[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 14426-14427]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             ENERGY POLICY

  (Mr. BLUMENAUER asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute.)
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, it's amusing to listen to my friends on 
the other side of the aisle decrying Democrats as somehow responsible 
for the problem of the current high energy prices.
  The fact is our friends on the Republican side controlled everything, 
by and large, for the last 7 years. They

[[Page 14427]]

passed an energy bill in 2005 which was a perfect energy bill for the 
1950s.
  Nothing that they are proposing in terms of draining America dry by 
opening up more drilling is going to make any difference for 8 to 20 
years, according to all the experts, and oil companies already have 68 
million acres available for exploration now that we're encouraging them 
to use.
  It's interesting that after the Republicans blocked even a study of 
improved fuel efficiency standards for our vehicles, the Democrats for 
the first time in 30 years have improved those efficiency standards. 
We're stopping Government competition with the oil companies by 
suspending Federal purchase of oil for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. 
We had to pass legislation to force the administration to do that.
  Now, we're looking at squeezing speculators a little bit, and there 
are a range of choices to help commuters compete now.
  It is time for us to talk honestly about the options and what's going 
to make a difference, not pretending that turning our energy future 
over to oil companies will make any difference in price or supply for 
years to come.

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