[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 44 (Monday, April 10, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2458-S2460]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ENERGY CRISIS
Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, for the last number of minutes I have
listened with great interest to the comments of my good friend from
Alaska describing the energy crisis in which our Nation now finds
itself. I use the word ``crisis'' with some reservation because my
guess is most Americans don't think we are in a crisis. They have good
jobs, they probably got raises this year, they feel their jobs are
secure, they have plenty of spendable income, and while they may be
paying 30 or 40 cents or even 50 cents a gallon more for gas this year
than last year, at least the gas is still there and the pump does not
say ``no fuel available,'' they don't sense a crisis.
I traveled home to my State of Idaho this weekend. I drove in out to
Dulles Airport. I got on a Boeing 777 that burns tens of thousands of
gallons of fuel in the course of a day and I paid $70 or $80 more for
each one of my tickets because of the cost of jet fuel. As I traveled
across the country I found the airports full, of Americans and foreign
travelers. Yet no sense of urgency or crisis did they appear to feel.
When I got home to my home State of Idaho and began to travel across
the northern end of the State, I saw that spring is breaking out very
quickly in the marvelous wheat belt of northern Idaho that spreads into
Washington and Oregon over to Pendleton and Wala Wala. It is a highly
productive area that oftentimes yields 100 to 110 bushels of wheat per
acre annually without benefit of irrigation.
What was out on those rolling wheat fields this weekend? Large 4-
wheel-drive tractors, oftentimes pulling 40- and 50-foot spreads of
harrows and springtooths, beginning to till the soil, all of them with
a 250- or 400-horse diesel engine under the hood of that tractor,
burning hundreds of gallons of diesel fuel each day.
This year those farmers will be paying another 50 or 60 cents a
gallon for that fuel. Yet this is just the beginning of the growing
season in our Nation. We are now tilling and planting. We will spend
the summer cultivating and spraying to protect our crops from weeds and
insects. Then in the fall, huge combines will roll out on the fields,
once again driven by diesel fuel--a source of energy that has
historically been so abundant in our country and so relatively
inexpensive.
Today, a river conservation group announced that some rivers in our
country are endangered because they have been dammed. In the past
America has placed large dams across some rivers and put large turbines
in the dams to generate electricity. In a relatively cavalier way, this
group said that my river, my Snake River of Idaho, is the most
endangered. Why? Because of dams. They want the dams removed. Yet those
dams produce hundreds of thousands of kilowatts a year to light the
cities of Portland and Seattle, Boise and many other cities and towns.
And somehow, all in the name of the environment, they cavalierly
suggest we start taking down relatively modern structures that produce
large amounts of inexpensive electricity without burning fossil fuels.
The reason I draw these verbal pictures today is that no one senses a
crisis. This administration, for the last 8 years, has not proposed a
single policy initiative that would produce 1 gallon more domestic
crude oil for our Nation. In fact, the Clinton/Gore administration has
done quite the opposite. They, through punitive environmental policies,
have suggested continually that we close more and more federal land to
any further oil and gas exploration and production. They have even
proposed to take down some of the hydro dams I have talked about, once
again all in the name of the environment.
Now, the Clinton/Gore administration has an energy policy of sorts.
They have talked a lot about solar and biomass which is not a bad idea
as long as we don't kid ourselves into believing they will solve all of
our problems. They have also talked about developing more powerful wind
energy technology to produce more power--not a bad idea either.
But the myth of that kind of technology is that to replace the dams
on the lower Snake River with photovoltaic cells or windmills, the
entire State of Idaho would have to be covered with solar cells just to
offset the difference. My guess is there would be a Vice President who
would reject such an idea because the result would be unsightly. It
would destroy the vistas that are so beautiful in my State right now.
It would be uncomely to the American environmental eye. And I would
agree with him.
But I would not agree with this Vice President, when he stands and
says that he will not tolerate drilling offshore California, offshore
Florida, offshore our East coast, or in the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge. The Clinton/Gore administration has an energy policy of sorts
and the Vice President's desire to take down dams, prevent new oil and
gas exploration, and instead cover my State of Idaho, or Arizona, or
California, with solar cells and wind farms is its hallmark.
The reason I mention these frustrations I have, and I think some
Americans share, is that for a good long while now we have not had a
consistent energy policy for our country that is a combination of all
these things: Research for new technology, conservation so we use less
and gain more from it, while at the same time producing as much of our
own fossil fuel resources as possible.
In just a decade or so, we have increased our electrical generation
by some 200 percent by the use of coal, but we have reduced the sulfur
oxide emissions from coal during that same time by over 20 percent.
Through technology, we are using more fossil fuels more efficiently and
more cleanly and more of our electricity is generated with such fuels.
That is the way you do it. You do not take those kinds of sources off
line; you say those are the sources that can generate the abundance of
power that drives our industries and heats and cools our homes.
So let's be wiser and smarter with our technology than just saying to
a certain political interest, I am with you, we will just take that all
out of production and off line, because it does not fit somebody's
environmental agenda.
Among all the things the rivers conservation group said today, about
taking dams out on the Snake River, there is something they did not
say. They did not say the removal of those dams would destroy the barge
traffic on the Snake-Columbia River system. All of the grain and timber
and paper and coal that now travels the river in barges would have to
move in 18-wheel trucks over the highways of the Pacific Northwest.
Tens of thousands more trucks would have to be employed to haul the
freight and replace the slack water transportation system that would be
destroyed were the dams removed.
Is that an environmentally sound thing to do, to employ thousands and
thousands more trucks, burning hundreds of gallons of diesel fuel a
day? I think not. But, of course, that is not a headline. That does not
make the kind of press they thought they could make by their release
today, all in the name of the environment, all in the name of saving
fish.
We will probably debate, on this floor in the next decade, the
removal of dams, whether in my State or somewhere else, as it relates
to energy policy and protection of the environment and valuable fish. I
hope at that time the American people can be given all the facts. I
think, when given all the facts and when allowed to view all the
alternatives of technology and retrofitting dams, Americans will
understand that abundant, inexpensive hydro power energy, can be had
along with a clean environment and strong salmon runs.
They will also understand the extent to which farmers and ranchers
need abundant, relatively inexpensive supplies of energy to produce the
food and fiber our Nation needs. Those commodities were being planted
in the soils of north Idaho this weekend by the large
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4-wheel-drive diesel tractors pulling 50-foot spreads of equipment I
talked about at the beginning of my statement. They had to use energy
to accomplish it.
I will also discuss legislation, with which we will deal in the near
future, to alleviate some of the concerns about energy policy in the
short term and the cost to the consumer while Congress struggles to
develop a long-term policy to increase energy production in our
country.
I do support legislation that will give us a temporary Federal tax
holiday from energy taxes of the kind thrust upon this country by the
Clinton-Gore administration several years ago when they argued it was
necessary to tax fuel consumption to reduce the deficit structure and
the debt structure of our country.
I did not support the tax then, and several years later I was one of
those who changed the tax from going into the general fund to reduce
the deficit to going into the trust funds of transportation, because up
until this President came to town, we had never taxed the American
people at the gas pump to fund the general fund expenditures of our
Government. We had taxed them only to put it in the transportation
trust funds that build the roads, bridges, and infrastructure all of us
expect and enjoy and the infrastructure on which our economy runs--
goods and services that traffic across America on a daily basis.
One way to give some short-term relief to the American consumer, as
these energy prices have gone up, is to reduce for a short term the
4.3-cent-a-gallon gas tax; take it off the pump; take it away from the
consumer and allow that tax to stay in the consumer's pocket. The
reason is, what does it mean with the current runup in fuel prices?
Matt Lauer said the other day on the ``Today'' show: The energy crisis
may be over in the short term. Meaning the Secretary had been to the
Middle East, he begged and cajoled the producers in the Middle East to
turn the valve on a little bit. Then as the spokesperson for energy
policy in this country, the Secretary announced to the American people
that gas prices were going to come down some maybe. The ``some maybe''
is that maybe they will come down a little bit, but they are still
going to be 40 to 50 cents a gallon higher than they were a year ago.
There is some belief in the marketplace, depending on whom you study
and whom you believe and who has the right information, that the supply
the OPEC nations promised may not be as large as promised and,
therefore, by late summer we could see an average of $2 prices across
this country.
We are going to have to wait and watch for that one. None of us know
what the price of gas will be in July or August, but it is going to be
a lot higher than it was a year ago. It will, in many ways, determine
how the American consumer utilizes his or her free time this year as
they think about a vacation, whether it is in the family car, the van,
or the SUV, or whether it is booking airline tickets to travel across
this country. In all instances, the cost of that leisure time Americans
so enjoy will be substantially more expensive than it was a year ago.
I am talking about leisure time. I am not talking about the weekly
commute, the daily commute. I am not talking about the goods and
services that traffic on America's trucks across our Nation on a daily
basis or the food we buy at the local supermarket, all having been
transported by trucks that are paying substantially more for fuel.
How much more are truckers now paying and how much will they have to
pass through to the consumer as these prices go up?
Diesel fuel costs exceeded $2.10 a gallon in the Northeast this
spring. That is a doubling of cost in about a year. The average
nationwide was about $1.50 a gallon. To the driver of an 18-wheeler
freight truck that traffics America's highways hauling our goods and
services, it will mean an additional $150 to $200 to fill his or her
tank on a daily basis or a 24-hour transportation period. If they are
to stay alive as a business, they have to pass that cost directly
through to the consumer: a little here on food prices; a little there
on the cost of a piece of carpet; a little somewhere else on any of the
goods and services that ultimately the American consumer buys.
Of course, that is the same cost the American farmer is experiencing
when he or she cannot pass it on, because they cannot set the price of
the commodity they will be selling this fall by an extra 10 cents or 15
cents a hundredweight to offset the cost of the diesel fuel and all of
the petrochemicals they will use this year in the production of
America's food sources.
To the consumer--that is you and me--who is commuting to work or
considering a family vacation, another 60, 70, or 80 cents a gallon
could well mean another $10.50 a tankful every time we pull into the
service station. Did they put that in the family budget in January? Did
they really plan to pay $300 or $400 more this year, including their
trips and all of their other expenses? I do not think so. I do not
think anyone considered that. Yet that is what one ought to have
considered if they have a true and honest budget.
That is why, when recently polled, the American people are beginning
to figure out that maybe a 4.3-cent-a-gallon tax reduction for the
short term is a good idea to offset at least some of these new costs in
energy. Eighty percent of them said the Congress of the United States
ought to reduce that tax, at least for the short term, to help
compensate for this runup in energy prices we have seen.
I am talking about short-term policy. It does not produce a gallon
more of domestic crude oil. It does not in any way provide the reliable
sources our country has grown to expect over time in a nation that has
experienced relatively inexpensive energy.
Many of our conservation and environmental friends are saying we
ought to be paying as much as Europe pays or as much as the rest of the
world pays. That is another $1, $2 a gallon, in some instances, and,
therefore, we would rely less upon our vehicles and change our
lifestyles. Some day we might have to do that, but all of those costs
would have to be spread across an economy, and the general cost of
living in this country will go up dramatically.
Mr. President, you and I, as consumers in this economy, will have to
make choices about how we spend our disposable income and how we spend
our income for goods and services. We will have to live a different
lifestyle than the one we currently have, if our attitude is only to
drive up the cost of energy instead of finding conservation sources and
alternative sources and maintaining at least a substantial level of
production of crude oil from our own domestic sources.
Last week, this Senate, by 1 vote, recognized the importance of the
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as a potential producer of 16 billion
barrels of crude oil, production that will be done in a fragile area of
our country but can be done in an environmentally sound way based on
new technologies.
We listen to a Department of Energy that says energy dependence on
foreign sources will go up to 65 percent by the year 2010 if we
continue the same policy, so says Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson.
What he did not say is that to be 65-percent dependent upon foreign
sources will require an estimated 12,000 more huge oil tanker dockings
each year in the United States. Will that be done safely? In most
instances, it will. Will there be a risk with thousands and thousands
of more of these supertankers on our open oceans? Will there be some
kind of environmental problem? You bet there will. In fact, that is the
weak link in the whole process. We have a Vice President who says no
drilling offshore because of environmental fragility, and yet by saying
that, he is advocating thousands of more supertankers on the open
ocean.
Go back and look at the record over the last decade. We have not had
environmental problems with offshore drilling. But every so often, one
of these big tankers runs ashore and spills crude into very fragile
environmental areas.
So, Mr. Vice President, get honest with the American people. Look at
a total package of energy policy that produces onshore in safe
environmental ways, and that looks at some of the alternatives you are
proposing for wind and solar. I do not deny that any of those has
certain value.
I suggest that our energy basket, as a nation, be full of all kinds
of alternatives but at the same time recognize the base: the
conventional forms of energy that drives our agriculture, that
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drives our industry, and that provides us with the kind of lifestyle
Americans expect, and ought to expect, from a free, powerful nation
such as ours.
Let me close with these thoughts because we do not often talk about
national security. We talk about ourselves, our personal security, our
family's security, our food security. Those are the things I have been
talking about for the last 10 or 15 minutes. Those are the things that
come to our minds immediately when we think we have to spend more of
our income on them. Is the food going to be there? Can we live the
lifestyle we have had if energy reasonably available?
Here is what Commerce Secretary Daley recently reported to our
President. In all honesty, this report was on the President's desk, but
he wasn't saying anything about it until Senator Frank Murkowski, the
chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, stood up and said: Mr.
President, you have a report on your desk. You ought to talk about it a
little bit. You ought to tell the American people what your own
Commerce Secretary is telling you.
The President wrote to the Secretary that he concurred with the
Secretary's findings and that current policies should aid in dealing
with our dependence on imported oil. Secretary Daley said in his report
that ``. . . imports of crude oil threaten to impair the national
security of this country.''
What does the Secretary mean? He means we are not as stable as we
were, as strong as we were. We are dependent upon foreign sources for a
lot of our energy. We did not send Secretary Richardson to Houston to
talk to the oil producers of Texas or to Anchorage to talk to the oil
producers of Alaska. We sent him to the most unstable political area in
the world, the Middle East. We begged the sheiks, the producers:
Please, please, give us just a little oil. We fought a war for you. We
saved you. We saved your palaces. We saved your airplanes and your
lifestyles and your limousines. Oh, it cost us 140 American lives, but
we saved you. So would you please give us a little oil? Because you are
really cramping our lifestyle. What you are doing may damage our
economy and put hundreds of thousands of Americans out of work.
I do not think Mr. Richardson said it quite like that, but that is
what he, in essence, was saying. He was admitting that we are
vulnerable. That is why Secretary Daley told the President we are
becoming more dependent on foreign sources, our national security is at
risk.
What did the President say? He said: I accept your recommendation
that existing policies to enhance conservation and limit dependency on
foreign oil ought to be continued. But not one energy proposal has come
forth from this administration, except the current budget which has
large increases in solar cell and wind technology budgets and hardly
any increases for nuclear or hydro technology, hardly any increase in
clean coal technology research that could help the large, coal-fired,
electrical-energy-producing plants of our Nation.
The President was warned this year by the Secretary of Commerce. In
1995, the President was also warned by the Secretary of Commerce that
``. . . The Nation's growing reliance on imports of crude oil and
refined petroleum products threatens the Nation's security because they
increase U.S. vulnerability to oil supply interruption.'' That was in
1995.
In late 1998, the OPEC nations were scratching their heads. They
weren't making any mont with oil prices at $10-a-barrel. So, t decided
to reduce production and drive up prices.
They did just that. We saw crude oil prices, in less than a year, go
from $10 a barrel to $34 a barrel. That is why I am on the floor today.
That is why House Members and Senate Members have been talking about
energy policy in the last several months.
We have known it was coming. We have warned the administration for
years. Six months ago, our colleagues from the Northeast warned of a
runup in home heating fuel prices and what that would do to their
constituents. But has this administration done anything about it? No,
not anything of consequence.
The Vice President has been outspoken about no new offshore drilling.
He has been outspoken about needing higher taxes for fossil fuels so
we would become less reliant upon the internal combustion engine. But
nowhere has he suggested increased domestic oil and gas production.
We will debate this week, and I hope we will pass, a temporary
Federal tax holiday that will allow the American consumer just a little
relief in a time when our Nation's energy policy has failed the
American consume. At the same time Congress will look at both short-
term and long-term policy in an attempt to create more stability in
price and supply.
This is an important issue. We will hear a great deal more about it
in days to come if prices at the pump average $2 a gallon at the height
of the summer driving season.
When I began these comments, I talked about an energy crisis. The
scenario I tried to describe over the last several minutes is that
there is, in fact, a crisis going on in our country. It is relatively
quiet at the moment. But it is a crisis. We aren't producing enough oil
and gas. The White House has no will to build an effective energy
policy and will not tell the American people truth about its failures
in this regard. We need to find ways to increase oil and gas
production, to deal boldly with our neighbors in the Middle East on
matters of their physical security and our energy security. The
administration has not been very firm with our allies. We are there
providing security today, yet we have to beg for our energy.
I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Roberts). The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. AKAKA. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Collins). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
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