[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 39 (Monday, April 3, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2034-S2037]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      ENERGY PRICES AND GAS TAXES

  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I thought I would come to the floor today 
to speak again about energy and the current energy cost crisis in which 
this Nation finds itself.
  Many of us have been to the floor numerous times over the last 
several weeks comparing our current situation and the tremendous runup 
in gas prices with this administration's lack of an energy policy and 
how they correlate--or if they relate.
  I have said, most critically, over the last several weeks, the only 
policy in town is the ``tin cup'' policy: Give our Secretary of Energy 
a tin cup, and send him to foreign oil-producing nations to beg for a 
little crude.
  He has been begging. He wanted a lot more. He begged for 2 million 
barrels a day in additional production. He got considerably less than 
that. I think it is now a wait-and-see: How does this level out? What 
do the markets say? What is the consumer going to pay at the gas pump 
in July? My guess is, the consumer is going to be paying near $2 a 
gallon for regular gasoline, depending on where they are in the 
country.
  The reason for this situation is what I would like to talk about this 
afternoon. Congress can respond in some ways. But we cannot increase 
oil production in the short term because, largely, we have had a policy 
of reducing oil production in this country for the last two decades, 
and it takes time to bring that production back on line. A great many 
people out there are opposed to increasing domestic production--all in 
the name of the environment or all in opposition to using hydrocarbons 
or some other issue that has helped shape the Clinton/Gore energy 
policy over the last 8 years.
  When the Clinton-Gore administration came to town in 1993, its 
announced intention was to drastically alter the way the Nation used 
energy, especially fossil fuels. The President and the Vice President 
determined that a broad-based Btu tax would force us away from coal and 
oil and natural gas to renewable energies, such as solar and wind and 
biomass. That objective has remained the hallmark of this 
administration's energy policy--until now; that is, until the day 
before yesterday, when the President was blaming the Congress, saying 
we had failed to reauthorize the Strategic Petroleum Reserve--the salt 
domes in the Gulf of Mexico, where we have stored about 570 million 
barrels of crude oil.
  The President promised his Btu tax would raise nearly $72 billion 
over 5 years, from 1994 to 1998, and marketed it as fair, helpful to 
the environment, that it would force down our dependence on foreign 
oil, and that it would have trivial impacts on consumers.
  Congress did not pass the Btu tax because we thought it would be 
damaging to the consumer. And over the years we have become 
increasingly more dependent upon foreign oil. I doubt the President can 
declare a victory because he was unable to suck $72 billion out of the 
back pockets of Americans while at the same time he advanced policies 
that slowed down crude oil production in our country.
  In fact, the Btu tax would have unfairly punished energy-intensive 
States and industries. Estimates by the American Petroleum Institute 
and the National Association of Manufacturers predicted the tax would 
hurt exports, reduce GDP by $38 billion, and destroy 700,000 American 
jobs.
  That is why the Congress finally refused to pass the tax, over the 
President's and the Vice President's objection. Vice President Gore and 
President Clinton claimed the tax was needed to balance the budget and 
fund large new spending programs to offset the negative impact of the 
tax. They also claimed that use of crude oil imports would be reduced 
by 400,000 barrels a day.
  At that time, DOE's own projections predicted--this is 
the President's own Department of Energy--that the tax would shave oil 
import growth by less than one-tenth in 10 years. DOE also predicted 
that by the year 2000, Americans would depend on foreign oil for three-
fifths of their total crude oil requirements.

  So quite the opposite was going on inside the administration. The 
President was talking politics, and his own Department of Energy was 
analyzing the matter and coming up with some very interesting facts.
  The American Petroleum Institute, in testimony, said:

     . . . even if imports were to fall by the full 400,000 
     barrels a day claimed by the Administration, the cost of $34 
     billion in lost GDP is excessive relative to other 
     alternatives for improving energy security. Using the 
     Administration's optimistic predictions, the cost of the Btu 
     tax works out to about $230 per barrel.

  Of course, that would have been devastating to an economy that is 
highly dependent upon fossil fuels that not only make our cars and 
trucks go, but feed the whole petrochemical industry which manufactures 
carpeting, herbicides, pesticides, insecticides, and plastics, all of 
those things that make up our very large, integrated economy--
therefore, the 700,000 estimated jobs lost if we were to raise the 
price of crude oil to $230 a barrel.
  In the end, Congress did the right thing; we refused the President's 
and the Vice President's policy and said it would simply create havoc 
in our economy. Congress did agree to raise taxes on transportation 
fuels by 4.3 cents--the first time the Congress has actually put a tax 
on fuel--and then put it into the general fund of the Treasury. Of 
course, it was argued to be a deficit reduction tax.
  A couple of years ago, we finally pulled that tax out of the general 
fund and put it back in the surface transportation fund, where all 
highway fuels taxes have gone historically, to fund the construction of 
roads, highways, and bridges.
  The Clinton-Gore administration's obsession with fossil fuel use 
reduction has actually put us in the position we find ourselves today. 
The President, on March 7, 2000, at the White House said:


[[Page S2035]]


       Americans should not want them [oil prices] to drop to $12 
     or $10 a barrel again because that. . .takes our mind off our 
     business, which should be alternative fuels, energy 
     conservation, reducing the impact of all this on global 
     warming.

  He is referring again to the cost of fuel. He simply said it would 
move us away from a desire for alternative fuels if we were to see low 
gasoline and fuel prices. Isn't that terrible? The alternative fuels 
were synthetics, highly subsidized by as much as $25 to $30 a barrel by 
tax money and, of course, alternative energy and electricity by solar 
voltaic cells and by wind machines.

  The only problem is, I have not yet seen a car, or a truck for that 
matter, going down the road with a solar cell on the top of it. I don't 
think they run very well that way. Somehow the President and the Vice 
President, in their hatred of fossil fuels, have forgotten that point.
  That is kind of an overview of 1993 to the present. What has happened 
during this administration? Domestic oil production is down 17 percent, 
and our crude oil consumption is up 14 percent. Dependence on foreign 
sources of crude oil has risen to 56 percent of our total crude 
requirements. In 1973, during the Arab oil embargo, our dependency was 
only 36 percent. I can remember that time.
  I am sure some listening this afternoon will remember the gas lines, 
the frustration and even the violence that occurred when Americans 
found out for the first time there wasn't an abundance of energy. There 
was a shortage. They couldn't get what they needed for their commuting 
or the running of their businesses.
  Since that time, while this country has struggled to put a policy 
together, other policies of our Government, largely environmental 
policies--some for the right reason--have progressively reduced our 
overall ability to produce and use domestic energy sources. That, 
coupled with the fixation of this administration on eliminating fossil 
fuels, now brings us to that point where we are now over 56-percent 
dependent.
  We all remember in the early 1990s we were fighting a war in the 
Middle East. Why? Well, to help some of our allies. Those allies were 
large producers of crude oil, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. We were fighting 
Iraq because the Iraqis had crossed the border and started the war. In 
the end, as they retreated and we were victorious, they set fire to 
many oil wells in Kuwait. We remember that phenomenal picture from the 
Middle East of black clouds of smoke as those oil wells burned. Many of 
our oil field workers went in and put the fires out for our neighbors.
  Now, what is the irony of that? Today, the very enemy we fought is 
selling over 700,000 barrels of crude oil each day to the United 
States. Something is wrong about that. Something is wrong about an 
absence of foreign policy that has allowed that to happen. That is the 
reality of where we are.
  Americans grow angry when they understand this administration only 
has excuses and solar cells and windmills for an energy policy. They 
understand that the Clinton/Gore foreign policy, working hand in glove 
with its non-energy policy, now tolerates that we buy Iraqi oil.
  Of course, we are not sure where that money goes and what it is used 
for. Is Saddam Hussein being allowed to build another war machine with 
the millions of dollars a day that pour out of the pockets of our 
consumers into the treasury of Iraq? The Clinton-Gore administration, 
while making much of increased appliance efficiency, greater use of 
renewables from biomass and other ideas, ignores a very fundamental 
fact. A large part of our energy use cannot be addressed by these 
measures.
  I am not suggesting we not pursue new technologies and alternatives. 
Where a solar cell fits, put one up; where wind farms work, we ought to 
have them. We ought to be striving to build the efficiencies of the new 
wind turbines. At the same time, those will not fuel a nation that 
produces the kind of growth we produce and builds its efficiencies 
based on flexible transportation and the ability to send our people and 
our products in an integrated way around the Nation and around the 
world.
  The administration's failure to encourage domestic oil production and 
production of coal and natural gas has led us to this point of near 
crisis. This Congress will engage in the very near future in debating 
the issue to see what we can do in the short term to help solve the 
pressure being placed on our consumers, but we also will be looking at 
long-term policy to see if we can't begin to produce more of our own 
resources again.

  For example, if we have the right tax incentives and if we were able 
and willing to build a floor for the small 15-barrel-or-less producer, 
we are not talking about the major oil companies. We are talking 
farmers and ranchers and private property owners spread all across the 
mid to lower south central part of our country and southwest that are 
known as stripper well producers. Their break even is about $17 a 
barrel. When gas oil crude prices went to $10 a barrel last year, many 
of those wells were shut in. If we would help encourage that production 
once again, we could produce well over a million barrels of oil back 
into our economy that is not producing today.
  I think that is tremendously good policy, if the tradeoff is putting 
money in Saddam Hussein's hand to build a new war machine versus 
helping subsidize or provide incentives for the small producer across 
this country to bring back on line a million barrels a day of domestic 
crude oil.
  The administration has refused to acknowledge the vast oil reserves 
and gas reserves we have offshore and in ANWR, the Alaska National 
Wildlife Refuge. We know we can explore and produce in these areas in 
an environmentally sound way. ANWR is an area about the size of Dulles 
Airport relative to the whole State of Virginia. Those opposed to 
exploring ANWR would have you believe that if we drilled inside Dulles 
Airport that it would pollute the whole State of Virginia.
  How foolish can some of these people get who make those kinds of 
arguments? The President listened. The Vice President listened. They 
have refused to promote a policy that would allow safe and sound 
drilling to provide the energy for our country.
  The Clinton-Gore administration recently announced a ban on future 
exploration for most of the Federal Outer Continental Shelf through the 
year 2012. That is where the real big oil reserves are left in this 
country, offshore. I know we all remember the oil spills of 20 years 
ago on the coast of California. What no one is talking about is the 
tremendous new technology that has been applied to the gulf and other 
areas where drilling goes on, where wells don't leak today and blowouts 
don't happen. If they do occur accidentally, they are immediately shut 
down. All of those technologies are in existence. I think anyone who 
has looked at the record of drilling in the Gulf of Mexico recognizes 
that it is clean and it is sound. It is extracting the resource and is 
having almost a zero impact on the environment of the gulf area and its 
coast lines.
  In 1996, the administration resorted to the little used 1906 
Antiquities Act. The President argued it was a major emergency and he 
had to lock up these millions of acres in Utah. What he was really 
locking up, for fear that it might be mined, was 23 billion tons of 
low-sulfur, high-value coal that could have been used to generate 
electricity in our country today and well into the future.
  All of these areas that would have been mined--and they were a very 
small part of the over 1 million acres that the President locked up in 
the Grand Starcase/Escalante National Monument--would have been 
reclaimed in a natural way because that is part of the environmental 
policy of our country today. If you are going to disturb the land, once 
you have done so, you must put it back in as near a natural way as is 
possible.
  The Clinton-Gore administration has vetoed legislation that would 
have opened the Coastal Plain of the remote Alaskan national wildlife 
reserve. It is estimated that there are 15 billion barrels of domestic 
crude oil up there.
  The administration also has ignored a report prepared by the National 
Petroleum Council, requested by the Energy Secretary, explaining how 
the Nation can increase production and use of domestic natural gas 
resources from about 22 trillion cubic feet per year to more than 30 
trillion cubic feet per

[[Page S2036]]

year over the next 10 to 12 years. In other words, we could add nearly 
10 trillion cubic feet of new domestic gas to our energy mix.
  That would allow the Northeast, which is tremendously dependent upon 
oil for space heat, to convert to a much cleaner fuel, a much more 
efficient fuel, a fuel of natural gas, and bring down their dependency 
on oil fuel for home heat and space heat.
  The Clinton-Gore administration has shown little interest in solving 
our domestic energy problems until now, as the foreign oil producers 
have forced crude up to over $30 a barrel last month. Gasoline prices, 
last week, were $2 a gallon in San Francisco.
  Mr. President, I argue that the Clinton-Gore administration has acted 
in other ways designed to force us away from the use of a reliable, 
available, relatively inexpensive fossil fuel, and the only argument 
the President had this weekend during his radio address was: Congress, 
you are to blame.
  Yet I have listed numerous vetoes or efforts to block our 
administrative and rulemaking processes that have actually blocked 
production in our country. That is why many of us have suggested to 
this President that he needs to step back and work with Congress to 
define a national energy policy that promotes increased domestic crude 
oil and natural gas production, while looking at all of the other 
alternatives we have and the new technologies, especially clean coal 
technology. Nothing should be done in isolation of the other. It ought 
to well be a total package that we would want to work on.
  My distinguished friend from West Virginia, Senator Robert Byrd, 
spoke eloquently last week on the subject. I want to add a few thoughts 
to his comments. The U.S. has the world's largest demonstrated coal 
reserve base and more than 90 percent of our total fossil fuel energy 
reserves are in coal. Yet this administration has downplayed new coal-
burning and clean coal technologies--the very kind of thing we ought to 
want to bring online as much of our electricity is generated by coal, 
and as we define and refine the science of global warming and attempt 
to understand the cause or causes and how to respond. At present rates 
of consumption our coal will last for up to 270 years. In other words, 
we blessed with huge coal reserves. Yet this administration's lack of 
policy has forced us into near crisis. Coal is used to generate 56 
percent of our electrical supply and about 88 percent of the Midwest's 
electrical needs. Coal use for electrical power has risen more than 250 
percent since 1970, while sulfur dioxide emissions has decreased by 21 
percent due to technology and, in part, due to some of the money we put 
into research sponsored here that has moved that kind of technology.
  Now, as my colleagues think about all of this, here is a quote I 
found by the President over the weekend. Remember, I was talking about 
coal. I was talking about our tremendous need for production of 
electricity. Here is what the President was saying over the weekend:

       I think to a much greater degree, then, we have a 
     commitment to the notion that we can improve the environment 
     while we grow the economy--

  None of us disagrees with that. But he goes on,

     . . . that is what the whole global warming issue is about. 
     All over the world, there are people who just don't believe 
     that you can get rich unless you put more stuff in the air 
     that heats up the earth. They think you have got to burn more 
     coal and oil in the digital economy. That is not true.

  Mr. President, what you have said isn't true. What runs the digital 
economy of our country? What turns on the computer? What fires up the 
Internet? A solar cell? A wind mill? I don't think so, Mr. President. 
It is the abundance of electrical power.
  Let me repeat: Coal use for electrical power has risen more than 250 
percent since 1970, and the sulfur dioxide emissions during that time 
have actually decreased by 21 percent. Furthermore, the gas the 
Clinton/Gore administration blames for global warming, carbon dioxide, 
isn't a poisonous gas and isn't regulated under the Clean Air Act.

  The point I am making is simply this: An abundant economy--the kind 
we are experiencing today that has us at or near full employment--is a 
direct result of an abundance of relatively inexpensive energy. The 
history of our country has been based on the availability of energy. 
That is why we are the wealthy Nation we are today. Look at the rest of 
the countries of the world; as they strive to grow and provide an 
economy for their people, they develop their energy base.
  My wife and I and a group of business people from Idaho were in China 
in December. The skies were so dark there in Beijing that you could 
hardly see because they don't have the clean coal technology we have. 
Yet they are growing very rapidly and they need an abundant source of 
energy. They are building dams and nuclear reactors, and they are 
searching for a cleaner way to burn their coal because they know if 
they are to grow and provide their country and their citizens with 
opportunity, they are going to have to use coal to generate electric 
energy. President Clinton, I don't think you really get it. Do you 
think this new hi-tech, digital economy happens out there on its own? 
It is, in fact, a product of a nation who has an abundant energy base. 
In November of 1999, the EPA sued several coal-burning utilities, 
claiming they had made major modifications in their facilities without 
applying for new resource review permits. Utilities maintained that 
these were modifications made during routine maintenance. They were 
still providing high-quality energy with less emissions. Why is EPA out 
there suing at this moment, at a time when there is a deficiency of 
energy in this country and we ought to be promoting more? Certainly, we 
ought to be promoting it with all of the newest technology. But you 
don't do that by suing; you do that with policies that encourage people 
to do the right thing.
  Lastly--and this is the irony of this administration which likes to 
think it has an energy policy--this morning, Secretary of Interior 
Bruce Babbitt is out looking for a dam to tear down. Eight years ago, 
he said he would like to knock down a really big dam while he is 
Secretary of Interior. Really big dams produce a lot of big power, Mr. 
Secretary, or haven't you figured that out? Big renewable power, 
hydropower. It doesn't have emissions; it is very clean. Yes, our 
fathers and forefathers chose to dam some rivers to generate 
electricity. Those were efficient ways to do it then, and they are 
finding out they are environmentally sound ways to do it now. Yet Mr. 
Babbitt wants to tear down one, two, or three dams, or I guess as many 
as he can get his hands on, or find a policies that make it difficult 
to keep these dams running.
  Why don't we simply work to improve those dams? Why don't we make 
them more efficient by adding new technology to the dams, putting new 
turbines in them that are friendly and more efficient. It is beginning 
to happen nationwide. Why should we deny our country 20 percent of its 
energy base, or bad mouth that energy source, or attempt to tear it 
down? No, what I am trying to say this afternoon in this collection of 
thoughts is, Mr. President, I don't think you get away by just pointing 
a finger at a single action of the Congress and saying you didn't give 
me emergency authority over the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, so 
therefore our energy crisis is your fault, Congress.
  I think I have named 15 or 20 issues on which this administration has 
taken a strong anti-energy, anti-production approach toward dealing 
with energy policy in this country. Mr. President, we can solve our 
energy problems. We are a marvelously creative Nation. But we don't do 
it by simply saying no. We do it by producing where we can produce, by 
creating less dependency on foreign sources, while at the same time 
building the kind of science and technology that allows us ever 
increasing energy efficiency and environmental improvement. I think in 
the coming years we are going to debate the global climate change 
issue. Getting rid of hydrocarbons isn't the answer. Getting rid of 
fossil fuels isn't the answer. It is finding better and more efficient 
ways to use them, and then allowing our technology to be sold and 
transferred to the world at large. If our clean coal technology were at 
use in China today, China would be a healthier, more environmentally 
clean place to live.

  Someday they will be able to afford that technology, and they will 
want it. It is our businesses and our companies that develop it that 
ought to be encouraged to sell it to them. That is

[[Page S2037]]

called leadership. It simply isn't crawling into a cave and getting a 
candle to light your way and heat your space. It is building an 
efficient system recognizing that all sources of energy ought to be at 
play at this moment so that we can truly develop an abundant energy 
package for ourselves and our Nation's future. Thank you Mr. President.

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