[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 14]
[House]
[Pages 19959-19960]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                       RIPLEY'S BELIEVE IT OR NOT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Foley) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. FOLEY. Mr. Speaker, if this campaign for President goes on much 
longer, it may be capable of being admitted into ``Ripley's Believe It 
or Not''. In fact, I am speaking specifically of our candidate on the 
Democratic side, the Vice President of the United States.
  Many people will remember some of the claims that he has made in 
recent years, including ``I invented the Internet,'' ``I discovered 
Love Canal,'' ``I was the feature for Love Story,'' and then recently 
he imagined his dog and mother-in-law were taking the same medicine for 
arthritis in which to compare pricing and scare seniors in my home 
State of Florida to reality check, if you will, that neither one 
apparently is taking the medicine, or at least the analysis was 
incorrect and flawed at best.
  More recently he is going to crack down on Hollywood and then goes 
out there and raises buckets of money and says to them, ``Do not worry, 
I am only here to nudge you.'' Now he wants to tap into the Strategic 
Reserve because he sponsored the legislation that created it and 
authorized the first funds to purchase the fuel, even though that was 
created 2 years before he came to Congress.
  He continues to accuse the Bush campaign of being beholden to big 
oil, yet continues to refuse to fully explain his ties and financial 
dealings with Armand Hammer, the late chairman of Occidental Petroleum, 
and a long favorite of the Russian Government.
  More recently now as we talk about the Strategic Reserve, many in 
this Congress claim on both sides of the aisle that the intervention of 
the White House on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has caused the 
market on energy

[[Page 19960]]

and fuel prices to plummet because of their outstanding leadership on 
this issue.
  Let me read to my colleagues from today's USA Today in the Money 
section, Thursday September 28: ``Forget oil. The price of natural gas 
is skyrocketing. All but unnoticed in the recent furor over crude oil 
and heating oil, the price of natural gas,'' and let me underscore this 
point, ``which heats more than five times as many homes as heating oil 
has soared to record heights with hardly a pause since July. The 
natural gas future prices hit 531 per million British thermal units 
Wednesday on the New York Mercantile Exchange, more than double its 
load this year of $2.17 on January 5 and up about 62 cents over last 
month.''
  Then the claim is that the tapping of the Strategic Reserve is not 
about politics. That one may top all other whoppers committed by the 
campaign to date.
  The Strategic Reserve was established to make certain that America 
would never become dependent on foreign fuels during a crisis. During a 
crisis, like the Persian Gulf, we were able to last tap into that 
reserve to make certain our country handled that crisis calmly and that 
there was no interruption in domestic life.
  But now because of the campaign, the concerns when soccer moms are 
complaining about the high price of gas, we have an administration that 
is quickly willing to tap into that very viable and vital supply that 
is there for all Americans to use.
  Now, think about it in one's own life. Many people, I am certain, 
think about buying a new car, maybe going on vacation. They make the 
analogy that I will borrow from my savings account and I will pay it 
back because this is really important. Of course most of us realize we 
never quite get around to paying it back or, if we do, it is usually 
late or not at all.

                              {time}  1415

  Now, look at the analogy here of 30-plus million barrels of oil. When 
and how do we pay it back, and at what price? Saddam Hussein and others 
must be cheerfully mocking America today and thinking, let us get them 
to continue, in the art of politics, to draw down their reserves, and 
then we in OPEC will spike prices so that when they have to replace it 
for the purpose of the strategic reserve, they will not be paying $30 
or $32, they may be paying $40 or $45. But then the election will be 
over and no one will really have to explain the financial gimmickry we 
went for in order to do a temporary fix at the pumps.
  We have not had a consistent energy policy the past 8 years. We have 
not embarked on enough wind energy and solar power and other 
alternative fuel sources. We have become too dependent, too 
consistently obligated to foreign sources. Yet this administration, in 
response to a domestic enterprise, sues Microsoft. They should have 
been suing OPEC, possibly for collusion on price.
  When Americans fill up their cars over the next few weeks, the one 
question most important to them should be, are we better off than we 
were 8 years ago? I would say they are not better off than they were 
even 1 or 2 years ago. During this administration prices have risen to 
the highest level we have had over the last 10 years; the last time 
being during a conflict in the Persian Gulf.
  So I urge my colleagues to look at the record, reflect on it, and, 
hopefully, urge the administration not to tap into our Strategic 
Petroleum Reserve by playing politics with petroleum.

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