[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 121 (Tuesday, October 3, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9783-S9785]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ENERGY
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, energy prices are going up; gasoline
prices are up. I doubt there are many families who do not spend $60 a
month on gasoline. Those who commute, those who have children with
vehicles, a husband and wife working may have two or three vehicles per
family and not be wealthy. They may be paying $100 a month or more for
gasoline. If they were paying $60 a month for gasoline 18 months ago,
they are now paying over $90 a month. If they were paying $100 a month
last year, they are probably paying over $150 a month this year.
That is $50 a month or $30 a month, perhaps more in some families,
withdrawn from the usable income of that family, money with which they
no longer can buy shoes, a new set of tires for their car, to go on a
vacation with their children, take the kids to a ball game, buy shoes
for them to play soccer or basketball, baseball, or volley ball. That
is $50 a month extra of aftertax money that American citizens had 15,
18 months ago and no longer have today. That is because the price of
energy has gone up.
In addition, businesses are facing those same increases. I traveled a
couple of months ago with a full-time truck driver and his wife. I
traveled from north of Birmingham to Clanton to Montgomery and
discussed with them the problems they are facing. They are paying up to
$800 to $1,000 a month extra to operate their truck. They try to pass
it on, which increases the costs down the road, but they are not able
to pass it all on and it is reducing their standard of living. They
have, in fact, less money with which to go to the store and buy
products.
What does that ultimately mean? It means there are going to be fewer
widgets bought, there are going to be fewer shoes bought, there are
going to be fewer new cars bought, fewer new houses bought and many
other things we would like to purchase. We will not be able to purchase
those items because OPEC, through its price-gouging cartel, has fixed
the oil and gas prices and driven them up to an extraordinary degree.
As a result, it is hurting us. We know this. We know the economy
appears to have some slowing. We know that profit margins across the
board have been shrinking significantly, and we know that higher energy
costs are a big reason for that.
I say that because we are talking about some very big issues. If you
do not have money to purchase, let's say you purchase 8 things this
month instead of what you would normally purchase, 10, there is
somebody who would have made those other 2 items, somebody who would
have sold those other 2 items; they may not be able to continue to do
that. What does that do to
[[Page S9784]]
the producing business? It puts stress on them. It can cool off this
robust economy with which we have been blessed for quite a number of
years.
Kofi Annan, the Secretary General of the U.N., wrote an editorial
recently which I was pleased to read. He pointed out how it hurts poor
nations more than wealthy nations, but it hurts wealthy nations, too.
Wealthy nations are hurt when poor nations do not have money to buy
products from us. We sell all over the world. Whatever cools off the
entire world economy cools off the American economy and jeopardizes
jobs.
What caused us to come to this point? I say with confidence that it
is the Clinton-Gore policies, primarily Vice President Al Gore's energy
policies, that have been involved here. The simple fact is that those
policies are driven by and motivated at the deepest level by his
adoption of a radical, no-growth agenda that is playing in his book. He
set it out some years ago. People are astounded when they read that
book because he is deeply revealing of a philosophy that we ought to
reduce spending on energy and that will somehow drive up costs and we
will use less oil, less gas, we will ride bicycles and use solar cells,
and that is how we are going to meet our national energy policy.
The trouble is that solar cells cost 4, 5, 10 times as much as fossil
fuels do to produce energy. Who is going to pay for that? Working
Americans are going to pay for that while some elite people think it is
a cool idea and for which they are not paying the price. They can
afford to pay it perhaps. We are into that mood now. This radical
agenda is demonstrated by the policies that have been carried out
systematically since this administration took office.
It has been steady, and it has been regular. They have not said our
policy is to raise prices. They are too clever for that. They are not
going to allow that spin to get about. What have they done against the
consistent opposition of Members in this body who have warned over and
over that reducing production of American fuels was going to lead us to
a crisis? What have they done? They have opposed drilling in the ANWR
region of Alaska which has huge reserves equal to 30 years of the
production in Saudi Arabia. This one little area amounts to the size of
Dulles Airport. It is a very small area with huge reserves. They vetoed
legislation that would have allowed us to produce oil and gas to help
meet our needs. Over vigorous debate in this Senate and a strong
majority vote, it was vetoed by the Clinton-Gore administration.
What else? They steadfastly oppose nuclear power. France has gone
from 60 percent of their power nuclear to 80 percent. Industrialized
nations realize it is the cleanest, safest of all sources of energy
with unlimited capacity to produce electricity, with no air pollution--
virtually no air pollution, and only a small amount of waste that we
can easily store in the Nevada desert. Oh, no, President Clinton and
Vice President Gore vetoed the ability for us to store that waste in
the Nevada desert, therefore, helping shut down our nuclear energy. We
have not brought on a nuclear plant in over 20 years in this country.
We are denying ourselves that capacity to produce energy. There are
huge reserves of natural gas in the Rocky Mountain areas. Natural gas
is the cleanest burning of all our fossil fuels. All our electric-
generating plants today are natural gas plants. We are hitting a crisis
in the production of natural gas. They refuse to allow those Federal
lands in the Rocky Mountain areas, almost all of it owned by the
Federal Government, to produce natural gas, which isn't a dangerous
fuel to produce. It doesn't pour oil all out on the ground; it is an
evaporative gas. It is safe to produce. Certainly we could do that.
They are opposed to drilling offshore. In fact, Vice President Gore,
during his campaigning in New Hampshire, promised not only to not
approve any additional offshore drilling of natural gas but to consider
rolling back existing leases that have already been issued.
How are we going to meet our energy needs for natural gas if we
cannot produce it? There are many other areas where, through
regulation, we basically shut off coal as a viable option for expanding
our energy needs. In fact, even though we are much more efficient than
we have ever been with electric energy, we need more. The projections
are that we will have a substantial increase in demand even though we
are improving our efficiency steadily. So that is the problem we are
facing.
The problem is that when OPEC realized our demand was increasing, and
the world demand was increasing, and our own domestic production was
decreasing 14 percent, while demand was going up 18 to 20 percent, they
were able to reduce production, force the price up to exorbitant
levels, and make themselves rich. In fact, it was a political decision
by governmental leaders to force up the price. It was not even a free
market decision. It was a political decision by the leaders of these
oil-producing nations because of our failure to produce energy and
because we have become dependent on their oil. So they have been able
to demand what they want to in price. Our politicians lost to their
politicians. Their politicians beat our politicians.
And who is paying the price? The American citizen, when he goes to
the gas pump, when he buys his heating oil, when he goes and buys a
product. It is more expensive today to buy that product than it was
before because of increased gasoline prices in the whole production
system. That is what has happened. We have been taken to the cleaners.
To me it is as if we put a tax on the gasoline, but instead of taxing
gasoline 50, 60 cents a gallon extra where the revenue comes to
Washington so it at least can be spent in the United States, it is, in
effect, a 50-, 60-cent tax that goes to Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and
the Middle East. The OPEC cartel gets our tax. They are taxing our
wealth and sending it abroad.
This has the capacity to kill the economic growth this Nation has
been experiencing. It has the capacity to drain our wealth to the
degree that this economy could slow down. It could even go into
recession because we have done nothing to deal with it. We have done
nothing. The only thing, in the long run, that we can do is to make
sure we produce what we have.
We have virtually unlimited reserves of natural gas and oil in the
United States--certainly for decades to come. There are myths that we
do not have enough. We have large reserves. We should have been
producing those more effectively. But the policies of this
administration have been to reduce our production.
And as night follows day, the price is going to go up. It threatens
not only the pocketbook of a mother who is trying to now get by--she
was paying $100 a month for the family's gasoline; now she is paying
$150 a month for the family's gasoline. She cannot buy things at the
store she used to buy. And the producers of those products are now
going to have to lay off workers because people are not buying those
products at the rate they were previously buying them.
This is not an itty-bitty issue. This is a tremendous issue for our
country. I hope it will be discussed tonight in the debate. I hope it
will be made a part of this campaign. I believe, with an absolute
conviction, that if we allow these international greedy producing
nations to jerk us around, to take money from the average mother and
father and working American when they go to the gas pump, having their
money sent to those nations, they can hurt us badly. It hurts a lot of
people.
I pumped gas a few months ago and washed people's windshields. I
talked to them about the costs they were facing. I talked to a young
lady in her early twenties. She was going to college 3 days a week. The
college she attended was 30 miles up the road. She talked about how
much her gas bill was. She was trying to save money for tuition. Her
car was not a new car. She said she would like to have a new car, but
she could not afford it. That extra cost was coming out of her pocket.
This is a real issue. It hurts our families. They have less money in
their pocket and in the family budget because it has to be spent on
gasoline. It is hurting businesses. Their profits are down. Home
building is down.
What will happen in the future? I don't know. But if we do not get in
this ballgame, if we do not challenge OPEC and figure out a way to
break that cartel, and if we do not increase our own production of
energy, we will have
[[Page S9785]]
what we have had numerous times before; and that is, a recession driven
by increased energy costs. What a tragedy that will be. It should not
happen.
Our projections are and our needs as a nation are to continue this
prosperity, to continue the surplus we have been able to generate in
this Government, and to pay down our debt and to be able to do some
things we wish we could have done before. This is a glorious time for
us.
I believe we have to take strong action. I have been frustrated that
this administration remains steadfast in blocking, time and again, any
step to increase our production of energy. And that has no more
consequence but one: When you reduce production, it will drive up
costs.
I thank the Chair and, again, express my appreciation for his fine
remarks on national defense.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
____________________