[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 10 (Wednesday, February 1, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H136-H138]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       AMERICA'S ENERGY POLICIES

  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to claim the time 
of the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee).
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Washington?
  There was no objection.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, last night we heard the President deliver 
his State of the Union message from this Hall. By the light of day, 
today, we know that the glow was artificial and the highlights were 
inaccurate at best.
  I will enter into the Record at this point a story from today's Los 
Angeles Times.

               [From the Los Angeles Times, Feb. 1, 2006]

                 Bush Stretches to Defend Surveillance

                 (By Peter Wallsten and Maura Reynolds)

       Washington.--President Bush received a roaring ovation 
     Tuesday for his prime-time defense of wiretapping phone calls 
     without warrants. But Bush's explanation relied on 
     assumptions that have been widely questioned by experts who 
     say the president offers a debatable interpretation of 
     history.
       Defending the surveillance program as crucial in a time of 
     war, Bush said that ``previous presidents have used the same 
     constitutional authority'' that he did. ``And,'' he added, 
     ``federal courts have approved the use of that authority.''
       Bush did not name names, but was apparently reiterating the 
     argument offered earlier this month by Atty. Gen. Alberto R. 
     Gonzales, who invoked Presidents Lincoln, Wilson and Franklin 
     D. Roosevelt for their use of executive authority.
       However, warrantless surveillance within the United States 
     for national security purposes was struck down by the U.S. 
     Supreme Court in 1972--long after Lincoln, Wilson, and 
     Roosevelt stopped issuing orders. That led to the 1978 
     passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that 
     Bush essentially bypassed in authorizing the program after 
     the Sept. 11 attacks.
       Since the surveillance law was enacted, establishing secret 
     courts to approve surveillance, ``the Supreme Court has not 
     touched this issue in the area of national security,'' said 
     William Banks, a national security expert at Syracuse Law 
     School.
       ``He might be speaking in the broadest possible sense about 
     the president exercising his authority as commander-in-chief 
     to conduct a war, which of course federal courts have upheld 
     since the beginning of the nation,'' Banks said. ``If he was 
     talking more particularly about the use of warrantless 
     surveillance, then he is wrong.''
       Bush's historical reference on domestic spying marked one 
     of several points in his speech in which he backed up 
     assertions with selective uses of fact, or seemed to place 
     a positive spin on his own interpretation.
       On his headline-grabbing pledge to decrease U.S. reliance 
     on Middle East oil by 75% over the next 20 years, Bush's 
     words seemed to suggest a dramatic new program to reduce 
     dependence on foreign oil.
       But experts point out that the U.S. gets only a fraction--
     about 10%--of its oil imports from the Middle East. In fact, 
     the majority now comes from Canada and Mexico--and Bush said 
     nothing on Tuesday about them.
       Speaking about Iraq, Bush argued that ``our coalition has 
     been relentless in shutting off terrorist infiltration.'' But 
     he may have left the wrong impression about how far U.S.-led 
     forces have gotten in closing off the huge border areas, 
     especially the 375-mile-long one between Syria and Iraq.
       Administration officials have often complained that the 
     Syrian government does little to police the border and have 
     said it may not be possible to close it, given its size.
       Two weeks ago, Rep. H. James Saxton (R-NJ), chairman of a 
     House Armed Services subcommittee, complained in a column in 
     the Washington Times that the border is ``extremely porous'' 
     and called for new steps to cut off the flow of enemy 
     fighters.
       Bush made a number of claims for his economic stewardship 
     that were technically accurate but told only a part of the 
     story.
       ``In the last 2\1/2\ years, America has created 4.6 million 
     new jobs,'' Bush said. Although the claim is essentially 
     true, he did not say that the United States lost 2.6 million 
     jobs in the first 2\1/2\ years of his presidency.
       ``In the last five years,'' Bush continued, ``the tax 
     relief you passed has left $880 billion in the hands of 
     American workers, investors, small businesses and families, 
     and they have used it to help produce more than four years of 
     uninterrupted economic growth.''
       But to many economists, the cause-and-effect relationship 
     is not so stark; they credit tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 with 
     helping to turn around a stagnant economy, but now they worry 
     that the resulting deficits may retard it.
       ``Every year of my presidency, we have reduced the growth 
     of non-security discretionary spending,'' Bush said. True 
     again, but this represents less than 20% of all spending. 
     Including defense and the giant benefit programs such as 
     Social Security and Medicare, spending has risen by about 30% 
     in the five Bush years.
       The president also seemed to ignore Supreme Court precedent 
     when he called for Congress to give him the ``line item 
     veto.'' But Congress did that once, in 1996, and it was used 
     once, by former President Clinton. But in 1998, a federal 
     judge ruled that it was unconstitutional. That was affirmed 
     by a 6-3 decision of the Supreme Court.
       Bush praised his administration's efforts to help the Gulf 
     Coast recover from Hurricane Katrina. ``A hopeful society 
     comes to the aid of fellow citizens in times of suffering and 
     emergency, and stays at it until they are back on their 
     feet,'' he said.
       But Bush omitted any mention of tensions between Gulf State 
     officials and the administration over responsibility for the 
     botched response to the storm. ``There was nothing in terms 
     of new money,'' said Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.). Perhaps 
     Bush's most controversial language came as he defended the 
     surveillance program.
       The president echoed earlier administration assertions that 
     the domestic surveillance program would have been useful 
     before the Sept. 11 attacks. Bush said two Sept. 11 hijackers 
     living in San Diego made telephone calls to Al Qaeda 
     associates overseas, but that ``we did not know about their 
     plans until it was too late.''
       However, The Times has previously reported that some U.S. 
     counterterrorism officials knowledgeable about the case blame 
     an interagency communications breakdown, not a surveillance 
     failure or shortcomings of the Foreign Intelligence 
     Surveillance Act.

  Point by point, the Times compared the President's rhetoric to 
America's reality. They are not even close. Here is what the Times said 
about the President's domestic spying program. Defending the 
surveillance program is crucial in a time of war. Bush said that 
Presidents have used the same constitutional authority that he did, and 
he said Federal courts have approved the use of that authority.
  Bush did not name names, but was apparently reiterating the argument 
offered earlier by the Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, who invoked 
Presidents Lincoln, Wilson, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt for their use 
of executive authority.
  However, warrantless surveillance within the United States for 
national security purposes was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 
1972, long after Lincoln, Wilson, and Roosevelt stopped issuing orders.
  This led to the passage of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance 
Act that Bush essentially bypassed in authorizing the program after 
September 11. The analysis comes from one of America's bedrock 
institutions of journalism, facts, not spin.
  Here is the analysis of the President's remarks about the war. 
Speaking about Iraq, Bush argued that ``our coalition has been 
relentless in shutting off terrorism infiltration.'' But he may have 
left the wrong impression about how U.S.-led forces have gotten in 
closing off the huge border areas, especially the 375-mile border 
between Syria and Iraq.
  Administration officials have often complained the Syrian Government 
does little to police the border, and many have said it may not be 
possible to close it given its size.
  Let me mention one other example. The President finally got religion 
on America's energy crisis. But he needs an atlas and a vision. Here is 
what the Times said. On his headline-grabbing pledge to decrease U.S. 
reliance on Middle Eastern oil by 75 percent over the next 20 years, 
Bush's words seem to suggest a dramatic new program to reduce 
dependence on foreign oil.
  But experts point out that the U.S. gets only a fraction, about 10 
percent, of its oil imports from the Middle East. In fact, the majority 
comes from Canada and Mexico, and Bush said nothing Tuesday night about 
them.
  I was proud the President used my words in his speech: ``America is 
addicted to oil.'' But he did not give a

[[Page H137]]

proper prescription. But beyond co-opting Democratic philosophy and 
Democratic programs, the President is an oil man through and through. 
Today's New York Times said this: ``President Bush devoted 2 minutes 
and 15 seconds of the State of the Union message to speak about energy 
independence.''
  It was hardly the bold signal we have been waiting for years for 
about global warming and deadly struggles in the Middle East where 
everything takes place in the context of what Mr. Bush rightly called 
our addiction to imported oil.
  Last night's remarks were woefully insufficient. The country's future 
economic and national security depend on whether the Americans can 
control their enormous appetite for fossil fuels. This is not a matter 
to be lumped in a laundry list of other initiatives, including in a 
once-a-year speech to Congress. It is a key to everything else that 
happens.
  I will enter at this point in the Record the New York Times 
editorial.

                [From the New York Times, Feb. 1, 2006]

                          The State of Energy

       President Bush devoted two minutes and 15 seconds of his 
     State of the Union speech to energy independence. It was 
     hardly the bold signal we've been waiting for through years 
     of global warming and deadly struggles in the Middle East, 
     where everything takes place in the context of what Mr. Bush 
     rightly called our ``addiction'' to imported oil.
       Last night's remarks were woefully insufficient. The 
     country's future economic and national security will depend 
     on whether Americans can control their enormous appetite for 
     fossil fuels. This is not a matter to be lumped in a laundry 
     list of other initiatives during a once-a-year speech to 
     Congress. It is the key to everything else.
       If Mr. Bush wants his final years in office to mean more 
     than a struggle to re-spin failed policies and cement bad 
     initiatives into permanent law, this is the place where he 
     needs to take his stand. And he must do it with far more 
     force and passion than he did last night.
       American overdependence on oil has been a disaster for our 
     foreign policy. It weakens the nation's international 
     leverage and empowers exactly the wrong countries. Last night 
     Mr. Bush told the people that ``the nations of the world must 
     not permit the Iranian regime to gain nuclear weapons,'' but 
     he did not explain how that will happen when those same 
     nations are so dependent on Tehran's oil. Iran ranks second 
     in oil reserves only to Saudi Arabia, where members of the 
     elite help finance Osama bin Laden and his ilk, and where the 
     United States finds it has little power to stop them.
       Oil is a seller's market, in part because of America's 
     voracious consumption. India and China, with their growing 
     energy needs, have both signed deals with Iran. Rogue states 
     like Sudan are given political cover by their oil customers. 
     The United Nations may wish to do something about genocide in 
     Darfur or nuclear proliferation, but its most powerful 
     members are hamstrung by their oil alliances with some of the 
     worst leaders on the planet.
       Even if the war on terror had never begun, Mr. Bush would 
     have an obligation to be serious about the energy issue, 
     given the enormous danger to the nation's economy if we fail 
     to act. His own Energy Department predicts that with the 
     rapid development of India and China, annual global 
     consumption will rise from about 80 million barrels of oil a 
     day to 119 million barrels by 2025. Absent efforts to reduce 
     American consumption, these new demands will lead to soaring 
     oil prices, inflation and a loss of America's trade 
     advantage. It should be a humbling shock to American leaders 
     that Brazil has managed to become energy self-sufficient 
     during a period when the United States was focused on 
     building bigger S.U.V.'s.
       Part of the answer, as Mr. Bush indicated last night, is 
     the continued development of alternative fuels, especially 
     for cars. The Energy Department has addressed this modestly, 
     and last night the president said his budget would add more 
     money for research. That's fine, but hardly the kind of 
     full-bore national initiative that will pump large amounts 
     of money into the commercial production of alternatives to 
     gasoline.
       When it comes to cars, much of the research has already 
     been done--Brazil got to energy independence by figuring out 
     how to get its citizens home from work in cars run without 
     much gasoline. The answer is producing the new fuels that 
     have already been developed and getting cars that use them on 
     the lots. There are several ways to make that happen. The 
     president could call for higher fuel economy standards for 
     car manufacturers. He could bring up the subject of a gas 
     tax--the most effective way of getting Americans to buy fuel-
     efficient cars, and a market-based tax on consumption that 
     conservative lawmakers ought to embrace if they are honest 
     with themselves and their constituents. But Mr. Bush took the 
     safe, easy and relatively meaningless route instead.
       There is still an enormous amount to be done to find new 
     sources of clean, cheap power to heat homes and create 
     electricity. But regrettably, the president made it clear 
     last night that he would rather spend the country's resources 
     on tax cuts for the wealthy. The oil companies are currently 
     flush with profits from the same high prices that have 
     plagued consumers, and the president might have asked the 
     assembled legislators whether their current tax breaks might 
     be redirected into a real energy initiative.
       Simply calling for more innovation is painless. The hard 
     part is calling for anything that smacks of sacrifice--on the 
     part of consumers or special interests, and politicians who 
     depend on their support. After 9/11, the president had the 
     perfect moment to put the nation on the road toward energy 
     independence, when people were prepared to give up their own 
     comforts in the name of a greater good. He passed it by, and 
     he missed another opportunity last night.
       Of all the defects in Mr. Bush's energy presentation, the 
     greatest was his unwillingness to address global warming--an 
     energy-related emergency every bit as critical as our 
     reliance on foreign oil. Except for a few academics on 
     retainer at the more backward energy companies, virtually no 
     educated scientist disputes that the earth has grown warmer 
     over the last few decades--largely as a result of increasing 
     atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide produced by the 
     burning of fossil fuels.
       The carbon lodged in the atmosphere by the Industrial 
     Revolution over the last 150 years has already taken a toll: 
     disappearing glaciers, a thinning Arctic icecap, dead or 
     dying coral reefs, increasingly violent hurricanes. Even so, 
     given robust political leadership and technological 
     ingenuity, the worst consequences--widespread drought and 
     devastating rises in sea levels--can be averted if society 
     moves quickly to slow and ultimately reverse its output of 
     greenhouse gases. This will require a fair, cost-effective 
     program of carbon controls at home and a good deal of 
     persuasion and technological assistance in countries like 
     China, which is building old-fashioned, carbon-producing 
     coal-fired power plants at a frightening clip.
       Mr. Bush said he would look for cleaner ways to power our 
     homes and offices, and provide more money for the Energy 
     Department's search for a ``zero emission'' coal-fired plant 
     whose carbon dioxide emissions can be injected harmlessly 
     into the ground without adding to the greenhouse gases 
     already in the atmosphere. But once again he chose to 
     substitute long-range research--and a single, government-
     sponsored research program at that--for the immediate 
     investments that have to be made across the entire industrial 
     sector.
       That Mr. Bush has taken a pass on this issue is a 
     negligence from which the globe may never recover. While he 
     seems finally to have signed on to the idea that the earth 
     is warming, and that humans are heavily responsible, he 
     has rejected serious proposals to do anything about it and 
     allowed his advisers on the issue to engage in a 
     calculated program of disinformation. At the recent global 
     summit on warming, his chief spokesmen insisted that the 
     president's program of voluntary reductions by individual 
     companies had resulted in a reduction in emissions, when 
     in fact the reverse was true.
       The State of the Union speech is usually a feel-good event, 
     and no one could fault Mr. Bush's call for research, or fail 
     to applaud his call for replacing more than 75 percent of the 
     nation's oil imports from the Middle East within the next two 
     decades. But while the goal was grand, the means were 
     minuscule. The president has never been serious about energy 
     independence. Like so many of our leaders, he is content to 
     acknowledge the problem and then offer up answers that do 
     little to disturb the status quo. If the war on terror must 
     include a war on oil dependence, Mr. Bush is in retreat.

  Let me just read one other excerpt, because it is very important. Of 
all of the defects in Mr. Bush's energy presentation, the greatest was 
his unwillingness to address global warming, an energy-related 
emergency every bit as critical as our reliance on foreign oil.
  Except for a few academics on retainer at the most backward energy 
companies, virtually no educated scientist disputes that the Earth has 
grown warmer over the last decades. This is the New York Times talking. 
Largely as a result of increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon 
dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels, gas. I read this and wonder 
how many alarms have to be sounded before the leaders follow.
  With new eyes in space like the great Hubble telescope, we understand 
the danger of great meteorites striking the Earth. Some are large 
enough to be called planet killers. We fear what might come from above, 
but we ignore what is coming from right here on the Earth.
  Mr. Speaker, the President could have done better. But he did not 
have it in him.
  The extinction of the dinosaurs provided for the extraction of fossil 
fuel.
  The addiction to oil could provide for the extraction of mankind from 
a planet too hot to inhabit.
  Is it science fiction or a looking glass? Too many scientists know we 
are looking into the future, and ignoring it.
  I urge the American people to read today's LA Times and New York 
Times.

[[Page H138]]

  Compare the common sense expressed in bedrock journalism against 
Republican's unlimited access to uncommon hype. You decide.
  Mr. Speaker, like oil, even Republican hype is a finite resource, and 
that's the best energy news for America in a decade.

                          ____________________