[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 118 (Thursday, July 17, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6885-S6886]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                 LIHEAP

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I recently received a letter from a senior 
citizen named Harriet, from Bartlett, IL, just outside of Chicago. She 
told the story that last January, when the average high temperature was 
about 28 degrees, she was sitting at home in a sweater, bundled up in a 
blanket, with the thermostat set at 62 degrees. She had cut back on her 
purchases of vital prescriptions for her stroke medication because she 
didn't have enough money to pay for her drugs and also heat her home.
  Unfortunately, Harriet is not alone. Even though we are in the midst 
of summer with the heat outside, we have to be very sensitive to the 
fact that, in a few months, many people across America will face 
freezing temperatures, and Harriet is one of those people. Seniors 
living on fixed incomes, working families with limited incomes, and 
disabled individuals will face recordbreaking energy costs. In the New 
England area of our country, they anticipate that heating oil costs 
will double this winter over last winter. I saw that headline when I 
visited Maine a few weeks ago.
  I know this isn't just a problem in the upper Midwest. It affects 
many parts of the Nation. So when you have this choice between paying 
utility bills and getting the prescriptions you need to stay alive, you 
understand how, in desperation, many seniors turn to us in Washington 
and ask for help.
  These are choices no American should ever be faced with.
  In 1981, Congress enacted a program called the LIHEAP program, Low-
Income Home Energy Assistance Program. Today, it helps almost 6 million 
people across our Nation--low-income families and seniors--to pay their 
home energy costs--air-conditioning in the summer and heating in the 
winter. For more than 400,000 people in my State, this means air-
conditioning during the sweltering 100-degree-plus days, on the worst 
days.
  This year, funding isn't enough. A majority of the Americans who are 
eligible for LIHEAP don't receive any assistance because this program 
is not adequately funded. For those who do receive it, the average 
grant pays as little as 18 percent of the cost of that utility bill. 
Energy costs are going up, and the program's purchasing power continues 
to drop. Utilities are raising power prices by as much as a third--
sometimes doubling--with the sharpest jump since 1970. In addition, 
tens of thousands of Americans have had their electricity and natural 
gas services cut off. Millions more are facing the danger of losing 
their service.
  Unless we significantly increase LIHEAP, two things will happen: 
Fewer Americans will receive the assistance they need to keep their 
homes warm in the winter and cool in summer; second, those who receive 
assistance will receive less as energy prices soar. I have joined with 
40 of my Senate colleagues, cosponsoring the Warm in Winter, Cool in 
Summer Act, introduced by Bernie Sanders of Vermont. He has been our 
leader on this issue. I commend him for that. The bill is endorsed by 
AARP, the National Conference of State Legislatures, the Alliance for 
Rural America, the American Corn Growers, and a lot of others. It 
nearly doubles funding for LIHEAP, from $2.5 billion to $5 billion. The 
extra money is needed desperately.
  This morning, as I understand it, the majority leader, Senator Reid 
of Nevada, on behalf of the Democrats, came to the floor and asked 
unanimous consent that we bring the LIHEAP bill out for consideration. 
As you will notice, we are not bustling with activity and business on 
the Senate floor. Senator Reid said let's move to this bill. 
Unfortunately, Senator Cornyn of Texas objected. He blocked a unanimous 
consent request to pass this critically needed funding for LIHEAP.
  Senator Cornyn argues that we ought to be talking about lower 
gasoline prices. I don't argue with that. But why are we pitting one 
against the other? The people who are going to face desperate 
circumstances in their homes are going to need help, whether it is air-
conditioning now or heating in the winter. We should do both. We ought 
to pass this LIHEAP bill on a bipartisan basis, and we ought to also 
address the energy issues around the cost of gasoline.
  I don't know why the Republicans blocked this effort to bring the 
LIHEAP bill to the floor. We could have done it today and passed it 
today and brought some piece of mind to people across America, such as 
Harriet, who sent me this letter. We also know we are faced with a 
debate on what to do about gasoline prices.
  Yesterday, Senator Reid came to the floor and brought a bill I am 
cosponsoring on the issue of speculation. Some of the business experts 
in our country tell us the price of gasoline today and jet fuel and 
heating oil and the cost of a barrel of oil has a lot to do with people 
who are speculators--folks who are guessing where the prices are going 
to go, which tends to lead the market and even push the market in the 
direction of higher prices. Now, you might expect that theory coming 
from an economics professor or maybe someone on the left of the 
political spectrum, but that theory comes from a lot of business 
people, including folks who are running our airlines today. The CEOs of 
airlines are struggling to survive. They tell us they think speculation 
accounts for up to 30 to 40 percent of the cost of gasoline and jet 
fuel today.
  There is no rational explanation of what happened in terms of energy 
pricing. It is understandable if the price of oil goes up 10 percent 
because of some instability in the Middle East--a war or blocking of 
the Strait of Hormuz or an interruption of pipelines. That would be 
understandable. You could say: All right, that is something that would 
affect supply and demand. But we are in the situation where the price 
of oil can go up 10 or 20 percent, or more, for no reason at all--no 
reason at all. Sometimes the only thing they can pinpoint is that some 
analyst on Wall Street made an announcement at a press conference that 
he thought the price of a barrel of oil might go up to $200. Lo and 
behold, it goes up $10 the next day. You think to yourself, something 
is dreadfully wrong.
  This isn't a question of supply and demand. Something else is at 
work. So we brought a bill to the floor--or we will, maybe as soon as 
today--that addresses speculation. The bill says the agency responsible 
for overseeing the trading in energy speculation, energy futures, will 
need more people. The number of trades has gone up 10 times what it was 
a few years ago, and they don't have the people to keep an eye on it. 
So there will be 100 more employees in the Commodity Futures Trading 
Commission and more computer technology.
  We also talk about bringing all these energy speculation markets 
under one basic disclosure requirement, so we know what is going on. 
The fact is, when I asked the Acting Chairman of the CFTC, Walter 
Lukken, how big this market was in the speculation of oil prices, he 
said he could not tell me; he didn't know. The biggest part of this 
market is happening outside the public eye and outside any Government 
supervision or regulation.

[[Page S6886]]

  So this bill that we will bring to the floor will to try to bring 
some reason to this market of speculation. Speculation is all right if 
it is based on market fundamentals, but if it is a matter of 
manipulation, it goes too far. So we want this bill to come to the 
floor. We would like it to be a bipartisan bill. The Republicans said 
they support it. Let's hope we can do that.
  The LIHEAP bill ought to be something we can agree to on a bipartisan 
basis, along with doing something about speculation to bring down 
energy prices and gasoline prices. Shouldn't both parties agree on 
that? We can do that as well. There is an issue we are debating. You 
cannot turn the television on recently without seeing President Bush 
talking about let's drill here or there and open areas for drilling.
  The suggestion of the administration is our oil companies have 
nowhere to turn to drill for oil, and that is why gasoline prices are 
so high. It turns out that is not true.

  Take a look at this map. Look at the areas in red on this map. This 
is the Gulf of Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. 
These areas in red are federally owned and controlled areas under lease 
to oil companies, where they are not drilling. In the blue area, they 
are drilling. In the red area, they are not drilling. Look at this 
literal sea of opportunity for oil, where the oil companies are not 
drilling. In fact, 68 million acres of land controlled by our 
Government has been leased to the oil and gas companies. They believed 
there is something there. What are they doing with it? It turns out 
they are only drilling on about a fourth of those acres.
  So the argument that we need to dramatically increase the acreage for 
opportunities to drill flies in the face of reality. Why aren't the oil 
companies drilling on the land they are currently leasing?
  Today, the House of Representatives is considering a bill called 
``use it or lose it,'' saying to the oil companies: If you are not 
going to drill on it, you are going to lose your lease. We will offer 
it to another oil company that might drill on it. So for the President 
and many people in his party to stand and say there is nowhere to turn 
to drill, look at this--all this red area in the Gulf of Mexico. But 
that isn't it alone. There is also a great deal of land in the United 
States, onshore, with the same story, Federal land that is leased for 
the purpose of exploration to oil companies. All the red areas are 
unused today. That is 34.5 million acres onshore, on land, in America, 
which is leased by oil companies that they are not exploring at all.
  The Republicans argue--or at least suggest--they know there is some 
great plot of land somewhere that has lots of oil and gas, and we are 
restraining and restricting the oil and gas companies from exploring 
and producing there. I don't know where that might be. The only one 
they have pointed to with any specificity is the Arctic National 
Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. That is 1.5 million acres. We know anything 
you go after in that pristine area, which has been protected for 15 
years, will take 10 or 12 years to put into production and will have an 
impact of pennies on the price of a barrel of oil. So I am afraid this 
argument falls on its face.
  There are opportunities to drill right now--plenty of them--68 
million acres' worth--and the oil companies, though they are leasing 
the land, are standing idly by and not doing it. When you ask why not, 
they say they have not had a chance to explore these or map these. In 
other words, there is the possibility oil and gas might be there, there 
is speculation there, but if they don't know whether there is oil and 
gas on the lands they are already leasing, how can they argue there is 
some other area they have never looked at that might have more oil and 
gas? It doesn't follow. It is a pretty weak argument.
  I think most Americans would agree we cannot drill our way out of 
this situation. America has 3 percent of the known oil reserves in the 
world. Each year, we consume 25 percent of the oil produced in the 
world. We cannot drill our way into lower gas prices. We want to have 
responsible exploration and production; both parties support that. We 
believe these 68 million acres offer that opportunity and the oil 
companies have paid for that chance there and they should exercise it. 
But we need to do more. We need to explore renewable, sustainable 
sources of energy in America.
  In my State, wind turbines all over downstate Illinois are generating 
electricity without creating pollution or adding to global warming.
  In addition, solar panels are being installed and research is going 
on at Federal labs so we can use solar power in a way that the next 
generation will be able to derive electricity and fuel our economy with 
sources that are not going to create environmental havoc in the years 
to come.
  We need to look at biomass. We have to look at so many other things. 
Biofuels--we are exploring ethanol now that is based on corn. We are 
now going to move into a new generation of ethanol that will use 
cornstalks and corncobs, literally, to make the same ethanol so that 
the kernel of corn can go into food and not be diverted to ethanol. All 
of this is on the horizon, and we should push it forward.
  We need battery technology. The cars and trucks we are driving today, 
sadly, do not meet the requirements and demand of the energy crisis we 
face. I am saddened that General Motors announced cutbacks in 
employment in the factories across America. It is a great company which 
is now on hard times. But I have to say in all honesty, they were 
forewarned. They were making these big heavy SUVs and trucks when the 
rest of the world was waking up to the reality that people wanted fuel 
efficiency. I hope they catch up. I want them to catch up. I want 
America to be in the lead again when it comes to cars and trucks.
  We need to push forward on battery technology so you can plug in the 
car when you get home at night and get up in the morning and drive 40 
miles without ever using a drop of gasoline, so the electricity that is 
going to fire up your car is being stored in a battery that is being 
collected from the Sun during the day. Does it sound like a wild idea?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
  Mr. DURBIN. I close by saying that there are many opportunities for 
us in the area of energy. I hope the Republicans will join us and do 
two things: Let us agree to move forward, let us approve LIHEAP so we 
can get peace of mind to families concerned about heating and air 
conditioning bill. Let us also move forward on speculation. We should 
offer our alternative, Republicans should offer theirs, and then each 
offer an energy bill, give us their best ideas on the Republican side 
and the best ideas on the Democratic side. Let's vote on them. Maybe we 
can merge some of them. That would be a constructive debate America 
would like to see.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
  The junior Senator from Arizona is recognized.

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