[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 143 (Wednesday, October 24, 2001)]
[House]
[Page H7286]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      TRADING OUR FREEDOM FOR OIL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, tonight I would like to speak a bit about 
trading our freedom for oil.
  Imported oil and the politics it attends have reared their ugly heads 
too often in modern history. Osama bin Laden's vengeance reveals its 
newest facet. President Jimmy Carter was right when he said that the 
Arab oil embargoes of the 1970s, and the economic havoc created here at 
home, constituted the moral equivalent of war. With public 
consciousness high at that time, our Nation created the Department of 
Energy to put America on a course to become more energy self-
sufficient. Conservation saved millions of barrels per day, more fuel-
efficient cars stemmed the growth of rising petroleum usage, and small 
efforts were made to develop alternative fuels.
  But in reality, America was not really committed to a nonpetroleum 
future. By the 1990s, America had fallen asleep again. Foreign 
petroleum constituted half of U.S. consumption, with its share of total 
volume rising each year. Serious work on other fuel alternatives was 
largely ignored. Billions of dollars of U.S. tax subsidies continued to 
flow to the petroleum industry. Even the U.S. defense budget grew, 
including standing forces in Saudi Arabia, our largest supplier, to 
protect our foreign oil sources. By 2000, the U.S. imported over half 
of its petroleum, expending billions of dollars annually while 
foregoing that investment domestically.
  The current recession, too, has been triggered by rising prices of 
imported petroleum. The U.S. engaged in the Persian Gulf War after Iraq 
invaded Kuwait to take over its oil fields. No longer working through 
surrogate heads of state like the Shah of Iran, the United States 
became directly embroiled in Middle East oil politics in that war. Then 
the subsequent, decade-long U.S. containment bombing of Iraq's no-fly 
zones ensued. What an irony of modern history, that as our Nation bombs 
Iraq, we continue to purchase billions of dollars of Iraqi petroleum. 
Meanwhile, in Saudi Arabia, 5,000 U.S. troops have been stationed to 
regularly defend the trade path for U.S.-bound oil out of the Straits 
of Hormuz and into the Arabian Sea headed to our shores.
  Now America is at war again. This time our enemies are oil kingdom 
zealots whose wrath grows out of the very undemocratic regimes that 
weaned them. In these places, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Yemen, even Sudan, 
oil trade over the decades has not brought freedom nor democracy. 
Trillions of U.S. consumer dollars have flowed to the oil kingdoms and 
yielded unrepresentative governments, some tyrants, great poverty, poor 
education, gender bias and political instability. Indeed, trade without 
freedom has yielded a virulent hate towards America, equal to that 
directed against the oil kingdoms themselves.

                              {time}  1730

  America must remove oil as a distorting proxy for our foreign policy. 
America can do this. It will take Presidential leadership and the 
leadership of this Congress, the kind of leadership less allied to the 
Carlyle Group and more allied to America's independence.
  As a consumer, I want to purchase an ethanol-powered car. Even though 
Detroit makes such a car, I cannot buy fuel for it at the pump. The oil 
industry has a lock on fuel sold to American consumers. But every time 
I buy a gallon of gas, I am angry because I know half of my money flows 
offshore into the pockets of cartels in undemocratic regimes.
  The American people must be freed to purchase a broader range of 
fuels. The lock of the cartels on our gas pumps must be broken. The 
Government of the United States should employ its antitrust powers to 
free our consumers at the pump, free us to purchase the fuel of our 
choice. For me it is ethanol produced by farmers in the Midwest. Let me 
buy it.
  Putting America on a solid energy footing will require national 
leadership, and our Federal Government must spur America forward, akin 
to the dawn of the space age and the establishment of NASA.
  We must demonstrate will here at home first. Becoming energy self-
sufficient makes global economic sense too, because over the next 15 
years world oil reserves will begin diminishing, with prices rising 
even higher with each barrel pumped.
  There is no more opportune time for our Nation to get serious. Let us 
free America from its dependence on foreign petroleum.

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