[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 57 (Tuesday, May 1, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H1707-H1713]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  2000
 REBUTTAL COMMENTS ON HEALTH CARE, THE PRESIDENT'S SPEECH ON DEFENSE, 
                         AND ENERGY IN THE WEST

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Pence). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 3, 2001, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. McInnis) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, once again I want to spend a little time 
with an evening chat. I want to discuss this evening a couple of 
issues, but first of all I will rebut a couple of the comments that 
were made in the last hour.
  As my colleagues understand the rules on the House floor, the 
previous speakers were allowed to speak 1 hour unrebutted, and now I 
have an opportunity to speak for an hour. It was not my intent when I 
came over here this evening to rebut this, but some of these statements 
were so strong that certainly my colleagues deserve to hear what the 
other side of the story is.
  It reminded me of a courtroom, one time in a closing argument where 
the statement was made that if you have ever been a parent you 
understand that if there is a problem between two children and you 
separate the children, each child comes up and tells you an entirely 
different version of what happened. And it is not that either child is 
intending to lie; it is that through the eyes of those two different 
children, they have seen different versions. And I think that is what 
happens here.
  It is not necessarily between Republicans and Democrats, although 
clearly there is a line drawn between the moderate and conservatives 
versus the liberal side of the Democratic party, but

[[Page H1708]]

I think what we heard in the preceding hour certainly reflects the more 
liberal side, the left side, of the Democratic Party. I do not think it 
is the mainstream of America, and I do not think it represents the 
mainstream in this body.
  I mean, how many of my colleagues will turn their backs on the 
elderly? Give me a break. There is nobody in these Chambers that 
intentionally turn their backs on the elderly. That is an exact 
statement that was made here just a few minutes ago, that our 
President, through his policy, turns his back on the elderly. As 
strongly as I disagreed with President Clinton in the previous 
administration, I never accused him of turning his back on the elderly.
  It is these kinds of emotionally driven comments that are really 
nothing but, in my opinion, an effort to have emotion drive the issue 
instead of facts. We cannot come to a good solution if the means to get 
to that solution is driven entirely on emotion. That is exactly why 
this country has got financial problems; it is exactly why this country 
got into a deficit, because time after time after time Members of this 
body go out, and in their leadership strategy they lead the public by 
emotion; and then they leave it to the other Members to try to dig out 
what the facts are.
  We see it out in the West. We see it all the time in the West on the 
public lands, where emotion drives the issue, not the science of the 
forests, not the science of the use of the water, not the science of 
using dams for hydropower, but the emotion of it. All the good of a 
hydroelectric power plant in the West can be overcome by simply tying 
it to some kind of degradation of Yellowstone National Park.
  So what I would say to my colleagues that just preceded me speaking 
is, come on, let us talk about the facts. Next time I would be happy to 
join those colleagues. Bring a pencil and a calculator and let us see 
how we are going to afford exactly what they prescribed this evening.
  Of course all of us in this country are having problems with pricing 
on prescription drugs. Of course, everybody that I would run a survey 
on and asked if they would like help on their prescription drugs are 
going to say yes. Anytime somebody offers to help pay our obligations 
with others' money, not our own money, with someone else's money, well, 
we are happy to accept that.
  The proposals that were being made this evening by these preceding 
speakers, they are emotional. They sound wonderful. How can you lose? 
Somebody else gets to pick up the tab. And by the way, anybody that 
says maybe we ought to do the addition, maybe we ought to figure out 
the bottom line, that people will pay more and that we will have the 
government interfering more, maybe we ought to take a look at that. But 
the minute we say that, we get a comment from the left side that says, 
well, they are turning their backs on the elderly.
  And it is some of these very same types of comments, or in my 
experience these types of representatives from that side of the party, 
that show up here and talk about how we turn our backs on education or 
we are ignoring the children or we do not care about this or we do not 
care about that. I have yet, I have yet to find one Congressman, 
Democrat or Republican, or independent, I have yet to find one 
Congressman that does not like education. I have yet to find one 
Congressman that intentionally or with any kind of design whatsoever 
turns their back on the elderly.

  There are a lot of hard-working focused people in this body, none of 
which by the way, in my opinion, deserve to have the label put on them 
that they are turning their back on the elderly. And the same thing 
applies for the administration, this administration as well as the 
previous administration.
  As I mentioned earlier, my disagreements with the Clinton 
administration were clear, and in my opinion they were very strong 
disagreements with the Clinton administration; but I never went to that 
administration and said they turned their back on the elderly or they 
turned their back on this or they turned their back on that.
  So I think, really, in order for us to get to a solution in regards 
to prescription and health care in this country, we need to put some of 
this emotional rhetoric aside and sit down at a table. And when my 
colleagues come to that table, they had better bring a pencil and a 
calculator, because we cannot put together a wish list without figuring 
out, number one, who pays for it; number two, how we are going to pay 
for it; and, number three, what are the honest expectations of that 
cost.
  Take a look, for example, when Social Security was first conceived 
back in the 1930s. It was never intended to be a full retirement. Do 
not kid yourself. Social Security was never intended by the people of 
this country to be a full retirement package. Take a look at where we 
are today. Today, it is an expectation. It is an entitlement program 
for full retirement. That is what some people expect. As a result, some 
of us on this floor continue to give and give and give; and yet this 
system now, for future generations, for our young people, and if my 
colleagues want to talk about somebody we need to pay attention to, 
look at this young generation and try to explain to them with a 
straight face that there is going to be Social Security dollars around.
  One of our problems today is we pay out $118,000 for people on Social 
Security today. For a couple we pay out $118,000 more on average than 
they put in the system. Now, how does that work? It does not work very 
well.
  Later this evening I am going to talk a little about energy. You 
cannot continue to tell the consumer out there that their prices are 
not going to increase on the demand side and pay escalating prices on 
the supply side. That is exactly what is happening with the kind of 
calculations and the figuring with these promises that are being made 
about health care in this country.
  Of course we want to improve health care; but dadgummit, we have to 
be straight with constituents. We have got to be straight with the 
American people and tell them what it is going to cost. This does not 
come free. It is so easy to stand on this House floor, it is so easy to 
stand on this floor and make promises about things we are going to give 
away. We may not use the word free, but that is the implication. We 
will handle all the prescription care problems of this country; we can 
finance all the priorities of this country. Well, let me tell my 
colleagues, we would not have enough money in the world to finance the 
priorities. Because every time we would start paying out, for every 
five priorities out, five more would jump in. My colleagues know that, 
and I know that.
  And when we talk about things like health care, when we talk about 
things like the military, when we talk about things like education, 
when we talk about specific projects in our districts, when we are 
parochial about our districts, we have an obligation to be honest about 
the cost. We can look at any substantial entitlement program that this 
government has, any one of them, pick it randomly. Any one my 
colleagues want to pick, I can promise that at the time it was put into 
place the costs that were attributed to it, this is what it is going to 
cost the taxpayer, those costs were minuscule as compared to the actual 
costs. Here is the cost they promise; here is the cost we end up with.
  It is the history of a Democratic government in a body like this, 
because the incentive is not to be straight with the taxpayers and the 
citizens of this country. The temptation is to go out there and promise 
everything for nothing. And that is exactly the problem today we now 
face in California. In California, the leadership out there, the 
elected leadership and the appointed leadership out there promised the 
citizens of the State of California, look, we do not have to take any 
risk of exploration; let us do not allow any generation plants in this 
State; let us not allow people to drill in this State; let us do not 
encourage conservation.
  Now, they did not say, let us not encourage conservation, the 
practice they followed discouraged conservation. Because no matter how 
much energy was wasted, the price did not go up. It was capped. No 
matter how much the electricity cost, the generators sold it, citizens 
did not have to worry about it, the State capped it for them. Well, 
that is an empty promise, in my opinion, just the same as some of the 
promises or commitments that were made

[[Page H1709]]

this evening. Those promises are empty if in the long term we do not 
have the dollars or the resources to provide for those.

  And based on the statements I heard here in the last hour, if we 
stacked up the cost of those commitments or those promises that were 
made by these speakers, and we put it on our calculators, first of all 
we would have to have a calculator with a screen that long. We are 
talking about trillions. We are not talking about billions; we are 
talking about trillions of dollars. So if my colleagues can figure out 
how to pay for that, that is what they should do first, then make their 
promises second.
  But what they do is they make the promise, and this is the typical 
program in the Federal Government, make the promise, put the program 
into place, then pass the cost of it on to the next generation. That is 
exactly what has happened here, year after year after year. You get to 
give out the freebies, you get to be the Santa Claus, but the next 
generation has to pay for it because my colleagues were clever enough 
in their legislation to deflect the true cost, to not admit the true 
cost, or to defer the true cost to some point in the future. That is 
why we have financial problems.
  Being a Congressman does not require a lot of education. All we have 
to be is a citizen; we have to be a certain age. But we are not 
required to have a college degree. In fact, it was intentionally 
designed that way. The reason it was designed that way is our 
forefathers, justifiably and correctly, thought we wanted people from 
all walks of life to represent the fine people of this country. But if 
we could redo it, I think I would go back and say, look, every one of 
us ought to take business 101 or accounting 101. It ought to be a 
fundamental requirement before we sit in these chairs. Because what we 
tend to find happening is there are a lot more promises made than what 
are funded. Then when they are not funded, we hear comments like I just 
heard a half an hour ago: they are turning their backs on the elderly. 
And I have heard it on education: they do not care about kids; 
education is not a priority with them.
  Again, let me point out that I do not know one Congressman, Democrat 
or Republican, I do not know one for which education is not a priority. 
It is a priority with everybody in these Chambers. So to make the 
statements like were made in this preceding hour, in my opinion, are 
totally unjustified and do not get us at all towards the kind of 
solution that we need to come towards in order to help bring those 
prescription prices within range of the average American so they not 
only can afford it, but they have access to it.
  I want to visit about another issue before I get very deep into the 
subject of energy. I think the President today made a very, very 
significant speech to the American people. The President talked about 
how since the Cold War the defense mechanisms of this country have 
changed. Our military status, our defense in this country, has to be 
very fluid. It has to change with time. There are a few facts that are 
very clear. Number one, it is not only the United States, China, and 
Russia that have nuclear capabilities. Now we have got India, we have 
got Pakistan, we have Israel, we have Iran, we have North Korea. I 
mean, the spread of nuclear weapons is a fact.
  Now, no matter how many millions of barrels of oil we promise the 
North Koreans, they are going to continue to develop nuclear weapons. 
The nuclear weapon kind of shows you are the big guy on the block. 
There is a lot of countries that want those weapons because it gives 
them leverage in world negotiations. So we should not be naive and 
think that these countries are not going to develop these weapons. I 
think what we have to do is assume that in fact these countries will 
develop these nuclear weapons, the ones that do not already have them. 
In fact, the ones that have them probably will, in many cases, like 
with China and like with Iran, assist other countries in acquiring 
these nuclear weapons.
  So is the answer to build more nuclear weapons? I do not think so. I 
think our country has adequate military supplies of our weapons. The 
answer is figure out a device, figure out a missile defense. How do we 
stop those nuclear weapons? We are not going to stop it by trying to 
convince these people they should not own them. Of course they are 
going to own them. They will do anything they can to get their hands on 
them. What we need to do is to convince them, look, you are going to 
spend a lot of money developing a nuclear weapon; you are going to take 
a lot of resources from your people, developing a nuclear weapon; you 
are going to put a lot of your scientific resources of your country 
into developing a nuclear weapon.

                              {time}  2015

  And guess what is going to happen, when you come to your product, 
your final product, i.e. that nuclear weapon, the United States and its 
allies will have a defense that makes that weapon useless. That is 
exactly what the goal of this President is. And it is a justifiable 
goal.
  We are crazy, we are certifiably crazy if we continue to turn our 
face and pretend at some point in the future there is not going to be a 
nuclear missile headed towards this country. We are irresponsible, in 
dereliction of our duty if we do not now begin an aggressive effort at 
putting some kind of a protective shield for this Nation and this 
Nation's allies and friends so that when that type of an attack comes, 
we are prepared. And we make the ownership of these kinds of weapons, 
not weapons of threat or fear, we neutralize them because we have a 
defensive shield for those kinds of weapons.
  It seems to me that it is so basic that with this threat developing 
out there, in consideration of the fact that we have an obligation to 
the generations behind us, as well as the generation ahead of us and 
our own generation, we have an obligation to continue to give this 
country the best defense that it can possibly have. You are totally 
disregarding your obligation as a congressman if you continue to ignore 
the fact that this country needs to defend against a missile attack. A 
lot of Americans, a lot of your constituents assume because we have 
NORAD space command out in Colorado Springs and we can detect a missile 
launch within a few seconds anywhere in the world, in fact we are so 
good we can track a 6-inch bolt maybe 500 miles into space. We know 
what is coming at us. A lot of Americans assume that once we know it, 
we shoot it down. That is not the truth. That is not what can occur out 
there.
  All we can do once we detect a missile launch against the United 
States of America, all we can do is call up the destination site and 
say, hold onto your britches, you have an incoming missile.
  Do we have an obligation to put up some kind of shield to defend 
against that? Of course we do. That is exactly the direction that the 
President of the United States told this country this morning. That he 
is prepared, that the time has changed, he is prepared to reduce our 
nuclear stockpiles while at the same time putting together a defensive 
shield.
  Now some of the critics and some people who oppose the military just 
in general pop right up and say we do not have the technology. It is 
going to be too expensive. We did not have the technology when we said 
that we were going to put somebody on the moon. We did not have the 
technology when we figured out we were going to solve polio. The fact 
is that we can do it. Americans can put their minds to something and 
accomplish it.
  So these people who want to criticize ought to stand aside. They do 
not want to take a leadership position in the defense of this country. 
That is fine. I do not think that everybody needs to participate, but 
get out of our way. Let us defend this country because I do not want to 
be one with tears in my eyes who has to look at my children or my 
grandchildren, or maybe even great grandchildren, if I am fortunate, 
when we are in the height of an international crisis where these 
missiles might be used and say to those generations behind me, I am 
sorry, I could have put a defense together. I could have done something 
to help you, but I walked away from it.
  None of us want to walk away from that obligation. We all need to 
come together behind the President and help the President with these 
efforts to defend this country and to build a capacity that will allow 
or take away all of the leverage of all of the countries in

[[Page H1710]]

the world that have a nuclear weapon and they want to use it against 
the United States via some type of missile.
  Let me move on to the other topic that I want to discuss with you 
this evening. That is energy. Look, we have all heard about the State 
of California. We know what the problem is in California, or at least 
we know some of the problem. Fundamentally I think every one of our 
constituents understands that California is running out of power. You 
know, it is kind of hard to feel sorry for California. California kind 
of adopted the not-in-my-backyard syndrome. California has promised its 
citizens do not worry, we will not increase your prices on energy, 
which means, in essence, you do not have to conserve. California has 
not allowed a power generation facility to be built, an electrical-
generation facility to be built in their State for what, 10 years.
  California has not allowed a natural gas transmission line to go 
through their State in California. In California you do not even dare 
talk about nuclear energy with their elected officials. There are a lot 
of people in California with the national Sierra Club whose number one 
priority is to take down the Glen Canyon Dam, one of the larger 
hydroelectric producers. There are people in California who are leading 
the effort to take down the dams in the Snake River or the Columbia 
River because they are trying to convince the population of California 
you can have it all and no risk. You can have it all and no cost. You 
can use as much as you want, it keeps on coming at the same price. We 
do not have to build electrical generation facilities in our State, 
because you can have it without it. We do not have to take risk and 
allow exploration of natural gas in our State. Do not worry about it.

  In the meantime as this Titanic comes up on the iceberg, demand is 
going like this and supply is going like this. You cannot operate like 
that. You cannot operate an airplane when your airport is this far 
away, and your fuel consumption is going to get you this close. It does 
not work.
  Despite the flowery promises, despite all of the hype that was given 
about California, we discovered something new. We have discovered for 
the first time in the history of the capitalistic market that we are 
going to be able to allow you to use all of the electricity you want, 
the price will be capped. We will deregulate. We will not have to take 
any kind of risks or suffer as a result of natural gas transmission 
lines or exploration because we have it all, and we will not have to do 
it in our own backyard. It is hard to find sympathy for the State of 
California. In fact, I have heard a lot of people say that is their 
problem.
  Well, fortunately or unfortunately, I am here to tell you it is not 
all of California's problem. What is bad in many cases for California 
is bad for the United States of America. California, after all, is a 
State. It is a major State and it is a big player. It is a huge player 
in the world's economy. A huge player in the economy of the United 
States. It is a huge player in their educational institutions. It is a 
huge player in their artistic institutions in California. We have a lot 
of fellow citizens in California who are going to suffer lots of 
consequences this summer as a result of the short-sightedness of a few 
government officials. And, frankly, suffer as a result of adopting the 
concept or being convinced or swayed by the concept that you can have 
all of the power you want without having to have a generation facility 
somewhere in your State.
  We cannot let California die on the vine. I am sure, colleagues, like 
the rest of you, I will probably go back to my office this evening and 
have calls from people that say let them die on the vine. California 
brought it on themselves, let them suffer.
  It is not that simple. We need to work with California. But let us 
look at a few of the facts. Let me say at the very beginning that there 
seems to be a make-believe theory out there that if we just simply 
conserve, our energy crisis will be resolved. Let me tell you, that is 
inaccurate on its face, and it is inaccurate no matter which direction 
they tell you it. It does not work.
  Conservation is a major contributing factor that we have to put in 
place immediately. In fact, you know what has put more conservation in 
place in the last few months than in any recent time in history? It is 
not the government. It is not the government that put conservation into 
place, it is the price of energy that has put conservation into place.
  I am a good example. I will use myself. I did not turn down my 
thermometers a year ago in my family home. We had the temperatures in 
our home, I live high in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, and in the 
winter time all of our rooms were at 70 degrees. And in the summertime, 
our air conditioning, because we like cool air, although we have a lot 
of cool air, if during the day it got hot, we kept the air conditioning 
at 60 degrees.
  It was not because some government brochure or some bureaucratic 
official said you do not have to have your rooms at 70 degrees, 
especially if you are not using them. Why not leave those rooms at 55 
degrees so your pipes do not freeze when you are not using the rooms. 
It was not because some government brochure came and told me that, it 
was because we got our gas bill. I can assure you now in our household, 
anywhere in the house where there are not people, that temperature is 
at 55 degrees. We have not even started our air conditioning. We have 
not had it on one time, not that it is on a lot this time of year; but 
still for a day or two, we would have had it on. We have our fans 
running. We are trying to make plans for this summer, how do we 
conserve? Why, because the price stun us.
  In California, the elected officials did not have enough guts to let 
the prices sting. They tried to make an artificial world out where you 
can continue to have as much energy as you want and not have to have 
your prices increased. That does not encourage conservation.
  But let us say here is supply, here is demand. Conservation will go 
up like this. So conservation closes a gap. I brought this over, it is 
one of the most fascinating things that I have seen. This is where we 
are going with incentives in the marketplace.
  A crisis drives innovation. To come up with alternative energy, this 
energy crisis is actually of some benefit because it will drive 
innovation. There are a lot of people trying to figure out how to make 
a better mouse trap. There are a lot of people saying we better make 
our air conditioning units more efficient. We can have a competitive 
advantage if our SUV gets better mileage.
  Here is a piece of innovation here, colleagues. This is a little 
piece of paper. To me it looks like a little piece of tinfoil. It is 
laminated in a piece of plastic, and there are two wires attached to 
this little piece of paper. Now the person that talked to me about this 
little device said there is a lot of energy and movement, movement that 
does not have to be generated. You know to generate electricity, you 
have to generate movement. You do not need to generate this, this is 
natural movement.

                              {time}  2030

  He said, we think we can capture energy out of waves, out of waves in 
the ocean. He showed me this. He gave me this. I was so fascinated by 
it. You will not be able to see it from there. If the lights were out 
in the Chambers, you would see as I go like this, the light comes on. 
That light is on. That movement generates energy which is put into this 
light. But do we have the capability today to generate any kind of 
significant source of power as a result of this device? No. Maybe in 15 
years, maybe in 10 years, maybe we would get a real break and have 
stuff like this available in 10 years. But we do not have it available 
today. But that has not slowed down the demand out there that we have 
for power.
  In fact, I find it interesting, one of our largest age consumption 
groups of power is our younger generation. That is the generation of 
people that some of the more radical environmental groups, for example, 
the National Sierra Club, has never supported a water storage project 
in the history of their organization. It is organizations like them out 
there trying to convince this younger generation, you can continue to 
increase your demand for power, whether it is your computer, your radio 
or whatever, you can continue to increase demand and yet at the same 
time stop supply or not allow supply to expand, or take down the dams. 
``Don't worry, the hydro power will be replaced somewhere else.'' Those 
are fallacies. That is exactly what got California

[[Page H1711]]

into the jam that it is in. That is exactly what is getting the rest of 
us. We will be sucked down that drain as well if California goes down 
that drain.
  Let us go over some statistics that I think are important to look at. 
Again remember, conservation is obviously a critical element for this 
solution to come together, but it is not the total answer. It is only a 
contributing factor to the gap in the energy supply that we have today. 
Let us just pull up natural gas. Consumer prices for natural gas have 
increased 20-fold in some parts of our country over the past year. In a 
1-year period of time, the demand for natural gas has gone up 20 times.
  I talked to a gas analyst who went to the different companies like 
General Electric that make power generation facilities that are powered 
by natural gas. Just the orders in place exceed the natural gas supply 
now available in this country. Let us go on. America's demand for 
natural gas is expected to rise even more dramatically than oil. Why? 
Because natural gas is a very clean fuel to utilize. It is a very 
convenient fuel to utilize.
  According to the Department of Energy, by 2020, we will consume 62 
percent more natural gas than we do today. Right now, an estimated 40 
percent of potential gas supplies in the United States are on Federal 
lands that are either closed to exploration or limited by severe 
restrictions. Even if we find supplies of gas, moving it to the market 
will require an additional 38,000 miles of pipeline and 255,000 miles 
of transmission lines at an estimated cost of 120 to $150 billion, just 
to move the gas. In some places we have plenty of gas, but that is not 
where the population is. You have got to move the gas to the 
population. Now remember, the numbers that I am going over are assuming 
that the American public exercises conservation. Even in consideration 
of the fact that you would conserve, these are still numbers you are 
going to face.
  The problem of inadequate supply lines is illustrated by the Prudhoe 
Bay in Alaska. The site produces enough gas a day to meet 13 percent of 
America's daily consumption; but because a pipeline has not been built, 
the gas is pumped back into the ground. I might add, many of my 
colleagues have driven by gas wells where we now have the technology to 
capture the gas, and they burn it off or they burn it off because they 
do not have the capability to move the gas. They are looking for the 
oil. There are a lot of things we can do for efficiencies in this 
country, but we cannot do it by having our head in the sand and 
pretending that there is not a crisis, at least not as it applies to us 
and our price should not go up.
  Let us move from natural gas.
  Electricity. By the way, Vice President Cheney gave some great 
remarks here in the last couple of days. Now, of course some of the 
more radical environmental organizations went nuts, saying, Oh, my 
gosh, look at what he's demanding. He's saying that we're going to have 
to have I think a power plant every week for the next 20 years just to 
meet the demand. So what these groups are suggesting, put your head in 
the sand and say, It ain't so, Dick. It ain't so, Mr. Vice President.
  It is so. If we are going to continue with the kind of demand that we 
have and remember this demand, that is not wasted power. This demand, 
just take a look at what the computer generation has brought onto us 
for demand for energy. Realistically, we are going to have to have 
energy in this country on an increasing production rate. So at least 
somebody has had enough guts to stand up and say because we have 
ignored this, because we have put our heads in the sand, we now have to 
build a bunch of power plants. We should have been building them all 
along.

  What we need, the best energy policy and, by the way, keep in mind, 
the last administration had no energy policy. Our Secretary of Energy 
had no energy policy. Our President had no energy policy. Our Vice 
President had no energy policy. This new administration has come 
forward and a great part of the wrath that they are getting put upon 
them by, say, some of the environmental organizations has been brought 
about because this administration is saying to the American public, we 
need an energy policy. We need to put everything on the table.
  We need to have on the table conservation, we need to have natural 
gas, we need to have the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. That is not to say 
that all of these are going to be accepted, but they have got to go on 
the table. And then we need to have level-headed minds from all walks 
of life sit down and come up with a strategy for energy for this 
country. That means we may add more items onto the table, or it means 
we may take some items off the table. But for us to prematurely 
eliminate sources or restrict conservation, what you do by the way with 
price caps, to do those kind of things does not help us develop a solid 
energy policy.
  Let me move on to electricity. Electricity is one of our greatest 
challenges. As illustrated in the growing crisis in California, the 
Department of Energy estimates that over the next 20 years, the demand 
for energy in the United States will increase by 45 percent. The 
increasing reliance on technology has prompted our energy demands to 
outstrip recent projections. Some experts calculate that the demands of 
the Internet already consume eight to 13 percent of the electricity. If 
demand grows at the same pace as the last decade, we will need 1,990 
new plants by 2020, or more than 90 a year just to keep pace. With 
conservation ideas in mind, with the current technology that we have, 
we are going to need to build 90 plants a year to keep pace.
  What happens if you do not? Some people might say to you, Well, you 
know, we can all do without a little air conditioning. We can all 
suffer a little more. Most people that say that really mean you can 
suffer a little more. We do not really mean I should be the one that 
suffers a little more, but you can suffer a little more.
  Take a look at what these rolling blackouts will do to the State of 
California. California is one of the largest agricultural producers in 
the world. Refrigeration is a basic ingredient in order to, once you 
pick that crop, to store that crop, to transport that crop. Take a look 
at the chicken farms and the turkey farms out in California. They have 
tens of millions of birds out there. I had a chicken farmer tell me the 
other day that if their circulating fans go off this summer, if they 
are shut down for 20 minutes, they lose their flock of birds.
  Take a look at the computer chip industry that has to have 
refrigerated storage. Take a look at the medical industry that has to 
have refrigerated capacity. Take a look at the frozen foods. You all 
see them, those trucks that have those little boxes up on the front of 
the trailer and a lot of times when the truck is parked you can hear 
that little engine in there idling. That is refrigerating that trailer. 
That will not be shut off obviously because of the shutdown of a power 
plant in California, but those little generating facilities take fuel. 
My point here is electricity is very important for us. Do not think 
that it is just a matter of turning off the air conditioner that is 
going to get us out of this crisis. The only way we are going to move 
out of this is we have got to build additional electrical generation.

  Let me continue. Hydroelectric power generation is expected to fall 
sharply. Today, relicensing a power plant can take decades and cost 
millions. Now, even though consumers are faced with blackouts and 
shortages, some of the activists still want to tear out dams on the 
Snake River.
  Let us move on to our next one. Oil. It is amazing to me how negative 
people have turned the word oil, as if it is some evil empire out 
there. They think of the J.R. Ewing of Dallas days and oil. I am 
telling you, everything we have in our life depends on this oil. I 
would like to be able to go to solar. So far, despite years and years 
and years and billions of dollars in research, we have not made any 
kind of dramatic steps forward in solar. We have got some, but we have 
not made the kind of steps we thought we could make to replace oil.
  I hope someday oil goes the same direction that whale oil went. It 
used to be before the discovery of oil, we used whales for oil, before 
the discovery of oil in the ground. Thank goodness we stopped hunting 
the whales because we found a replacement product. I hope through our 
technology we are able to find a replacement product, but the fact is 
we do not have it today. The hard reality of it is we are not going to

[[Page H1712]]

have it next year. We are probably not going to have it for any number 
of years. So our reliance on oil, our dependency on oil is very 
significant and we all depend on it. Our clothes are made with oil. Our 
medicine is made with oil. Our vehicles, our ambulances, our fire 
trucks, our school buses, our personal vehicles all run on oil. The 
lights that we have. Members know what I am talking about. Take a look 
at any facet of life and tell me where oil is not needed. Any facet of 
life. It is fundamentally important. Until we find the replacement, we 
better face up to the reality that we have to meet the demand. You 
cannot just meet the demand through conservation alone.
  Let us talk. Oil. In the next 20 years, America's demand for oil will 
increase by 33 percent, according to the Energy Information Institute. 
Yet as demand rises, domestic production drops. So the demand is going 
up and the domestic production in our country is going down. We have 
not had an inland refinery built in this country for 25 years. That is 
not how you answer an upswinging demand line. We now produce 39 percent 
less oil than we did in 1970.
  Those of you my age and older, a little younger, can remember the 
crisis we had in the 1970s. Remember how this country committed that we 
would lessen our dependence on foreign oil, lessen it? It did not work. 
What happened is we continued to regulate, and I can tell you a lot of 
those regulations were good regulations. But we continued to discourage 
any kind of oil exploration in this country, and we depended on other 
countries because other countries were easier to extract it from 
because less regulations and safeguards, et cetera, et cetera, and we 
have become more dependent, not less dependent, upon it. We are down 
nearly 4 million barrels of oil a day. Unless our policies change, 
domestic production will continue to drop to 5.1 million barrels a day 
in 2020, down from 9.1 million barrels a day 30 years ago.
  We are increasingly dependent on foreign governments for our oil. 
Back in 1973, we imported just 36 percent of our oil from overseas. 
Today, we import over 54 percent of those resources. The number of U.S. 
refineries has been cut in half since 1980. There has not been a new 
refinery built in this country in more than 25 years. Those are pretty 
startling statistics.
  Let us go back very quickly to California and take a look at the 
California situation. We have just seen the nationwide situation. Let 
us look at California. No new natural gas lines in 8 years. They placed 
price caps on the rate that electricity providers could charge to the 
consumers while doing nothing to discourage demand.

                              {time}  2045

  You continue to allow demand to go up. You do not discourage it 
through conservation. You do not discourage it through price. What you 
do is allow it to continue to go up, and you allow supply to continue 
to go down. When there is a cross, there is a collision. It is like two 
airplanes hitting in the sky. It is going to be a nasty crash. No new 
coal-fired plant permits in 10 years. No nuclear power plants have been 
built in our Nation in over 20 years. No inland refineries have been 
built in 26 years.
  California's power capacity is down 2 percent since 1990 while demand 
is up 11 percent in that same period. So on one end, your supply you 
take it down by 2 percent. On the other end you take demand up by 11 
percent and in the meantime you say to the consumer your price is 
capped; you do not have to worry about a price increase.
  My purpose tonight is to say that this Nation needs an energy policy. 
It is our President, the first President now in 9 years, who has come 
forward and in my opinion had enough gumption to stand up, not hype, 
not a bunch of hype but the gumption to stand up and say maybe we ought 
to look at everything we are doing out here in regards to energy. 
Maybe, for example, we ought to look at some of the sanctions we have 
on oil-producing countries like Iran or some of these others. Maybe we 
ought to take a look and tell the people, look, we have to conserve.
  Again, let me remind my colleagues, and my guess is every colleague 
in here has been conserving in the last few months. Why? Not because 
the government told them to conserve but because the price of the 
energy they are using has gone up tremendously. That is what is driving 
their conservation.
  We have a President who says let us put everything on the table. Let 
us put conservation on the table. Let us put oil exploration on the 
table. Let us put ANWR, let us put transmission lines on the table, put 
everything on this table and then bring people to sit down at this 
table and let us develop an energy policy. It is an obligation, by the 
way, that we have; not only to ourselves but to the generation behind 
us and the generation ahead of us.
  What do you think we are going to do? Earlier in my comments I 
mentioned that I said somebody said well, we turned our back on the 
seniors, if you do not buy their program you are turning your back on 
the seniors. You better talk to those seniors this summer when you have 
to shut off air conditioning out there in California. You better 
explain to those seniors out in California why you would not be a 
willing participant at the table in trying to come up with some kind of 
energy policy. You better be willing to talk to the seniors not only of 
California but of New York, of Oregon, of Washington, and explain to 
them why you did not find time to come to the table.
  We have to come to this table. The President has provided the table. 
The President has even provided the subject of the discussion and the 
debate. Here are some of my ideas. Here is what I want to talk about. 
Now if you have a better idea, let us talk about it. Let us put it in 
place.
  In the end, at the end of the day, the President says I need an 
energy policy for this country. That is good policy of its own. We, 
Members of this Congress, have an obligation, and I said earlier that 
obligation also means helping the State of California. It does not mean 
subsidizing the State of California. It does not mean allowing the 
citizens of California to continue to have their electricity or their 
gas or their oil at artificially low prices. What it does mean is we 
have to be willing to participate with California and help them get 
through this crisis, but California has got to step up to the plate as 
well. California is going to have to take a little more careful look 
about the not-in-my-backyard position that they have taken. California 
is going to have to take a little more careful look about going out to 
its citizens and promising them no price increases. California is going 
to have to take another look at not allowing refineries in their State 
or at least stalling the permitting process so they cannot get in 
there. California is going to have to take a look at not allowing a 
natural gas transmission line permit to go into their State or be 
granted in their State over such a long period of time.
  This crisis, by the way, is not a crisis that is going to sink us. 
This is not like being in these House chambers say on December 7 or 
December 8 of 1941, the day after Pearl Harbor, the day after Pearl 
Harbor. That crisis is much more severe. This is a crisis we can 
resolve. This is a crisis that if we bring our heads together we can do 
something about it, but we are going to have to change some policy. We 
are going to have to change the policies of the previous administration 
of drifting along without an energy policy. We are going to have to 
adopt an energy policy. We are going to have to change the policies 
that you do not have to have an increase in supply to meet increasing 
demand.

  We are going to have to educate, I think, our younger generation, 
work with our younger generation, and prove to them that the 
technologies that we have for oil exploration have improved and that if 
they want to continue to use power at the rate they are using power we 
all have to join in in finding this additional supply to meet that 
demand.
  I think in the long run, what I hope in the long run, is that 5 years 
from now those of us on this House Floor can look back and say that 
energy problem we had back in 2001, it had some good benefits to it. 
The American people are now smarter about their utilization of energy. 
They are conserving. We have more innovation on the market. We have 
ways, we have alternative energy that really works similar to this one 
right here with the light. That is what I hope 5 years from now we look 
back, I hope 5 years from now we can look back, and we have SUVs, for 
example, that get 45 or 50 miles to the gallon instead of 12 or 15 
miles to the gallon.

[[Page H1713]]

  I think we can do it, but in order for us to do it, we have to stand 
up on the line. We have to come out of the foxhole. Somebody has got to 
be the first one out of the foxhole. To that end, I give credit to the 
President of the United States. He has taken a lot of heat in these 
last 3 or 4 weeks or maybe the last 2 or 3 months. Well, he has not 
been in office 3 months but a couple of months, and he has taken a lot 
of heat because he stood up and said we need an energy policy and, God 
forbid, we are going to need to explore for oil; and gosh darn, sorry 
about this but we are going to have to have an ability to move natural 
gas from one end of the country to the other end of the country.
  Those are tough stands to take in a society that has become pretty 
used to the fact that they get the energy they need without having a 
generation facility inside of their home or inside of their community 
or even within the boundaries of their State. Times are changing.
  Is it not Bob Dillon that said, times are changing? That is what is 
happening. Times are changing in our defense strategy and times are 
changing in our energy strategy. We have to pay attention to defense 
and we have to pay attention to energy. We have to pay attention to 
health care. We have to pay attention to education. Times are changing, 
and energy is not exempt from the change of time. Energy is not exempt 
from continuing demand with diminishing supply. You cannot have or 
continue to have diminishing supply with continuing upgrade in demand 
without a mid-air collision.
  That is exactly what happened in California, kind of. That is exactly 
what is going to happen in California this summer. We are going to have 
a mid-air collision. Maybe we can avoid it. We probably cannot.
  Let me wrap up my comments here in regards to energy by saying to all 
of us, especially to my colleagues from California, I have been 
particularly harsh this evening about what has gone on in the State of 
California but I am not about to abandon the State of California. You 
are important to us. We are important to you. But it does mean you are 
going to have to change your habits. It does mean that you are going to 
have to start to conserve. It does mean that you are going to have to 
stand up and tell your consumers out there that they are not going to 
be able to enjoy artificially low prices. They are going to have to 
pay.
  When you have disruptions in the market you do not get the product 
you want, and disruptions are in the market when you artificially 
subsidize prices. That is what has happened out there. So we want to 
help our colleagues from California but for the rest of us, in our 
States that do not face this imminent energy crisis, we better watch 
out because one of these days that nasty wolf will be knocking on our 
door. So let us learn from the lessons of California. Let us figure out 
conservation methods that really work. Let us figure out where in a 
reasonable and responsible environmental fashion we can explore for 
additional resources for energy. We have to do it.

  Let us be frank when we talk to our constituents and let them know, 
hey, we have to build power plants. We are going to have to have 
resources to do that. You are no longer going to be able to enjoy the 
luxury perhaps of having every room at 70 degrees. Times, they are 
changing. It is going to happen to us just like it has happened in 
California.
  Let me just summarize my earlier comments in regards to the missile 
defense. We have left energy now. Let me just summarize my comments. It 
is an inherent responsibility of every Member of Congress to provide a 
national defense not only for the people currently here today, our 
generation and maybe the one behind us, but for the future generations. 
It is an undeniable fact that countries will continue to accumulate 
nuclear weapons and the capability to deliver them by missile. That is 
undeniable. The only way that you will be able to defend yourself 
against those type of horrible weapons is to have a missile shield of 
some type. Do not kid yourself. You are not going to be able to talk 
these countries out of disarming themselves. You are not going to be 
able, as the previous administration did or thought they could, bribe 
North Korea by sending them lots of oil, which by the way goes right to 
their military; or give them millions of dollars in foreign aid and 
expect these countries, on my word we are going to disassemble our 
nuclear weapons.
  The fact is our country is going to have to disassemble nuclear 
weapons and any of you, by the way, who are opposed to nuclear weapons, 
you ought to be in support of this defensive shield. Why? There is no 
quicker way to make a nuclear weapon ineffective than have a shield 
against it. It works. We know it. You cannot disassemble a nuclear 
missile fast enough as you can with a missile shield once we put it in 
place. It makes them ineffective. That is what will break the nuclear 
arms race. Mark my word, that is what will break that race is the first 
country that is a major power that comes out with a shield that itself 
and their allies can use to defend themselves, that will break the 
nuclear arms race as we know it today in the world.
  I intend to come back, I want to visit I hope later this week, 
certainly next week, and talk a little more about the issue of the 
death tax and what it has done to a lot of families in America. It 
looks like we are close to a tax agreement. This afternoon they have 
been down at the White House, Mr. Speaker, working with the 
administration. I hope we come together on that. I hope as we begin to 
put our budget together for this next year that we refrain from 
comments as were made in the previous speech prior to my coming up 
here, refrain from the comments that the administration, for example, 
has turned their back on the elderly or that they do not care about 
education or they do not care about this or they do not care about 
that.
  They care about it. As I mentioned earlier, I think everybody on this 
floor, no matter how liberal their politics are, how conservative their 
politics are, I think everybody on this floor, everybody on this floor 
cares about education; they care about the elderly; they care about 
health care; they care about defense. I have a list a half a mile long 
that we care about. Let us work together as a team. I think we can do 
it.

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