[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 6]
[House]
[Page 7347]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                 ENERGY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of 
January 31, 2006, the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Madam Speaker, Members of the House, 
as Americans are paying over $3 a gallon for gasoline and have been 
doing so for a couple of months, we see the Bush administration and 
Congressional Republicans running away from their record of supporting 
the oil and gas industry and trying to convince the public that they 
are deeply concerned and on the side of consumers. They even went so 
far as to insult the public by suggesting that they would increase the 
deficit and give them back a $100 check at the end of the summer. 
Fortunately, the Republican leadership in the House called the idea 
stupid and it seems to have waned.
  What the American public really wants is a comprehensive energy 
policy that gives them choices about their transportation, gives them 
choices in the heating of their homes and the cooling of their homes, 
gives them choices in energy conservation. That is what they are 
looking for, but that is not what the Republicans have delivered over 
the last 6 years.
  Why? Because 6 years ago, Vice President Cheney sat down with the 
executives of the oil companies and made a decision that they would put 
the oil companies in charge of America's energy policy. They would put 
the oil companies in charge of whether or not we would have innovation, 
whether or not we would have new technologies, whether or not we would 
have alternative energies such as solar, biofuels and all the rest of 
that. And the oil companies basically decided we would keep doing 
business on our energy policy as we have since the 1950s and 1960s, 
that is, we would just let the oil companies continue to drill.
  That meeting with Mr. Cheney made it very, very profitable for the 
oil companies because since that time the Congress has done nothing but 
lavish tax breaks on the oil and gas industry. The policy seems to have 
worked because when you look at the profits, they have gone through the 
roof. Chevron netted $4 billion in 3 months. That is a profit of $44 
million a day. But they look like a small business alongside of 
ExxonMobil which reported a profit of $8.4 billion, and that is after 
they gave the CEO of ExxonMobil a $400 million pay package. And they 
were still able to get a profit into the billions. I bet they loved 
being in that meeting with Mr. Cheney where they got the rights to do 
all this.
  So Congress has continued to lavish tens of billions of dollars of 
tax breaks on the industry, income tax deductions for Humvee purchases, 
opening the California coast and other protected places for oil 
exploration, liability protection for the oil industry against MTBE 
contamination of cities' drinking waters that is occurring all over the 
country, and, finally, a royalty holiday, treating the oil companies 
like royalty. They won't have to pay the United States taxpayers for 
the right to drill oil on those lands that are owned by the taxpayer. 
They will get a royalty holiday. But, of course, today, now the 
Republican leadership is running around and the President has said that 
a royalty holiday makes no sense when oil is at $70 a barrel. He 
actually said it when it was at $50 a barrel. It makes no sense at $50 
a barrel, it makes no sense at $60 a barrel, and it makes no sense at 
$70 a barrel. But the fact of the matter is we don't see one step being 
taken in this Congress to end that royalty holiday and end it today and 
give that money back to the taxpayers and reduce the deficit.
  No, what the Republicans ought to do is they ought to check their 
voting record and see how voted this last year when our colleague from 
Arizona (Mr. Grijalva) offered that amendment in April, 2005, to make 
sure that we would get rid of the royalty holiday. But it didn't pass. 
It didn't pass because that is not on the oil companies' agenda. And as 
we now know, the oil companies are running the agenda for this 
Congress.
  The Democrats have a better idea. We believe that working together 
across all of the talents of America, that we can provide energy 
independence within 10 years. But to do so you would have to 
dramatically encourage new technologies, alternative forms of 
transportation, of mass transportation, the use of solar, the use of 
biofuels, the use of these kinds of conservation efforts combined with 
new fuels and new technologies to let America be independent, to make 
choices about its energy future.
  Today, the President of the United States walks hand in hand with the 
Sheik from Saudi Arabia and that is our energy policy: Don't do 
anything to upset the Saudis.
  The fact of the matter is we have to take control of our energy 
policy. But we will only do that when we break the link between the 
Republican Party and the oil and gas industry in this country. We will 
only have the chance to bring new forms of transportation online, to 
bring solar energy at a much more affordable price for American 
consumers, to bring alternative fuel sources online at a more 
affordable price, to break our dependency on Middle East oil. As our 
leader said over the weekend on Meet the Press, we want to send our 
money to the middle west to develop biofuels, to develop switch fuels, 
to develop syn fuels, to develop ethanol. That is what we want to do, 
instead of sending our money to the Middle East where it is being used 
for very dubious purposes in terms of the interests of this country.
  But this administration to date has not broken its alliance with the 
oil sheiks in the Middle East and has not broken its alliance with the 
oil industry in this country. And Americans today continue to drive to 
work paying over $3 a gallon for gas with no respite in the future 
because of the absence, the abandonment of this country by this 
administration for an energy policy that works to the benefit of 
America's consumers.

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