[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 118 (Thursday, July 17, 2008)]
[House]
[Page H6711]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1530
                      BRINGING DOWN ENERGY PRICES

  (Mr. SHIMKUS asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. SHIMKUS. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to come down to the floor at the 
end of the week to just say if we really want to be sincere about 
bringing down the price of energy, we need to have an all-of-the-above 
strategy.
  That is opening up the Outer Continental Shelf which we legislatively 
limited 25 years. That is bringing on wind and solar. We can use the 
revenues from opening the OCS to build wind and solar operations. We 
can use our vast resources of coal, 250 years worth of supply in the 
Illinois coal basin alone, turning that into liquid fuels creating 
American jobs. We also can continue to expand the use of biofuels.
  The great thing about the Republican proposal is that it is all of 
the above. We are not willing to say ``no'' to everything. We want 
everything to come on board, to bring on more supply and lower the cost 
of liquid fuel for the cost of electricity, and we want these fuels and 
these commodities to compete. In the competition, we will have lower-
cost fuel and energy so we can have a manufacturing base left in the 
United States of America.

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