[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 112 (Wednesday, July 28, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6347-S6348]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           ENERGY REGULATIONS

  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, it has now been 99 days since the 
Deepwater Horizon drill rig caught fire and sank to the ocean floor. 
That incident--and the millions of barrels of oil that have spilled 
into the Gulf of Mexico since it began--has made it absolutely clear 
that our Nation's offshore energy regulations need to be reformed. Even 
in a Congress as deeply and bitterly divided as this one, the fact that 
we are living through a terrible environmental disaster, caused at 
least in part by certain failures of the government, should be more 
than enough for us to work in good faith and reach consensus on a path 
forward.
  For the past 3 months, that is exactly what the members of the Energy 
Committee have sought to develop. We have been working toward a 
responsible path that is acceptable to all--or at least most--of the 
Members of the Senate. We started by holding four major hearings on the 
gulf spill. This allowed us to build a record within the committee on 
everything from blowout preventers to certificates of financial 
responsibility. Our committee worked very hard on this. We spent 
countless hours working on legislation to repair the failed offshore 
regulatory system. We concluded our efforts last month, after all these 
series of hearings, and we unanimously passed legislation, S. 3516, the 
OCS Reform Act, out of committee unanimously. Around here nowadays, 
sometimes it is tough to get not only that real good committee work 
product but then to see that move through committee unanimously. It is 
not easy, and it is certainly not a perfect bill, but it was a fair and 
open process. I would like to think that our hard work within the 
committee and the negotiating that went on, and our very open markup 
and amendment process--what we did was the best of the Senate. It was 
an open and fair and a deliberative process. You would think that would 
go somewhere. But once that bill left committee, it became clear that 
some people cannot take yes for an answer, and that good committee 
product was not going to be advanced.
  About the time we were marking up the MMS bill, we witnessed a deeply 
misguided effort to tie oilspill legislation to cap and trade. I think 
this was an attempt to literally convert one disaster into another. We 
were told that cap and trade was somehow or other going to end our 
dependence on oil and hold polluters accountable and prevent future 
spills. Then an analysis of cap and trade from the EPA itself showed 
that cap and trade would have almost no effect on our Nation's oil 
consumption--not now and not over the course of the next 40 years. 
After nearly 19 months of vote counting, I think the majority was 
forced to admit the obvious: There are not 50 votes, let alone 60, for 
cap and trade in the Senate.
  What we now have before us is this coming together, or slapping 
together, of the Clean Energy Jobs and Oil Company Accountability Act--
the bill that members of the press and the lobbyists received before my 
staff on the Energy Committee. A draft came out last night around 10 
o'clock. I am told it will be officially introduced sometime this 
morning.

  Again, this is such a disappointment. Instead of an open and 
transparent process as we did through our committee, what should and 
what could have been a bipartisan bill was hashed out in secret, 
written behind closed doors with very few Members of the Senate, least 
of all Members from the Gulf States, allowed to provide any level of 
input.
  Since its 409 pages of text were released late last night, we have 
not had time to thoroughly review it, to develop amendments, negotiate 
improvements, or even decide if it is worth supporting yet. We have 
instead been told the majority leader is unlikely to allow amendments 
to be considered--unlikely to allow any amendments to this just-
cobbled-together bill.
  I can only imagine it is because there are provisions that are 
contained in this bill to which he does not want to draw attention, 
much less talk about and vote on. The phrase, ``rush to judgment,'' is 
used a lot around here. I challenge my colleagues to find a more 
flagrant example of that than what we have in front of us with this 
bill.
  We talk around here about why Congress's approval ratings are as low 
as they are. We are at about 11 percent right now. It is bills such as 
this--when people look at this and say, How did this come about, what 
happened to the committee bill--that makes cynics out of all of us, 
especially when we know there is a very serious problem that demands a 
quick and robust policy response.
  Instead of working together to fix the problems, the majority 
leader's bill would undoubtedly create more problems. The Senate's 
process and our traditions have just been left in the ditch. Decisions 
have been made almost exclusively in secret behind closed doors. 
Republicans were shut out of the room. But, of course, we are going to 
be blamed for holding up the bill.
  One has to ask the question, Does anyone honestly believe that we in 
the Senate can pass something by Friday or perhaps early next week that 
we did not even see the light of day on until this morning?
  I suggest that from every procedural vantage point, it seems as if 
the majority's goal has been to drive a stake into the heart of 
anything that can attract Republican support. The staging of this bill 
has been choreographed to ensure partisan opposition so the majority 
can blame us for the problems they are making even worse, such as the 
job losses from the moratorium, the increase in reliance on foreign 
oil--which, of course, we know is coming--the injustice of Federal OCS 
revenues never reaching coastal States such as in Alaska and the gulf 
where they derive in the first place.
  The Democratic caucus can try to pass this bill as introduced without

[[Page S6348]]

amendment and with almost no debate, but I suggest this will be nothing 
more than a Pyrrhic victory. Like the stimulus, like health care, like 
financial reforms, it will give folks something to talk about, but it 
will only worsen the problems it is meant to deal with.
  Unfortunately, it will come at the expense of a far better bill, a 
bill that was introduced last week by the Republican leadership team. 
Let me talk a couple minutes about the bill that has been introduced.
  It starts at the root of the problem--the already apparent 
shortcomings with offshore regulations and at the Minerals Management 
Service, MMS. It includes the OCS Reform Act that we moved through our 
committee, reported unanimously by all 23 members of the Senate Energy 
Committee. Permitting and best available commercial technology 
requirements are strengthened to enhance the safety and the integrity 
of offshore operations. We also codify a complete reorganization of 
MMS. We remove the President's offshore moratorium once new safety 
requirements have been met. We establish strict liability limits for 
each project based on a range of risk factors. There is a series of 13 
different risk factors that would be relevant. We include a bipartisan 
commission to investigate what went wrong with Deepwater Horizon. And, 
finally, we right a longstanding wrong by returning a large share of 
production revenues to the coastal States.
  It has been suggested in one of the Hill publications this morning--a 
Democratic staffer is quoted as saying this Republican package was 
hastily thrown together. I remind that Democratic staffer or others who 
are looking at this that almost all of what is contained in this 
Republican package was introduced 1 month ago today, as a matter of 
fact, in an oilspill compensation act I introduced. We include that 
with the component pieces of the OCS Reform Act that was passed 
unanimously by the committee. To suggest this has been somehow hastily 
cobbled together, one needs to go back and look at the fact that it has 
been out there for public review and scrutiny now for almost 1 month.
  As much as I will push back against the decision to race to finish 
this bill, we must--we absolutely must--have more debate on these 
issues. The majority, with very commanding numbers in both Houses and 
control of the White House, may want to try to somehow blame 
Republicans for the thousands of lost jobs from Alabama to our State of 
Alaska as well as the administration's failure to protect and restore 
the gulf's offshore environment. But that strategy will fail.
  We are offering a more responsible and dramatically less costly piece 
of legislation that truly deserves to be considered and passed by the 
full Senate.
  I wish the majority would take that same path instead of deciding, 
judging from the development of the bill and its actual content, that 
it is time we give up on policy for the year and focus instead on just 
messaging.
  We need to look at the terrible toll we all know is taking place as a 
result of the Deepwater Horizon spill, the obvious failure of our 
offshore regulatory system, and of the growing economic consequences of 
the administration's offshore moratorium.
  It is absolutely crystal clear there is action that needs to be 
taken. There is policy that needs to be put in place to respond to the 
oilspill, the environmental devastation, the economic devastation, and 
the regulatory confusion that was in place. It is not time for the 
politics or partisan activities. It is not time to roll the dice with 
our Nation's energy policy. For the continued vitality of an entire 
region in the United States, it is imperative that we move beyond the 
message and we provide the policy and the legislative response that is 
so necessary and so needed.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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