[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 38 (Thursday, March 8, 2012)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1502-S1504]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            GASOLINE PRICES

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I come to the floor to express my concerns 
on behalf of the 26 million constituents I have in Texas about the 
rising gas prices and the administration's failure to take reasonable 
and rational and practical steps to help ease the pain Americans are 
feeling at the gas pump.
  Just think about it. We know unemployment is unacceptably high and 
intractable, notwithstanding our private sector economy's best efforts 
to grow and to create jobs. So we know people are out of work. We know 
many of them are unable to pay their mortgages and are literally losing 
their homes to foreclosure. Those who are fortunate enough to have jobs 
are experiencing higher prices when it comes to food, when it comes to 
health care, notwithstanding the passage of the Patient Protection and 
Affordable Care Act, of which the President said the average family 
would save $2,500 in health care premiums. Last year alone, there was 
almost a double-digit increase in the cost of health care for most 
American families.
  Now, to add insult to injury, we have higher gas prices, which are 
crowding out other spending and lowering the standard of living for 
American families who are struggling with the slow economic recovery we 
are experiencing.
  The average price of gasoline in the United States has more than 
doubled since the week of the inauguration of President Obama in 
January 2009. In January 2009 a gallon of regular gas was $1.89. Today 
it averages $3.79 a gallon. The Associated Press reports that the 
average American household spent $4,155 filling up at the pump in 2011. 
That is the annual cost of gasoline for a typical U.S. household.
  I remember arguments--passionate arguments--about the payroll tax 
holiday and the President holding press conference after press 
conference saying, if we would just pass the payroll tax holiday, then 
families would have $40 more a month spending money in their pockets. 
Well, higher gas prices have wiped that out and more.
  Gasoline costs now amount to 8.4 percent of the median household 
income--8.4 percent. I am not telling anybody something they do not 
already know and they have not already felt, that they have not already 
experienced. Everyone has experienced the higher prices. This is the 
highest price for gasoline since 1981 when costs soared because of 
another crisis in the Middle East.
  Weeks ago President Obama said there is very little he could do about 
high gas prices in the short term. I tell you, it is good he made those 
comments in Miami, FL, and not Midland, TX, because Texans know that 
greater domestic energy production would help reduce oil prices and, 
therefore, reduce gasoline prices. Roughly 70 percent of the price of 
gasoline is the price of oil from which gasoline is refined. You know, 
sometimes I feel as though in Washington, DC, we are operating in a 
parallel universe that has very little in common with the rest of the 
country. And here it is--not to mix my metaphors--ships passing in the 
night. But the fact is, the laws of supply and demand cannot be 
suspended by the Congress or the President of the United States. 
President Obama used to agree with that.
  Last March, for example, he said producing more oil in America would 
help lower oil prices. Well, lipservice will not produce lower oil 
prices, but, yes, producing more oil will because the greater the 
supply--we know the laws of economics say, demand being the same, 
greater supply will lower prices. The fact is, there is greater demand 
all around the world, not just in the United States, as economies are 
growing in China, in India, and Brazil and places such as that.
  To add insult to injury, this administration has adopted policies 
that have directly conflicted with the goal of lowering oil and 
gasoline prices. I do not know how to reach any other conclusion but to 
say it appears to me that the administration has intentionally enacted 
policies that will raise gasoline prices. I know they will deny that. 
They will say it is not true. But I do not know any other explanation.
  Let me provide the evidence that leads me to that conclusion and 
perhaps you will agree. Today we learned that President Obama has been 
busy calling Senators on the other side of the aisle and asking them to 
vote against an amendment being offered by Senator Hoeven of North 
Dakota that would allow the Keystone XL Pipeline project to move 
forward--the President, on the phone calling Senators saying: Vote 
against the Keystone XL Pipeline amendment offered by Senator Hoeven.
  The President has previously said there is not a single morning he 
wakes up that he does not think about creating jobs. But, apparently, 
he woke up today thinking about how to lobby against jobs because the 
Keystone Pipeline, in addition to providing an additional supply of 
crude oil from the tar sands in Canada that would be transported to the 
United States, would be turned into gasoline in places such as Port 
Arthur, TX--apparently, the President got up and thought: How can I 
obstruct additional supply? How can I destroy the jobs that would be 
created, which is directly contrary to what he professed he does when 
he wakes up each morning thinking about how to create new jobs.
  The Keystone XL Pipeline is a $7 billion private investment that will 
create 20,000 jobs in construction and manufacturing alone. It will add 
tens of thousands of additional jobs throughout the economy in other 
sectors that will support the pipeline construction.
  This is kind of personal for me and my constituents in Texas because 
we

[[Page S1503]]

are an energy-producing State. We actually think that is good because 
it has created a lot of jobs. It has allowed us to weather this 
recession. People have voted with their feet, and they have moved from 
other parts of the country to Texas because that is where the jobs are 
so they can provide for their families and they can try to achieve the 
American dream.
  Texas as a whole provides more than one-quarter of America's total 
refining capacity. Last month, when the subject of the Keystone 
Pipeline was very much in the news, I visited with a number of refinery 
workers in Port Arthur, TX, who expressed concern about the future of 
their livelihood. These constituents of mine in Port Arthur, TX, could 
care less about the politics in Washington, DC--who wins, who loses, 
the sort of stuff that seems to facilitate an obsession inside the 
beltway. But they were particularly upset--not just Republicans but 
Democrats, Independents, unaffiliated folks. They were particularly 
upset with the Obama administration's rejection of the permit for the 
Keystone XL Pipeline which, as I said, would terminate in the Port 
Arthur region and allow our State to refine an extra 700,000 barrels of 
oil each day and turn it into gasoline and other refined products that 
would increase the supply and thus, according to the laws of economics, 
have a tendency to bring prices down as we increase supply.
  President Obama's behind-the-scenes maneuvers, this crusade, is the 
starkest reminder yet. He is the only thing standing between this 
country and more jobs and energy security. I regret to reach that 
conclusion, but I do not know of any other reasonable conclusion to 
raise.
  Rather than asking Saudi Arabia and other OPEC countries to produce 
more oil in a region where our troops have been deployed for 10 years 
or more, is it any coincidence that in the oil-producing regions of the 
world that we depend upon for oil, where our American troops have 
fought and some have made the ultimate sacrifice to protect our 
country, to protect our economy, to protect our way of life, that there 
have been some in this Chamber who have suggested we ought to go, hat 
in hand, to Saudi Arabia, and say: Will you please open the spigot a 
little wider? Will you please supply us more oil so we do not have to 
do it in America? You can do it for us, and we can buy it from you.
  Well, I believe this administration should work closely with our 
partners in Canada, a friendly country where we do not have to worry 
about a disruption of supply because if the Iranian threat to block the 
Strait of Hormuz comes to pass, 20 percent of the world's oil supply 
passes through the Strait of Hormuz. You know what that would do to 
prices, not to mention other consequences which are entirely negative.

  Canada is a reliable and geographically secure trading partner. Their 
oil exports are insulated from the potential supply disruptions in the 
Middle East. Rather than demonizing oil and gas companies that employ 
millions of hard-working Americans, while wagering more taxpayer 
dollars on boondoggles such as Solyndra, the Obama administration 
should take its regulatory boot off the necks of our domestic energy 
producers.
  As I said, this is personal for me and my constituents because Texans 
are proud that our State remains the leading U.S. producer of oil and 
gas. As I stated, it is what has helped us grow and create an awful lot 
of jobs for which people are grateful. We know for a scientific fact 
that America has just begun to tap the potential of its vast resources. 
According to the Congressional Research Service, our country has more 
recoverable energy resources than Canada, China, and Saudi Arabia 
combined.
  As American Enterprise Institute scholar Kenneth Green has noted, the 
Outer Continental Shelf of the United States alone contains enough oil 
to fuel 85 million cars for 35 years. Yet more than 97 percent of that 
territory is not under lease as a result of Obama administration 
policies. Expanding access to Federal onshore and offshore lands, 
eliminating permit delays in the issuance of leases could help reduce 
polices and strengthen our energy security while creating jobs and 
boosting revenue to the local, State, and Federal Government that would 
help us close our budget gap.
  Unfortunately, the Obama administration's proposed offshore oil and 
natural gas leasing plan for 2012 to 2017 eliminates--eliminates--50 
percent of lease sales provided for in the previous plan and imposes a 
moratorium on developing energy from 14 billion barrels of oil and 55 
trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. 
The moratorium on the natural resource rich Gulf of Mexico and 
persistent delays in permits for shallow and deepwater leases could 
result in a 19-percent decrease in production in 2012--a 19-percent 
decrease in production.
  So we are not only talking about keeping the production static, we 
are talking about actually decreasing supply as a result of Federal 
administration policies. Decreasing supply will have the inevitable 
effect of raising gasoline prices as that happens, and then there is 
the regulatory impact. Everywhere I go in my State, and as I talk to 
people around the country--they come to visit us in the Capitol. If 
they are in the private sector, they say the biggest threat to their 
ability to start a new business or grow existing businesses and create 
jobs is regulatory overreach.
  We know during the last election the voters gave us divided 
government. They made it harder for the Obama administration to single-
handedly pass policies such as the President's health care bill, such 
as the stimulus, such as Dodd-Frank on a partisan basis. So we got 
divided government. What we did not get is an ability to stop the 
regulatory overreach of executive branch agencies.
  If the President is serious about looking for every single area that 
we can make an impact on gas prices, as he pledged in Miami, he must 
reverse the regulatory overreach of the last 3 years. The U.S. Chamber 
of Commerce reports that the Environmental Protection Agency alone is 
moving forward with 31 major economic rules and 172 major policy 
changes. That is not something Congress is legislating. That is what 
the EPA is doing on its own because they are an executive branch 
administrative agency. But they are going to have a negative impact on 
our energy supply. The Chamber of Commerce rightly calls this an 
unprecedented level of regulatory action. It has a chilling effect not 
only on energy production, it has a chilling effect on jobs, something 
we need more than anything else as our economy struggles to recover.
  Even as gas prices have approached $4 a gallon, the Environmental 
Protection Agency has proposed a tier 3 rule to cut air emissions from 
fuels in light-duty vehicles. This rule alone would force refiners of 
oil to gasoline to make dramatic changes in the way they do business.
  A recent study concluded the rule would increase the cost of 
manufacturing gasoline by 12 to 25 cents per gallon. So as high as they 
are now, once this rule goes into effect, the price we pay at the pump 
could go from 12 to 25 cents higher.
  It could also inflate the refiners' operating costs by $5 billion to 
$13 billion annually and lead to a 7- to 14-percent reduction in gas 
supplies from U.S. refineries and force as many as seven U.S. 
refineries to shut down.
  We have already seen recent reports of a number of refineries on the 
East Coast that produce gasoline in America shutting down because they 
cannot do business economically under this regulatory burden. Beyond 
the tier 3 rule, the American energy producers are deeply worried about 
the EPA's proposed greenhouse gas regulations which will serve as an 
energy tax on consumers. They are also worried, as if that wasn't 
enough, about the agency's new source performance standards and its 
boiler maximum achievable control technology rule.
  I know a lot of this sounds arcane and is not something people talk 
about over the kitchen table. But each one of these cumulatively have 
had a negative impact on the gasoline prices that are directly harming 
American families in their pocketbooks, lowering their standard of 
living and making it harder to get by even as they struggle with the 
slow economic recovery.
  Collectively, if we were to have a moratorium on these regulations at 
least until we begin to see unemployment come down and the economy

[[Page S1504]]

grow, gas prices come down--collectively, these regulations will put 
more U.S. refineries out of business and will lead to ever higher 
gasoline prices at the pump. Conversely, if we were to have a temporary 
moratorium, it would provide much needed relief to hard-working 
American families.
  If that weren't enough, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been 
very active as well. I mentioned Midland, TX, which is part of the 
historic Permian Basin, which is a huge source of oil and gas 
production. Thanks to new technology and innovation, it is experiencing 
a second boom and creating lots of jobs and a lot of American energy. 
What a surprise it was when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 
announced its intention to list the sand dune lizard--a 5-inch lizard 
in the Permian Basin--as an endangered species without adequate 
investigation of the science. It threatened the jobs of nearly 27,000 
Texans in the Permian Basin, which is home to more than one-fifth of 
the top 100 oilfields in America.
  Looking at all of the evidence on energy prices, it is hard to come 
to any conclusion other than that higher energy prices are part of 
President Obama's plan. He talks about green energy and green jobs. 
Those are great, but they only supply a low single-digit percentage of 
our energy needs. We have to produce American energy, our oil and gas 
reserves.
  President Obama's policies have intentionally elevated the price of 
gasoline to the detriment of the American consumer. One of the things 
we can do is pass this Keystone XL Pipeline amendment. It will 
eventually provide 700,000 barrels a day of oil from Canada to be 
refined in America, creating jobs and creating more supply, which will 
have a beneficial impact on gasoline prices, notwithstanding the other 
policies I have mentioned this morning.
  I hope my colleagues will support Senator Hoeven's amendment. I 
certainly will. I would love to hear the contrary argument. 
Unfortunately, we hear nothing but crickets when we start talking about 
all of the beneficial effects of this policy.
  I invite my colleagues who might not come from an energy-producing 
State to go on the Internet and Google or use Bing or whatever search 
engine they use and type in ``U.S. oil and gas pipelines'' and look at 
the picture that comes up. They will be astonished, perhaps, to see all 
of the pipelines that are operating safely, without the public knowing 
about it, providing the oil and gas and other refined products we need 
in order to keep our economy growing. This pipeline is not a threat to 
the environment because we have adequate safeguards in place, and have 
for a long time.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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