Congressman Lamar Smith

On June 20, U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith called on the federal government to redirect incentives for clean energy such as wind and solar into research to make those technologies more affordable.

"If you want to talk about reducing global warming and talk about reducing carbon emissions, you're going to have to make those other forms of energy cost-effective," said Smith, R-Texas. "The only way to do that is to come up with some breakthrough technologies and try to reduce those costs. We're going to put a lot of money into research and development, but we're not going to get there if we're just subsidizing those industries."

Smith also discussed the federal deficit and other topics during a speech to the San Marcos Chamber of Commerce.

National Security Agency's leaked surveillance program: "I take the [Obama administration at their word that a number of terrorist attacks have been deterred because of some of the information that has been picked up. On the other hand, I have absolutely no explanation for why the judge who is supposed to make the government produce real cause rubber-stamped every single request that was put before this particular judge."

IRS' scrutiny of Tea Party groups: "When you have the full force of the government being politicized, that is an abuse of power, it's a violation of the Constitution, particularly the First Amendment, and criminal laws have been broken and some individuals might eventually go to jail. We're beginning to wonder if this problem is far more pervasive than initially thought. Frankly, we're probably not going to find out until we get some of the federal investigations going and people are threatened with jail time."

The federal deficit and proposed budgets: "The House and the Senate have passed very different budgets. I don't know where we end up in the middle when you have such different political philosophies between those two branches of government. Maybe we end up closing a lot of loopholes in the tax system, and that will raise some revenue to meet in the middle there. Maybe if we don't balance the budget in 10 years, at least we agree to reduce the deficit every year for 10 years, so there may be some compromise. We can't do nothing."

Smith represents District 21, which includes parts of San Marcos, Buda and Kyle.