[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 96 (Wednesday, June 11, 2008)]
[House]
[Pages H5310-H5317]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
30-SOMETHING WORKING GROUP
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Murphy) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues for
giving us the indulgence of once again allowing the Speaker's 30-
Something Working Group to come down to the House floor. We are hopeful
tonight that we're going to have a full House here on the House floor,
that we will be joined tonight by our master of ceremonies, on most
nights Representative Meek and his original partner in crime, Mr. Ryan,
as well as Ms. Wasserman Schultz, and Mr. Altmire.
It's appropriate that we're going to have hopefully four or five of
us here by the time the hour is up because we have a lot to talk about.
Because as our Republican colleagues have noted
[[Page H5311]]
over the last hour, the one thing that they are probably right on the
mark about is that people are hurting out there. People have a level of
anger and anxiety over what is happening in this economy that many of
us haven't seen in a very, very long time.
I don't know technically whether we're in a recession, whether we're
on our way into one. All I know is that people are having to do more
with much less; that that salary increase that people thought they were
getting isn't happening; that those overtime hours that my constituents
in New Britain relied upon aren't there this year. And yet on the other
side of their family's ledger, the prices to heat their home are going
up, obviously the prices to fuel their car are going up, the college
expenses, the health care expenses are going in only one direction and
by and large far outpacing the rate of wage inflation that they're
seeing as well.
{time} 2130
And the New Direction Congress is trying to do something about it.
There's no secret as to why we've gotten into this situation that we're
in today, why our people are making money at the very upper echelon of
the income scale, why do we have GDP continuing to expand, while we
have wages remaining relatively stagnant.
It's because for a very long time on the floor of this House of
Representatives before the New Direction Congress was installed last
January, the voices that really mattered down here were the folks that
were doing pretty well off in this economy: the drug industry, the
health insurers, and at the top of the list, the oil industry.
The dichotomy right now that exists today between the success of the
oil industry and the distress of the people who buy their product is
absolutely unconscionable. And it is hard for us to understand, with
our slim majority that we hold on the Democratic side, why we can't get
more consensus here between Republicans and Democrats to take on those
gross and unjustifiable profits that are being made by the oil
industry.
Last quarter's profits from American and multinational oil companies
set records, not for the history of the American oil industry, but for
the history of American capitalism, and it's no secret where they're
making those profits. They're making it off of all of us.
Now, we heard a couple of days ago that the average price across this
country hit $4 a gallon. Well, that was old news to us in Connecticut.
We hit $4 weeks, if not a month, ago. We are well on our way in
Connecticut to $5 a gallon, and in Connecticut it hurts us a little bit
more because we have more congested highways. We don't have mass
transit alternatives like other parts of the country. People are
driving.
In my district, we still have some jobs growing in Danbury,
Connecticut, but nobody can live there because we don't have enough
affordable housing. So people live in Waterbury, Connecticut, and they
drive 30 miles to work every day. They'd live in Danbury if they could.
They can't afford to do it. They'd live in Stamford if they could, but
they can't. They live where they have to. They work where they have to.
And it necessitates a commute which puts them out now record amounts,
all the while, while the oil industry are making profits, they are
setting records in the history of American capitalism.
So, to us, it seems pretty obvious where we should lay the blame, on
an oil industry which has continued to take profits out of American
consumers and at the feet of an administration run by two oil men. I
mean, it doesn't get much more simple than that.
I mean, I understand people's frustrations. I understand the
frustrations of the folks on the Republican side and the Democratic
side, but it doesn't take too much imagination to figure out why we got
where we got. We elected to the White House a President and a Vice
President who made their fortunes in the oil industry, and they have
created a legacy that they will leave behind in the White House of
doing even more favors for that industry, of setting an energy policy
that guarantees massive profits for the friends that they left behind
in that industry.
And so, to us, the solution seemed pretty simple. The Senate tried
just a few days ago to pass a windfall profits tax to suggest that
maybe they're making a little bit too much in the oil industry; we
should turn a little bit of that back around to hardworking consumers.
Couldn't get the votes it needed to without Republican support.
Here in the House, we looked at the $18 billion in tax breaks and
giveaways that have been given to the oil industry. We watched a recent
report come out from GAO, the nonpartisan Government Accountability
Office, about a week ago which told us that we have given away over $50
billion in annual unclaimed royalties that we should be collecting
against the oil industry for their drilling across this country and off
our shores. And we see an opportunity, we see an opportunity to take
those unclaimed royalties that are making the oil industry rich, we see
an opportunity to take those tax breaks, $16- and $18-billion, however
you want to estimate it that the 2005 energy bill passed before the New
Direction Congress got here and gave to the oil industry, and we see a
chance to take that money out of the pockets of the oil industry and
turn it around to hardworking consumers, hardworking commuters that
need a break right now.
It's not like the money isn't out there. It's out there. It's lying
in the hands of oil industry and gas industry CEOs and their top
executives, their shareholders who are reaping the benefit of the
misery that people in this country are witnessing at the pump. Four
dollars may be the national number, but in Connecticut that's history.
We're on our way to $5.
So, to us on the Democratic side, on the majority side, we don't want
this to be a partisan issue. I appreciate the comments of our
Republican friends who spoke before the 30 Something Working Group here
tonight, but this, to us, isn't about Republicans or Democrats, because
you're paying $4.50 at the pump in Connecticut whether you're a
registered R or you're a registered D. And those oil company executives
are making record profits, whether they are a registered Republican or
whether they are a registered Democrat. Affiliation ideology does not
mean anything here. The stats are the stats and the numbers are the
numbers, and it shows us that there are people making a lot of money
who don't deserve to make it, and there are people enduring a lot of
misery who don't have to.
And one of the most respected Members of the other side of the aisle
sat at the well just a few moments ago and told us that words are one
thing, but votes matter. I don't think that there would be a voice of
disagreement in this House. Absolutely, you can go out there and say
one thing about how you're trying to take on the oil industry, but what
you do here matters.
And so I would encourage people out there, my friends in the Fifth
District of Connecticut, and all those in other parts of the country
that are struggling to understand what's happening with energy prices
out there to check the record, to go back and look at what Congress has
done and has attempted to do to fix this problem and see where the
votes are and where the votes aren't.
You see, we've tried to pass legislation to punish price gougers, to
give the Federal Trade Commission the authority to press Federal
charges against those individuals, retailers and wholesalers, who have
tried to take advantage of this situation to unjustifiably run up the
price, and we've been alone over here on the Democratic side of the
aisle. We've passed legislation to repeal the antitrust exemption that
the big, multinational oil companies have so that we can go after folks
that are price colluding against American consumers, and we haven't had
much cooperation on this side of the aisle.
And we have put actions behind words when it comes to conservation. I
hope that Representative Wamp is right. I hope that we are on the verge
of a new era in transportation technology. I hope that we are going to
see electric cars be the predominant force in our automotive world. I
hope that we are near that moment, and I think he's also right,
frankly, that if we are going to get to that moment we're going to have
to be honest about the electricity capacity that we do not have in this
country.
[[Page H5312]]
I hope that we can set, Republicans and Democrats, a strategy to get
there, to both encourage the development of electric car technology, of
the recharging stations that we will need to make that a robust
technology and a commercialized opportunity, an alternative for
commuters, and that we will also do the right things in terms of
electricity production and grid capacity to make it a realistic option.
But until we get there, until we get to a moment where we can plug in
our car and go, we have an opportunity today to stand behind an effort
to make the cars that we buy right now more fuel efficient. Thirty
years went by until this House of Representatives stood up under a
Democratic leadership and passed a new law requiring that every car in
this country, the average fuel efficiency of a fleet, be 35 miles a
gallon. Thirty years went by, 12 years of Republican rule, and not a
single bill passed in this Congress to promote conservation with real
policy directives behind it.
Now, we did get a lot of Republican sponsors on that legislation, the
energy bill passed at the end of last year, but we needed more. We
needed more, and on that case, votes did matter. On that case, votes
did matter. We have had bipartisan cooperation, but led by a new
Democratic majority, this House stood up and passed legislation
requiring cars in this country to hit 35 miles a gallon, which will
save the average consumer $1,000 over the course of the year at the
pump. That's real dollars. That's real dollars for the average
consumer. In fact, that number was from the end of last year. It's
probably much more than $1,000 now that the price at the pump has gone
up.
And the alternatives that the Republicans offer, as we try to say,
listen, the solution here is to make the cars we drive now more fuel
efficient, the solution is to go after those that would collude to set
prices, those who would take advantage of this moment to price gouge at
the pumps, when we sit here and say that we can also look at
legislation promoted by Representative Stupak and Representative
Larson, legislation being worked on now by the Energy and Commerce
Committee to start to regulate the energy commodity trading markets
that are skimming millions, if not billions, of dollars off of the
product that people are paying for at the pump, we can do something to
take money out of the hands of speculators who have done far too well
off of the rising price of oil and put that money back in the hands of
those hardworking, middle class Americans who are paying the bills for
those speculators on Wall Street.
We're going to move forward legislation to do that as well. We're
going to set a long-term strategy while we're at it because we can do
things in the short-term with price colluding, with price gougers. We
can take pride in legislation that Mr. Welch and Mr. Courtney and
others moved through the House to stop the President from putting more
oil into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and, instead, put that oil on
the market. That's another 10, 15, 20 cents on the gallon. We can do
all those short-term things necessary to get the price of oil down.
We can take a long-term view to try to get to a moment in 5 or 10
years where we're no longer relying on a foreign-produced and foreign-
priced product that oil is. We can have that long-term view to have a
renewable domestically produced energy source here.
We can do all those things, and we can do them together. It's not
mutually exclusive to try to take some steps right now, going against
the speculators, going against the price gougers, stopping putting oil
in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. That's not mutually exclusive from
doing the long-term things necessary to wean ourselves off of this
product that we do not price, that for the most part we do not produce.
The solution, though, is not to just say that we're going to get a
little bit more from here in the United States. We have a chart here
that maybe we can take a look at with regard to some of the claims of
our friends on the other side of the aisle with regard to the great
salvation of the American energy crisis which is going to be the
drilling for oil in Alaska.
We are talking about a project that, first of all, is going to take
20 years to get to peak oil production. It's going to take 10 years,
Mr. Speaker, just to get to a point where anything is coming out of the
ground. Even in a moment right now, where big oil companies have
license to drill right here onshore, on about 42 million acres, 42
million acres that they could take oil from onshore. You know how much
that they're taking oil off of right now? Twelve million. There's 30
million acres with permitted potential here domestically that isn't
being used today.
{time} 2145
So this talk of drilling more, these oil companies have the ability
to drill for more oil right now, 30 million acres permitted and not
drilled for.
Let's talk about offshore as well. And I want to talk about what
happens in ANWR, in the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge, but let's talk about
offshore. Thirty-eight million acres ready to go, permitted for
drilling by the big domestic and multinational oil companies. You know
how much of that 38 million is being used today? Eight million acres.
30.6--let's be exact here--30.6 million acres of offshore territory
permitted for use not being drilled upon today.
This effort to take a small parcel of land, admittedly no bigger than
Dulles National Airport, and use this crisis moment in American energy
history to open up a sensitive wildlife refuge for drilling is nothing
more than a power and money grab by an industry that already today, by
facts and figures that don't come from me, but come from the industry
themselves, suggests that there are 60 million acres of onshore and
offshore territory today that are not being drilled upon that could be
used right now if they wanted to. Record numbers of new permits being
handed out for drilling on available lands and available offshore
territory today.
It is not that we don't have the capacity for new drilling. We have
it, it's ready to go; the oil industry has decided not to use it. The
oil industry has decided, for whatever reason--I can't get into their
heads to try to figure out exactly what their motivation is, but you
can certainly impute a motivation which would suggest that a holdback
on supply isn't such a bad thing, that by keeping supply, by holding
back on drilling, by keeping that 60 million acres that they could
drill on right now tomorrow from going into production, they're going
to make some profit off of that.
Our focus has to be on how on Earth we have allowed for more tax
breaks, for more royalty breaks to an oil industry making record
profits in the history of capitalism that sits today on 60 million
acres that they're not drilling on.
But let's talk about what would happen if we did get beyond that, if
we did sort of forgive the fact that they just simply aren't using the
territory that's available to them today and we gave them the ability
to drill in ANWR. You're not going to be even able to really see this
chart. In fact, Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, it looks like a blank
chart. It's titled, ``How Much Would We Save by Drilling in ANWR?'' And
the statistics used to make this chart don't come from congressional
Democrats or congressional Republicans, they come from the
administration, they come from the administration's own energy agency.
And you can't see anything on this chart. It looks blank to you
because it is blank. How much would you save by drilling in ANWR? By
2030, Mr. Speaker--I'm going to have my first child this summer, and my
child will be on his way to college by the time 2030 rolls around. So
by 2030, my child will be driving a car. And in 2030, he's going to
have saved 1.8 cents per gallon if we drilled in ANWR.
So even if you got over the fact that there are millions of acres out
there permitted today, ready to go for exploration today that the oil
industry has not used, even if you get over the very legitimate
environmental concerns that confront ANWR, you're getting 1.8 cents in
savings per gallon in 2030. Why 2030? Because it takes 20 years to get
to peak production. It takes 10 years to get one drop out of the
ground.
And while we sit here and argue over whether we drill in ANWR or not,
we're wasting valuable time that could go into making changes today,
like the success we had just weeks ago in stopping the deposit of new
petroleum into the Strategic Reserve. That's not 1.8
[[Page H5313]]
cents per gallon, that is potentially 15 or 20 cents per gallon.
Stopping putting oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve isn't 2030, Mr.
Speaker, it's today, it's next week--maybe not next week, maybe it's
next month, maybe it's next year. It's not 2030, it's immediate.
And more to the point, by spending our time this year and next year
talking about how we take this country back from this oil industry, how
we create sources of energy that are produced here in the United States
that we control and we price, we're doing something not just for energy
prices, but we're doing something for national security. Because every
day that we continue to go on, every day that we fight about what
little bit more we can get out of the ground, we're empowering a global
energy industry that is a threat to this Nation in the end.
Every day that we continue to fill up our gas tanks with a product
that sends money overseas to countries that use that money to fuel the
educational and recruitment initiatives of those who would do harm to
us--because that's what's happening here, we're sending oil overseas,
Ms. Wasserman Schultz, to countries that maybe aren't directly using
that money to send straight to terrorists, but they're using that money
to fund the schools that train the kids that eventually turn into those
terrorists. They're using that money to create societies that
marginalize individuals in Saudi Arabia and other places so that they
have no choice but to flee to those extremist movements.
Every day that we sit here and argue over whether we drill in ANWR,
whether we drill offshore, whether we give more power to the
international oil industry that already is making these record profits
in the history of capitalism, we are endangering the safety of this
country.
I want to do the right short-term and long-term things because I go
home every weekend and I feel the hurt, as you do, Ms. Wasserman
Schultz, as you do, Mr. Speaker, of all of our constituents that don't
deserve to pay $4, $5 at the pump while the oil industry is making
record profits. But I also want to make the right decisions now on the
future of our energy policy because it's how my future kids and grand
kids live in a safe country and in a safe world.
And so I'm proud to be part of a ``new direction'' Congress that is
finally, for the first time in a decade, taking on this oil industry.
I'm proud to be part of a Congress that is both doing things in the
short run--even if we don't get Republican votes to do it--and trying
to set a long-term strategy. It's a lot to ask. It's a lot to ask, but
this is a big moment right now. This is a big moment. Four or five
dollar prices at the pumps cannot sustain. Families cannot pay that.
And the question is, are we going to allow the oil industry to co-opt
this moment, to take advantage of it, to get a little bit bigger piece
of the pie in order to make even bigger profits? Or are we going to use
this money, the $4 and $5 prices at the pump, to finally stand up to
these guys, to finally say enough it enough, and to set a long-term
plan to get this country off of this product that we can't control, Ms.
Wasserman Schultz?
I think I know the answer to that. I think I know where this Congress
wants to go. I think I know that the American public are ready to
follow. But it frustrates me--you just joined us here--it frustrates me
to listen to some of our colleagues standing on the floor and basically
asking for the same old, same old that we've seen for the late 8 years,
Ms. Wasserman Schultz.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Yes, they seem to believe that the President's
drill more and veto policy is the right way to go when it comes to our
energy policy. And I'll tell you, as I often call myself, Mr. Murphy
and Mr. Ryan, a minivan mom because I have three young kids, I spend
most of my time, when I'm home, driving them from diving practice to
baseball games to gymnastics, and it consumes quite a bit of gas. So
when I'm home and have to go and fill up that gas tank, which I did
just last week before I came back to Washington, it cost me $76, Mr.
Ryan.
And we've done 30-something in the last few weeks, and I think the
last time I was here it cost me $62 to fill up my gas tank, the last
time we talked about this. And we've gone from $62, I'm at $76. The
week before last I was at $72. The week before that, I was at $68 to
fill up the tank. I mean, so now we're talking about real money.
Seventy-six dollars is what a very small amount of groceries cost. And
that's money that is the difference between someone being able to buy
the groceries in the supermarket or put gasoline in the tank or make
sure that they can take their kids to the doctor and make that
copayment for the doctor's appointment. I mean, we have record gas
prices now that are hurting, cutting people to the quick. And the
Republicans, our good friends on the other side of the aisle, what is
their solution?
First of all, before we became the majority and began to even put
this issue on the front burner, it wasn't an issue for them. The last
action that they took, when they were in charge, was to give $14
billion in subsidies to the oil industry, which is the most profitable
industry in America. Now, what does that mean? We've heard a lot of us
talk about those $14 billion in subsidies. What it means is that the
Federal Government gives the oil industry permission, they are allowed
to drill for oil on Federal lands and in exchange they are supposed pay
royalties to the Federal Government to do that. We forgive those
royalties, that's what the $14 billion is. And what we have proposed
is, because we want to truly wean ourselves off of our addiction to
oil--and not just foreign oil, we need to wean ourselves off of our
addiction to oil period because oil is a finite resource. We need to
really invest in renewable energy sources, in biofuels.
And what we would like to do is repeal that $14 billion in subsidies,
require the oil industry to pay the royalties--because they're pulling
oil out of the ground on land that they don't own, on land that is
owned by the Federal Government, they're profiting from that and paying
nothing for the privilege--we want to take that $14 billion in
subsidies and invest it in alternative energy research. Because, you
know, growing up, Mr. Murphy and Mr. Ryan, I remember during the Carter
administration, I remember the energy crisis. I remember sitting in the
back seat of my parents' car on gas lines. And I remember in elementary
school seeing all the conservation efforts that they started doing all
the way down to, you know, to the public school and elementary school
level. We had signs next to the light switches that suddenly were put
on there that said, you know, ``turn the lights off.'' There was a big
national energy conservation effort that just fizzled once Ronald
Reagan became President. And we never invested in alternative research
like we should have. The conservation efforts went by the wayside, and
we went back to the same old story, oil, oil, oil.
And look, right now, the Republicans are talking about needing to
drill for more oil in ANWR, pulling oil out of shale, this 68 million
acres available now that they are not drilling on, 68 million; I mean,
it's absolutely ridiculous. They need to be utilizing the turf that
they've got now, and they're not.
So we need to make sure that it's clear to the American people--and
that's why we come out here every night--who's for solving this energy
crisis and who's all talk. And I think the Republicans have clearly
proven that through their actions and their lack of stewardship when
they were in charge. And I yield to the gentleman.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. What's funny here, Mr. Speaker, is that this is
another pattern, as these issues continue to come up, where the
Republicans continue to offer solutions that have absolutely nothing to
do with the problem that we're trying to deal with. You know, they lack
ideas. They are a party that's void of ideas.
We cannot drill our way out of this problem. That's the issue here.
Drilling has increased in the last 7 years by 66 percent, and there has
been no decrease in the price of gas, there has been a tremendous
increase. And on Friday, there was an increase in the per barrel cost
of oil that was larger than a barrel cost 10 years ago. So the increase
this year was more than a whole barrel cost 10 years ago. We've been
drilling more than we've ever been drilling, 66 percent more in the
last 10 years, and it's still not reducing the price.
The key here is we need to move off of our dependency on foreign oil.
So if
[[Page H5314]]
you look at what the policies have been up to this point--and everyone
says, you know, they come down to the floor, ``if we could only drill
in ANWR,'' if you started drilling in ANWR today, you wouldn't get a
drop of oil for 10 years. And in 20 years, you would only reduce the
cost of a gallon of gas by one penny. That is the energy plan of the
Republican minority in Congress and President George Bush: Go drill,
and in 20 years we'll save you one penny per gallon of gas.
{time} 2200
What we're trying to do is to make a very mature decision, which is
unusual for Washington, that if we take the $15 billion or $18 billion
in subsidies that we're giving to the oil companies under the Bush
administration, we can move that into alternative energy research and
development and have a long-term plan to solve this problem. We do not
want to be here. Hopefully, God willing, our constituents will continue
to elect us.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Will the gentleman yield for just 1 minute
for a correction?
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I would be happy to yield.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I just want to point out that it's not
actually a penny, Mr. Ryan. We have a chart here. It's 1.8 cents.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I'm sorry.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. It's actually 1.8 cents.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I reserve the right to revise and extend my
remarks. So I'd like to take this opportunity to say 1.8 cents per
gallon of gas 20 years from now.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Right.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. What we're trying to say is we don't want to be in
the same position 20 years from now or 10 years from now that we're in
today, so that means that we need to make some long-term decisions.
It's easy to come down to the floor: Drill, drill, drill. Drilling will
not solve this problem.
If you look at what President Bush's policies have been, if you look
at what the Republican Congress' policies have been--drill, increase by
66 percent--gas still goes up through the roof. The war in Iraq has
totally destabilized the region that has more oil than anywhere else,
and it has totally helped to drive up costs.
What we're trying to do is to have these mature discussions, not
drill and veto, drill and veto, drill and veto. Let's stop the
manipulation of the commodities market. Let's stop the manipulation of
the futures and everything else where it's just continuing to drive up
the cost of gasoline for average people. That is basically what is
going on.
I think Ms. Wasserman Schultz made a great point. There are 68
million acres of land, Federal land, that the oil companies could tap
into if they wanted. They have not. As for the refining capacity in the
United States, everyone says, ``Build more refineries. Build more
refineries.'' The refineries we have now are only working at 85
percent. So there are a lot of smoke and mirrors coming from the other
side.
What we are trying to say is we need long-term, responsible policies
that are going to stop providing corporate welfare for the oil
companies, and we need to invest that money into long-term biodiesel,
nuclear, wind, solar, and all of these other issues.
With that, I'd like to yield to our good friend from Pennsylvania.
Mr. ALTMIRE. I appreciate the gentleman from Ohio.
I do hope those who are interested in this topic--and everybody in
this country, I think, is interested in the issue of gas prices and is
certainly interested in alternative sources of energy--have heard what
the gentleman has just said.
There was a poll taken which somebody talked to me about today.
Fifty-four percent of the American people think that we should drill
for more oil domestically. Well, I don't think there is anybody in this
Congress who disagrees with that statement. What does that mean?
As the gentleman said, there are 68 million acres. That is not a
typographical error. I'm not misspeaking. The gentleman was not
misspeaking. There are 68 million acres of Federal lands that are
currently available and permitted to drill for oil. Well, why aren't
the oil companies drilling for oil there? There are a variety of
reasons.
Some of it is the construction. The permitting, the geological, the
surveying work that needs to be done takes a long time. That's the
issue with ANWR, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. If we said today
we were going to allow the oil companies to drill for oil in ANWR, it
would be 10 years before the first drop of oil came, and it would be 20
years before ANWR was at peak capacity. I'll return to that
momentarily.
Part of that 68 million acres that isn't being utilized is going to
be developed at some point, but they're not there yet. Part of it is
that the oil companies buy up these leases and stockpile them because
that looks good on their assets, and they file their financial reports,
and it helps their bottom line because they hold the futures on
stockpiled assets that are leased acreage for oil drilling. But we have
in the Outer Continental Shelf already identified where 80 percent of
the known oil is. It is within the area where the oil companies are
already permitted to drill and where 8,000 leases already exist. So 80
percent of the known oil in the Outer Continental Shelf is already
within an area in which we're able to drill for more oil.
So those watching tonight might say, ``Well, how much of that 80
percent are we drilling on?'' Well, we're drilling on about a quarter
of it. About 75 percent of the leases that are held in that area where
we know that there is oil is not being used for oil drilling right now.
It's the same situation. Some of it is being surveyed, and the
geological work is being done, and they're going to do some
construction, and they'll get there. Some of it is just being held by
the oil companies.
Then you have the coast of Florida, where the gentlewoman is from,
and you have the coast of California, and you're getting into those
issues. It's the same thing. We have identified places in this country
where it's already available to drill for oil.
You might say, ``All right. What are we talking about? How much oil
are we talking about?'' How about 4.2 million barrels of oil per day
that we could get from those 68 million acres if we were drilling right
now where the leases are already held. 4.2 million barrels.
By comparison is ANWR, which we're talking about. The first drop of
oil arrives in the pipeline in ANWR 10 years from the time that we say
you're allowed to drill there. 40,000 barrels of oil per day that first
year from ANWR. 40,000 barrels per day. Currently, the worldwide oil
market is about 80 million barrels per day. So we're talking
infinitesimal on the worldwide market.
When ANWR is at peak capacity, according to the experts, it's going
to be approximately 800,000 barrels a day. It's going to be 800,000
barrels of oil a day in a market that's 80 million barrels a day, a
worldwide market. Let's think about that 4.2 million barrels that we
could get from the 68 million acres, and I know we're talking about a
lot of numbers right now.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. We're standing here, and we're incredibly
impressed, Mr. Altmire.
Mr. ALTMIRE. The point is this: We already know where there is oil to
drill in this country. The oil companies already own the leases where
they could drill for that oil. They're making a conscious decision, for
a variety of reasons, not to drill for oil in places where they're
already permitted to do so.
Lastly, on refineries, people will say, ``Well, let's build more
refineries.'' Well, we have half the number of refineries today that we
had 30 years ago because the companies have shut them down, and the
refineries that we do still have are operating, as the gentleman said,
at 85 percent capacity.
So what is the point of spending the time and the effort to build
more refineries, and what is the point of spending the money if the
refineries that we have aren't even operating at near full capacity?
There are other ways we could spend our time. There are other ways we
could spend our resources. There are other ways we could spend our
money.
So what, I think, every Member of our side of the aisle agrees on is
we have a crisis regarding gas prices in this country right now. I
don't think anybody would disagree with that. We're paying over $4 a
gallon. It's
[[Page H5315]]
going to continue to go up in the foreseeable future. We have to make a
decision. We've arrived at a crisis point. We have a decision to make.
There are no short-term solutions.
Now, we can put a Band-Aid on it and do the Strategic Petroleum
Reserve, which we did, which is going to have some impact. It's not a
long-term solution. We're going to talk about manipulation in the
market and about the speculation that goes on, and that drives the
price per barrel up. We can do some short-term things there, but in the
long term, we have to make a decision.
There are one of two ways we can go. We could either continue our
dependence on oil--and yes, we're talking about domestic sources of oil
when we talk about ANWR and the Outer Continental Shelf and the coasts
of Florida and California. That's domestic oil. But there is not nearly
enough oil there to produce that would bring down the percentage that
we get from foreign nations. So, even if we were done and if we were
pumping all of the oil from those 68 million acres and from the new
land in ANWR and from the other locations, we still would get more oil
from foreign nations than we would produce in this country. There's no
way to get around that.
So the question is: If it's a 20-year process until we get to peak
capacity at ANWR and in the Outer Continental Shelf, isn't there a
better way that we could spend the next 20 years if we're going to pour
money into it and have a national commitment to say we're going to find
an alternative source of energy?
What I advocate and what I'm sure my colleagues would agree with is
we need to put our best and brightest on the job and give them all of
the resources that they need. We need to take everybody from our eighth
grade science students on up to our Nobel Prize winners and say,
figuratively, ``You go in the same room. We're going to give you all of
the money that you need, all of the resources and all of the support
this Nation can provide. This is our number 1 priority. Figure out a
way to make a car run affordably on something other than gasoline.''
We can do that, but we can't do both because every dollar we spend
drilling for more oil or that we spend building more refineries is a
dollar we could have spent getting us off oil and getting us off our
dependence on foreign oil.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. If the gentleman would yield.
Mr. ALTMIRE. I would.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. When most of us here are back home, I know that
people say, ``Just stop the politics. Solve the problem.'' That entails
our making some tough decisions long term, and this is kind of the
general theme of what we're talking about here.
It is that we're trying to provide, yes, some short-term relief but
also some long-term planning and long-term investments so that we're
not here 10 years from now. If you're running a corporation or a
business, you have a long-term business plan. This is our long-term
business plan for the United States of America.
Do you want billions of dollars going to the oil companies that are,
supposedly, supposed to help them increase refining capacity and help
make it easier to drill but where they're not doing it for whatever
reason? Public tax dollars. So the average taxpayer is getting hit at
the pump, and their tax dollars are going to the oil companies, and
still the price is not going down.
What we're trying to say is this money can be better spent. We are
making a decision here to invest this into the long-term alternative
energies which will prevent us, as a country, from being in the same
position that we're in today 10 years from now.
I yield to my friend.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Thank you.
By the way, to the gentleman from Pennsylvania, that was a very
impressive top-of-mind overview, and your command of the facts is truly
incredible. So thank you very much for that very articulate overview.
We also want to stress that, in addition to laying out the problem
and the shock that we have in reaction to the solution of our good
friends on the other side of the aisle to drill and veto, we have not
stood idly by and just said, ``Well, unless we repeal these $14 billion
in subsidies, then we're not going to be able to do anything.'' We have
a series of bills that we have passed, and I think it would be helpful
for us to go through those and to tell people the efforts that we're
making--some short-term, some long-term.
This is a difficult problem to solve in the short term. It is very
difficult to dramatically bring down gas prices through legislation in
a short-term way, but one of the things that we did was to pass the
Strategic Petroleum Reserve Fill Suspension and Consumer Protection
Act.
What that does is it says to the President that he is not to fill the
Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and that was something that the President
had previously opposed. He was threatening to veto it until he realized
that the increase in gas prices was so politically painful for both his
administration and for his Members of Congress that he had no other
choice but to finally relent and agree to sign it. There were still 25
Republicans who voted against that bill.
What the Strategic Petroleum Reserve Act is designed to do is to
bring gas prices down in the short term. During the rest of this year,
we expect that bill to affect gas prices in the short term.
We have the Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act. That is a bill
that will extend and expand tax incentives for renewable energy, the
type of energy that we would like to go in the direction of, instead of
the finite sources that the Republicans always talk about.
What that bill would do is generate hundreds of thousands of green
jobs, spur American innovation and business investment, and cut taxes
for millions of Americans. What the provisions of that bill will do is
preserve hundreds of thousands of good-paying, green-collar American
jobs.
A recent study showed that allowing the renewable energy incentives
to expire would lead to about 116,000 jobs being lost in the wind and
solar industries alone through the end of next year. Yet 159
Republicans voted against that legislation. That's how latched to the
oil industry they are.
How about the OPEC and Big Oil companies accountability bill? We
passed a bill that would combat record gas prices by authorizing
lawsuits against oil cartel members for oil price-fixing as well as
created an antitrust task force to crack down on oil companies that are
engaged in anticompetitive behavior and market manipulation.
{time} 2215
You still had 84 Republicans vote against that bill.
We also passed legislation, historic legislation, Mr. Murphy, for the
first time in 35 years we have passed legislation that will require the
automobile manufacturing industry to increase fuel efficiency standards
to 35 miles per gallon by 2020. That is the first congressional
increase in more than three decades. Ninety-six Republicans voted
against that legislation. It was signed into law on December 19, 2007,
so we will over the long term see fuel efficiency standards improve,
which, of course the automobile industry could have done years and
years ago on their own. But, unfortunately, we had to cajole them along
a little bit.
There are two more bills I want to highlight, simply because of the
shockingly large number of Republicans that voted against those as
well.
You have the Renewable Energy and Conservation Tax Act. That is the
bill that included the repeal of this $14 billion in subsidies. It also
would invest in clean and renewable energy and energy efficiency and
also address a reduction in global warming. It included provisions that
would generate, again, hundreds of thousands of green jobs by investing
in solar energy and biodiesel jobs and protect an additional 75,000
wind industry jobs. And 174 Republicans voted against that bill.
Lastly, one of the things that we wanted to make sure we protected
against when it came to our energy policy was price gouging, so we
passed the Energy Price Gouging Prevention Act, because it is a little
bit suspect that all of these retail establishments and all of the
entire oil industry suddenly and dramatically all increase prices at
the same time. What a coincidence.
[[Page H5316]]
So we thought it was important in order to provide immediate relief
to consumers to give the Federal Trade Commission the authority to
investigate and punish people and entities that artificially inflate
the price of energy, and we wanted to ensure that the Federal
Government had the tools it needed to adequately respond to energy
emergencies and prohibit price gouging, particularly like, for example,
when you have natural disasters like my State faces which we often
struggle with. And 140 Republicans voted against that bill.
So it is just really important that we highlight these stark
differences in our policy versus the Republicans, what we support and
the actions that we have taken and what the other side supports. The
other side is married to the oil industry, and we would like to move,
again, in a new direction, so we can invest in renewable energy.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Ms. Wasserman Schultz, just to put it in
real stark terms here, 2002 to 2008, the oil industry we are talking
about here, goes from $6.5 billion in profit, that is pretty good, you
are going to take that, that is a good year, to 2008, $36.9 billion in
profit.
We still haven't figured out why that is. Why is it that the oil
industry and the drug industry are two of the most profitable
industries in the world? Because they cornered the market, right? You
have got to take that drug. You have got nowhere else to go. If that
drug keeps you alive and nobody else makes that drug, you have got to
buy that drug. If the only thing that gets you from point A to point B
is the product that Exxon and Chevron and BP make, then they can charge
whatever they want.
So we can talk about the margins here. We can talk about producing a
little more. But, in the end, the reason why they get to just basically
decide whatever they want, they can make $6.5 billion one year and
$36.9 billion the next year, it is up to them, because they know
whatever they charge, we will pay, because we have no alternative. That
minivan mom, that soccer mom, guess what? Nothing else fuels that car
right now, except for the products that these guys produce.
If I made a really good apple pie and I went out and everybody else
that tried to grow some apple trees in their backyard, I whacked them
down, I could charge whatever I wanted for that because nobody else
could make that pie. That is what the Republicans are basically doing.
Everybody else that tries to go out and plant some apple trees in their
backyard to give an alternative to the big oil companies, they whack
those trees down. Guess what? That apple pie is now about $5 a gallon,
Ms. Wasserman Schultz.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. If you look on every issue, right, it is like we
get hit on 9/11, the Taliban is housing them in Afghanistan, somehow we
end up in Iraq. We have an energy problem. Drilling is up 67 percent.
We have all this land and everything else, all these other areas. We
got to keep drilling. That is the answer, when we know that it is these
other things going on in the commodities market.
We look at trying to reduce the cost of college education. It is like
we will put the banks in charge of loaning the money to the kids. Or if
we want to provide prescription drugs, I got an idea. We will have the
taxpayer pay for it, and we won't do any negotiations with the drug
companies at all.
It is like they have a solution that doesn't address the current
problem that we have at hand, Mr. Speaker. And what we are trying to
say is we have solutions that will last more than a decade or two, and
if they are wrong, we will switch them. But to come down and say drill,
drill, drill, drill, drill. In ANWR, for example, it will reduce the
cost of a gallon of gas by 1.8 cents per gallon of gas 20 years from
now if we start drilling today. Totally off the mark.
Mr. ALTMIRE. I think it is instructive, the gentleman talks about
mistakes having been made on other issues. It is instructive when you
think about the people who are making the arguments for how to solve
the problems that we face today, let's take a look at what the track
record is and how we got to where we are today. Who made the decisions
that have led us to where we are today?
I know I don't want to be partisan about this, but the facts are the
facts. There are three reasons that gas prices have gone up, two of
which we can control and one we can't. We can't control the increased
demand in China and India and other countries in the world. It is a
huge driving force. It is going to continue to get worse over time. It
is going to continue to drive an increase.
The other two factors, increased speculation in the market and
manipulation of the price in the worldwide oil market. The gentlewoman
from Florida talks about what this Congress is doing on that issue in
regulating that market and moving towards a more fair system that is
going to decrease the price per barrel upwards of $30. We are taking
action. That is a second cause.
But perhaps the biggest cause is the weak U.S. dollar. So let's take
a look at why the dollar is so weak. Oil is traded in the worldwide
market based on the dollar. We are paying more in this country.
Obviously our currency is the U.S. dollar and we are paying more
because of the weakness of the dollar which is at an all-time low, an
historic low.
Well, it is because of the economic policies of the past 8 years that
have driven our economy and driven the price of the dollar nearly to
the ground. And I would invite anyone to compare where the dollar was
based on other worldwide currencies 8 years ago versus today.
We have an enormous trade deficit which the gentleman and I deal with
every day in our districts with the jobs that have been lost, and the
trade deficit is at almost historic proportions. That has led to a
decrease in the dollar.
But mostly the runaway spending of this Congress and the $3.5
trillion in debt that this administration and the previous three
Congresses rolled up on the American people have led to the economic
conditions that drove the price of the dollar down, that have resulted
in sky-high gas prices.
So the exact same people who made the decisions that led to the
crisis that we are in today now have their own recommended solutions.
And I don't dispute their motives. I think they are in it for the same
reason we are. They want to do the right thing. I just think they are
wrong. I think that their course of action that they propose is not
going to solve the problem, and in fact is going to lead to a worsening
of the problem by furthering our dependence on oil, as we talked about.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Murphy, I might need a little help with
this so I can be bipartisan. Let's spread this out here. It is always
better in the 30-Something Working Group when we give visual examples
of what we are talking about.
We walked through the agenda of the New Democratic Congress on our
initiatives to try to affect the cost of energy in the short-term and
the long-term.
Here is a visible example. Next to here are the names of the entire
Republican leadership, and here are the four major pieces of
legislation that we have moved through the Congress. Not allowing OPEC
to price fix, making sure that our constituents are not gouged by
prices, ensuring that we invest in renewable energy and repealing those
$14 billion in subsidies, and ensuring that we have energy security
going into the future.
There are no yeses on this entire grid, the entire Republican
leadership. What is objectionable about making sure that we don't have
price gouging when it comes to gasoline? Should we allow OPEC to fix
prices? Is that okay? I am just not sure which of these bills was
objectionable.
It is one thing for them to say that we should do some other things
as well, but if we are going to try work in a bipartisan spirit and
approach this problem and find a solution together, voting no on
anything that doesn't prop up the oil industry is just insensitive and
callous and doesn't recognize that this is a real problem that is
affecting Americans in a significant way.
Thank you, Mr. Murphy. I would be happy to yield back to Mr. Murphy.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. You know, before I was joined by my
illustrious colleagues here this evening, one of actually our more
helpful colleagues on the other side was talking about words are one
thing and actions are another. Words are one thing and votes are
something else.
[[Page H5317]]
Ms. Wasserman Schultz, you are pointing out when this comes down to
it, when we had the chance to gather together and link arms and be one
as Republicans and Democrats, our friends on the other side of the
aisle didn't join us. There have been plenty of opportunities for that
to happen, for us, as Mr. Ryan says, to do what our constituents want
and put politics aside.
As I said at the outset, the pumps don't care if you are a Republican
or a Democrat. The pumps don't care if you voted for Chris Murphy or
not. They are going to charge you the same thing one way or another.
I think Mr. Altmire is right. Maybe they have the best intentions at
heart. But it is a pretty simplistic solution to a pretty complex
problem: Drill more, drill more. Again, you are just feeding the beast.
You are continuing to perpetuate a monopoly on energy that offers no
real competition.
What you need is not competition between Exxon and Mobil. You need
competition between oil and electric, between biodiesel and gasoline.
That is what you need competition among. That is how you are going to
solve this thing in the end.
But so long as the solution to high oil prices is just more oil and
nothing else, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, Mr. Ryan, you are not getting
anywhere.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I think it is important, the American people are
onto this. They have been dealing with this problem now for like 35
years.
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Pretty much our whole lives.
Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Before we were even born. But they have been
dealing with this issue of oil and gas and the Middle East and
dictators and how do we do this and prop up this one and try to figure
it out.
In this whole scheme, I was watching a thing on Darfur last night.
The only reason we couldn't get things done in Darfur is because China
has oil in Sudan and we couldn't go in there because they were blocking
things at the UN. Oil has become a major, major geopolitical and
domestic problem in the United States of America. It has come to a
head, and it is Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and the Democrats who are
trying to move us off the dime and say long-term alternative energy is
the investment. If we drilled in ANWR today, in 20 years you would save
1.8 pennies per gallon of gas. We can't drill our way out of this
thing.
So if we don't start getting innovative and having a NASA-shoot-the-
moon project for alternative energy, we are going to be in the same
spot a decade from now, two decades from now. Our constituents did not
elect us to come down here and play politics with this.
Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Ryan, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, Mr.
Altmire, I thank the Speaker again for allowing the 30-Something
Working Group to come down to the floor again and share with our
colleagues the ``New Direction'' mentality that we continue to preach,
talk about, and vote for here on the floor of the House of
Representatives.
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