[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 14 (Wednesday, January 24, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1004-S1006]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                 ENERGY

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, last night in the State of the Union 
Address, President Bush, for the seventh year running, raised the issue 
of energy. I am glad he did because I think everybody across America 
understands we are in a dangerous position. We are entirely dependent 
upon imports from foreign countries when it comes to our energy needs 
and our economy.
  It is true that we produce our own oil and gas in this country, but 
we don't produce enough to fuel our economy. So we find ourselves 
buying oil from countries far and wide across the globe. We find 
ourselves in positions where we are compromised sometimes by that 
dependence. Many of us have felt that the President's first goal or 
task should be to establish the reduction of our dependence upon 
foreign oil. I think that is a worthy goal and one I wish the President 
had quantified last night a little more specifically than he did.
  The reason, of course, is if we can find a way to reduce dependence 
upon foreign oil, for example, we might have several positive impacts: 
first, not entangling ourselves in the foreign policy goals of 
countries we don't share many values with; second, it is good for our 
security interests to have sources of fuel that are reliable closer to 
home; third, of course, we are dealing with an environmental issue 
here. The more gasoline we burn to move a mile or two miles down the 
road, the more emissions and the more global warming; the more global 
warming, the more climate change and a disastrous environmental impact.
  So many of us believe that though the President continues to refer to 
the problem, he has never quite moved us as we would like in the 
direction of a solution.
  Last night, he said two things that were more encouraging. As I said, 
this is the seventh year the President has brought up the issue. He 
made a famous statement last year about America's addiction to oil. In 
the ensuing 12 months, we did little or nothing in Washington to 
address that addiction.
  Assuming the same addiction today, the President said we should move 
toward alternative fuels, which I heartily support, not just biofuels, 
such as ethanol and biodiesel, but other alternative fuels that could 
make a big difference in the way we drive our cars, heat our homes, and 
fuel our businesses.
  The second issue the President talked about, which is long overdue, 
is addressing the CAFE standards. These, of course, were standards 
created in 1975 by Congress. At the time, we knew we had a problem. The 
problem was obvious--that we had too much dependence on foreign oil and 
prices were going up. By today's standards, they were not going up that 
high, but by the standards of those days they were.
  In addition, the cars and trucks we were driving were inefficient. In 
fact, the average miles per gallon in 1975 for cars and trucks was 
about 13, 14 miles per gallon. At that point, Congress worked up the 
courage, with the cooperation of the President, to set a new goal and 
said that in 10 years, we will virtually double the fuel efficiency of 
the cars and trucks in America.
  The negotiations got underway, and they decided to exempt trucks--we 
will go after cars and we will go after the fleet average of cars.
  It worked. In a span of 10 years, we went from 13 or 14 miles a 
gallon average mileage to 27, 28 miles a gallon. So we clearly showed 
that when given incentives and mandates, the automobile manufacturers 
could respond with a product that was more fuel efficient.
  What happened after 1985, after we hit the 27, 28 miles a gallon 
average? We did nothing. For 21 straight years, we did nothing. What 
happened in addition, that little loophole we created for trucks, 
letting them off the hook, the SUVs drove right through it. They 
produced these big, heavy vehicles that became extremely popular with 
Americans. They classified them as trucks, and they had no requirements 
to be fuel efficient. So the overall use of gasoline continued to 
increase, and the overall efficiency of the cars and trucks we drive 
went down as more and more SUVs and trucks were built that were exempt 
from the CAFE standards. Twenty-one years passed and things got 
progressively worse as we imported more and more fuel--dramatically 
more and more fuel--to burn in cars and trucks that were significantly 
more inefficient than those we had in 1985.
  I have tried, on the floor of this Senate, three different times to 
reimpose CAFE standards on cars and trucks, to close loopholes and to 
move us back in the direction of more efficient cars and trucks, and I 
failed every time. Maybe things have changed. I credit a lot of people 
for this new debate.
  What troubled me last night was the President, I felt, acknowledged 
the energy issue but gave scant attention to the environmental aspect. 
It is true that most of us understand we are going through a climate 
change in America. If you have seen Al Gore's documentary ``An 
Inconvenient Truth,'' he documents and brings the facts forward to make 
the argument that this climate change is changing the world we live in 
on a permanent basis.
  I recently returned from an official trip with my colleagues to South 
America, where leaders in that region of the world said, when asked, 
they saw ample evidence of climate change--glacier melt and changes in 
things they thought would never change. We have seen it in America. We 
have seen it in the weather we find in different regions of our 
country, the extremes which we have witnessed and experienced.
  My point is I hope we can take the President's invitation in his 
speech last night to the next level. I hope we can start talking about 
an energy policy that does make sense. The starting point ought to be a 
realistic goal for reducing our dependence on foreign oil. We ought to 
understand, if we can move forward with more efficient cars and trucks, 
give consumers in America more choices, that they will, given those 
choices, make the right choice, time and again.
  Sadly, the production of these fuel-efficient cars has been led by 
foreign manufacturers and not by the United States. That has to come to 
an end.
  I might say, although I support biofuels, ethanol, and biodiesel, 
although I believe flexible fuel vehicles are sensible for people to 
own and drive, it is not enough, and we shouldn't delude ourselves into 
believing it is enough. We need to move toward those hybrid vehicles 
that truly burn less fuel and move people in America to the places they 
need to go. We can do that, but we need to move in a sensible way.

  Let me give two examples. There are two companies in my State of 
Illinois. One is Firefly. Firefly is a spinoff of Caterpillar Tractor 
company. It is an independent company that is trying to design a new 
battery for cars and trucks. The lead-acid battery, which most use 
today, is ancient and heavy and inefficient and in extreme temperatures 
doesn't work well. They are investing in research to find a new battery 
that is lighter and has a longer life. I don't know if theirs will be 
the breakthrough technology, but we need to encourage companies such as 
Firefly to develop the new batteries that can lead to better hybrid 
cars and more fuel efficiency.
  Secondly, one of the biggest problems we have with fuel efficiency is 
the weight of the vehicle. If we can reduce the weight of the vehicle 
without compromising safety, we can get more fuel efficiency. I happen 
to have another company in Illinois--I am certainly proud of my State 
and what we do; these happen to be two companies relevant to the 
discussion--this company in Illinois has now a new titanium alloy that 
can be derived at a much lower cost.
  Titanium holds the promise of being stronger than steel and lighter 
than aluminum. So this could be the answer to a car chassis that is 
safe and lighter. Combining those two items might offer a prospect for 
a vehicle in the future which would be much more fuel efficient.
  Why aren't we promoting companies such as those companies? If we 
truly

[[Page S1005]]

want to reach energy independence and energy inefficiency, we need to 
move beyond where we are today. We need to move the discussion. We need 
to say to automobile manufacturers that it isn't good enough to keep 
producing those SUVs and trucks, fuel-inefficient vehicles, and giving 
consumers fewer choices. It isn't enough to always come in second to 
the Japanese, when it comes to production of newer and forward looking 
technology. It isn't enough to let the airline and airplane industry 
look for these new alloys and new batteries and ignore their need for 
our automobile industry as well.
  The President has pointed us in the right direction. I hope that now 
he will join us. We need to cooperate. We need to work together, 
Republicans and Democrats--give some ground, if necessary, but keep our 
eye on that goal to clean up this environment for our kids, reduce our 
dependence on foreign oil, push the kind of technology and innovation 
that will create great new American companies with great new American 
jobs that pay a decent income to those who work there.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Colorado.
  Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, in each State of the Union Address that 
President Bush has given to our country over the last 6 years, he has 
talked about the importance of energy independence for our Nation.
  In 2001, he said loudly and clearly that we as America ``must become 
more energy independent.''
  In 2002, he said:

       We need to encourage conservation, promote technology, and 
     build infrastructure.

  And again last year, most of us remember the President loudly and 
clearly telling the people of America, the people of this world, that 
America is addicted to oil and we need to do something about it.
  I was pleased last night that the President revisited an issue he had 
talked about before--our energy independence. In my view, this is a 
signature issue for all of us in the 21st century. Encompassed in this 
issue of energy security for our Nation, we see the national security 
of America because today the way we approach the energy issue, where we 
now import 70 percent of our oil from foreign countries, we end up 
funding both ends of the war on terror. We do it when we put gasoline 
in our tanks in America and it ends up funding Iran and Iran ends up 
buying the rockets for Hezbollah that rain over Israel and funds the 
10,000 members of the Hezbollah militia. That is crazy. So our national 
security requires us to move forward with energy independence.
  As far as our economic independence at home, we saw what happened 
when gasoline went up over $3 a gallon, when farmers and ranchers were 
suffering, having to pay $3.50 a gallon for diesel to fill up their 
tractors, their combines, and their trucks. We know the economic 
security of our country depends on having a steady supply of energy.
  Finally, the environmental security of our country, knowing what 
global warming is doing to the North Pole and to the climate changes 
all around the world, is something we need to get our hands around. We 
need to deal with the energy issue in an effective way.
  So I was pleased that the President of the United States last night 
came before the Congress and the Nation and said we needed to do some 
more work on energy. He said we needed to more than double, we need to 
quintuple the renewable fuel standard, which hopefully will get us to 
the 35 million gallons per day in 10 years. And he said we need to 
reduce the gasoline we are currently using in this country in 10 years 
by 20 percent.
  At the end of the day, what we do on energy will depend on how we 
take those concepts and how we, with the President, walk the talk 
toward getting us to energy independence.
  When we look back on what has happened in the last 6 years in the 
United States, the opposite has happened. Instead of becoming less 
dependent on foreign sources of oil, we have become more dependent on 
foreign sources of oil. So the rhetoric simply has not matched the 
deeds. We need to make sure the words that were spoken last night are 
matched by the deeds of the administration in terms of the budget, the 
leadership of the Department of Energy in investing in technology, in 
the National Renewable Energy Lab, and moving forward with an 
aggressive agenda on renewable energy and new technologies.
  I wish to illustrate two points that tell the history of what has 
happened over the last 6 years in Washington. First, with respect to 
renewable energy investments, if one takes a look at this chart, 2001 
to 2006, one would think, as we were on this trajectory of getting 
ourselves energy independent, that this red line would show us 
increasing investments in renewable energy in America. And yet the 
exact opposite has happened.
  We started in 2001 investing about $350 million a year into renewable 
energy. By the time we got to 2006, we were at about $375 million. So 
we actually dropped about $25 million in what we were investing in 
renewable energies. This is not walking the talk as we embrace the 
future of renewable energy.
  I would like to illustrate what we have done with efficiency. We talk 
about energy independence. We know it is a complex issue, but frankly, 
as my good friend from Tennessee and others know, it is not as complex 
as some of the other issues we face in America today. It certainly is 
not as complex, in my mind, as the health care issue which dogs the 
businesses and families of America every day because we know how we can 
get to energy independence.
  If the country of Brazil, a Third World country, could declare itself 
to be energy independent, why not the most powerful Nation on Earth, 
the Nation with the greatest technology? Why couldn't we have done the 
same thing? The answer to that is that we have not had a sustained 
commitment to get us to energy independence.
  If we look at the low-hanging fruit with respect to energy 
efficiency, we again see the story of our walking away from embracing a 
true ethic of energy independence. If we look at the investments that 
have been made from 2001 to 2006, we see a dramatic decline, again, in 
terms of what we are doing with energy efficiency. That is not the way 
to go. It is the wrong way to go because the experts and scientists at 
the Department of Energy, the National Renewable Energy Lab tell us 
that we waste about 62 percent of the energy we consume. We waste 62 
percent of the energy that we consume. So if we can become much more 
efficient with respect to how we use energy, we can help deal with this 
issue of energy dependence, which is essentially strangling our economy 
and strangling our national security.
  As I react to the President's State of the Union Address, I am 
delighted with the fact that he has given us this challenge. Now we 
need to work as a Congress and have the administration work with us so 
we are able to put the resources and the ideas on the table to come up 
with what is truly a bipartisan package that will help us move forward 
with the kind of energy independence that is achievable.
  In my view, we can be even bolder and go beyond what the President 
has said. There is a group of Senators in this Chamber--some 25 of us, 
half Republicans, half Democrats--that last year sponsored legislation 
called 2025. This year it has another number. We talk about alternative 
fuels and how we incentivize moving forward with alternative fuels. We 
have in the Senate as well incentives for higher efficiencies and how 
we use oil. Our goal in that legislation is to reduce the consumption 
in the imports of oil in a very dramatic fashion by the year 2016 and 
then beyond, by the year 2026. It is a bipartisan agenda.

  At the end of the day, and in conclusion, we have an opportunity to 
work together as a Senate, as a Congress, by bringing Republicans and 
Democrats together to achieve true energy independence and surpass even 
the President's vision of what we can do. When you think about Senators 
such as Sessions and Brownback and then on the Democratic side Bayh and 
Lieberman, a whole host of us who are involved in the set America free 
agenda, it is an important opportunity we have to move forward. But, at 
the end of the day, the way we will achieve this milestone of energy 
independence for our country, which is so essential, is by making sure 
the administration itself, the President of the United States,

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walks the talk in terms of what we can do to achieve this goal of 
energy independence.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be allowed 
to speak for 10 minutes in morning business.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Will the Chair please let me know when I have a minute 
remaining?
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Chair will do so.

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