[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 34 (Thursday, March 16, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2291-S2293]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Amendment No. 3023, As Modified
Mr. President, I send to the desk amendment No. 3023, as modified,
and ask unanimous consent that it be agreed to.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment (No. 3023), as modified, was agreed to, as follows:
(Purpose: To strengthen homeland security by adding $10 million to
National Defense for an interoperable and survivable mobile wireless
communications network enabling clear, reliable communications among
DoD and first responders for the military homeland defense command)
On page 9, line 20, increase the amount by $10,000,000.
On page 9, line 21, increase the amount by $10,000,000.
On page 27, line 23, decrease the amount by $10,000,000.
On page 27, line 24, decrease the amount by $10,000,000.
Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will please call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, we are prepared to go to final passage. We
cannot do that without first thanking people. This has been a marathon,
and people--many people--have worked around the clock to get us to this
position.
Let me thank a colleague because we would not be finishing at 7:15
without the extraordinary work of Senator Patty Murray.
Thank you, Patty.
She convinced literally dozens of our colleagues to drop amendments
tonight; otherwise, we would have been here until 2 o'clock in the
morning. So special thanks to her.
And thanks to my staff director, Mary Naylor; and John Righter, my
deputy staff director; Lisa Konwinski, my counsel; and, most of all, my
chart master, Kobye Noel.
And thanks to the staff of Senator Gregg: Scott Gudes and Denzel
McGuire, outstanding professionals.
Of course, my personal thanks to the chairman of the committee, who
has been so decent to deal with, and so honorable to deal with.
On our side, Mr. Chairman, we thank you for your courtesies.
With that, let me conclude on the budget itself.
Mr. GREGG. No.
Mr. CONRAD. Oh, yes.
Borrow and spend--that is what this budget represents.
Mr. President and colleagues, as shown on this chart, this is what is
going to happen to the debt under this budget. It is up, up, and away.
A vote for this budget is a vote for more debt, higher interest rates,
a weaker economy, the export of American jobs, the selling off of
America, piece by piece.
Colleagues, we could do a whole lot better than this. I urge my
colleagues to vote no.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I have been asked to remind Senators that
there will be two more votes, after the final vote on the budget, on
judges.
Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There is a sufficient second.
The question is on the adoption of the concurrent resolution.
The clerk will please call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
The result was announced--yeas 51, nays 49, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 74 Leg.]
YEAS--51
Alexander
Allard
Allen
Bennett
Bond
Brownback
Bunning
Burns
Burr
Chambliss
Coburn
Cochran
Cornyn
Craig
Crapo
DeMint
Dole
Domenici
Enzi
Frist
Graham
Grassley
Gregg
Hagel
Hatch
Hutchison
Inhofe
Isakson
Kyl
Landrieu
Lott
Lugar
Martinez
McCain
McConnell
Murkowski
Roberts
Santorum
Sessions
Shelby
Smith
Snowe
Specter
Stevens
Sununu
Talent
Thomas
Thune
Vitter
Voinovich
Warner
NAYS--49
Akaka
Baucus
Bayh
Biden
Bingaman
Boxer
Byrd
Cantwell
Carper
Chafee
Clinton
Coleman
Collins
Conrad
Dayton
DeWine
Dodd
Dorgan
Durbin
Ensign
Feingold
Feinstein
Harkin
Inouye
Jeffords
Johnson
Kennedy
Kerry
Kohl
Lautenberg
Leahy
Levin
Lieberman
Lincoln
Menendez
Mikulski
Murray
Nelson (FL)
Nelson (NE)
Obama
Pryor
Reed
Reid
Rockefeller
Salazar
Sarbanes
Schumer
Stabenow
Wyden
The concurrent resolution (S. Con. Res. 83), as amended, was agreed
to.
(The resolution will be printed in a future edition of the Record.)
Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote and to lay
that motion on the table.
The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I would be remiss if I did not make at
least a short statement on the budget we just passed. I agree with
those who believe that government is simply out of control. We just
passed a budget that promises a budget deficit in the vicinity of $400
billion, a truly staggering amount of money. Our Federal Government is
borrowing in excess of a billion dollars a day to fund the awesome
amount of obligations that we have authorized. While I would have
preferred
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a vastly smaller budget today, I know it is simply not politically
feasible to do so at this time. I pledge to work toward creating an
environment where we can achieve responsible spending and fiscal sanity
while meeting our obligations. The budget we have just passed does
represent a step, albeit a small one, toward fiscal responsibility.
Getting our entitlement spending under control, reining in earmarks and
other wasteful discretionary spending, and maintaining the conditions
necessary for strong, stable economic growth are all necessary to
achieve a balanced budget, and it will take the concerted efforts of
each and every one of us to achieve this in the future.
Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, today, the Senate allowed its budget
process to be hijacked by those seeking to move a policy issue that has
been rightly rejected so many times. I opposed the manipulation of
process in the Budget Committee and I opposed final passage this
evening. Using the reconciliation process to advance a single
controversial policy--a policy that should be considered through the
appropriate legislative channels--is shameless.
We debated drilling in the Arctic last spring. We debated it again
last fall, and at that time, a number of House Republicans shot the
idea down. Then, in December, we wasted more time on the issue. This
year, nine members of the Budget Committee reached out ahead of time to
Chairman Gregg and Ranking Member Conrad asking that the budget process
not be used to revisit drilling in the Arctic Refuge, and yet, it was.
I ask unanimous consent that a copy of the letter be printed in the
Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC, March 6, 2006.
Hon. Judd Gregg,
Chairman, Budget Committee,
Washington, DC.
Hon. Kent Conrad,
Ranking Member, Budget Committee
Washington, DC.
Dear Chairman Gregg and Ranking Member Conrad: As members
of the Budget Committee, we write to express our opposition
to the inclusion of any language or mechanism in the fiscal
year 2007 budget resolution that assumes revenues from
drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or allows for
the insertion of any provision that opens the Coastal Plain
of the Refuge to oil and gas drilling and exploration. We
also strongly oppose the inclusion of any Arctic Refuge
reconciliation instructions for the Energy Committee in the
budget resolution.
It is irresponsible to base the country's budget on highly
speculative and dubious projections of lease revenues for the
coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The
reality is that leasing portions of the Arctic Refuge would
likely not bring in the assumed levels of revenue to the
federal treasury, and yet, the Congressional Budget Office
(CBO) assumes $6 billion in revenue from leasing of the
Arctic Refuge, and the President's fiscal year 2007 budget
proposal presupposes $7 billion in revenue from a 2008 Refuge
lease sale. Previous drilling proposals called for leasing
between 400,000 and 600,000 acres of the Arctic Refuge. The
Administration proposal would therefore require that industry
bid at least $11,667 per leased acre. The facts of oil and
gas leasing on Alaska's North Slope and elsewhere in the
country show that such a proposal is far out of touch with
reality:
Since 1991, 38 leases on the North Slope and in near-shore
waters have brought in an average of only $64.38 per leased
acre. The Administration's projection is 181 times this
historic average.
Last year, the oil industry bid $161.55 per acre for areas
offshore of the Arctic Refuge--an amount that is nearly an
order of magnitude lower than the Administration's
projections.
The CBO acknowledged in December 2005 that higher oil
prices do not necessarily result in higher lease bids when it
wrote that other factors, such as operating and capital costs
and the attractiveness of competing projects elsewhere,
influence bid amounts.
The North Slope leasing history demonstrates CBO's point.
In the last five years, when North Slope crude averaged
$33.60 a barrel, the average price per acre was $48.15. In
the five years prior to that, when North Slope crude averaged
$19.60, the average price per acre was $93.58. Additionally,
preliminary analysis of two lease sales held on March 1, 2006
reveals an average per acre price of less than $40 on a day
when North Slope crude was selling for $59.11.
This kind of budget charade will simply not help reduce our
huge and growing federal deficit.
As we all know, the President acknowledged our addiction to
oil during his State of the Union address. As with any
addiction, recognition of the problem is the first step
toward change. Thus, now more than ever, instead of looking
to drill to the past in areas such as the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge, we should truly dedicate ourselves to a
cleaner energy future. The American people expect Congress
and the Administration to stop wasting their time on dead-end
drilling schemes and to instead chart an energy vision
reflective of the 21st century.
Again, we encourage you to reject any requests that are
intended to misuse the budget process to open the Refuge to
oil and gas drilling and exploration and we thank you for
your consideration of this matter.
Russ Feingold, Patty Murray, Tim Johnson, Bill Nelson,
Robert Menendez, Paul S. Sarbanes, Ron Wyden, Robert C.
Byrd, Debbie Stabenow.
Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I oppose drilling in the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge, but if we are going to debate this policy, we should
do so openly--not through a backdoor budget maneuver. My colleagues who
want to open the Arctic Refuge to drilling should go through the
regular legislative process that the rest of us use to advance policy
initiatives. After all, what message do you send when you manipulate a
process simply because the normal procedure does not give you the
outcome you want? That is not a message this body should endorse.
Proponents will say that using the budget process is the only way
they can get an up-or-down vote. My response is simple. I know how hard
it is to be very close to having the votes to pass legislation, but not
quite being there. Senator McCain and I worked very hard on our
campaign finance reform legislation to get the votes needed to move
forward--it took years--but we stuck with it until we could get the
legislation passed. We fought hard but we fought fair. We did not--and
we would not have--tried to advance our legislation by manipulating the
budget process. This single reconciliation instruction opening up the
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is simply out of bounds.
My concerns, however, go beyond the obvious abuse of process. The
bottom line is that the revenue assumptions are highly speculative and
in no way reflect reality. For a second, let's ignore the fact that
last year a Bush adviser was quoted as saying that ``even if you gave
the oil companies the refuge for free, they wouldn't want to drill
there'' and let's look at the numbers.
The Congressional Budget Office assumes $6 billion in revenues while
the President's budget puts the number at $7 billion. Based on past
proposals, 400,000 to 600,000 acres in the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge would be on the leasing block. Therefore, to achieve the
administration's estimate, companies would have to pay between $17,500
and $11,667 per acre to make it to the $7 billion level. To get to
CBO's estimate, they would have to pay between $15,000 and $10,000 per
acre to get to a total of $6 billion. Now let's consider these numbers
a bit more closely to see how they line up with reality:
Since 1991, 40 lease sales on the North Slope and in near-shore
waters have brought in an average of only $60.47 per leased acre in
real 2006 dollars. CBO's projections are 165 times greater than the
inflation-adjusted average during the last 16 years.
Think that higher gas prices will mean higher lease bids? Think
again. In December of 2005, CBO said that higher gas prices at the pump
don't directly translate into higher lease bids by oil companies, and
cited other factors--such as operating and capital costs and the
attractiveness of competing projects elsewhere--that influence bid
amounts.
Additionally, the reconciliation instruction assumes $3 billion in
Federal revenues, based on a 50/50 split between the State of Alaska
and the U.S. Treasury. Given public statements by members of the Alaska
delegation, as recently as last December, this 50/50 split is, at best,
speculative.
Some may argue that oil company activities in the Arctic Refuge could
be done in an environmentally safe manner. I would point out to them
that earlier this month the largest crude oil spill in the history of
oil and gas operations was discovered on Alaska's North Slope. To quote
an employee of the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation,
``Hopefully, the tundra will recover. It's never going to be perfect.''
I don't think anyone wants to contemplate the possibility of such an
accident occurring within the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
During his State of the Union Address, the President acknowledged our
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addiction to oil. I hoped that this would mean we could move forward to
discuss real energy solutions, solutions that protect our national
security, our citizens, and our environment, as I continue to believe
that we can do all three. In fact, there are bipartisan bills out there
to move our transportation sector to renewable sources of energy and
sadly we spend our time talking about this issue, an issue that divides
us. When are we going to move past this divisive debate to discuss real
energy solutions for the 21st century?
If we do not stand against misuse of the legislative process, then
every member of this esteemed body is at risk. Today, I cast a vote
against abuse and in favor of the integrity of the Senate.
____________________