[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Page 12789]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  LESSENING DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, first, I rise to express my appreciation to 
Senator Cantwell for the issue she has brought before the Senate. I am 
so convinced that the 40 percent can be met in 20 years. When President 
Kennedy said, We need to go to the Moon, he did not set a formula how 
we would get to the Moon, but we got to the Moon. When we were in the 
depths of our Depression in 1932, President Roosevelt said, We need to 
get out of this. We went a number of steps forward, some steps back, 
but we were able to work our way out of the Great Depression.
  Senator Cantwell's amendment is visionary. I really do believe that 
we can do this. I know there are people concerned, well, does this mean 
CAFE standards? Does this mean we are going to go totally to biomass? 
Are we going to do it all with alternative energy? I do not know, but 
the great genius of America can figure out a way to do this.
  We need to lessen our dependence on foreign oil. There is no question 
about that. Fifty-eight percent of the oil we use comes from foreign 
countries. Listening to the news this morning, the stock market just 
moved a little bit yesterday. Why did it not move more? Because the 
price of oil went up almost a dollar a barrel. We have to do better 
than that. The only way we can do it is to lessen our dependence on 
foreign oil.
  Unless we have a directive of this President and Presidents that 
follow him to meet this goal, we will continue to be dependent on 
foreign oil.
  So I am totally impressed with the Senator from Washington and the 
great work she has done on this amendment. I hope it passes by a large 
margin.

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