[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Pages 14927-14928]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                 ENERGY

  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I want to summarize where we are on the 
comprehensive energy legislation issue that all of us are interested in 
moving ahead, and to tell you my perspective on it at this point.
  As we began the year, we identified two sets of issues. There were 
the short-term challenges we faced as a country, and then there were 
the more long-term issues. The short-term challenges included the very 
high prices for electricity in California, which I think all of us 
recognized at that time were not just unreasonable but were exorbitant 
really for many residents in California. Really, the wholesale prices, 
being very high, were not being passed on to consumers at that time, 
although the consumer retail prices started to reflect those high 
prices that had been charged for such a long time.
  Second, of course, natural gas prices were very high. That was a 
concern.
  A third short-term concern was the inadequacy of funding for the Low 
Income Home Energy Assistance Program. That is the program Congress put 
in place many years ago to help low-income families in this country pay 
their utility bills. The demand on that program was so great during 
this last winter, and even into this spring and early summer, that most 
States that operate that program, and are dependent on Federal funds to 
do so, were out of funding. So that was another short-term problem we 
needed to address.
  Fortunately, most of these short-term issues have been addressed in 
some significant way. The price of wholesale power in California has 
come down, perhaps not as far as it eventually will and should, but it 
has come down substantially. The price of natural gas has come down. 
Again, that is not being reflected to the extent it should as yet in 
home utility bills, but that hopefully will happen quickly, too.
  As to the LIHEAP program--the Low Income Home Energy Assistance 
Program--we have put $300 million of new funding into the supplemental 
appropriations bill that we sent to the President to try to keep that 
program functioning through the rest of this summer.
  So those are short-term issues we have seen resolved to some extent. 
And I feel good about that.
  There remain, however, a great many long-term challenges that the 
country has in dealing with its energy future. Let me mention a few of 
those because I believe we can work in a bipartisan way to deal with 
them to help resolve those issues.
  One, of course, is supply. We do not have assured adequate supply 
going forward over the next several years. We need to look at ways to 
increase supply. One is affordability. We are concerned about the price 
of the various sources of energy: Electricity, natural gas, gasoline at 
the pump.
  Efficiency in the use of energy is a major challenge. We have 
tremendous inefficiency in power production in this country. We need to 
find ways to increase efficiency in that respect. In many cases, two-
thirds of essentially all the power for fuel going into our power 
plants is lost because of inefficiency in power production.
  I believe we all want less pollution from the burning of fossil 
fuels. I think we have come to recognize that as fossil fuels burn we 
do have pollution. We need to find ways to diminish that. We need more 
diversity in our fuel supply. We need to shift to more use of renewable 
energy, to the extent the technology permits that, and to the extent 
the cost of producing that renewable energy permits.
  So we have a great many long-term goals that the country wants to 
achieve. I believe we can do that. I think we can do it in this 
Congress. I think we can do it in this session of this Congress.
  The President, to his credit, has presented the country with a 
national energy plan. There has been a lot of criticism of parts of 
that plan. I share some of that criticism. But I do think the President 
should receive credit for having made this a priority issue for the 
country. He has said this is something he thinks needs to be addressed. 
I agree with that; this is something that needs to be addressed.
  We need to pass an energy bill addressing these long-term concerns. 
The House of Representatives is expected to act this week on a major 
energy bill. There will be substantial controversy about some of the 
provisions in that bill. And there are, frankly, several provisions in 
the bill, as it comes to this Chamber, with which I do not agree.
  I do not agree with the proposal to open the Arctic National Wildlife 
Refuge to drilling and exploration. I do not think that is a 
substantial solution to our problems. I do not believe we should 
produce legislation to accomplish that, and send it to the President, 
even though he has requested that we do so. So that is one point of 
disagreement.
  I hope very much that we will do something significant to improve 
vehicle fuel efficiency. We are always concerned about the growing 
dependence on foreign sources of oil. And those sources are growing. We 
import a tremendous amount of oil. Most of that goes into the 
transportation sector, and most of that for cars and light-duty 
vehicles of various kinds. So we need to find ways to increase vehicle 
fuel efficiency. We can do that as well.
  Let me say there are a great many other challenges we also have. I 
know time is short. I intend to begin a markup of an energy bill in the 
Energy Committee this Wednesday. I hope we can move ahead on a 
bipartisan basis. Then we can also set the framework for moving ahead, 
when the Congress returns in September, on the balance of a 
comprehensive bill.

[[Page 14928]]

  This is something that will benefit the country; it is something we 
can do in the Senate; and we can do it on a bipartisan basis.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, before the Senator leaves, I ask if he will 
respond to a question I have about the energy bill.
  Mr. BINGAMAN. I am pleased to respond.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, through you to my friend from New Mexico, I 
was speaking with Senator Lugar. One of the things that has so 
intrigued me about the legislation you will mark up is that there is a 
section in the bill that deals with renewables; is that right?
  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, we will have a section in the bill 
dealing with renewable energy production. The one we are marking up 
this Wednesday deals with research and development and training 
programs. When we come back in September, we expect to have a section 
dealing with renewable energy production.
  Mr. REID. There isn't any one answer to the energy problem, is there? 
It is a combination of solutions that you have talked about, such as 
renewables. It is going to take a lot of cooperation and partnering to 
be able to answer the energy needs of this country; is that right?
  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, in answer to the Senator, he is exactly 
right. There are a variety of technologies that can help us to meet our 
energy needs. There are a variety of sources for energy production. We 
need to move ahead on each of them. That is my view.
  Mr. REID. There is no magic bullet, not one thing that is going to 
solve all the problems of energy relating to our country's needs; is 
that true?
  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, again, that is certainly my view. There 
is no single solution to the problem. We need to make progress on 
increased energy supplies from a great many sources. We need to make 
progress on more efficiency in various ways. Clearly, we need to do a 
better job of conserving the energy we do produce.

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