[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 13] [House] [Page 18157] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]THE AMERICAN ENERGY ACT The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Boehner) for 5 minutes. Mr. BOEHNER. Well, Mr. Speaker, let me say ``welcome'' to my Democrat colleagues. ``Welcome back to the House.'' You all left here without a vote on the American Energy Act, and as I look at this week's schedule, it looks like we're going to take another week of vacation because there is not much on the schedule. While you all were out, I and my Republican colleagues were here each and every day with the lights dimmed, with the microphones off, with no one in the chair, and with the cameras off. We were talking to the visitors who were coming through the Capitol about our plan to produce all of the above. You know, the American people are tired of high gas prices. Small businesses are having a difficult time with high energy prices. We've got school districts around America that are trying to figure out how they're going to operate their buses this fall with the prices of gasoline and of diesel where they are. Yet Congress has failed to act. What we've been proposing for the last 3 months is the buildup of do all of the above. We need to have more conservation in America, and we need to have the incentives to produce more conservation. We need renewables. To my colleague from Washington who was just here, I'm in full support of all of these renewables, but many of them are not going to be ready next year or the year after or, for that matter, some of them not for 10 or 20 years. So, in the meantime, we've got to find a way to produce more energy now, and that means using coal in a clean way whether it's coal to gas or coal to liquid. We can use coal, and we're the Saudi Arabia of the world when it comes to coal, and there is no reason for us not to use it in an environmentally sensitive way. We also need nuclear energy, the cleanest form of energy. Today, it's a 15-year process to get a nuclear permit and to go through all of the steps. It costs billions of dollars, and maybe at the end of 15 years you will get a permit to actually operate. Even if we do all of that, we've not done all we can do to maximize our energy security and to maximize the amount of energy we can produce to take a big step toward energy independence. That's why producing more American-made oil and gas in an environmentally sensitive way has to be part of this bill. Now, this bill has been out there. It does all of the above, and I think the American people are demanding that we do all of the above, but the Speaker, before she became the Speaker, promised this would be the most open and accountable Congress in history. In that light, I respectfully ask the Speaker: When will you give the American people a vote on the American Energy Act (H.R. 6566), our plan to do all of the above? Will it be on the floor this week? There are rumors floating around that we could have an energy bill this week. Nobody has seen one yet. It hasn't been scheduled, but these rumors are out there. If we're going to have a vote on a little bit of the above or on some of the above that the majority might produce, why not give a large group of Members in this House who want to do all of the above just a chance to have a debate and to vote on our competing proposal? That's what we're looking for. We want a fair and open debate. We want a chance to have a vote. Anything less than that, frankly, is unacceptable, and the Republicans in this House will continue to force the Democrat majority to allow a vote on doing all of the above because it is what the American people want. It is what they sent us here to do, and we are not going to leave until it gets done. ____________________