[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

[[Page S2459]]

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

[[Page S2460]]

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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