[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 107 (Friday, July 10, 2015)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1031]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         21ST CENTURY CURES ACT

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                     HON. CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, JR.

                              of louisiana

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, July 9, 2015

       The House in Committee of the Whole House on the state of 
     the Union had under consideration the bill (H.R. 6) to 
     accelerate the discovery, development, and delivery of 21st 
     century cures, and for other purposes:

  Mr. BOUSTANY. Mr. Chair, I rise today to express opposition to H.R. 
6, the 21st Century Cures Act.
   As a doctor, I strongly support medical innovation and research. 
Over the course of my 30 years practicing medicine, I saw tremendous 
leaps and bounds in treatment that saved lives. I appreciate the hard 
work put into creatively attempting to modernize the health-care 
innovation infrastructure, specifically efforts to incorporate a 
patient perspective into the drug and device approval process, support 
advances in personalized medicine, and streamline clinical trials. 
However, I cannot support the sale of 64 million barrels of crude oil 
from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve being used to pay for these 
changes.
   Over the past year, the price of oil has dropped from above $100 per 
barrel to below $50. Although the price of oil is currently at $54 a 
barrel on the global markets, this is far from stable. I do not 
understand why Congress would agree to sell 64 million barrels from the 
Strategic Petroleum Reserve when the price is low, flooding the global 
oil marketplace, and likely causing the price to drop even further. 
This has the potential to cause havoc for our own domestic oil and gas 
industry.
   The decline in oil prices is hurting the states that had benefited 
from the domestic oil-production boom in recent years. My home state of 
Louisiana ranked second in the U.S. in oil production and second in 
natural gas production in 2013, with more than 64,000 Louisianans 
employed in extraction, pipeline and refining industries. This industry 
matters to everyone in Louisiana.
   According to the American Petroleum Institute the U.S. oil and 
natural gas industry supports more than 9 million jobs nationwide, 
supports over 7% of GDP, and contributes more than $86 million to the 
Federal Treasury every day. Since oil prices began to drop, it has been 
widely reported that the oil and gas industry have been struggling to 
keep their employees on payroll. In April, the U.S. Bureau of Labor 
Statistics announced that Louisiana suffered a 3,300 job loss in the 
mining and logging sector. In June we saw two consecutive week losses 
in mining employment--that's the category that includes many oil and 
gas exploration and extraction jobs--have slipped below 100 in 
Louisiana.
   I will not accept the false choice between supporting medical 
innovation and Louisiana oil and gas jobs. I believe it's irresponsible 
to flood the global market for petroleum with more product while 
Louisiana families are experiencing layoffs because of low global 
prices.
   Many of my colleagues have stated that given the remarkable 
expansion of North American oil production, a reduction in the size of 
the reserve could be seen as responsible cost-effective public policy. 
I would disagree. Research shows that price spikes in transportation 
fuels is highly regressive, with most of the cost disproportionately 
hitting middle class and low-income groups. This vulnerability remains 
even though our work shows that the U.S. and much of the Western 
hemisphere will largely separate from physical trade flows with Middle 
East producers in the next few years.
   According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA), the U.S. 
economy will continue to rely upon petroleum for many years, and work 
by EPRINC and many other research groups demonstrates that we will 
remain vulnerable to severe economic damage from disruptions in 
petroleum supplies in the world oil market. The SPR remains an 
important strategic asset for protecting the U.S. economy and security 
interests from this vulnerability.
   Selling barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve should be done 
in a thoughtful and strategic manner when global prices are high, not 
as another coffer for Congress to raid at its convenience and at the 
expense of Louisiana's oil & gas industry.

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