we could get it right, let's do it.
    Mr. PLAUGHER. Number one looks to me like energy policy. 
And, you know, we need consistency. We need to know where we 
are going with energy policy. I am all for green energy, but it 
looks like the way this is being brought forward it is at 
everyone's detriment, and it is definitely hurting communities 
like ours. And the cheaper energy that we have, the more 
opportunities for business, the more opportunities for jobs are 
out there available, and that needs straightened out.
    Mr. MOORE of Utah. Ms. Bachman.
    Ms. BACHMAN. I agree with Tom as well, but I also feel that 
you need to decrease unemployment benefits so that you can get 
people motivated to come to work.
    Mr. McDADE. Leadership and vision at the top are going to 
stabilize our markets. If you tell us what you are going to do 
and you lay out a plan to bring down inflation, bring down fuel 
costs, just putting that plan together and presenting it to the 
American people is going to go a long way in stabilizing those 
markets. If we talk about it and say that it is going to 
happen, quite often if we follow the right steps it happens.
    But back to another one. Fentanyl killed my kid brother, a 
cheap pill on the street. And, you know, I heard it for a while 
that some politicians saying, you know what, we need to make 
Fentanyl a worse crime.
    And the first thing you can do is make it first degree 
murder if you are dealing Fentanyl, period, and that is it and 
we will nip this problem in the bud. But it is going to take 
something very drastic to keep our children and our brothers 
and sisters from dying on the street every single day.
    It happened to me. I guarantee it happened to most of you 
or someone you know. Everyone seems to have a story about it. 
And, like, what are we doing? Like, nip it in the bud. Make it 
a capital offense if you have to, but make it stop.
    Mr. MOORE of Utah. Thank you for highlighting that.
    If you will indulge, Mr. Chairman, for Mr. Ward just to 
share his last thought.
    Mr. WARD. The only thing I could ask is just every decision 
that you all make just always put America first. Make sure 
that, before your decision, that once you make it America is 
better. Protect the southern borders. And that is my two 
things.
    Mr. MOORE of Utah. Thank you. Thank you all.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Representative.
    I would like to recognize the gentlelady from the great 
State of California, Ms. Steel.
    Ms. STEEL. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    And this is a very important hearing on the state of the 
economy. So thank you for our guests for taking time from your 
busy jobs to discuss how they have been dealing with the 
economic downturn for over the last 2 years.
    And, Mr. Plaugher, I came from the lumber business my--
grandfather used to own. I have never seen this clean lumber 
yard, you know, in my life. So I used to play with dust, you 
know, sawdust and all these woods and stuff. So I thought I was 
expecting that kind of lumber yard, but this is very, very 
clean. So thank you for opening up this place, and I am so 
grateful.
    I represent southern California, and our families pay some 
of the highest costs in the whole country. A lot of other 
States, they complain about, you know, how awful this economy 
and everything, but, you know, compared to California, I think 
it is much better other States in the Nation.
    One outrageous example of progressive policies that hurt my 
constituents is the fact that State gas tax is 50 cents per 
gallon plus 23 cents for cap-and-trade program to lower 
greenhouse gas emissions, and 18 cents for State low-carbon-
fuel programs. So our tax and fees are much higher than any 
other State's. It went up last year. Actually, $9 per gallon 
people had to pay in California.
    Government handouts without any plans makes working family 
class and the small business going through the very tough time. 
In California only--Ms. Bachman, you are working so hard for 
the restaurant. Forty percent of small business never came back 
in California. So it is really, really bad.
    So, Mr. Plaugher, my constituents were on the front line of 
the original supply chain crisis. We are located next to the 
ports of Long Beach and L.A. There are the number one and 
number two, the biggest size of ports in the Nation. Ships were 
backed off the coast and trucks were lined up trying to get 
into the ports. This caused all kinds of disorder in our 
neighborhood and supply chain.
    In California, it is the worst progressive policies. So 
independent truckers cannot come in. A lot of truckers, 
actually 50 percent of the truckers are independent truckers. 
They cannot come into California, and they cannot drive. I 
always tell people that you do whatever--you do opposite of 
what California government does; then you know that you are 
doing the right thing.
    So you are trying to lead the company or work for. Can you 
share how American businesses have been left on the hook for a 
failed supply chain and how that affects not just your 
employees that I have been hearing but those associated with 
your business and community?
    Mr. PLAUGHER. Well, as far as how, American businesses have 
been left on the hook for the supply chain. I mean, again, it 
looked like there were things that the government probably 
could have done to help smooth the supply chain out or to help 
things run smoother. And there really wasn't any action taken 
on any of that.
    And American businesses were left to just pick up the 
pieces, to figure out how to navigate that situation as best 
they could. And they did things like I mentioned before, that 
you doubled up on the supplies that you bought because you 
didn't know when you could get them again, and that led to 
higher price increases because, you know, everyone was trying 
to grab everything that they could get so they had what they 
needed to operate.
    The same way on the exporting side. There were a lot of 
unfair things that happened, whether you were an importer or an 
exporter, in dealing with the steamship lines and dealing with 
getting vessel space and dealing with demurrage costs and 
charges that were levied against you.
    And you were stuck with them. I mean, you basically had no 
repercussion. You had no way to argue them or to deal with 
them. It was just another cost levied against you that you had 
to deal with for somebody else's incompetence.
    So all of it just led to more costs for American 
businesses.
    Ms. STEEL. My next question is: Many employers have 
expressed concerns with me about the skill shortage in southern 
California. I think it is in the Nation too. Can you share how 
this could impact your business today but also in the future if 
not handled by the government correctly?
    Mr. PLAUGHER. As far as the skill shortage, we see a 
shortage in the trades, you know, in trying to hire people with 
welding skills, with, you know, different trade-related skills. 
There is definitely a shortage there. And there are tons of 
opportunities out there for young people who would want to go 
into the trades and learn things like that.
    You know, again, from our standpoint--and one thing that 
was mentioned a while ago was our starting wages. At this 
plant, we are actually at $13 an hour. Ours run from 13 to 18. 
It depends where you are at. But that is for entry-level, zero-
skill labor. If we could get people in, we will train them. We 
will teach them. We will give them skills. But getting them to 
pass the drug test, to show up on time, to show up 5 days a 
week and do that on a regular basis, that is the challenge.
    And, as one of my plant managers commented one time, we 
were meeting with an Economic Development Authority person, and 
they were asking for job training they could offer, and he made 
that comment. And he said: If their mama didn't teach them 
that, I don't know what kind of job training you are going to 
offer that is going to do that.
    And that is just the basics of being ready to go into the 
workforce.
    Ms. STEEL. Thank you, Mr. Plaugher.
    And thank you to all the witnesses.
    I yield back.
    Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Representative.
    I would like to recognize the gentlelady from the great 
State of Texas, Ms. Van Duyne.
    Ms. VAN DUYNE. I appreciate that, Chairman.
    And thank you all for being here. I cannot tell you the 
warmth that you have received us. And if your Meadowbrook 
Farm's barbecue and brisket is anything reflective of the food 
that you have here, we will be back. And you guys have been so 
good to be sitting there for hours as we have been getting up 
and down taking breaks. So I really hope that part of this 
includes getting them fed. And, by the way, me saying that from 
Texas is a really big thing. And I don't know that I would ever 
admit it in my State, but that is like some of the best I have 
ever had.
    And I appreciate getting out of D.C. I appreciate, 
Chairman, you getting us out of D.C. I feel like we have to get 
out of that Godforsaken place to be able to hear what is 
actually going on in our country.
    Last night, I flew in, and I took my daughter out to 
dinner. We all talk about inflation. We went and got pizza. We 
split an appetizer, had two drinks, and two personal pizzas. 
Over a hundred dollar bill for pizza. It is ridiculous.
    This is what normal people are feeling every single day. 
And I will tell you, when I ran--I have been a Representative. 
I was a city council member. I was mayor. I now work in 
Congress.
    My job is to represent the people in my district in D.C. My 
job is not to represent D.C. in my district. And I think we all 
feel like that. So getting out here and actually hearing your 
stories firsthand is very, very powerful to me.
    And, when I say hearing the truth outside of D.C., when I 
am home, I have meetings with my small businesses, when I have 
meetings with my teachers, when I have meetings with our 
parents, with just normal constituents, I am hearing from them 
every day that the problems that they are running into, high, 
you know, what, 40-year high inflation. They are dealing with 
problems with supply chains. They are dealing with energy 
costs. They are dealing with a hard time hiring people.
    And yet, just earlier last week, we had a President who 
wants to make everybody feel better. And he comes in, and he 
tells you: Oh, no, we have beaten inflation. Oh, no, no, we 
have no problems. Look at how great the economy is doing.
    Now, I don't know about you. I feel like I am in a twilight 
zone when I hear that. And so my question to you all is, am I 
the only one? Because what I have heard from every single 
witness today is you are going through hardships.
    So, out of curiosity, do you feel like what you are seeing 
is, one, reflective of what people across the country are 
seeing? And, two, do you feel like the policies that are coming 
out of this administration are solutions to the problems that 
you are facing?
    And, Mr. Plaugher, I will start with you.
    Mr. PLAUGHER. Yes, I believe everyone across the country is 
dealing with these issues, and it has got to be hitting us 
equally hard every place. I mean, inflation is hard on every 
family, on everyone.
    And no, I don't see the answers coming from Washington 
right now that are going to fix these things. Quite the 
contrary. It looks like the direction our energy policy is 
going, things are going to continue to cost more. It is going 
to get more expensive and a lot more uncertainty there. So, no, 
I don't see the answers coming at this time.
    Ms. VAN DUYNE. I appreciate you saying that.
    Ms. Bachman.
    Ms. BACHMAN. I agree. I don't see any hope in the next few 
years. My husband and I are returning back to work outside of 
the restaurant. I mean, we have to do. We are in struggle mode 
right now, in survival mode, shall I say, just trying to make 
it through all this. And we are hopeful that, in the next 
election period, that the Republicans take over again.
    Ms. VAN DUYNE. Mr. McDade.
    Mr. McDADE. Which commodity is not more expensive today 
than it was 2 years ago? I can't think of one. And they are all 
tied to the same thing, energy and energy policy. When one goes 
up, the other is going to go up. And that is all we see to move 
those products.
    But I see it even in my local community. I go by the local 
gas station: $17 an hour and a $3,000 sign-on bonus to go be a 
cashier at a gas station. Now, what does that do to the other 
local business owners when they can make much, much better 
money working--and there is nothing wrong with being a cashier 
at a gas station, but you get my--I mean, there are technical 
jobs out here in my place, in your place, in all of these 
places. And so it is pushing everything up, at least that is 
our perception from down at the bottom.
    Ms. VAN DUYNE. Thank you.
    And I am going to quickly ask Mr. Ward a separate question: 
You keep hearing all of these things coming out of the 
administration about all these great green new plans and how 
that is flushing trillions of dollars into your community. You, 
in particular, are you seeing it? Are you seeing all these 
resources coming into your community?
    Mr. WARD. No. No, we don't see any of that coming to where 
I am from in southern West Virginia.
    Ms. VAN DUYNE. Thank you very much.
    Chairman SMITH. I want to thank the Representative.
    The gentleman from Iowa, Mr. Feenstra, is recognized for 5 
minutes.
    Mr. FEENSTRA. Thank you, Chairman Smith.
    I want to thank you. It is an incredible honor to be now 
part of this committee, and I look forward to working with the 
committee to create solutions to all the problems and concerns 
that we have talked about.
    I come from Iowa. I am a rural Iowa kid, born and raised in 
rural Iowa. And I am no different than each one of you, right? 
We work hard. We care about our country. We are happy, and we 
just want to be successful. That is all we want. And yet, it is 
a real struggle right now. It is a real struggle.
    Our economy is in a precarious situation. Economics 101 
notes that, when there is too much money chasing too few goods, 
you are going to have inflation. And that is exactly what has 
happened. We put $6 trillion--or this administration put $6 
trillion into the economy. We have pinch points in the supply 
chain. And we have this incredible inflationary issue happening 
amongst us.
    One of those inflationary issues is obviously our 
workforce. Our unemployment rate is 3.4 percent. That means 
there are about 5.7 million unemployed people in our country. 
However, there are 11 million job openings currently. That 
means there are two jobs for everyone employed. In a perfect 
system, you could have two jobs.
    However, we know that, because of skills, it doesn't work 
that way. 2.9 million fewer workers are not in the workforce 
because of the pandemic. Before the pandemic, all right, we had 
2.9 million more workers. Why did that happen? Because we had 
all these giveaways to keep people out of work.
    So my question is this: Mr. Plaugher, I will start with 
you. You talked about the different things that are keeping 
people from work. You also noted what we need to do to train 
people. How do we bring people to Iowa? How do we bring people 
to West Virginia to want to work in our areas, in our 
occupations?
    Mr. PLAUGHER. As far as how to bring people to West 
Virginia, West Virginia is a wonderful place, if you have never 
spent any time here. And I think the State is doing a lot of 
things right now that will attract more people to West 
Virginia.
    You know, I would like to see the native West Virginians, 
though, again, I feel that there are a lot of people out there 
who are not working who could be working. And the things that I 
see impacting that so much are the drug issues and also some of 
the benefit issues where we end up competing against the 
government. And, you know, we need to straighten it out so that 
people are incentivized to want to work, to want to get ahead.
    Mr. FEENSTRA. Another issue that you brought up, Mr. 
Plaugher, that you noted that home starts are slowing down, and 
you are right. I mean, year over year that has passed, home 
sales are down about 20 percent. Home affordability has never 
been worse. It is even worse than in the 1980s.
    And there are obviously two reasons for that. Obviously, 
the big issue is inflation. Inflation is hitting building 
starts. It costs 42 to 50 percent more to build a house today 
than what it did several years ago. The cost of a mortgage is 
double.
    What an incredible nexus when you have your cost of 
building a new house is doubled and the cost of financing it is 
doubled. This is catastrophic.
    Mr. Plaugher, when you start looking at forecasting for 
your business, does this concern you? Is this something that, 
you know goes bump in the night that you are worried about?
    Mr. PLAUGHER. Yes, absolutely, it does. Again, our goods 
that we manufacture go into hardwood products that are used 
generally in single-family housing and home remodeling. So they 
are more luxury items.
    So, yes, absolutely. The forecast doesn't look good in 
terms of that and helping our business.
    Mr. FEENSTRA. And this is our concern for every business, 
every business in our country right now, is the cost, the cost 
of goods, the supply chain, the workforce. And you can see what 
is going to happen. We are driving ourselves into a recession 
when our interest rates continue to go up. The Fed just 
increased another 25 basis points.
    These are real serious issues that need to be resolved by 
serious people. And I just think our administration is not 
serious about what is happening, obviously. They keep saying 
that everything is rosy, and that is wrong. So I greatly 
appreciate each one of your testimonies, and it is time for us 
to get to work and try to create solutions for you.
    Thank you so much, and I yield back.
    Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Representative.
    I would like to yield 5 minutes to the gentlelady from New 
York, Ms. Malliotakis.
    Ms. MALLIOTAKIS. Thank you. And good afternoon to everyone. 
I appreciate the chairman and the committee selecting West 
Virginia.
    I have never been to West Virginia. It is a beautiful 
State. And I really enjoyed hearing from all of you today.
    I represent New York City, Staten Island, and southern 
Brooklyn. And, to be quite honest, the challenges you are 
facing are not different from what we are facing in my city, 
although I would say probably it is worse in New York City 
because of our local and State government.
    But we have the similar challenges when I speak to the 
small businesses in my community, the restaurants that are 
struggling after the pandemic, being slammed with food 
inflation and high energy costs, and, of course, small 
businesses that I represent just trying to get by. And, 
unfortunately, I feel the policies that have come out of our 
government, whether local or Federal, have just made it worse. 
They haven't helped. They have actually made it harder for you.
    And that is a problem. And I think that is why we are all 
here today, to kind of hear--and, quite frankly, you are 
validating a lot of what we have been saying, those who are 
here. Sadly, the ones that need to hear this aren't here today, 
mostly.
    But we will continue to take this message and echo it, 
because the reality is, is you have had to adapt. You have had 
to make tough choices. You are dealing with higher energy costs 
due to a bad energy policy, which we are seeking to reverse and 
try to restore energy independence. And, like you said, we want 
diversification. We are for clean energy, but not to the 
exclusion of traditional energy sources that are affordable and 
reliable.
    In terms of labor, they have incentivized people not to 
return to the workplace. We have worked to try to end that. But 
it is like an endless cycle, right? They keep spending money 
with one hand, and then they are taking it from you with the 
other hand because now you are paying more in terms of 
inflation and whatnot.
    But, with the spending and the debt, as my colleague 
mentioned, I mean, this is that endless cycle. They spend 
money. They create more debt. It leads to inflation. Now the 
interest rates are increasing. Now, as a result, mortgage 
rates, loan rates, and that is impacting your businesses as 
well.
    So I have a very basic question, just a basic question, 
because I think sometimes Washington needs to hear fundamentals 
here. What would happen if your business spent more than you 
took in? What would happen if your debt exceeded the value of 
the products that you produce?
    Mr. PLAUGHER. Our business wouldn't last very long. And, 
you know, there is only so long that you can sustain something 
like that.
    Ms. BACHMAN. Same here. We would have to close our doors 
immediately.
    Mr. McDADE. I think you have seen in some cases we are 
deficit spending on the ground just to maintain our businesses.
    Mr. WARD. It would be the same result. We would have to 
shut down.
    Ms. MALLIOTAKIS. I think that says it all. And that is what 
Washington needs to do as well. We need to adapt. We need to 
make those tough choices. And that is what the Republican 
Conference is aiming to do to try to manage our debt, to lower 
our debt-to-GDP ratio, to be more responsible with your tax 
dollars, and to stop trying to fix problems by creating more 
problems.
    And so I thank you all for being here today. Obviously, I 
would have more questions, but my colleagues have already asked 
them all. So I am pretty much at the end here.
    One last thing, with a minute and 30 seconds left: The 
interest rates, any of you are seeking to maybe take a loan to 
expand or buy a new facility, you know, create a new mortgage 
for that. Any comment you would like to make on how mortgage 
and interest rates are affecting you right now?
    And I can tell you as somebody, I speak to home builders in 
my district slowing down now, 35 percent I think decrease in 
home building. They are having difficulties now. Home buyers, 
all that is slowing down.
    How is that affecting your industry and particularly for 
wood products, and then anyone else who would like to talk 
about how it is impacting their business, preventing them from 
expanding?
    Mr. PLAUGHER. I think it affects all industry just as far 
as access to capital goes. And I mentioned earlier that our 
business, we depend on a lot of other small businesses to 
operate, logging contractors, trucking contractors, folks like 
that. A lot of those are folks that are just starting with one 
truck or two trucks and trying to get their business going. And 
so, for them, especially, access to that capital and the cost 
of that capital is a huge driver in whether or not they can 
actually start that business or grow that business.
    So I guess I see that as all holding back some of the 
business expansion.
    Mr. McDADE. Well, I mean, we are in the middle of an 
expansion right now. And the business has to grow. You know, we 
are out of space. And so we will take it on the chin. That is 
what we are going--that is what we have to do. And, yes, it 
will be much more expensive to borrow money this time around 
than the last time around.
    Chairman SMITH. I also want to remind the folks in the 
audience that there are clipboards being passed around. If you 
want to submit any comments for the record, for the committee 
hearing, be sure to fill that out. And we will submit that to 
the official proceedings.
    Last but certainly not least, we would like to represent 
the great gentleman from the State of Ohio, Mr. Carey.
    Mr. CAREY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    And as most people in Columbus, Ohio, we can trace our 
roots right here to West Virginia. In Mason County, west 
Columbia, he wasn't--my great-great-grandfather wasn't a coal 
miner but he was a salt miner. And I actually just live about 
11 blocks where he moved many, many years ago.
    Mr. Chairman, we were talking. I would like to submit for 
the record this article showing that West Virginia coal mine 
employment is at its lowest level since 1980, at fewer than 
12,000 coal jobs, or about half the level of just a decade ago. 
And that is less than 10 percent of the all-time high.
    So if you don't mind, I would like to submit it for the 
record.
    Chairman SMITH. Without objection, so ordered.
    [The information follows:]

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    Mr. CAREY. A couple of other things. I mean, I think I have 
been looking at all the towns on this wall. And as somebody--as 
Congresswoman Miller knows, I have been in most of those towns 
over the years. But there is real people in those towns and a 
couple of things.
    I mean, a lot of us come here. We are from all over the 
country. We don't have a State Senator like Randy Smith who is 
a coal miner. Right? Jim Justice, who has been in the energy 
industry. We don't have AGs like Patrick Morrisey who is 
fighting Federal regulations. You have got Riley Moore doing a 
great thing on the lending side of things.
    But, Chairman, I am really happy you brought us out here to 
West Virginia, because you are hearing from real people about 
real things.
    A couple of things I want to point out. If you look at coal 
production historically, so in 2008, America produced 1.3 
billion tons of domestic coal. Now whether that is 
metallurgical, whether it is steam coal, 1.3. The only numbers 
we have for 2021 is, the latest numbers we have, we are down to 
580 million tons. Think about those numbers.
    And So when you look at towns like Princeton and you wonder 
what has happened to the economy and all the spinoff jobs, that 
is the other thing. Mr. Ward, you talk about the miners that 
you have in those--that work with you in the new mine. But for 
every one of those coal miners, there are four spinoff jobs.
    And if you look at some of the counties that--whether it is 
Monongalia County, Marshal County, and you look at the average 
income for a coal miner, it is anywhere from $75,000 to $90,000 
a coal miner. Now, when you look at the average wage or the 
average per-household income, it is $25,000.
    So what happens when you take those good-paying coal jobs 
away and the spinoff jobs away? It truly affects the economy 
and definitely affects the economy of West Virginia and all 
coal-producing States.
    But it is not just coal. It is also natural gas. And I 
think if we are looking at what we have seen as my--as my 
colleague across the aisle there said, what percentage actually 
comes from West Virginia in terms of power production per coal, 
it is 88 percent.
    And the other part, of course, is natural gas. And as you 
were saying, you know, natural gas gets diverted, obviously. We 
need to have an energy policy that is based on sound, reliable 
science, not political science, one that understands baseload 
energy, one that understands that there are only two choices of 
energy that you could actually store on sight, nukes and coal. 
Those are two baseloads.
    Now in this rush that we had done as a country to green 
energy, which is fine, I am all of the above, i think we should 
have that. But when you look at all the products for these--
that go into a lot of these renewables, they all come from 
China which, by the way, doesn't have the same mining 
regulations that we have in this country, doesn't have the same 
environmental, you know, cautions that we have in this country.
    So, Mr. Ward, I probably went on a rant because it is 
something I truly believe in. But could you just tell, I think, 
this committee from Consol's perspective, which is a very 
highly respected company out of Pittsburgh, can you just kind 
of give what you guys do for the local community and the amount 
of people that you're now employing that are relatively close 
by here.
    Mr. WARD. Yeah, we started hiring back in June. We took--we 
took--took a look around and tried to get the very local that 
we could. We started--of course, there is several jobs that I 
have, you know, the electricians, there are varied trades I 
can't hire out of that trade.
    But we opened up to people that haven't even been in the 
coal industry before and give them a job. This is the first 
step that we took. My general manager, he insists that we get 
local stuff as close as we can. We could do the bigger stores, 
the bigger supply chains. But we get stuff needed locally. We 
have several vehicles, fleet vehicles.
    Mr. CAREY. It is safe to say you are definitely benefitting 
the local economy.
    Mr. WARD. Yes. We are putting back what we can.
    Mr. CAREY. Thank you.
    Real quick, Wes, who actually is the owner of Meadowbrook 
Farm BBQ in the back, I spoke with him just recently. He 
actually used to work at the Mount Storm Power Plant which is 
serviced by the Mettiki coal mine. But he and he I were 
talking. I am a big fan of ribs. But he told me, and I am sure 
this goes the heart of the products, but just a year ago 
barbecue ribs were double the price than what they were just 
one year. Now they are still up 40 percent.
    So I just thought I would throw that out there, and Wes was 
just telling me about the economics of barbecuing.
    So thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    And thank you all for inviting us down. Thanks so much.
    Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Representative.
    I want to thank each and every one of the witnesses for 
being here today. You took time out of your busy schedule, away 
from your family, away from your employees to share ideas that 
we need to hear as members of Congress.
    I want to thank Allegheny Wood Products once again for 
allowing to us be here in our very first hearing of the House 
Ways and Means Committee this Congress.
    And I also want to thank every member that took the time to 
be here. I want to thank, Acting Member Beyer, for making the 
point to be here.
    I am extremely proud of you all for listening. This is how 
we can move America forward, by listening to real Americans and 
delivering on those issues. So thank you.
    Please be advised that members have 2 weeks to submit 
written questions to be answered later in writing. Those 
questions and your answers will be made part of the formal 
hearing record.
    With that, the committee stands adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 2:07 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]

      

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