[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 32 (Wednesday, February 29, 2012)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1101-S1103]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ENERGY POLICY
Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, I want to associate myself with the
remarks of the Senator from South Dakota and follow up in that regard.
Yesterday I came to the Senate floor and explained how the
President's ideological outlook and the policies that have grown out of
it will only continue to drive up the cost of gasoline at the pump.
After I spoke, the President's Energy Secretary seemed to confirm it
when he told a congressional panel that the Department of Energy isn't
working to drive down the price of gas. They are working to wean us off
of it altogether, and high gas prices add urgency to those efforts.
In other words, high gas prices actually help the administration
achieve what it is trying to achieve. What I suggested yesterday and
what I am suggesting again this morning is that we look at statements
such as this and many others from the President and some of his top
advisers in the past, along with the President's actual policies when
it comes to assessing the current situation at the pump--not the
speeches he gives when he starts feeling the political heat for it
because he can't have it both ways.
Once again, here are the facts. The President continues to limit off-
shore areas to energy production and is granting fewer leases on public
land for oil drilling. At the same time, he has encouraged other
countries such as Brazil to move forward with their off-shore drilling
projects. The Obama administration continues to impose burdensome
regulations on the domestic energy sector that will further drive up
the cost of gasoline for the consumer. He is proposing raising taxes on
the energy sector, a move that the Congressional Research Service has
said would drive up costs.
As we all know, he flatly rejected the Keystone XL Pipeline, a
potentially game-changing domestic energy project that promises not
only greater independence from Middle Eastern oil but tens of thousands
of private sector jobs.
All of these policies help drive up the cost of gasoline and increase
our dependence on foreign sources of oil, but perhaps none is as
emblematic of the President's simplistic and punitive approach to
energy policy as the last one. The President simply cannot claim to
support a comprehensive approach to energy while at the same time
standing in the way of the Keystone Pipeline. It doesn't make any
sense. It is either one or the other.
Most Americans understand that. That is why many of us were pleased
when the company that is responsible for building Keystone said it
plans to move forward with the southern portion of the pipeline,
despite the administration's decision to block the northern portion to
alleviate a bottleneck in Cushing, OK. They are just not going to let
this administration punish them or the rest of those who want to build
this pipeline.
Asked about the impact of delays, the company's President and CEO
said they were partly to blame for the recent spike in gas prices,
which is presumably why the White House came out in support of the
move. But the hypocrisy is quite stunning.
How could a White House that is single-handedly blocking one-half of
the pipeline to appease an extreme segment of its political base now
claim to support the southern half of the same pipeline? Well, the
short answer is they don't have the authority to block the southern
half, so they think that by claiming to support it, then they can get
credit from people for being on both sides of the issue. But if
Keystone is good for America and good for jobs, the President should
just come out and support the whole pipeline. With gas prices literally
skyrocketing and growing turmoil in the Middle East, we can't afford
another year of foot-dragging. It is time for the President to move
quickly to approve the entire Keystone XL Pipeline. This is literally a
no-brainer.
An overwhelming majority of Americans support the Keystone XL
Pipeline in its entirety. The President should listen to them. Instead
of lecturing the American people about his idea of fairness, he should
spend a little more time thinking about what most Americans think is
fair. Most Americans don't think it is particularly fair that the
President of the United States is blocking them from tapping into our
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natural resources even as he uses their tax dollars to prop up failing
solar companies like Solyndra and to hand out bonuses to the executives
who drive them literally into the ground. Most Americans don't think it
is fair that their President would want to drive up the cost of
gasoline they need to get around every day and build their families and
their businesses and their lives even as he is directing more and more
of their money to risky solar schemes in his own administration--risky
solar schemes his own administration says sometimes fail.
Well, the American people don't ask for much, but they do expect to
be able to go out there every day and try to build a future for
themselves and their families without their own President throwing sand
in the gears. And whether it is high gas prices or government
regulations or higher debt, the American people are tired of bearing
the burden so this President can build an economy in which Washington
calls all the shots. Yes, Americans want lower gas prices, and, yes,
this President's policies are hurting. But let's be clear about
something: This debate is not just about gas prices, it is about a
President who wants to impose a definition of ``fairness'' on the
American people, yet most of them simply do not accept.
I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Utah.
Mr. HATCH. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be
permitted to finish my remarks and that I be granted enough time to do
so.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. HATCH. Madam President, the first 3 years of President Obama's
administration were a frenzy of activity. He pushed the stimulus, he
spent over a year pursuing his health care law, and he forced through
Dodd-Frank, imposing historic regulations on the banking industry. Even
The Economist magazine has found fault with that. Yet, at a time when
the Nation was in economic free fall, the President chose an agenda of
more regulation and higher taxes.
The President ignored private sector job creation and the primacy of
economic growth, and nowhere was this more evident than with respect to
energy policy. President Obama has failed entirely to address one of
the greatest obstacles to economic growth; that is, high energy prices.
Today he claims he is for an all-of-the-above approach to energy. All
of a sudden, facing $5-a-gallon gasoline, weak job creation, and a
Presidential election, he claims to have found religion on energy
production. But whether we look at oil, natural gas, or the Keystone
Pipeline, the American people are not buying this conversion story, and
I certainly agree with our distinguished minority leader and his
comments here this morning.
This failure by the President to tackle our energy needs is a
national crisis for which the American people should hold him
accountable. Yet his inability to put jobs ahead of his radical and
unrepresentative environmental base has particular implications for the
citizens of my State of Utah as well. Days after announcing in his
State of the Union an ``all-of-the-above strategy that develops every
available source of American energy,'' the administration cut access to
Federal lands in the West for oil shale development by 75 percent and
proposed a 50 percent royalty hike on domestic energy production on
public lands.
Whether it is closing off more Federal lands to American energy
production or saying no to the Keystone Pipeline, this White House has
shown it is more focused on appeasing its extremist ideological allies
than putting forward an energy policy that works for Utahans and
Americans everywhere. With gas prices and home heating costs on the
rise, the American people deserve action, not more campaign speeches--
and I might add, from the most anti-American energy administration in
our Nation's history.
When it comes to energy policy, the President is a man divided. On
almost all economic policy, his answer is, tax the rich more. Taxing
the rich more is his go-to option for reducing the deficit, paying for
Obamacare, and paying for new roads and bridges. Higher taxes are a
matter of fundamental fairness, the President claims, but when it comes
to gas prices, the President sides with the 1 percent.
The folks who would benefit most from increased energy production are
blue-collar workers and middle-class families. High energy prices hit
the wallets of lower income Americans the hardest. Middle-class
Americans are more likely to have longer commutes and bigger cars than
wealthy urban citizens. The passthrough cost of high fuel prices hits
the grocery budgets of all Americans. The jobs that never materialize
due to the failure to develop energy resources undermines every blue-
collar American.
The President claims to be for fairness and an egalitarian economic
policy, but his energy policy is incredibly regressive, putting the
burden of his environmental agenda on the backs of the middle class.
The situation got no better with the budget the President recently
submitted or with this long-delayed proposal for business tax reform.
Rather than advance an energy agenda that would spur production,
lower prices, and create jobs, the President continues to advocate for
increased taxes on oil and gas production in the United States.
On March 3 of last year, the Congressional Research Service concluded
that the President's proposals would ``make oil and natural gas more
expensive for U.S. consumers and likely increase foreign dependence.''
The same holds true today. These decisions are based in political
appeals to his elitist base rather than any interest in developing
sound energy policy. For example, in his budget the President cites the
following as his reason for repealing tax incentives for oil and gas
production:
Special tax treatment of working interests in oil and gas
properties . . . distorts markets by encouraging more
investment in the oil and gas industry than would occur under
a neutral system.
Give me a break. The reason the President opposes current tax policy
for oil and gas is because he opposes distorting markets?
The Energy Information Administration reports that in fiscal year
2010, $14.7 billion in energy-specific subsidies went to advance
renewable energy compared to $4.2 billion in energy-related subsidies
that went to advance fossil fuels. In other words, there are three
times as many government subsidies going to renewable energy as there
are going to oil, gas, and coal combined. Now, that is what you call
distorting the market.
Contrary to the President's presentation, these are not tax loopholes
that need to be closed. The term ``tax loophole'' implies that a tax
incentive is susceptible to an exploitation of an unintended benefit.
While the Tax Code has some tax loopholes that we must clearly
eliminate, the tax expenditures that benefit oil and gas companies were
intended to incentivize a particular activity or behavior. For
instance, section 199 of the Internal Revenue Code includes an
incentive for the domestic production of oil and gas. This is no
loophole. Congress, on a bipartisan basis, understands that without
this incentive, we could see an enormous reduction in employment, and
it is simply inaccurate to state that this incentive adds little to our
economic or energy security.
The American people need to understand that repeal of this policy
will only increase our dependence on foreign-produced oil. But this
does not seem to bother the President one bit. On March 20 of last
year, the President told a group of political and business leaders in
Brazil that we ``want to help with technology and support to develop
these oil reserves safely, and when you're ready to start selling, we
want to be one of your best customers.''
As hard as it is to believe, the administration does not even seem to
share the desire of the American people for lower energy prices. The
President's Secretary of Energy, Secretary Steven Chu, stated: ``We
have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in
Europe.'' Gas prices in Europe are $8 to $10 a gallon, and that is
where the administration and environmental activists want gas prices to
be for Americans. Even President Obama stated in 2008 that he would
prefer a gradual adjustment to high gasoline prices, just maybe not a
quick spike.
The President claims he is for an all-of-the-above energy policy so
long as it
[[Page S1103]]
does not include offshore drilling, drilling on our western lands, the
development of energy in Alaska, and the Keystone Pipeline. My reading
of his all-of-the-above approach is some-of-the-above and only those
that are poll-tested and approved by environmental activists.
This is terrible tax policy, it is terrible energy policy, and it is
terrible economic policy. Unfortunately, it is all we have from this
administration.
The reality is that our country relies upon oil and gas because it is
dependable, abundant, affordable, and domestic. Raising taxes on
American companies that produce oil and gas will be felt by all
Americans not only at the pump but also through a decrease in dividends
to many middle-class shareholders. This is the wrong prescription for
our ailing economy.
For this administration, the goal remains not lower energy prices but
the liberal dream of getting America off of oil. Just the other day,
the President's Secretary of Energy acknowledged that the overall goal
of his Department is not to lower the cost of traditional energy but to
decrease dependency on oil.
For what it is worth, this commitment to restricting domestic
production is a policy that divides my colleagues on the other side of
the aisle. They know the President is putting the preferred lifestyle
policies of wealthy urbanites ahead of the needs of blue-collar and
union workers and middle-class Americans. They know the decision by the
President to kill the Keystone Pipeline put environmental interest
groups ahead of the needs of workers, commuters, and families.
President Obama has traded in the hardhat-and-lunch-bucket heritage
of the Democratic Party for a hipster fedora and a double-skim latte.
He has put liberal environmental dreams ahead of the economic reality
that working-class Americans have been struggling with for years. The
Nation's unemployment rate has been above 8 percent for 36 straight
months. The average duration of unemployment was 40.1 weeks in January
2012. Yet the President and his allies in the Senate have helped to
kill projects that would undeniably lead to the creation of hundreds of
thousands of high-paying American jobs.
Gas prices have now risen for 20 straight days. Gas prices are now up
30 cents over the last month and 18 cents in the past 2 weeks. We are
cruising toward $5-a-gallon gas, and the President resists any long-
term solutions to these rising energy prices.
The American people deserve better than this. They have waited 3 long
years for a serious energy agenda from this President, and if he does
not address this energy crisis soon, in less than a year the American
people will be looking to another President to promote an energy
program that will finally create jobs and lower the cost of energy for
all Americans. Look, we have energy within our country's boundaries. We
have energy that is just begging to be developed, that would help us to
make it through these trying times. We need the lowest cost energy we
can possibly have, and we are not going to get it under this President.
We are not going to get it under this administration. I hope my
colleagues on both sides of the aisle wake up and realize we are
putting our country right down the drain.
I saw, sometime over the last couple of weeks, The Economist
magazine. The front page of that magazine criticizes us for the
overregulatory nature of our economy and of our government. We are
making it so it is almost impossible for businesses to expand and
create high-paid jobs.
We can solve our own energy needs. We have between 800 billion and
1.6 trillion barrels of recoverable oil in oil shale in Utah, Colorado,
and Wyoming alone. We have billions of barrels of oil in ANWR up in
Alaska and billions of barrels of oil at other sites in Alaska.
Fortunately, we found oil in the Bakken claim in North Dakota, but the
only reason we have been able to drill there is because it is private
land. Fortunately, we found some places down in Texas, but again they
are on private land. We can't get the permits and the ability to drill
on public land or even develop oil shale on public land. Yes, it would
cost us more per barrel to develop that oil, but it would also bring
down the intense problems we have in trying to find enough oil and gas
to keep our country moving ahead as the greatest country in the world.
We have to simply get this administration to wake up and realize there
are many ways we can solve our energy problems--many ways.
We are also awash in natural gas. A lot of people have been saying we
need to develop our natural gas. We need to develop more of our energy
resources than we are developing now. And we can do it. America can do
it if we get the government off the backs of those who produce energy.
I hope and pray that Democrats and Republicans alike will lock arms,
get together, and solve the problems facing our country, regardless of
this President, who doesn't seem to know what to do or how to do it.
This is a crucial time for our country. There is no excuse for us to
be in the mess we are in. But unfortunately, we are here because of the
poor energy policies of this administration.
Madam President, I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Michigan.
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