[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 113 (Thursday, July 10, 2008)]
[House]
[Pages H6389-H6390]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   NATIONAL DEFENSE AND ENERGY POLICY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DUNCAN. Madam Speaker, I rise to discuss two very important 
national issues that are unrelated.
  First, I consider national defense to be one of the most important 
and most legitimate functions of the National Government. Yet even I am 
astounded at sometimes the waste and inefficiency of the Defense 
Department, and I think the primary reason is that almost every defense 
contract is some sort of sweetheart or insider type deal.
  Just yesterday in the Washington Times, I would like to read a 
portion of a story that the Times carried yesterday. It says: 
``Similarly, Edward C. `Pete' Aldridge, Undersecretary of Defense for 
Acquisition, Technology and Logistics at the Pentagon, left the agency 
to join the board of Lockheed Martin, the Pentagon's largest 
contractor. Weeks before he left the Pentagon, Mr. Aldridge approved a 
$3 billion contract to build 20 Lockheed planes. That decision was made 
after he criticized the plan and threatened to cancel the contract. 
While serving on the Lockheed board, Mr. Aldridge was picked in 2004 to 
chair the Commission on the Implementation of U.S. Space Exploration 
Policy, a decision that drew criticism only from Senator John McCain of 
Arizona, now the presumptive Republican Presidential nominee, who said 
Lockheed was one of NASA's biggest contractors and called for Mr. 
Aldridge's removal because of a conflict of interest. His criticism 
went unheeded.''
  Madam Speaker, the problem is that all of the defense contractors 
hire all the retired admirals and generals, it has been referred to as 
the ``revolving door at the Pentagon,'' or all the high level Pentagon 
employees, and then they come back to these same people and they get 
these multi-billion dollar contracts. In this example, this man awarded 
Lockheed Martin a $3 billion contract, the same contract he criticized 
at one point. But then, surprise, shock of all shocks, he approved this 
contract, and then a short time later joined the board of Lockheed 
Martin.
  This is just one example. I could give examples day after day of 
similar types of things. All of these defense contracts going to 
companies that hire all the retired admirals and generals, and it 
should be stopped.
  The second issue, a very important issue but very unrelated, is the 
issue of energy and gas prices. I would like to read part of a column 
by Charles Krauthammer a few days ago. Mr. Krauthammer is very 
respected by both sides of the aisle.
  He said, ``Gas is $4 a gallon, oil is $135 a barrel and rising. We 
import two-thirds of our oil, sending hundreds of billions of dollars 
to the likes of Russia, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. And yet we 
voluntarily prohibit ourselves from even exploring huge domestic 
reserves of petroleum and natural gas.''
  Mr. Krauthammer continued: ``At a time when U.S. crude oil production 
has fallen 40 percent in the past 25 years, 75 billion barrels of oil 
have been declared off limits, according to the U.S. Energy Information 
Administration. That would be enough to replace every barrel of non-
North American imports for 22 years.'' That is nearly a quarter century 
of energy independence.
  Mr. Krauthammer said, ``The situation is absurd.''
  George Will wrote a column a few days ago and he said this: ``One 
million barrels is what might today be flowing from ANWR if in 1995 
President Bill Clinton had not vetoed legislation to permit drilling 
there. One million barrels produce 27 million gallons of gasoline and 
diesel fuel.''
  And Robert Samuelson, who is not really considered a conservative or 
Republican columnist, he is a columnist for the Washington Post, he 
wrote a few weeks ago this. He said, ``The truth is we are almost 
powerless to influence today's prices. We are because we didn't take 
sensible actions 10 or 20 years ago. If we persist, we will be even 
worse off in a decade or two. The first thing to do, start drilling.''
  Madam Speaker, I am one of the very few Members who has been up to 
Prudhoe Bay in Alaska twice. I have been up there to this frozen 
tundra. There are millions of acres without a tree or a bush on that 
entire expanse up there, 19.8 million acres, 36 times the size of the 
Great Smokey Mountains, part of which I represent. They want to drill 
on about 2,000 or 3,000 acres of this 19.8 million acre refuge. It 
takes a survivalist to go in there. In fact, Time Magazine said 4 years 
ago it only had about 200 visitors a year.
  It is ridiculous that we do not drill in an environmentally safe way. 
Most environmental extremists, I have noticed over the years, they come 
from very wealthy or very upper-income families. Perhaps they can 
afford gas to go to $5 or $6 a gallon. They have said for years they 
wanted gas prices to go higher so people would drive less. But I can 
tell you this: They are hurting a lot of poor and lower-income and 
working people in this country, and they are shutting this country down 
economically.
  We heard in the Highways and Transit Subcommittee a few weeks ago 
that

[[Page H6390]]

935 trucking companies had closed in the first quarter of this year, 
and they only counted trucking companies with five trucks or more. Two 
weeks ago we heard in a hearing of the Aviation Subcommittee that eight 
airlines had shut down, had ceased operating in the last year-and-a-
half, and one more was in receivership.
  We are at a very dangerous point. We don't have to produce all of our 
oil or all of our energy, but we have got to start producing a little 
bit more, or these foreign energy producers are going to know they can 
keep on raising these prices, and as I say, they are going to hurt a 
lot of working and ordinary Americans in the process.

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