[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Page 15370]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                SCHEDULE

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, today the Senate will be in a period of 
morning business for 60 minutes. The Republicans will control the first 
half, the Democrats the second half. Following this period of morning 
business, the Senate will resume postcloture debate on the motion to 
proceed to H.R. 6, the Energy bill.
  We have consent to move to the bill itself after the caucuses end at 
2:15 today. The motion to proceed will be agreed to, and the Senate 
will begin consideration of the energy legislation. Senators Bingaman, 
Domenici, we understand Boxer and Inhofe and Inouye, or his designee, 
and Stevens, will come and talk about this bill. Hopefully, they will 
do it this morning to lay the groundwork for this very important piece 
of legislation.
  As with the competitiveness bill, this is a bipartisan bill. I remind 
everyone, matters that the Energy Committee reports out of their 
committee on a bipartisan basis are part of this bill. The same applied 
to Commerce; the same applied to the Environment and Public Works 
Committee.
  Those matters the chairmen wanted out of those committees that were 
not bipartisan are not part of this bill. This is truly a bipartisan 
bill. There will be amendments offered to weaken the bill, to 
strengthen the bill--of course, the understanding of those words is in 
the eyes of the beholder.
  I hope this will be a good, strong debate. I hope people will offer 
amendments. We have a limited amount of time to complete a lot of work. 
If there are long delays, people not offering amendments, I know the 
managers will be saying we have to end this some way, and the ``some 
way'' that we are always forced to look at is whether we want to have a 
bipartisan cloture vote on ending debate.
  Let's have people who want to offer amendments do it as quickly as 
possible. I have asked the managers of the bill, rather than wait 
around for people who say: I don't know if I want a vote on this, we 
need more time--after there has been a reasonable amount of time 
discussing one of these amendments, the managers should move to table 
the amendment. If it is not tabled, nothing is lost. We need to move 
along and get this legislation completed as quickly as possible.
  Gas prices are going down. They have dropped a few cents the last 
week or two, which is good. The cost of oil coming into this country 
has gone up. It is now at $67 and people are saying it is going up 
higher, which will mean there will be an increase at the gas pumps a 
month or so after the cost of oil importation increases.
  Remember, we have an obligation with this legislation. This 
legislation, which some people say is not strong enough, if it passes, 
will cut the amount of oil we use per day in this country by 4 million 
barrels. Think about that, 4 million barrels a day. This is a step in 
the right direction. I hope we can do this.
  The setting for this is, among other things, we use 21 million 
barrels of oil every day. We import 65 percent of that. As I said 
yesterday in illustration of how much this is, it is a ditch 150 feet 
deep and 11 miles long filled with oil. That is how much we use every 
day.
  We have an obligation to the American people to lessen our 
dependence, to make that ditch shorter and not nearly as deep.

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