[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 101 (Wednesday, June 18, 2008)]
[House]
[Pages H5572-H5578]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                THE FRESHMEN CLASS OF THE 110TH CONGRESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from New Hampshire (Mr. Hodes) is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. HODES. Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to be here tonight on the 
floor of the House of Representatives with a number of my colleagues 
who will be coming in and out, I imagine, as the evening goes on. And 
I'm also especially glad to be able to follow my colleague from Iowa 
(Mr. King), who's got an interesting, but obsolete, perspective on the 
energy future for this country and what we need to do not only in the 
current crisis, but for the future of our great country, for the future 
of our economy, for the future of our energy use.
  So tonight we will be talking about what it means to go green. 
Because, let's face it, green is the new red, white and blue. And 
before I jump into the energy issues, but sticking with the theme of 
going green, I cannot help but stand to congratulate the Boston Celtics 
for winning the NBA finals. And if anybody exemplifies what it means to 
be green and to be champions, it certainly is the Boston Celtics. It's 
the kind of lesson that we all could learn in this country.
  Many of us in New Hampshire are diehard Celtics fans. And some of a 
certain age, including myself, remember the great championship Celtic 
teams from the sixties, seventies and eighties. And this has been the 
longest stretch in the Celtics' franchise history without winning a 
championship.
  The Boston Celtics last night beat their rival, the Los Angeles 
Lakers, by a whopping 39 points. It was the first NBA championship for 
Boston since 1986. Now, Celtics fans are especially proud today of 
Captain Paul Pierce, who, in the great tradition of Celtic champions 
like Red Auerbach and Larry Bird and Kevin McHale and Dennis Johnson 
and other greats, was the obvious choice for the NBA Final MVP Award. 
I'm proud to stand tonight to congratulate Paul Pierce for securing his 
place in Celtics history and the rest of the team for bringing the 17th 
banner back to New England. It's time to go green: Go Celtics.
  Now, along with going green, what's important to note is that, as we 
are here tonight, in my home State of New Hampshire, New Hampshire 
families are paying record prices for gasoline. Today, the average is 
$4.04 for regular gas and $4.73 for diesel. Last year at about this 
time, New Hampshire families were paying $2.92 for regular gas and 
$2.82 for diesel.
  Now, for some reason, as if to rewrite history, the President of the 
United States and my Republican colleagues, regrettably, would like to 
shift the blame for the soaring energy prices to the Democrats in 
Congress. They would like somehow for the American people to believe 
that it is simply the fact of the switch of majority in 2006 and 
Democrats who have been here working hard on reasonable, responsible, 
smart energy legislation, who are somehow the cause of the pain at the 
pumps. Well, tonight we'll talk a little truth, we'll talk a little 
truth to what are outrageous scams. It is simply not true.
  The President today proposed, for example, drilling in ANWR. He 
proposed giving the oil companies even more access to drilling. The 
President's proposal today is, unfortunately, another page from the 
administration's energy policy that was literally written by the oil 
industry. I don't think anybody can forget that it was Vice President 
Cheney, an oil man, who, together with President Bush, an oil man, sat 
in secret with the oil companies to create this country's energy 
policy.
  The product of that energy policy is that today, after the first 
quarter of 2008, we've had another record year for oil company profits. 
Apparently Mr. Cheney's energy policy seems to be working for the oil 
companies. In 2002, the profits of the oil companies were $6.5 billion 
in a quarter. And today, in 2008, first quarter of 2008, the record 
year for oil company profits, $36.9 billion in profits, while we pay 
$4.04 at the pump.
  So the plan from the President now is to give away more public 
resources to the very same oil companies that are raking in record 
profits; and all the time those oil companies are sitting on 68 million 
acres of Federal lands they've already leased; 68 million acres of 
Federal lands they've already leased

[[Page H5573]]

and already have done the environmental permitting on. That's 68 
million acres ready to be drilled on for oil.
  The President's speech, in a time of record gas prices, had no ideas 
for more efficient transportation or renewable American energy; no 
ideas for conservation and an alternative future that will actually 
free us from oil; no real ideas to deal with the current crisis now, as 
well as looking toward the future because they are inseparable. And we 
are now paying the price, frankly, for 30 years of not paying attention 
as we should, and for 8 years under the Bush administration, together 
with a previous 12 years, much of that with a Republican Congress in 
which energy policy has been designed for the oil companies, favoring 
the oil companies, and the American consumers have been paying the 
price. The President's proposal is nothing more than a continuation of 
addiction to fossil fuels and dependency on an oil industry earning 
record profits.
  Now, just before I turn it over to my colleague, my good friend from 
the State of New York, John Hall, who has been working on environmental 
issues his entire life, what is clear is that we will need to 
transition from the current addiction we have to oil that binds us to 
unfriendly countries, that threatens our national security, that 
depresses our economy, we will need to transition to a future of energy 
efficiency and conservation, and renewable and alternative fuels, which 
will explode the entrepreneurial spirit of this country, deliver real 
security, real jobs, and a sustainable future. But in that transition, 
what my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would like the 
American people to think is that somehow, by drilling in Alaska, they 
will see some real benefits.
  We will talk more about it later. But the last thing I will say 
before I turn it over to Mr. Hall is, what the Department of Energy has 
told us about drilling in Alaska is very simple: Even if you opened 
ANWR to drilling it would take until about 2025 to see any of the 
benefits, and at that point you might reduce the price at the pump by 
1.8 cents. So that is what the President of the United States proposed 
today to deal with our energy crisis and the future of our energy use.

                              {time}  2145

  Drill in ANWR, and by 2025, we will reduce the price by 1.8 cents.
  At this time, Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to turn the proceedings 
over to my colleague from New York, John Hall.
  Mr. HALL of New York. Thank you, Mr. Hodes. Good evening. It is a 
pleasure to be here again. I want to just agree with one thing that our 
previous speaker from the other side of the aisle, Mr. King, had to say 
regarding biofuels. I think that there are ways in which various 
biofuels, including corn, but especially cellulosic biofuels and 
nonfood crops can and should be used to extend the liquid fuels 
capacity of this country. But the main reason that I'm here tonight is 
because I've heard in the last several days a nonstop drum beat, a 
chorus singing from the same choir book and the same hymn book at every 
committee meeting I have been at, at every press conference I have 
heard, at every chance I see a Republican representative on television 
blaming the Democrats for the high price of gasoline and claiming, 
erroneously, that Democrats have been stopping drilling, that Democrats 
are opposed to drilling, and therefore we're responsible for the price 
of gas. This is not only false but ridiculous on the face of it. And I 
challenge it as a falsehood.
  Specifically, I would say that over the last 8 years, the number of 
drilling permits issued by the government has gone up by 361 percent. 
So the lands are open. The oil companies own 9,700 plus leases that 
they have bid on and received the leases for. And as you say, Mr. 
Hodes, they have got done the environmental permitting on, the permits 
have been issued, and the way is clear for drills to go into the ground 
or into the offshore adjacent waters of the lower 48. But for some 
reason, no drilling is occurring.
  Now I'm curious as to why exactly that is, if really the oil 
companies want to drill. And I would remind you, by the way, that our 
President George W. Bush said, when oil was going for $50 a barrel, 
that that was all the incentive the oil companies need. They don't need 
any more tax breaks or incentives. Fifty dollars a barrel is enough 
incentive to make them drill anywhere.
  As this chart will show you, the total Federal acres leased and in 
production in 2007 were 91.5 million acres leased but producing only 
23.7 million acres. There is a huge discrepancy between land that has 
been leased by the oil companies and that which they are using to 
actually drill and produce oil. Why is this? Could it be perhaps that 
they expect that speculators and market forces may drive the prices up 
further, not to mention their restricting supply might drive them up 
further, and that if they hold off for a couple more years, that same 
land and that same oil might be more valuable? And actually when you're 
making profits such as the gentleman from New Hampshire just talked 
about, I mean, how much money can you deal with? How many profits can 
you possibly figure out what to do with and where to invest in? And 
maybe it's better leaving them in the ground.
  If I'm an oil company, I'm not necessarily thinking in the national 
interest. I'm thinking in the interests of my shareholders for the next 
quarter, for the next year, for the next shareholders' meeting, and for 
my next bonus if I'm the CEO. We had the CEOs of the top five oil 
companies testifying in this House before the Select Committee on 
Energy Independence and Global Warming. And when they were asked, ``Now 
that you have made the record profits of any corporation in the history 
of the world, would you commit to investing in one biofuels pump at 
every station that you own?'' And they said ``no.'' And when they were 
asked, ``If you would commit to advertising now that you have made the 
biggest profits in the history of the world for 3 years in a row, would 
you invest in advertising to tell people to conserve more and that it's 
patriotic to conserve and to drive a more fuel-efficient car and so 
on?'' And they said, ``Oh, we're already doing that.'' Which I frankly 
haven't seen. I watch enough television. I think I would have noticed 
if they were doing that.
  And my friend, Mr. Walden, a minority member, a Republican member of 
the Select Committee from Oregon said, ``I'm a capitalist.'' I'm 
paraphrasing him now. I don't remember the exact quote. ``I'm a 
capitalist. I'm a small businessman myself. And if I made record 
profits for several years in a row, profits that I hadn't even dreamed 
of, I would start to think about whether I could lower my price to my 
customer. Have you at the oil companies thought about lowering the 
prices to the consumers?'' And one by one all five of them said, 
``Well, we don't set the prices.'' And there was a chuckle through the 
room.
  But I think there are various factors setting the prices. And one of 
them is collusion between the oil companies, which is why I have called 
for an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission and the Commodity 
Futures Trading Commission on exactly that fact, the fact that when 
crude oil goes up on the world market, the gas and diesel price spikes 
immediately with it. They go up simultaneously. But when crude prices 
go down, gasoline prices still go up. And if they come down at all, 
they come done slowly. It's kind of like rockets and feathers. The 
price goes up like a rocket, and it comes down like a feather very 
slowly.
  So I'm suspicious about a couple of things, one, the disconnect 
between crude and refined gasoline when they're coming down. They're 
connected when going up. They are not connected when coming down. 
Secondly, why so much leased acreage that is not being drilled on? And 
thirdly, why at this time when the prices are at a record, when 
America's families are being squeezed and hurt, and their budgets are 
being hurt, they're being forced to choose between food, medicine or 
gasoline, some people have given up their jobs because they can't 
afford to commute to those jobs, why at these times are these oil 
companies and our friends on the other side of the aisle choosing to 
put the pressure on and say drill in ANWR and drill in these 
environmentally sensitive areas?
  By the way, two of the individuals who have been stopping offshore 
drilling, I haven't personally stopped any myself, but two of the 
people who have

[[Page H5574]]

are the President's brother, Jeb Bush, who is the Republican Governor 
of Florida who is opposed to drilling off the coast of Florida, and 
Governor Schwarzenegger of California, a Republican Governor who has 
been opposed to further drilling off the coast of California. So you 
can't just say this is a Democratic opposition even if we were opposing 
it.
  But the fact is that we have seen an increase, a radical increase in 
leases that are made available, in leases that the oil companies bid 
for apparently believing there is something of value underground, 9,700 
separate leases and 68 million acres of land currently available and 
not being used. And I suggest that our friends in the minority might 
think of another reason, or perhaps another policy, that would help us 
get out of the box we're in.
  We have worked very hard in this Congress to try to develop new 
sources, to provide incentives and tax breaks and subsidies for 
renewable energies like solar, wind and geothermal and various kinds of 
biofuels. For the first time, we made a major investment of, I believe 
it was $6 billion or so in carbon sequestration so we can use the 
record amounts of coal that we have and still precipitate out the 
carbon so we don't release that carbon dioxide that causes the global 
warming.

  And, by the way, I would say in sympathy to the folks from Mr. King's 
State and to the parents of the five Boy Scouts who were killed by a 
tornado there, and in sympathy to the folks in Cedar Rapids who are 
just now starting to pump out their basements and put their city back 
together, it used to be called the city ``that would never flood,'' by 
the way, that was under 12 feet of water from its most recent flood, in 
sympathy to the poor citizens of Myanmar who were struck by the cyclone 
a couple of weeks ago that was as strong as Hurricane Katrina but came 
to shore with no warning and no FEMA, and not even Brownie to save 
them, and in sympathy to the people in Georgia and in Florida with 
record droughts, and in sympathy to people of the Rocky Mountain States 
and the Western States with record fire seasons, and in sympathy to 
folks in the 19th District of New York, which I represent which has had 
three 50-year floods in the last 5 years, I would say in sympathy to 
all those folks and to protect them, that global warming is here, it is 
starting to change the climate. These extreme weather patterns fit the 
computer models of global warming. And if we want to pump and drill 
more oil and burn more fossil fuels, fine. But that had better not be 
our only solution, or we will see more tornadoes, more floods, more 
extreme weather catastrophic events and more global warming. And I 
think that is not what the American people want. What we want are fair 
gas prices, fair energy prices and a green, renewable, sustainable 
energy future.
  I yield back to my friend from New Hampshire.
  Mr. HODES. Thank you. And what strikes me is as you recite the litany 
of terrible tragedies, natural disasters, or unnatural disasters, that 
have struck the world, my district underwater in various parts of it, 
as yours has been in the last 5 years, with unprecedented floods, the 
floods around our Nation, hurricanes, Katrina, in Burma, Indonesia, 
around the world, clearly, the world's climate is changing.
  What strikes me as radical is to attack the notion that global 
warming is here. What seems radical to me is not to accept that we're 
going to need to make the kind of transition that seems evident that we 
will have to make from a fossil fuel past to a new energy future. And 
in the middle of all this, how convenient it is at summertime with 
people in pain from rising gas prices, caused by lots of things, to 
say, for my friends on the other side of the aisle, it's those 
Democrats, if only they would let us drill, if only those Democrats 
would let us drill, everything would be fine. If only we could drill in 
ANWR. If only the Democrats weren't stopping us from drilling, gas 
prices would come down.
  Let me point out that since the 1990s, the Federal Government has 
consistently encouraged the development of its oil and gas resources, 
and the amount of drilling on Federal lands has steadily increased 
during that time. The amount of drilling on Federal lands has steadily 
increased.
  Now that includes the period of time in which the Democrats have had 
the majority in Congress. Federal lands have been open to the oil 
companies. They have leases. The environmental permitting is done. As 
you pointed out, they haven't been drilling, although the number of 
permits has been going up. In fact, we would call it an explosion in 
Federal permits to drill for oil on Federal lands, a resource for all 
the people which, through the wisdom of the Federal Government, the 
Federal Government is allowed to be drilled on in the environmentally 
proper ways.
  In fact, 5 years ago, there were 3,802 permits to drill, and in 2007 
there were 7,561 permits issued to drill. We're not stopping drilling. 
We're not stopping drilling. What we are talking about, though, is 
truth.
  And one of the questions that you have to ask is, so where is the 
drilling getting us? What effect will the drilling have, has the 
drilling had, on gas prices? Well, if the President's answer is we want 
to drill more, if my friends across the aisle's answer is, oh, drill 
more, the more you drill, the lower the gas prices will be, then let's 
at least first take a look at that claim that more drilling means lower 
gas prices.
  In fact, between 1999 and 2007, when the number of drilling permits 
issued for development of public lands increased, as you said, by 361 
percent, gasoline prices have also risen dramatically. The chart to my 
left shows emphatically, categorically, with no room for argument, that 
more drilling, more permits, doesn't equal lower gas prices. When you 
look at this chart and you start down here in the corner that I'm 
pointing to, we have the price of gas along this side. I'm pointing to 
here. The years are along the bottom. We see in red, the bars are 
drilling permits issued. In blue, we see the number of wells drilled. 
And the green line is the price of gas. So we're showing all three 
components of the question I asked: Does more drilling lower gas 
prices? Because if it doesn't, then the President's argument to drill 
in ANWR holds no water. The complaints of the minority that we're 
somehow stopping progress, we are the fault for keeping gas prices 
high, holds no water. And we're going to have to look for other enemies 
to point the finger at and other solutions for our energy.

                              {time}  2200

  So let's take just a quick look. Without going through it all, what 
this trend clearly shows, as you can see, are the permits issued. This 
starts in 1994 and goes up to 2007. As you can see, in the early years, 
with the red bars, there are more permits issued than there is drilling 
because, first, you have to issue the permits before you drill on it.
  Then by about 1999, after we've issued permits from 1994, 1995, 1996, 
1997--here we are in 1998 and 1999--what we're seeing is that the 
number of wells drilled has caught up and has surpassed the number of 
permits issued, and it's relatively stable through there.
  Then starting in the year 2000, we're going to see that the number of 
wells drilled is declining. As you pointed out, the oil companies are 
getting permits. They're buying up leases. They're holding onto the 
supply, but they're not drilling wells, not because there aren't the 
permits issued, not because they couldn't drill but because of some 
other reason. Now, let's remind ourselves that they're also making, in 
these last years here, record profits while their drilling on public 
lands available to them is lower than the permits issued.
  Now let's take a look at the price of gas. Notice how the price of 
gas basically tracks these lines. So it shows more permits, more 
drilling, higher prices of gas. More permits, more drilling, higher 
prices of gas. The argument that if we simply open up ANWR to drill 
will somehow lower the price of gas is absolutely wrong. It just 
doesn't hold water.
  What is so interesting to me is that this is a, theoretically, free 
market economy, and this country has always stood for free markets with 
reasonable regulation because, as Abraham Lincoln--a good Republican--
said, the purpose of government is to do what the free markets cannot 
or will not do so well for themselves.
  In our free market economy, if the oil companies tapped the 68 
million

[[Page H5575]]

Federal acres of leased land, it could generate an estimated 4.8 
million barrels of oil a day. That is what is available to them now 
under lease with the environmental permits done. 4.8 million barrels of 
oil a day is six times what ANWR would produce at its peak in the year 
2025. It's available to the oil companies today. Yet, somehow, the 
President and our colleagues want to open ANWR, which will take 20 
years to get done and will reduce the price, theoretically, by 1.8 
cents. It simply doesn't hold water.
  The fact is that 80 percent of the oil available on the Outer 
Continental Shelf is in regions that are already open to leasing, but 
the oil companies, in their wisdom, haven't decided it's worth their 
time to drill there either. They have the leases. They have the 
permits, but they don't want to drill there. So we have the Arctic 
National Wildlife Refuge, a small place up there in Alaska where the 
caribou are wild, where wildlife flourishes, where it's tough to get 
the oil out of there because you've got to build a pipeline forever. We 
have onshore Federal lands available to the oil companies. We have 
offshore lands available to the oil companies. They're not drilling. 
They want more leases. It sounds kind of like grab and greed to me. 
Grab and greed.
  We're a nation that has, perhaps, 2 percent of the world's supply of 
oil. We use 24 percent of the world's supply of oil. There is a 
disconnect there. We need to find new solutions because the bottom line 
is we cannot drill our way out of an energy situation in which foreign 
countries, many of them unfriendly to us and multinationals who are 
making record profits, control our supply of oil. It has had disastrous 
consequences for our foreign policy because now you read the various 
evidence that's coming out about the reason we went to war in Iraq.
  I just finished the book of President Bush's spokesman, Scott 
McClellan, called ``What Happened,'' which is on the reason we went to 
war. What is very interesting is that, when you read the passages of 
the discussions in the White House about why we went into Iraq and Vice 
President Cheney's concerns about oil, many of the fears that people 
have seem to be clarified about the reasons we went to war in Iraq.
  Now, I understand the motivation that says we need oil and that we 
need to secure our supplies and that we're going to use our 
geopolitical power and our military might to make sure we have the 
energy, but the bottom line is, when our energy future runs our foreign 
policy instead of our foreign policy and our energy future being tied 
together for our independence, we're at great risk. Here we are in 
2008, stuck in a quagmire of a war with a huge debt. We have a deficit 
with China. Our gas prices are soaring. There is no way to drill our 
way out of the solution, and so we're going to talk about some more 
facts, some more truth and some of the things we're doing both to deal 
with the current issues and what we're doing for the future of this 
country.
  I'll yield back to you, Mr. Hall.
  Mr. HALL of New York. Thank you, Mr. Hodes.
  As you were speaking, I was thinking about some of the things that we 
can do.
  Westchester County, one of the counties that I have the honor to 
represent, has a loop of county bus service which has switched from 
diesel buses to biodiesel buses to hybrid biodiesel buses.
  We have John Jay High School, at which I just spoke a couple of days 
ago, where the environmental club has a grease mobile, a diesel car 
they've converted to run on biodiesel that they made from cooking oil 
from restaurants in the area.
  The Newburgh Free Academy, a public school in Orange County, New 
York, one of the counties I'm honored to represent, has a solar racing 
club that built a solar car which tied for first place in a race 
between Houston, Texas and Newburgh, New York. They were built without 
the faculty advisors' even touching the vehicle. The adults were not 
allowed to touch the vehicle. The kids had to build it by themselves. 
These students knew how to weld and fasten the car together and how to 
build it sturdily enough and how to make sure that the wheels rotated 
so that they didn't wobble and so on. The advanced placement math and 
science students knew how to calculate how many square inches of 
photovoltaic cells it took to power a certain number of batteries to 
drive the wheels.
  They drove that car from Houston for 2,000 miles to Newburgh, New 
York, and tied for first place in a race that was sponsored by a 
corporation that put the money up for the entire educational and 
research experiment.
  When we did a presentation in our district on this, the students came 
in, wearing their solar racing club hats and their solar racing club T-
shirts, and they showed the video of their car rolling down the highway 
with nothing but solar power powering it. By the way, this was a 
standing-room-only crowd who came to see this at the Bedford Town Hall 
in New York.
  Afterwards, the adults came up to me as we were leaving, and they 
were saying, if these kids can do this on a shoestring, with no budget 
to speak of, where is Detroit? Why can't GM and Ford and Chrysler, our 
automakers, do this?
  I would say that they can and that they should have been, but they're 
only now starting to. In fact, as to the Chevy Volt, as advertised on 
their Web site--it will be out, I believe, next year--they're planning 
this car to be a plug-in hybrid which will have a small internal 
combustion engine, but it will not be connected to the drive chain. The 
gas engine will only be used to drive a generator to keep the Lithium-
ion batteries fully powered. When you drive this car, they say, on a 
100-mile commute or less, it will run as an electric vehicle and will 
not use any gasoline. When you run it on an intercity trip of hundreds 
of miles, it will average 150 miles per gallon. That's supposed to be 
available next year.
  I was at an event last week, and I talked to somebody from Toyota. 
They said, oh, that's nothing. In a couple of years, we're bringing out 
a car that's going to get 500 miles to the gallon.
  Now, my feeling is that, when I was growing up and when we were in 
the middle of the space race and when President John Kennedy had 
challenged us that we would get to the Moon in 10 years, in our 
country, we were used to the position of leadership, and we thought, 
certainly, the United States has the ingenuity and the creativity and 
the expertise and the intelligence to be able to devise solutions for 
all of these problems. I still think we can, and I think we need to, 
and I think that the solution here is not to drill, drill, drill, and 
to open up more environmentally sensitive areas to be destroyed.
  By the way, it was interesting to me that the polar bear was just put 
on the threatened list by the Secretary of the Interior. Then just this 
week, with a rulemaking process that doesn't have to go before us here 
in Congress, Secretary Kempthorne issued a rule indemnifying the top 
seven oil companies against any legal action should they kill polar 
bears in their exploration for oil.
  So it's kind of a curious environmental consciousness that this 
administration seems to have where they give lip service to it on one 
hand, but on the other hand, they want to protect their friends in the 
oil companies from any risk at all at the same time that they open them 
up to all profit imaginable.
  Just turning to this chart, natural gas is, of course, another one of 
the things we hear about, the oil and gas for which we bad Democrats 
are not allowing them to drill. Currently, how much natural gas is open 
to leasing? 82 percent. Closed to leasing is this small piece of the 
pie chart. This came from the Minerals Management Service in 2006. 
Technically, of the recoverable reserves of natural gas, 82 percent of 
them are open to leasing. This corresponds with the figures that we've 
been talking about in terms of oil that is open to leasing and that, in 
fact, has been leased and that is not currently being used.
  I would contrast that with the inventiveness of Listening Rock Farm 
in my district, which is in the town of Amenia, New York. It's, 
actually, just barely north of my district. It's a renewable tree farm 
that's making biodiesel from wood waste and is running all their farm 
vehicles--their tractors and other vehicles and their road vehicles--on 
biodiesel made from wood waste, which is wood chips, sawdust, leaves, 
anything that doesn't go into the furniture that they make.
  I would contrast it with Taylor Biomass, which is a company in Orange

[[Page H5576]]

County that is a private corporation but that takes municipal solid 
waste currently from the Town of Montgomery on a pilot project. They 
separate out the batteries and the solvents and the Raid and the 
insecticides and other bad things that you don't want to go into the 
groundwater or up into the air, and those things get taken away and are 
dealt with in a responsible way. What is left is gasified and burned to 
spin a turbine and to put kilowatts out into the grid and, at the same 
time, to produce ethanol. These are creative solutions to our energy 
problems that, I think, must be explored.
  One thing I would share with our friend Mr. King is that we need to 
look at a wide variety of different kinds of energy around different 
parts of the country but, in particular, in the northeast where we have 
a hilly topography. There are many opportunities for small, low-head, 
hydroelectric power. In New York alone, the Department of Energy's Web 
site--the Idaho National Laboratory page--lists 4,000-some, low-head 
hydro sites, meaning small dams and small waterfalls, where, according 
to them, no lefty, environmental, tree-hugging organization--this is 
our DOE that we're talking about now--says that if we just put turbines 
where the water is already falling at these 4,000-some sites of low-
head hydro potential that we could generate greater than 1,200 
megawatts of power. That's about 60 percent of the output, the full 
output of the two Indian Point nuclear plants in my district. That's 
just for contrast.
  Lastly, I would say that I'm interested that Texas recently passed 
the State of California as the State with the largest installed wind-
power capacity. They have now become the leading wind generation State 
in the country. The reason, in part, is that Governor George W. Bush, 
when he was Governor of Texas, signed a renewable energy standard 
requiring that 10 percent of all electricity in Texas be generated by 
renewable sources of power.

                              {time}  2215

  Of course, once the industry knew that that was there, that was a 
requirement they had to meet, they more than met it, they exceeded it. 
They had passed California and became the top wind-power electric 
producer that T. Boone Pickens, one of the original oil tycoons in this 
country, was quoted recently as saying that he is more excited today 
about wind power than he ever was about any oil field he ever 
discovered.
  The odd part of this picture is that now that George W. Bush is 
President of the United States, he threatened to veto our energy bill 
last year if it included a renewable energy standard in it. What was 
good for Texas, for some reason when he was President, wasn't good for 
the whole country.
  Now, I wish that he would revisit that or explain it to us, but I 
believe that the same thing that was good for Texas would be good for 
the whole country. It doesn't have to be wind everywhere. It just has 
to be renewable. Some places will be wind, some places might be low-
head hydro, some places might be biofuels, some places might be tidal 
power or wave power, but all of these things are available.
  There are test programs and pilot programs that show they are 
effective. The sooner we start using them, the sooner we can get off 
this dependence on foreign oil and start to put our economy back to 
work and create new jobs and the new businesses, new technologies, here 
at home.
  I yield back to my friend.
  Mr. HODES. Thank you, and I appreciate the kindness and decorum with 
which you discuss the change in apparent policies from our President, 
who was Governor, apparently understood the importance of a renewable 
electricity standard which would help industry, help consumers and help 
move us to the kind of energy future that is responsible, American 
independent energy future.
  As Governor of Texas, as you said, he signed a 10 percent renewable 
energy standard. As technology has developed, in our bill in the House, 
when we tried to pass a bill with a 15 percent national renewable 
portfolio standard to give our utilities who generate the power and the 
electricity we need the certainty they are waiting for, to unleash the 
free market forces, to use the renewable and alternative energies with 
technology already existing to do it, that would come from a variety of 
sources around the country and start to give us the kind of power 
around the country that could come from renewable and alternatives, but 
unfortunately it didn't get past the Senate where, unfortunately, 
Senators from my State of New Hampshire stood in opposition to it, 
along with a number of their Republican colleagues. It didn't pass.
  We did pass an absolutely important, precedent-setting new CAFE 
standard, which means that for the first time in 30 years the mileage 
standards for automobiles will begin to rise. We have been able to pass 
legislation to correct the obsolete standards we were stuck with, and 
now by 2020 we will be in a 35-mile per gallon standard. But as you 
discussed in your earlier remarks, the technology is here today for our 
automobile companies, which are now languishing in the doldrums. These 
former engines of the American economy, in which some people estimate 
20 percent of the workforce of this country is in some way involved 
directly or indirectly in the supply chain, our car companies are 
taking a back seat to others which seem to have gotten on the new 
technology bandwagon a lot earlier. They have simply fallen behind, 
when if they had kept up with advanced technology, technology that's 
available now, think about the markets around the world, which our car 
companies, thus the people who are working directly and indirectly in 
that supply chain would then have the benefit of, we would then be 
exporting advanced technology instead of being behind the rest of the 
world, because the technology is certainly here now.
  One area that you touched on that I would like to amplify are the 
kinds of innovative and entrepreneurial activities that are going on at 
home in our districts in our State. In New Hampshire, we have a lot of 
wood, and in much of the Northeast and in much of the cold belt of this 
country we are heavily forested, have a lot of wood resources.
  One of the things that I was glad to see in the farm bill, not a 
perfect bill by any measure, as you know, in any of these large bills, 
there is a lot to like, there is a lot not to like.
  One of the things that's important in the new farm bill is that 
cellulosic ethanol will receive much more help from the Federal 
Government, as opposed to corn ethanol, which we now know I think to be 
somewhat of a problem. The subsidies were lowered for corn ethanol, 
raised for cellulosic ethanol.
  With all due respect to my colleagues on all sides of the aisle, 
whose districts produce a lot of corn and have been producing corn for 
fuel, we now know there are some issues with corn ethanol. It takes 
about this much energy to produce this much corn ethanol. There may be 
some byproducts. Food pricing around the world has suffered, so we 
clearly need to find a range of solutions.
  Cellulosic ethanol means ethanol that can be added to the fuel of 
automobiles and other vehicles that comes from wood waste, biomass, 
switchgrass and other organic matter other than corn. It's very 
important in the Northeast where we can use wood chips, and the waste 
from logging and forestry products.
  One of the fascinating things that I had the privilege to visit in my 
own district was a wood pellet plant in Jaffrey, New Hampshire, New 
England Wood Pellet, which is one of the pioneers of wood pellets. Now, 
wood pellets are essentially compressed wood waste where you take 
sawdust. Then you are able to compress it under very high heat.
  When compressed and fed into a stove, it's incredibly efficient, 
extraordinarily clean at the same time, and very convenient. You can 
put it in the hopper, and power your home and heat your home with it. 
The sad thing is that after wood-pellet technology was developed in the 
United States, the leader has become Germany.
  Now, when I was visiting a closed paper plant up in my district, 
there were Germans who were thinking of coming to take it over and turn 
it into a wood pellet plant. So we have the capacity, clearly in this 
country, to use our entrepreneurial skills and use local resources to 
produce our energy.

[[Page H5577]]

  The even more interesting thing about the wood pellet plant in my 
district is that they have attached an innovative system to their wood 
pellet plant. What they have done is they have brought in a large 
turbine, it kind of looks like a jet engine, that's housed in a small 
business, that's attached to the wood pellet plant. Now, as I said, the 
wood pellets are produced using extraordinary amounts of heat and 
sawdust to compress it into the wood pellets for use in a stove.
  What these folks have done is they have attached their own heating 
and electricity generating system right off their own building, so they 
have these two buildings interconnected. The turbine, which looks like 
a large jet engine, is fed through a series of filters and tubes. What 
happens is from the wood pellet process, the waste gases and the waste, 
of which there is some, is fed through the filtering system, gasified, 
and then fed into the turbine.
  The turbine spins, it provides heat first to preheat the heating 
system that makes the wood pellets. It provides all the power, the 
electrical power to run the wood pellet plant, and it provides 
additional electric power which they sell back to the electric grid.

  So they are heating their plant, they are preheating their 
manufacturing process, they are providing the power for their building. 
They are selling electricity back to the grid all in an integrated 
system that is creating fuel from a locally produced product that can 
be used to heat homes in a renewable energy efficient and appropriate 
way.
  Now, if that one small wood pellet plant in my home district of New 
Hampshire can do that, we can be doing that all over the country in 
different ways, whether it is geothermal, whether it is tidal, whether 
it is small hydro, of which there is plenty all over this country, 
solar, wind, biomass, we have the capacity. We have the brains. We have 
the entrepreneurs, we have the technology, the computer systems, and 
the people who are just waiting to have the entrepreneurial spirit of 
this country unleashed.
  To hear the President, and to hear our colleagues on the other side 
of the aisle, trying to propose that we go backwards in time to a 
technology which clearly does not lower the price of gas for consumers 
and clearly threatens our planet, is surprising, to say the least. I 
asked my friends on the other side of the aisle, for whom I have great 
respect, because this is an important process, to have two different 
philosophies come before the American people so that they can help 
discern the truth.
  I have asked them, and I have yet to hear a good answer, what is it, 
what is it that prevents you from seeing the free markets, which you 
say you believe in, are waiting for the signals from the Federal 
Government, are waiting for the standards to be set here in Congress, 
are waiting to be unleashed. They know it means jobs, they know it 
means good products, they know it means new markets around the world, 
they are ready.
  The utilities are ready, industry is ready, the market are ready. I 
just don't understand the thinkers who are stuck in the past and aren't 
ready, not only to address the issues we are facing today, but help 
move this country into the future.
  I don't have an answer. I haven't heard an answer. I certainly would 
like to hear one, because what is being proposed by the President makes 
no economic sense except perhaps to the oil companies, whose record 
profits will go up even more if the President's plan were followed. 
They would get more leases, get more permits, do less drilling, let the 
price go up, and make more money as they have been.
  That doesn't seem to be a good deal for the American people, so why 
the President would propose it, I have no idea. But I don't understand 
why he and his colleagues, his supporters, don't understand that the 
future is simply waiting.
  If they are real free market folks, then let's go, let's unleash the 
free markets.
  Do you have an answer for me, Mr. Hall?
  Mr. HALL of New York. Well, I have a couple of comments. One is there 
is a bill that will be, I believe it's already been introduced, but we 
are going to be talking about more tomorrow called the Responsible 
Federal Oil and Gas Lease Act of 2008 introduced by Representatives 
Rahall, Markey, Hinchey, Emanuel and Yarmuth, among others, I am 
cosponsor as well, as are you, I believe.
  Mr. HODES. I am.
  Mr. HALL of New York. What this will do, it's called, the slang 
version is the ``Use It or Lose It Act,'' which would compel oil and 
gas companies to either produce on those 9,700 leases that they have 
and those 68 million acres of land that they have already leased, 
either produce or give up those leases that they are stockpiling, and 
it would do this by barring the companies from obtaining any more 
leases unless they can demonstrate that they are producing oil and gas 
or diligently developing the leases they already hold during the 
initial term of those leases. The bill directs the Secretary of the 
Interior to define what constitutes diligent development.
  By the way, the backdrop for this, the sort of origin for it, is that 
back a while in history, coal went through the same kind of 
speculation, where Federal coal resources were being abused, potential 
coal exploration areas were being leased by the coal companies, and 
speculation was driving the price up before that coal was actually 
developed.
  Some people think that, and this is people in the financial markets 
as well as the energy markets believe that a significant portion, maybe 
as much as 25 percent in the increase in the cost of gasoline is 
actually speculation, people saying, well, that's a good place to put 
my money. I guess the stock market is kind of uncertain, and real 
estate has taken a hit lately.
  Of course, I am not sure which commodities to invest in, but, oil, 
that looks like it's always going up. No matter what happens, I think I 
will put my money into oil. Of course, the more people that do buy oil 
futures, the more the price of oil goes up on the world market, and the 
more we wind up paying at the pump.
  Companies which lease Federal coal resources are, already by law, 
required to diligently develop those leases. That's the result of this 
speculation in the past. The requirement has discouraged the rampant 
speculation that once did exist in the Federal coal leasing program. 
This same type of speculation now appears to be plaguing the oil and 
gas leasing program.
  So under the Use It or Lose It bill, the Responsible Federal Oil and 
Gas Lease Act of 2008, oil and gas companies would have to either 
produce on those leases or give them up. I think that this is in the 
national interest, I think it's fair, because certainly the application 
for lease of a particular plot, whether it be onshore or offshore for 
production of oil or natural gas, implies that that company was 
intending to develop that resource.

                              {time}  2230

  And the Department of the Interior has I believe the right and the 
duty to make sure that our country's natural resources are used for the 
best and higher good of the people of this country. Not the CEOs or the 
stockholders of those corporation, but every American citizen, every 
person in the United States whose future depends on this economy and on 
the energy choices we make.
  That's all I wanted to say, but I wanted to ask my friend from New 
Hampshire, since you have that lovely chart next to you, I wonder if 
you can comment on the Republican leadership's voting record on 
legislation that pertains to gas prices.
  Mr. HODES. I would be happy to talk about that. One of the 
interesting things that we have seen, unfortunately, is a do-anything-
to-stop-progress mentality from our colleagues. While they have been 
long on accusations about the Democratic attempt to move us, to address 
the current issues and move us to a new future, their leadership has 
unfortunately been lacking.
  For instance, on the issue of OPEC price fixing, the House will once 
again take up legislation to empower the Justice Department to take 
legal action against OPEC-controlled entities for participating in oil 
cartels that drive up oil prices globally in the United States. We are 
in the grip of monopolies with price fixing. It is a

[[Page H5578]]

basic right of American law that we deal with that in the proper way to 
stop price fixing. The Republicans have stood in the way without any 
leadership on that issue.
  In terms of price gouging by the oil companies, we have passed, the 
Democrats have passed legislation cracking down on Big Oil that are 
gouging American consumers.
  The Energy Price Gouging Prevention Act would give our Federal Trade 
Commission authority to investigate and punish companies that 
artificially inflate the price of energy. It sets criminal penalties 
for price gouging, and permits States to bring lawsuits against 
wholesalers or retailers who engage in such practices. The Bush 
administration has threatened to veto the measure and the Republican 
leadership has consistently voted ``no, no, no'' and ``no'' on price 
gouging.
  On renewable energy as we discussed, we have been moving towards 
renewable energy provisions. The House leadership of the Republicans, 
every single one of them has voted ``no'' on renewable energy. They are 
voting ``no'' on America's future. They are voting ``no'' on a 
responsible free market. And on our energy security which we have been 
working on as Democrats to make sure that we are moving to real 
security for the United States and energy independence, they voted 
``no, no, no.''
  So in closing, and there is so much more we could say about what we 
have been doing, but as I close tonight I want to say to you and to the 
Speaker's attention I appreciate, another member of our freshman class 
of 2006, a distinguished member, that it is time to say yes to the 
future. It is time to say yes to American consumers. Our special 
interest must be the interest of the people of this country. It must be 
an answer to the pain that they are feeling at the pumps, and where 
they know, where the American people know the great future and destiny 
of this country lies.
  So our job is to say yes. We understand that we need to do something 
now and we are. We are answering the call now. Democrats will answer, 
Republicans will say no, but we will be steadfast in the special 
interest of the people. We will be responsible in unleashing the forces 
of the free market to take us into the energy future that the American 
people need and deserve. It is time to say yes to the future. Green is 
the new red, white and blue. I look forward to working in the years to 
come on the legislation and the policies that will move us into the 
future in a way that the American people will be proud of, and I thank 
you for being with me tonight.

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