[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 25 (Thursday, February 14, 2008)]
[House]
[Page H972]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1615
                WE ARE STANDING AT A CRITICAL CROSSROAD

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Tim Murphy) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. TIM MURPHY of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, we are facing massive 
problems with regard to the price of energy. Energy costs money, and 
expensive energy costs jobs, and we are seeing that now happen in our 
economy.
  We are standing at a critical crossroad, and if we fail to deal with 
our energy needs in a responsible way, we will face not only the 
concerns about the environment, but we will face and we are facing 
economic recession threats and major job losses.
  Earlier today, the Department of Commerce released December's trade 
deficit numbers, which, once again, strongly underscored the need for 
American energy independence. The good news is that the trade deficit 
shrank by 6.9 percent to $58.76 billion. But the bad news is that 
energy imports continue to make up over half of our trade deficit, over 
half, 55 percent. In November, it was the reason why we had major 
increases.
  We continue to see risk that oil was sold for only $50 a barrel a 
year ago and gas into $2.50, and is going to continue to climb.
  As long as we continue down this road of importing foreign oil to the 
United States, we will be allowing OPEC nations to call the shots for 
our economy and becoming more dependent upon hostile countries for oil. 
When OPEC manipulates production, rural oil prices soar. And our 
President is left to go and ask Saudi leaders to produce more oil, more 
Saudi oil, not more American oil.
  We have Venezuelan leader, President Hugo Chavez, threatening to cut 
off oil to the United States and Exxon. If they were to do that, the 
price of oil would increase throughout the world. Chavez himself 
predicted the cost per barrel would double to $200 and increase our 
prices. Such a move would show all of these oil-producing countries 
that they can control our actions by shutting down our access to oil. 
We've already seen natural gas prices manipulated by Russia. We've seen 
these energy prices increase. But when we buy oil from countries with a 
history of supporting terrorism, the worst part about this is we are 
funding both sides of the war on terror.
  Meanwhile, what has Congress done in the last year or two? Well, it's 
put on an embargo on our own oil. It's blocked exploration for American 
oil. Congress has voted to prevent oil production, oil drilling in the 
Atlantic coast, the gulf coast, the Pacific coast, Colorado and Alaska. 
These bans on drilling for our own oil are particularly preposterous in 
light of the fact that China and Cuba are drilling within 60 miles of 
our Florida coast while we are not allowed to drill off our coast.
  The U.S. contains 70 percent of the world's shale oil reserves, 
enough to supply our country with energy for hundreds of years if we 
are allowed to use it. But rather than turning to this resource that 
can lead us to energy independence and energy security, we once again 
turn our backs to it. Last year, we cut off access to 2 trillion 
barrels of shale oil in the western States in the omnibus spending 
bill. Such policies have forced us to continue this increase of 
importing oil.
  What happens is the impact upon the American family in terms of 
costs. We see increased costs for food as we also try using corn for 
ethanol. But when 20 percent of corn is being used for ethanol, we see 
the cost of food go up. We see the costs of transporting food go up. We 
see the cost of wheat climbing because not only is it a concern with 
regard to shortages of wheat coming from other nations, but it's also a 
huge concern on the cost of transporting that wheat. So what was $16 
per hundred weight last year for wheat for our bakers to use their 
flour, now it's $40, with anticipation to climb much more.
  How will Americans react when they know that while Congress continues 
to embargo the American oil resources, a loaf of bread is going to 
climb from $1.50 to $3 a loaf. Americans don't understand why we cannot 
drill for our own oil.
  Yes, we need to do so many things to clean up the air. Yes, we need 
to make sure we are investing in clean coal technology so that the 300 
years' worth of coal we have in this Nation can be used to cleanly 
produce electricity. We have to make sure we are using clean nuclear 
energy. We have to make sure that natural gas is used for what it's 
supposed to be as a chemical product to make fertilizer rather than 
producing energy at a very high cost and thereby allow us to use it for 
making fertilizer and other products that can help also reduce the cost 
of our food products.
  But instead, we continue to say no to American oil, and it just 
doesn't make sense. Here is what America's going to face by 2050: our 
energy demands are going to double. That means we have 400 coal-fired 
power plants that need to be rebuilt and an additional 400 built. We 
have 100 nuclear power plants that need to be rebuilt because they are 
old, and we need to build an additional 100.
  That means starting in the year 2010, we have to open up a new clean 
coal power plant every 2\1/2\ weeks and a nuclear plant every 2\1/2\ 
months, and we haven't even started building them yet. It cannot be 
done. Instead, what we are probably going to face is rolling brownouts 
because the efforts we are doing are not going to suffice.
  I hope this House will move forward, take the embargoes off coal, and 
begin to really move towards clean coal technology and stop the embargo 
on oil.

                          ____________________