[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 9] [House] [Pages 12258-12265] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]{time} 2030 ENERGY DEVELOPMENT The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Peterson) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader. Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, today, June 11 of the year 2008, we had an interesting happening in the Capitol. We have had $4 gasoline for some time now, we have had $5 diesel, record high natural gas prices approaching $13 per thousand, the most expensive energy America has ever known. We had a chance today in committee the deal with this issue. I was stunned. I have been working on this issue for many, many years. We passed a major bill in 2006 with good bipartisan support, a lot of Republicans, but we had probably 40-some Democrats. A lot of people in this Congress realize that we must produce more energy in America if we are going to deal with the prices in America. Today the Interior subcommittee met. I offered an amendment to open up the Outer Continental Shelf. As you look at the chart to my left, that's the east coast and the west coast and down here in the gulf on both sides of Florida. The red or pinkish areas are locked up. There's 86 billion barrels in those areas, by old standards, by old seismographic tests which was 30-some years ago. Most people feel there is many times that. There is 400 trillion cubic feet of natural gas there. My amendment today would have removed the moratorium. For 27 years Congress has had legislative language that says we cannot produce here. It's locked up. This Outer Continental Shelf is from 3 miles offshore. The first three miles is controlled by the States. Next 197 miles is owned by us, the taxpayers, citizens of America. Not by any company, not by the President, not by Congress, but owned by the citizens, not by any State. It's our resources. The interesting and troubling fact is my amendment would have opened it up from 50 miles to 200. Every country in the world that has energy offshore produces it. It's the most environmentally sensitive place to produce energy. [[Page 12259]] In most places the fisheries are better, they like the platforms, they like the places to hide. The fishermen love them being there because it's where the best fishing is. Down here in this little blue area, 40 percent of our energy comes from there that we produce in this country, that little bit of the gulf. Now there they produce right up to the shoreline. We were given a 50- mile buffer. There has not been an oil spill on a beach from a well except for the one in Santa Barbara in 1969, pretty good record, in my view. There has never been a natural gas well that's ever caused an environmental problem that I know of. But today we had a vote of nine ``noes'' for the Democrats and six ``yeses'' for the Republicans. I don't like to be partisan. I like to have bipartisan support, and I worked very hard on this amendment. I thought I had strong support from both parties, and I was stunned today. I guess it's another example of Speaker power. I have been in the legislative business for 31 years, 19 years at the State and 12 years here. I have seen legislative bodies that were good process bodies where you debate the issues from the subcommittee to the full committee to the floor. Then when the House and Senate meet in a conference committee, that really gives you seven shots at a bill. That's not happening here. This is the most top-down legislative body I have ever been a part of. Today showed that. I would bet the farm there are members on this subcommittee that wanted to vote for this, but for some reason chose not to. I am not going to name them, I am not going to second-guess them, but I was stunned. I think America would be stunned. I believe this Congress is way behind the folks, approaching 60 percent of Americans at a recent poll, who want us to produce offshore, on shore, wherever we have energy. I find, in talking to town meetings and large groups, when you discuss the issue and explain the facts and explain the alternatives, almost all Americans want energy produced so it's affordable. Our economy was built on affordable energy. The problem we have, the arguments today were that there are 68 million acres already leased, and that's enough. This is the percentage, and, actually, it's less than 3 percent, of the Outer Continental Shelf where there is a lease that has been offered. So there is a very small part of the continental shelf that actually has a lease on it. They said, well, there are 68 million acres, we need lease no more. Well, if you have leased property--yes, there are leases, there are leases that are not active--but if you have leased property and spent millions and millions of dollars and you get dry holes, you don't drill anymore. You find out there is not oil in there. As we look on here a little bit, this is interesting, this is a map. It's not as good as color as I had hoped to see. This is Cuba, this is Key West, this is Florida. These are the leases that have been granted by Cuba, China, Canada and Spain. I am not sure here, but these are the ones that are being negotiated now. Canada is going to be producing energy off our shores, and we absolutely disallow it. Does that make any sense? No. Our biggest competitor, China, will be possibly producing our oil and our gas, using it to compete against us. Natural gas is the one that's really in trouble in America. We know the oil prices today closed at $137, natural gas at $12.75. Natural gas is the one that we don't talk enough about. Oil is painful, but every country that competes with us pays that price. America may be the only country paying--now, this is not the price people pay. This is what the price today coming out of the ground is. Now, what's sneaking up on Americans this year, they already know it costs a lot to travel. Those who are on propane and fuel oil last year know it was pretty expensive to heat their homes. Natural gas did not rise a lot last year. But here is what happened to natural gas this year. This is the chart of natural gas for this year. This is what's happened this spring. Never before have I ever seen natural gas prices--this is the time of year when we are not heating and cooling much, it's call the shoulder season for use, and this is when we usually put it in the ground for next winter's storage to heat our homes. We are putting gas in the ground at a price more than we paid for it last year. Now you have to add storage costs, transmission costs and processing costs. Americans will be getting somewhere between a 60 to 100 percent increase of natural gas prices this winter. So those who are struggling to pay $4 to drive their cars are now going to struggle to heat their homes. The sad story is, with natural gas, our big employers like Dow Chemical in 2002 paid $8 billion for natural gas for a year's use. This year they are paying $8 billion every quarter, that's $32 billion. Folks, here is what has happened to the jobs and what will continue to happen if we don't deal with energy prices because the rest of the world is. Natural gas will push petrochemicals, polymers, plastic and many other steel and aluminum jobs--I predict, glass will be made offshore, bricks will be made offshore. Bulk commodities will not be made in this country because of natural gas prices, because you use so much. Here's what the arguments were. This is what people want to use. This is oil. From the middle over is history, this is what the Energy Department predicts for the future. I don't quite agree with this chart, because we are turning down coal plants all over the country. The natural gas will be much wider, coal will be much shallower. I don't see the growth in coal. We also all had high hopes for coal-to-liquid. That's sort of on hold in this country. Why, I don't know, because of carbon, I guess. The concern of carbon has become a greater concern. Nuclear, to stay here, we have to have 35 to 40 nuclear plants built in addition to what we have to keep nuclear where it's at as 20 percent of the grid. Nonhydro, the amount, everybody wants--hydro is not growing because we are not doing dams. Nonrenewables are mostly woody biomass and hydro. That's what most of this is. If we double wind and solar, and we hope we can, we are less than 1 percent of our energy needs in 5 years or 10 years whenever we do that. That's the scary part. Now here's the dependence part. When I came to Congress, we were in the 40s. We are now 66.3 percent dependent on imports, and here is where we get it. Canada is our best friend to the north, Mexico is our next best friend, nonOPEC and Ecuador, and then we go down here. These are the countries that are going to own us. These are the countries where our wealth is going. In fact, I think I heard a speaker a few moments ago on floor talk about the purchase of the Chrysler Building by one of the Mid East countries. Ladies and gentlemen, if America does not deal with energy, we will not compete in the global economy of the world. We cannot have the highest energy prices known anywhere and compete. We will not have middle-class jobs. The middle class in America will disappear. That's not the America I want. Now, how we get past this partisanship, how we get past that we can take the minuteness of wind and solar and replace fossil fuels, I wish I knew. I am for hydrogen. I belonged to the hydrogen caucus for years, but it has not grown. Wind and solar has grown a very small amount. Until we can store electricity, we are going to depend on fossil fuels to make it. If we continue with the chart I just looked at to not produce coal plants, that's going to come on natural gas. If we don't open up the Outer Continental Shelf and much of the Midwest, we are not going to have the natural gas--and natural gas, let's come back to the natural gas chart. Natural gas, in my view, is the clean, green fuel. We would have been far wiser, in my view, to have used compressed natural gas in automobiles than ethanol. Automobiles, with a couple of thousand dollars addition can burn natural gas. That's a clean fuel. [[Page 12260]] If we open up the Outer Continental Shelf, if we opened up the Roan Plateau in the west and some of the new areas that we know are potentials in this country--but we have to drill a hole in the ground, and why aren't we doing that? Well, here are the people that I think have been successful. I was having a debate late week with the Sierra Club on NPR radio in California. When the debate was over she assured the audience that she would be beating me back next week when I offered my amendment. They won today. The Sierra Club, they are against shale oil development. They are against coal gasification, and they are against offshore energy. Then we have Greenpeace, and they want to phase out all fossil fuels. They want to eliminate all of these and replace them with these. Now, I wish we could do that. They are opposed. Environmental Defense Fund, no power plants, no smokestacks, League of Conservation Voters, no coal-to-liquid, wrong way to go; Defenders of Wildlife, no offshore, no coastal production; Natural Resource Defense Council, no coal, coal is evil; Center for Biological Diversity, no oil and gas drilling. That's devastating on public lands. {time} 2045 Friends of the Earth, no liquid coal, that is dirty. Folks, we have technology in this country today. We can produce energy cleanly. We can burn it cleanly. We have clean coal technology we are refusing to build to replace the old plants. If we continue, we are the only country I know of in the world that is on a madness mission, I call it, that we are not going to use fossil fuels. Now I want to grow all of these. I would be building hydrodams. The only one that has grown on this chart, and I have another chart that shows it better, woody biomass has doubled in the last decade. That is wood pellet stoves. Almost a million Americans use them now. That is using wood for generators, small plants for electricity using wood waste, and heating small factories. I am from a wood area, the greatest hardwood forests in America are in northern Pennsylvania, and we dry kiln our wood. We used to use propane and natural gas, now we use wood waste. Wood waste has found a marketplace, and it is continuing. But that's the only one that has had measurable growth that you can put on a chart. I don't have that chart here. But folks, we need to have a comprehensive policy. But until we have the renewables available to use, we have to use clean fossil fuels in the very best manner we can. But if this Congress says no in full committee a week from now, we will be doing our bill in full committee, if they say no again, partisanly, and if they say no on this floor when we do the Interior bill, America will miss its only chance. My bill, the Outer Continental Shelf bill, has 170-some cosponsors, and can't get a hearing or a discussion. We are not going to talk about fuels in this Congress. Now we passed a great bill a couple of weeks ago where the Democrats proposed to enable us to sue OPEC. We are going to sue a group of countries, I had the chart here a minute ago, that we don't think have produced enough energy, when we refuse to produce it at all. Now what is the logic of that? What court is going to listen to that, and how do you even have a serious face. Back home, people laughed about that. They thought it was stupid. We also have proposals to tax oil companies. Who pays the taxes, the energy users. I know there is hatred for the energy companies. They are really a small part of the mix. The vast majority of energy in this country is not produced by Big Oil. It is produced by small producers in my district in Pennsylvania and all down through the south. It is mostly independents. They are the brand names. They own some of the refineries. They own a lot of product lines in their names, but they are a small part of the production of energy. Yet we want to punish energy production. We passed a bill here once, fortunately the Senate didn't, that was going to tax all energy companies. And I have two refineries in my district, one who was struggling, American Refiners and United Refinery, and we were going to make them pay higher taxes than the businesses right down the road. Did that make any sense? No. That is taxing American energy; not taxing imports but American energy. I believe this Congress is way behind the American public. When I go back to my office many times after giving one of these speeches, I have phone calls for hours, I have phone calls for days saying I believe in what you said; I believe America should be producing energy; thank you for speaking out. I believe the American public in the next election, I believe energy availability and affordability will be one of the major issues that they will be looking at because I don't think we are done. I don't think $4.05 gasoline is the end. We have these high prices today that have scared the American public. I have people in my district who don't know how they are going to get through the winter and how they are going to heat their house. They don't know how they are going to make it. We have these high prices today. We have not had a storm in the gulf, which interrupts a lot of production when it happens, for 2\1/2\ years. Everyone is predicting we are going to have major storms in the gulf, hurricanes, and that will eliminate a lot of energy production and prices will skyrocket. We have not had a successful terrorist attack on our energy supply system. That could happen tomorrow. We have not had a major foreign country, and I had that chart of countries we get our oil from, most of those are dictatorships that could tip over. When there is a little trouble in Nigeria, energy prices skyrocket. When there were problems in Venezuela, prices skyrocketed. When Chavez was arguing with Exxon, oil went up $20 just because they were arguing. The reason is there is no surplus in the system. Historically we had eight million barrels of oil that another country could produce if some country couldn't produce. Today we are down to where this is about a million barrels of oil. It is 86 million barrels a day countries use. We use 21, and so there is only a one million barrel surplus. So if a country has problems and produces three million less, there is not enough oil. Now the reason these gas prices that I showed you earlier are going up, we are using more gas than we are producing. One of the big storage companies told me a month ago, they are not sure they can get their storage full this winter and they have always had it full by winter because we cannot produce enough gas, we have to put it in underground caverns and store it for winter. I believe this Congress is at the root of the high prices of energy, and three Presidents, too, I am not going to hold them countless, because we have not had an adequate, thoughtful energy policy for America. While the rest of the world is building an energy supply for themselves, we are twiddling our thumbs and we are refusing to produce fossil fuels. I think if this Congress before we recess in July does not deal effectively with energy and open up supply, you are going to see the beginning of the decline of the America we know. It is a national security issue. It is an economic issue. American companies cannot compete, and when they can't compete here, they will diminish their operations here and they will expand them over there. They have had other reasons to do that, but the biggest one has been energy. So I beg my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, let's get by this partisan bickering and let's support an energy policy for America. The gentleman from Ohio has come to join us, and I yield to Mr. Latta. Mr. LATTA. I thank the gentleman for yielding, and he speaks the truth. This country is in a crisis and we are not listening. The folks back home get it. But we are not getting it. It is time we do. I would like to start off with this. This is kind of sobering. Right now the United States uses 21 percent of the world's energy. If you look across this [[Page 12261]] chart, in 2010 we still have energy supremacy and usage over India and China. When you look at 2015, those two countries together will be consuming more energy than the United States. When we get to 2020, China is going to be consuming more energy than the United States. And just look at the chart as it goes across, the United States is barely moving while China is making leaps and bounds. The question is, what does that all mean. It means this: energy means jobs. Those are American jobs. The folks back home get it. Congress doesn't get it. I come from the Fifth Congressional District of Ohio which is the ninth largest manufacturing district of the 435 districts in Congress. I also represent the number one agricultural district in the State of Ohio. What does it mean, if we don't have energy, we don't have jobs. Companies out there are looking, we look at this chart, companies are looking at where can they get energy. How are they going to keep their jobs and keep their people employed. Farmers are out there right now in our State planting, and some people say farmers are getting these high prices this year. Let's look at some facts. When they are buying diesel and buying fertilizer that is also made from oil, when they are buying their chemicals that they are putting on the field made from oil products, they are not making that much money. What does that mean to the consumer? Very simple, the consumers when they go to the grocery store are finding that prices are going up for milk, bread and cereal. It is all going up. Looking down the road, when you are paying $4 a gallon for gasoline, you are paying more for food and it is costing you more to get to work. I have talked to a lot of my manufacturers in Ohio in my district, and I asked how far do most people drive to work. It is not unusual to have people say people are driving 50 or 60 miles to get to work. So when we look at people who are driving maybe 100 miles round trip every day, 500 miles a week, and $4 a gallon for gasoline, some folks are saying I'm not sure I can afford this job. We can't have that happen. As the gentleman from Pennsylvania mentioned about Dow, we have a company in my district, a float glass company, the price of their fuel for natural gas in a 5-year period of time has gone from $10 million to $30 million. What does that mean for America? There are only 37 float glass facilities left in this country. The Chinese are building 40 as we stand here today and bicker, unfortunately, about doing something in this country about oil and our energy usage and needs. They have the energy and they are going to have a cheaper labor supply, I am going to ask you in the future, where are you going to buy a window pane that is made in the United States of America? Or where are you going to buy a windshield that is made in the United States of America? They will not be made in this country at all. And the gentleman from Pennsylvania is absolutely correct, more and more products are being made offshore and those are American jobs. We can't afford that. What made this country great is very simple. After the Civil War, the Industrial Revolution really kicked into high gear. We had all the natural resources in the country, and we were able to produce for the world, and we produced for the world for years. We had the head start on everybody, of course, after World War II when the rest of the world lay in ruins and the United States' factories were humming. But the rest of the world is catching up, if not surpassing us, and this chart shows it. And we can't afford it. What is the rest of the world doing? France, 70-80 percent of their power is nuclear. They are exporting power to the rest of Europe. Japan, 55 nuclear reactors, two under construction. China, they are building 40 nuclear power stations in the next 25 to 30 years. India, 30 plants in the next 25 years. Coal. That was talked about earlier. China and India use 45 percent of the world's coal. China is building coal-powered plants as we speak and putting them online right now. They are investing $24 billion in clean coal technology. The gentleman mentioned they are also out there building the Three Gorges hydroelectric plant. Again, it is a communist country and they are not worried about displacing millions of people, but they are going to have that power station producing electricity to make sure that they are producing. It has been mentioned how China is drilling onshore and offshore and right off our shore. But the real question is what is the United States doing on all of this? And this scares people, absolutely nothing. Absolutely nothing. The last nuclear power plant to be licensed in this country was in 1977; 1977. The last one to go online was in 1996; 1996. We have 24 percent of the coal in the world; 24 percent. But what are we doing, nothing. You mention coal in this Chamber, and it is an absolute no. We have to have it. In Ohio we have what they call high-sulfur coal so it is very, very expensive to burn because you need to have it clean. But if you burn it in a closed system, you don't have those emissions. What does that mean for Ohio, we will put miners to work and we will have companies that make steel to make the coal gasification plants out there, making those parts, and we will have people building those plants. And we will be able to consume that power in this country because when we have 24 percent of the world's coal reserves right now, we can get a lot done. But what are we doing about it, absolutely nothing. What about oil. Again, when you have China out there doing everything it possibly can to make sure that they have their oil supplies up, they are putting thousands of cars on the road. A lot of people say we don't understand what is going on out there. Well, there is only so much oil out there in the world right now, and only so much of it has been refined. The whole world is now consuming more and other areas are producing more, but not in this country. {time} 2100 One of the things that we should be doing is, as the gentleman from Pennsylvania mentioned, we've got to be drilling. We've got to be exploring. And one of the places we've been talking about a lot is ANWR in Alaska. As has already been mentioned, how big are we talking here? We're talking one-half of 1 percent of that area. Of 19.6 million acres, total, we're only talking 2,000 acres. Anybody who has ever done any title work, you know that a section of land is only 640 acres, which is 1 square mile. We're talking a little over 3 square miles. Three square miles. And we're talking about an area of 19.6 million acres, and we're not allowed to go in there and produce? And there's estimated that we have 10.4 billion barrels of oil that we can extract up there. What's it all about? That's twice the proven oil reserves in Texas, almost half of the total U.S. proven reserves of 21 billion barrels. What are we doing? What's this Congress doing? Absolutely nothing. But we are doing something that this past year we almost imported 65 percent of the oil that we need to use in this country; 65 percent of the oil being imported into this country. We talked about it a little bit earlier. We're watching our dollars flow overseas. What's that all mean to America? We have a $9 trillion national debt right now. What scares the devil and daylights out of me is this little fact. $2.4 trillion of that national debt is owned by foreign countries. The Chinese almost now own almost one-half of $1 trillion of American debt. That's what's happening. You know, the American people out there, again, they get it. This Congress doesn't. Again, as the gentleman mentioned earlier, right now it's estimated there's 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas offshore and 86 billion barrels of oil. 85 percent of that's off-limits, and we can't afford that. We can't afford that for the future. Onshore, it's estimated there's, on Federal lands, 31 billion barrels of oil [[Page 12262]] and 231 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. And again, it's restricted down to access, which does not allow Americans to be getting that. 92 percent on Federal lands for oil and 90 percent for natural gas. We can't get to it. What civilized country in the world allows this to happen? Not very many. But right here in this country it's happening. It's happening here, ladies and gentlemen, and we're doing nothing. The old saying is, ``Rome burned and Nero fiddled.'' That's what's happening. We haven't built a new refinery in this country, talk about problems, in two-and-a-half decades. I'm fortunate in my district, just by coincidence, that I have a company that produces solar panels. Over 99 percent of their production goes overseas to Europe. We have another plant that's going to be constructed. Solar is another area out there. It's good supplemental power. We also have the only four wind turbines located in the State of Ohio. I can see them out my back door in Bowling Green. We only have four. There's a lot of objection now because people say they're unsightly; they don't want them; build them someplace else. But when you talk about wind-powered turbines, to kind of get an idea how many you have to have to equal something, you have to have between 600 to 800 turbines to equal one coal-fired plant, or anywhere from 1,250 to 1,700 wind turbines to equal one nuclear power plant. If we're having problems around Bowling Green in Ohio, getting turbines built, how are we going to build 1,700 turbines if people are objecting to a few? Because now in Ohio the Division of Wildlife is going to have to start making assessments what birds might be killed, or a bat. And it's going to be blocking them. We also have an ethanol plant in my district. We're working on biofuels. It's all out there. But we've got to be acting and we've got to be acting now. We can't wait. The American people can't wait because we've got to be getting this done today. This country, 10, 20 years ago, had the ability to make mistakes and say, well, in a few years, okay, we can get it corrected. We can't do that today. Why can't we do that today? Because the rest of the world has caught on and they're moving. Every day that we do not act they are, and we're falling farther and farther behind. That's American oil, energy that we have to be producing, and we're not doing it. I introduced a House resolution not too long ago, 1206, and it's really pretty basic what we need to be doing. Just a few points. We have to expand the use of our renewables and alternative energy sources. We have to increase the U.S. domestic refining capacity. We have to promote, incentivize an increase in the conservation and energy efficiency, expand and promote additional research and development through new and innovative methods, such as public-private partnerships, and enhancing the consumer awareness and education regarding methods to increase energy efficiency and available alternative fuel sources to reduce our dependence on middle eastern oil. But the time's getting short. The clock's ticking, and America must act now. I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania, and I yield back. Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. I thank the gentleman from Ohio for his very thoughtful comments. I now recognize the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Wamp). Mr. WAMP. I thank the gentleman, and I'll try not to be long. But I do want to start by saying that I seek not to blame anyone, because one of the things that I'm the most turned off by in the modern era of American politics is that everybody wants to blame everybody. And Democrats always say Republicans are wrong. Republicans always say Democrats are wrong. The truth is, neither party has a whole lot to brag about, and more and more people are being frustrated or becoming frustrated with the two parties. But I will say, on this particular issue of energy, it's important to realize that talk is cheap. Words are not worth much. And votes really do matter. And the positions you take really do have consequences, and we have to actually discuss that as we look at solutions, because what I want to talk about is solutions; not blame, but solutions to these major problems. In my 14 years of service here, this issue now stings and hurts more than any issue that I've seen. And I've served through impeachment, through the Iraq war, through the awful response to Katrina, and I would say that more people are angry and upset and concerned about $4.05 gasoline than anything. And it's easy to say, I told you so. The gentleman from Pennsylvania can definitely say I told you so because I've served with him for 12 years, and he's been talking about supply of oil and gas and the consequences of us not going after it and becoming more independent ourselves for the whole 12 years; a very powerful and effective voice. I too have a long history of talking about the problems that are going to be associated with the energy crunch and was very concerned following September the 11th that we would end up here tonight. I do think that the nexus between national security, energy and the environment is the most important challenge of our generation because they're all connected now inseparably. It's ironic that the left wants to promote legislation and conversation about global warming and climate change because actually that will further restrict our access to energy, and everybody knows that. And it will raise prices. It will increase regulation. It will actually compound this problem. Yet they're promoting that agenda at the same time that they're retreating from energy capacity. And these votes really matter. Now I come at this with 10 years of service on the Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, 8 years of service as the cochairman of the Renewable Energy Caucus here in the House, which is a bipartisan thing; the Representative that represents the premier energy research facility in this country, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. And I want to start by saying that conservation is a very important piece of these solutions. As a matter of fact, conservation is not for wimps, as some people would have you believe. Conservation is for warriors, in my opinion. Not everyone is going to put on the uniform of our Armed Forces. We should be grateful to everyone who does. But not everyone's going to do that. But every person in this country can contribute to our national security by becoming more energy efficient, by conserving, by trying to be more efficient in their daily life, and there are a lot of ways to do that. And I rolled out at the National Press Club, with some outside groups, some very effective outside groups, the Drive Smarter Challenge. You can go to drivesmarterchallenge.org, and you can save yourself hundreds of dollars by following simple instructions of how to conserve gasoline without cutting back on your travel. Obviously the speed limit and how much you travel would be a good step. But there a lot of other things you can do with your automobile, depending on how much gas it uses, to save and conserve, because even in small ways, if we reduce the demand, and the supply stays the same, the price will come down. Demand and supply are connected to each other. I'm also very, very much about new technologies. As I talk about these solutions, understand that I'm here tonight, not because these solutions are all technology-driven or conservation-driven, but I'm here tonight because we have to go forward with an all-of-the-above strategy. We can't afford to leave anything off the table. We can't afford to pick winners and losers. As a matter of fact, I can give you a good example of picking winners and losers in the energy sector because in California, they said, we're not going to use all of the resources for electricity production. We're going to mandate that a certain amount of our electricity has to be produced by these sources. They picked winners and losers. And guess what happened? The [[Page 12263]] lights went out. They didn't have any electricity. That's the problem with picking winners and losers. We have to have an all-of-the-above strategy. I'm here tonight, as the gentleman from Pennsylvania laid out earlier, because we have to increase capacity. We have to go after these resources from the Outer Continental Shelf, from ANWR. I've been in Congress 14 years. I've cast 24 votes to increase capacity for oil and gas in this country. Twenty-four votes. As has been said ad infinitum now, and I'm not a partisan guy--I don't want to blame anybody--but these votes matter. And almost every time the Republicans vote for new capacity, and almost every time the Democrats vote against it. Even today, it happened again. And 2 weeks ago it happened in the Senate again. This is one of those issues that I don't want to be too partisan, but you can't deny there is a huge difference between increasing capacity. Frankly, even the wild-eyed environmentalist has to recognize that this is painful to regular people. And you've got to get off of your crusade to save every tree, you know, to save every form of wildlife at the expense of our human beings who can't pay their bills and they can't buy gas. Be reasonable, people. That's not happening today. But there's a tremendous amount of new technologies. I would argue that we can literally grow our economy, a manufacturing-driven, export robust U.S. economy, by being aggressive in this energy sector, because we have the innovation. What does everyone around the world still emulate about our country? We would like to say it's our privilege to vote. That's important. But they don't all emulate that. We'd like to think that they all would freely worship as we do, and I cherish that. But they don't all emulate that. We would like to think we all have freedom of the press. The one thing they emulate is our private sector, our capitalistic, free enterprise, innovative sector. We have that. How did we balance the budget in the late nineties? I was here. Four straight years. People think, oh, you cut spending. No we didn't. We slowed the growth of spending, yes we did. We didn't cut spending. But revenues surpassed expenses principally because of one sector of our economy that roared, information technology. We led the world. Microsoft is an example. There are many others. We led the world. Revenues surpassed expenses. That can happen again in this sector if we will lead and not be in retreat and not regulate, not limit, but expand, go after it, create new technologies, increase capacity. Be competitive. As the gentleman from Pennsylvania said, it's important. {time} 2115 Now, I have had the editor of Automotive News say that we're going to be driving electric cars. That might be true. Ion lithium batteries have some potential. GM and Toyota say that next summer they're going to have plug-in hybrids. But I will also tell you that Volkswagon, which is a premier automotive interest in the world, can make a three- cylinder diesel engine, lightweight, gets 50 to 60 miles a gallon so biodiesel, biofuels, as long as they're cellulosic in nature and not corn based, are very important developments as well. I will tell you what I don't think the Congress ought to do is pick winners and losers. I think we ought to have an all-of-the-above strategy. Let the market determine which one gets their best and first. Let consumers choose and promote them all. Let the marketplace decide. Let me say that if we do end up plugging our cars in, though, we don't have the electricity capacity to keep them running. We have to have nuclear energy. The numbers--81 percent of France's electricity is generated by nuclear power. They have 53 reactors; we have roughly twice that many. They don't bury their waste, which we propose at Yucca Mountain. They reprocess their spent full turning most of the spent waste back into energy. Why don't we do that? Because we're still stuck in a Three Mile Island time warp mindset that it's somehow not safe, and it is. And there is no evidence that it is not. And we've not had any nuclear incidences. We have 53 nuclear reactors. It is emissionless. You want to reduce the carbon footprint? Promote nuclear. If you want to reduce the carbon footprint in a meaningful way and you're against nuclear, you're disingenuous. I don't care what your name is. You're not living in the real world, or you're playing politics. We need nuclear. Now, another new technology is the stationary solid oxide fuel cell. What is that? Well, it's developed out of Silicon Valley. Partnerships around the country. We have a 100-kilowatt system now being demonstrated in the Tennessee Valley. It looks like the HVAC system in your home, but here is the special element of a solid oxide fuel cell: It makes electricity, but it's not on a transmission grid. That's pretty cool in the world we live in today because without a transmission grid, you can't shut down the electricity through a terrorist incident because not everyone is connected to the grid. And in this stationary solid oxide fuel cell, which is also emissionless, reducing the carbon footprint, it does have to be fueled in one feedstock. It's an HVAC system with fuel cells that creates 100 kilowatts of power which is roughly a 30,000 square foot building. Office building, commercial center, several houses. But you have to have a feedstock, but it will run on anything, just about. It will run on natural gas, it will run on solar in some places, ethanol, different feedstocks. But that's an important development. It has got tremendous electricity potential especially if we start plugging in our cars and we need this new electricity capacity. I believe we ought to look at a follow-up stimulus bill that directs resources to people that are stuck. And I'll tell you in the south, if you're on the lower income, you probably have a very inefficient vehicle and you probably drive a long way to work and you're stuck; and those are the people that our next economic stimulus ought to help. We ought to figure out a way in a bipartisan way to get them some resources to move to more efficient transportation, one way or another. Because people right now, they can't trade that big car. They can't get for it what it's worth, and then they don't have the money to go to a more efficient car. We should help them. In closing, let me just say words are cheap and votes really do make a difference, and the votes for energy capacity have been really important in the past, and they're even more important today; and they're going to be even more important tomorrow. And this is where we have to bring this Congress together. And the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate is way out of touch with reality unless they get serious immediately about increasing capacity because if we made moves that were published around the world that we're going back in the energy-production business, prices would come down overnight, not because the energy is there overnight, but because they know we're going in the right direction because right now we're going in the wrong direction. We need help. Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. I thank the gentleman from Tennessee. The president of DOW Chemical said in a letter I received, he said, We have a debate going on in this country and one side wants production, the other side wants conservation and renewables. He said you're going to need them all. You'll need them both. There's no room for choice. At this time, I'm glad to be joined by my friend from New Jersey (Mr. Garrett). Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. I appreciate the gentleman for hosting this special hour tonight and also very much importantly for all of your work all over the years on this very important issue. And this issue really does strike at the heart of my constituents back in [[Page 12264]] my great State of New Jersey whether it's from my home County of Sussex County, where over 60 percent of them have to commute out of the county every day by car, or Warren County or Bergen County where a host of so many commuters are being hard hit by this hard energy crisis that we're facing right now. I join with my friend from Tennessee where--I don't come to the floor to blame anyone because the American public simply wants the Congress to come up with answers to the problems that we are all facing back in our district. And I think really when you get right down to it, it's not that complicated in one sense to take a look at the various policies or ideas out there. It's easy, I think, one way to tell whether a good-- whether a policy is a good energy policy or not. All you have to do is look at three things: supplies, cost, and security. A good energy policy is a policy that will do what? It will give you more energy. More supply. A bad energy policy will give us less supply. A good energy policy is one that will lower costs for Americans. A bad energy policy is one that is going to continue to raise or escalate costs, meaning that American families are going to have to have less money for their food, housing, education, and so on. And thirdly and finally, a good energy policy is one that will make us a stronger, more secure America. A bad energy policy is going to be one that makes us less secure, less independent of foreign, unstable regimes like Venezuela and overseas and Saudi Arabia and places like Russia and the like. So why don't we take a minute to see what has, quite honestly, the other side of the aisle proposed for us. I have in my hand right here, the Democrat plan to lower gas prices. You may recall that when Democrats were campaigning for the 110th Congress, they said that they had a commonsense solution to lower the price of gasoline and energy for the American public. And we are now 18 months, I think, into the 110th Congress. And, well, there is absolutely nothing in the Democrat's plan. Their commonsense solution, and that's why we're so eagerly awaiting it, and that's why we, on this side of the aisle, come to the floor every night to hammer home the point that something must be done. But we can look to see what has occurred over the last 17 months, 18 months of the 110th Congress now that the Democrats have been in charge of dealing with energy. On these three points: on supply, on cost, on security. On supply. As I stand here tonight, as was already indicated from the gentleman from Pennsylvania, 85 percent of the Outer Continental Shelf where our energy supply comes from, natural gas principally, but oil as well, it's basically locked up off limits to us for further exploration even determining what is actually out there. There was legislation to do that just to say what's out there. Let's find out the information. Off limits to us. Deep sea exploration. Over 100 or 200--200 miles off sea totally off limits right now. Eighty-six billion barrels of oil, 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas could be at our disposal to give us greater supply, but it's not. Oil shales In the Midwestern part of this country. Oil shales were reported in the paper just today as it was going through committee and will be coming to the floor later on, proposals to keep that off-limits as far as greater supply for the country. Let me give you some quick little number here. U.S. has two trillion, that's with a ``T,'' two trillion barrels of oil that effectively are involved here. And to put that in perspective, from 1859 from the first days that oil was pulled out of the ground to today, one trillion barrels of oil has been used. And we have basically two trillion barrels over there that we could basically be getting in economically viable ways. Supply has not been addressed, unfortunately, during the 110th Congress by the Democrats. Costs. Well, when they were campaigning for office, I know in my district you could buy gasoline for $1.80. Now, of course, it's up to $4, doubling the price, and that's hurting the American family. What else has occurred during these last 17 months? Four times legislation has come through this House that would raise taxes on energy costs. And who actually pays those taxes at the end of the day? You and I do at the pump or any other ways where we buy our energy. And finally, there are still proposals, believe it or not, from the other side of the aisle that want to put more taxes on us like 50 cents-a-gallon gasoline taxes has been proposed by Chairman Dingell. So the next time you go to the pump and you're paying around $4 bucks per a gallon of oil, just remember the other side wants to add another 50 cents; and there is another proposal for a nickel as well by Chairman Oberstar. So 55 cents more if they have their way in taxes. Finally on security. Well, right now this country imports around 63 percent or is dependent upon foreign oil. Places like Saudi Arabia, places like Venezuela, places like Nigeria where they have so many problems, Down south in South America as well; and that number continues to grow for the reasons I have just stated. Gasoline. We have not built refineries in this country so now we are like many countries across the globe. We have to import gasoline, 10 percent of our consumption of gasoline is coming into this country, which makes us a less secure Nation because we do not have our own supply of refineries right here at home. Let me move off of what we're doing here on the floor to an outside source to look at this. And the Investors Business Daily has taken a look at this issue. And what they said is this. They said just going back a couple of years, under the eight Clinton years alone, U.S. oil production declined 1.3 million barrels per day, or 19 percent, while our foreign imports increased 3.5 million barrels a day, or 45 percent. During President Clinton's time, he vetoed legislation that would have increased legislation that would have increased production of our own vitally needed oil supply, not only for Americans but for our national defense emergencies as well. The article goes on to say--it poses this question. So were the Democrats and Members of Congress together merely short-sighted with only a few having any real business experience, or were they just ignorant about economics, the fact that the law of supply and demand determines the price of oil commodities such as oil, steel, copper, and lumber? Or were they utterly irresponsible and incompetent in their actions that led us to become dangerously dependent on increasing oil imports from foreign companies? We think, it says, we think it was all of the above. The unintended consequences of the Congress Members' poor judgment and meddling micromanagement of U.S. energy policy is that they actually hurt most of the people that they profess to help: the average American consumer, lower-income workers, and those in the inner cities who can't afford an extra $100 a month to drive to and from work. So that, ladies and gentlemen, is the dilemma we face here in the 110th Congress on a proposal, on plans that do not address supplies, costs, and energy. And that is why I so commend the gentleman from Pennsylvania for the solutions that he's offered over the years as well and his legislation that goes to the issue of supply to increase the amount of energy that the American consumer can attain, to lower the cost of energy for the American family so that they have more disposable income for other needs, and to increase national security to strengthen America to make us more independent of these volatile countries. And with that, I thank the gentleman. Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. I thank the gentleman from New Jersey for his fine comments, and we yield back the balance of our time. [[Page 12265]] ____________________