[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 12597-12600]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   ABUSES OF POWER: ENERGY TASK FORCE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Garrett of New Jersey). Under the 
Speaker's announced policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from New 
Jersey (Mr. Pallone) is recognized for the remaining time until 
midnight as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, House Republicans are making a mockery of 
the House floor this week. They are bringing up at least four pieces of 
legislation they claim will address our Nation's energy needs and begin 
the process of lowering prices at the pump but the American people 
should not be fooled. Over the past 3 years, the Bush administration 
and congressional Republicans have done nothing to help consumers who 
are now struggling to pay higher gas prices. Instead, the Bush 
administration is in the pocket of the oil and gas companies and House 
Republicans are doing their dirty work.
  Mr. Speaker, Republicans are claiming the energy legislation they 
passed last year which we are again voting on this week will provide 
some much-needed relief at the pump. What Republicans will not say is 
that a study from the Energy Information Administration concluded the 
Republican bill would actually increase the average gasoline price by 
three cents per gallon. Congressional Republicans and the Bush 
administration are not interested in lowering gas prices. One might ask 
why, and that is because high gas prices mean high profits for big oil 
and gas companies. In fact, it was the executives at these very 
companies that worked in secret with Vice President Cheney in crafting 
the Republican energy bill that Republicans are now touting this week. 
For 3 years now, the Vice President has done everything he can to keep 
the records of his energy task force secret. This secret task force 
developed President Bush's energy policy, a policy that was then made 
into legislation here in Congress, legislation that has now stalled in 
the other body. Nevertheless, the end result was bad energy policy. 
There is no doubt that the energy industry succeeded

[[Page 12598]]

with its influence during these secret closed-door meetings in crafting 
a policy that benefited them rather than benefiting Americans now that 
Americans are paying that price at the pump. For 3 years, the Vice 
President has refused to let the American people know who made up his 
energy task force. For 3 years now, the Vice President has refused to 
let the American people know how and why the task force came to the 
conclusions that it did. Finally, after 3 years of hiding the 
information, it appeared that we would finally get some of the 
information Cheney was fighting so hard to keep secret thanks to the 
Sierra Club and the conservative group Judicial Watch who sued Vice 
President Cheney in the courts. The two groups wanted to find out 
exactly who from the energy industry participated in crafting the Bush 
administration's destructive energy policy. A district court ordered 
the administration to provide the information last year but the Bush 
administration still refuses to turn it over. The administration's 
reason, constitutional immunity from such inquiries. The district court 
rejected that contention, pointing out that the administration was 
attempting, and I quote, to cloak what is tantamount to an 
aggrandizement of executive power with the legitimacy of precedent 
where none exists.
  But, Mr. Speaker, as we know, the Vice President refused to give in. 
He has appealed the district court decision to the U.S. Supreme Court 
and last December the Supreme Court agreed to take the case and heard 
arguments this spring. I have to point out that it does not make any 
sense to me why the Vice President would be so concerned about keeping 
his energy task force records secret. I would like to know or ask the 
congressional Republicans why they continue to allow the Bush 
administration to get away with this secrecy. Could it be that they 
know if the records are ever made public that the American people would 
finally realize that the Republican energy bill was never intended to 
help the American consumer but instead from the very first day its main 
goal was to provide oil and gas companies billions of dollars in tax 
breaks?
  Mr. Speaker, I wanted to point out a problem with a potential 
conflict of interest, I think clearly a conflict of interest with 
regard to Justice Scalia and the Supreme Court. It appears in my 
opinion that Vice President Cheney will do anything to keep these 
documents of the energy task force secret. That is why I think that 
what happened is that 3 weeks after the Supreme Court announced it 
would hear Vice President Cheney's appeal of the case, Justice Scalia 
accompanied Vice President Cheney on an Air Force Two flight from 
Washington, D.C. to Morgan City, Louisiana for a duck hunting visit. 
There, according to news reports, Justice Scalia and the Vice President 
were guests of Wallace Carline, president of an energy services 
company. Neither the Vice President nor Justice Scalia made this duck 
hunting vacation public. Had it not been for the investigative work of 
the L.A. Times, we might still not know that these two spent several 
days together hunting duck in Louisiana. One would think that these two 
bright men would realize how such a vacation would look to the American 
people if it ever became public but unfortunately it does not seem like 
either one of them cared.

                              {time}  2340

  What happened is, and I think there is no doubt, that this vacation 
serves as a conflict of interest, and because of that, I believe that 
Justice Scalia should recuse himself from hearing the Cheney case in 
the Supreme Court. But even more importantly, Vice President Cheney 
should have realized how this would look and should have cancelled the 
trip before he even went.
  But regardless of that, there is no disputing that Justice Scalia 
should recuse himself on ruling on the case involving the energy task 
force. The Sierra Club asked Justice Scalia to do just that, but 
Justice Scalia continues to refuse to recuse himself. What he did 
instead was to defend his decision in a 21-page memo. In the memo 
Scalia describes how he enjoyed going hunting every year with his 
friend Wallace Carline. And Scalia writes: ``During my December, 2002, 
visit, I learned that Mr. Carline was an admirer of Vice President 
Cheney. Knowing that the Vice President, with whom I am well 
acquainted, is an enthusiastic duck hunter, I asked whether Mr. Carline 
would like to invite him to our next year's hunt.''
  And Scalia continues in this memo that ``The answer was yes. I 
conveyed the invitation, with my own warm recommendation, in the spring 
of 2003 and received an acceptance, subject, of course, to any 
superseding demands on the Vice President's time. The Vice President 
said that if he did go to Louisiana, I would be welcome to fly down 
with him.''
  Mr. Speaker, just think about this explanation that Justice Scalia is 
giving for not recusing himself in this case involving Vice President 
Cheney. Think about the apparent relationship these two men have, a 
relationship between two men who have worked in Washington for so many 
years and even worked in the Ford administration together.
  And then try to look at it another way. The columnist E.J. Dionne did 
a Washington Post column earlier this year, and he said: ``Imagine you 
were in a bitter court fight with a former business partner. Would you 
want the judge in your case to be someone who went duck hunting with 
your opponent and flew to the hunt on your opponent's plane?'' That is 
the reality here.
  Dionne continues: ``And now consider that you, as a citizen, have a 
right to know with whom Cheney consulted in writing an energy bill that 
was overwhelmingly tilted toward the interests of an industry in which 
the Vice President was once a central player.'' Scalia admits that 
recusal might be in order where the personal fortune or the personal 
freedom of the friend is at issue. And Dionne writes that one should 
not worry because what is at stake here are only Cheney's political 
fortunes, the interests of the industry that Cheney once worked for, 
and the public's right to know, and that is no big deal.
  But it is a big deal. Vice President Cheney should have realized the 
conflict of interest and declined to join the Supreme Court Justice 
once he knew the Supreme Court would be hearing Cheney's case. I do not 
know. It just does not seem like Vice President Cheney cares and he 
just basically will do anything to ensure that the records of his 
energy task force are never made public.
  I would like to ask a question because, again, this is the energy 
task force, remember, put together by the Vice President that put 
together the energy legislation that my colleagues on the other side 
are saying is a good bill and is something that we should pass here 
again this week. But I have to say if all that is true, if it is such a 
great bill and if they continue to tout, as my colleagues did just 
before I spoke tonight, how wonderful this legislation is that came out 
of this task force, then what are they trying to hide? What is the Vice 
President trying to hide? Why does he not just say who was on the task 
force and when the task force met and what they did? Why would anybody 
have a problem with it if my colleagues on the Republican side think 
that this is such a great bill that is going to benefit the American 
people?
  But I think we have to think about it. Would it be an embarrassment 
maybe to the Bush administration to have to admit that every member of 
this task force was an oil or gas executive? I do not think so. I mean 
I think that is pretty obvious. I do not think they are trying to hide 
that in any way. I think that would be nothing new. So there has to be 
something else that they are trying to hide. What is so damaging in 
these documents?
  And I would venture to ask could it be that somewhere within these 
documents there is proof that the Bush administration was looking at 
taking out Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in order to take control of that 
nation's rich oil reserves? I am not just saying that as a matter of 
speculation. There is some evidence that that may be, in fact, the 
case.
  Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill stated in a book that he wrote

[[Page 12599]]

recently that Vice President Cheney strongly suggested U.S. 
intervention in Iraq well before the terrorist attacks of September 11. 
Then this spring President Bush's former top anti-terrorism adviser 
also talked about how almost from day one the Bush administration was 
consumed with taking out Saddam Hussein.
  It began back in 2001, months after the new administration came to 
power. Clarke says that he had been trying to schedule a cabinet-level 
priority meeting on terrorism. His first opportunity was a meeting with 
Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and Clarke said that he 
started the meeting by saying that we needed to deal with bin Laden. 
And Wolfowitz's response: ``No. No. No. We don't have to deal with al 
Qaeda. Why are we talking about that little guy? We have to talk about 
Iraqi terrorism against the United States.''
  Clarke then responded to Wolfowitz: ``Paul, there hasn't been any 
Iraqi terrorism against the United States in 8 years.'' Clarke turned 
to the deputy director of the CIA, who agreed with his assessment.
  This conversation took place 3 months after Bush and Cheney took 
control of the White House. Clarke's assessment seems to support that 
of former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill.
  Clarke goes on to detail conversations with both President Bush and 
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld after 9-11. Both wanted to go after Iraq and 
Saddam Hussein. Additional evidence exists that Cheney played an early 
planning role in the war in a National Security Council document dated 
February 3, 2001, months before September 11. According to a report in 
New Yorker Magazine, the document, written by a high National Security 
Council staffer, directed the NSC staff to cooperate fully with the 
energy task force as it considered the melding of two seemingly 
unrelated areas of policy: the review of operational policies towards 
rogue states, such as Iraq, and actions regarding the capture of new 
and existing oil and gas fields.
  So now we have the melding of the national security policy and the 
energy task force policy. This document that I mentioned is essentially 
instructing the National Security Council staff to fully cooperate with 
the energy task force in melding together two different policies, one, 
a foreign policy towards Iraq versus an energy policy towards Iraq, and 
once again the document mentions the review of actions regarding the 
capture of new and existing oil and gas fields.
  Does this mean, Mr. Speaker, that somewhere within the energy task 
force documents there is a possible strategy towards taking control of 
Iraqi oil and gas fields? Keep in mind this was before 9-11 and well 
before the administration now claims it began looking into the 
possibility of going to war against Iraq.
  So my question is, Mr. Speaker, does Vice President Cheney want to 
keep his energy task force secret because he does not want to admit 
that the administration was exploring ways of taking out Saddam Hussein 
before 9-11 strictly for the purpose of taking control of Iraq's oil 
fields?
  I do not know the answer to that question, Mr. Speaker, and I do not 
think the American people know either. But the reason we do not know is 
because Vice President Cheney again refuses to allow the American 
people to see these documents of the energy task force.
  Another possibility, and again I am not just speculating, there is 
some evidence, is whether these energy task force documents were 
potentially hiding documents involving Enron. Could it be that the Bush 
administration also wants to keep the records of its energy task force 
secret because it wants to continue to distance itself from the Enron 
scandal? According to a 2002 report by the Committee on Government 
Reform, seven of the eight recommendations that then Enron Chairman Ken 
Lay gave to Vice President Cheney miraculously made their way into the 
final energy task force report. Back in January, 2002, the San 
Francisco Chronicle released a memo given by Enron Chairman Lay to Vice 
President Cheney at a meeting on April 17, 2001. Enron's memo contains 
recommendations in eight areas. In total, the White House energy plan 
adopts all or significant portions of Enron's recommendations in seven 
of these eight areas. Enron representatives had six meetings with the 
White House energy task force, including four meetings that occurred 
before release of the final report. The White House has consistently 
refused to disclose what Enron requested during these meetings. And 
despite all these meetings and the fact that Enron Chairman Ken Lay was 
President Bush's largest financial supporter, another reason the 
administration may want to keep these documents secret is that they do 
not want the American people to see more collaboration between the Bush 
administration and former Enron executives.

                              {time}  2350

  Now, once again, Mr. Speaker, I do not know whether or not these 
documents would reveal the collaboration between Enron and President 
Bush, and neither do the American people. But we will never find out if 
the documents continue to remain secret.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to conclude this evening, and, of course, I 
listened to some of the comments that my colleagues on the Republican 
side made earlier before I spoke about energy policy, but I wanted to 
say, Mr. Speaker, if the Republicans really want to address our 
Nation's current energy crisis, which they say they do, then they 
should finally wrestle legislation authorship away from the oil and gas 
executives and craft bipartisan legislation between Democrats and 
Republicans that truly modernizes our Nation's energy needs and finally 
ends our dependence on foreign oil.
  The Republicans have to get away from the special interests and get 
away from writing legislation that just is for the benefit of the oil 
and gas executives. Otherwise, we are never going to see something pass 
here that actually helps the average American.
  The facts about the Republican energy bill are clear: It provides 
billions in benefits to companies run by over 20 executives who have 
raised more than $100,000 each for the President's reelection campaign. 
One thing we do know, is when the policy was being written, the task 
force met with 118 energy groups, but only 13 environmental groups, and 
only one consumer group. Based on those statistics, who do you really 
think would benefit from this Republican energy bill?
  For over 3 years, Democrats have been fighting for a short-term plan 
to bring down high prices and a long-term plan for energy independence. 
We want to create a more reliable power grid, reduce our dependence on 
foreign oil and encourage research on new energy technologies and 
alternative fuels. Democrats want to lower gas prices. We want to force 
OPEC to make a meaningful increase in production, and we want to defer 
deliveries of oil to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and put it into 
the marketplace.
  Lastly, and maybe most important, we want the FTC, the Federal Trade 
Commission, to investigate, to make sure that oil and gas companies are 
not working together to keep prices high.
  In my opinion, Mr. Speaker, the Republicans are doing everything they 
can to create a diversion. This week with their Energy Week they are 
creating a diversion and trying to shift attention away from their 
failed energy policy. I have often said they are in the majority; they 
are the majority here, they are in the majority in the other House, and 
they also have a Republican President. If they pass a bill here which 
they think is a good bill, then why is it they cannot pass it in the 
Senate where they have the majority?
  Why is it they cannot collectively pass a good energy bill? The 
reason is, it is not a good bill. It is a terrible bill. The other body 
will not pass it because they know it is not a good bill.
  What we have here is a failed energy policy, and this Republican 
Energy Week is nothing more than an effort to create a diversion, to 
keep passing the same old legislation in different forms. But, again, 
it is not working. This is a ruse by the Republican leadership. 
Americans know that it is not working, and they are reminded of it 
every

[[Page 12600]]

time they fill their tank and see the high gas prices.
  So I would say to the Republicans, stop fooling around; stop with 
this mockery, if you will, of the legislative process by keep passing 
the same failed legislation. Nobody out there is paying any attention. 
Americans realize that gas prices are high and that nothing is 
happening here in Congress to make a difference.
  Instead, the Republicans should sit down with the Democrats on a 
bipartisan basis and try to put together an energy policy that will 
really work to lower gas prices and to reduce our dependence on foreign 
oil, particularly Mideast oil, and, until they do that, no one is going 
to seriously believe that their so-called Energy Week really matters or 
makes any difference.

                          ____________________