[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 14507-14508]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1915
                          ENERGY INDEPENDENCE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, on both sides of the aisle, 
Democrats and Republicans, we realize that we need to start looking at 
every source of energy that we can come up with; solar, wind. Every 
kind. We need to move toward new forms of transportation; hybrid cars 
and other vehicles, maybe hydrogen-powered cars.
  But in addition to that, while this transition from fossil fuels is 
taking place to these new technologies, we need to drill for oil. We 
need to be energy independent. We need to use such things as coal shale 
and offshore drilling, and drilling in Alaska, the ANWR, in order to 
get the oil that is necessary for us to move and become energy 
independent, and we can do that. But this Congress and the Senate, this 
House and the Senate, really needs to get together and come up with a 
plan that covers all of these things. If we don't start drilling for 
oil and using fossil fuel more efficiently in this country, we are 
going to have a severe problem.
  The Iranians just fired some test missiles the other day. They did 
that in response to the Israelis flying about a hundred war planes down 
the Mediterranean for a distance that was pretty close to Tehran's 
distance from Israel. I think they are both sending signals. The head 
of the air force for the Iranians said that if there was any kind of an 
act of war toward them, they would sink ships in the Persian Gulf.
  Twenty percent of the world oil goes through the Persian Gulf. You 
sink two ships in the Gulf of Hormuz and you're going to have chaos. We 
get as much as 40 percent of our oil from that region. If anything like 
that occurs, and as long as Iran keeps working toward their nuclear 
goals of building a nuclear weapon, the threat of war is definitely 
there.
  Israel has been threatened with extinction by the Iranian leaders, 
Ahmadinejad, the President, and so the threat of a conflict is 
definitely there. The United States economically would be devastated if 
we weren't prepared for that eventuality because we don't have the 
energy here necessary to keep this economy moving.
  The best way to make sure that doesn't happen is to use every source 
of energy we can come up with. While we are transitioning to these 
other forms of energy like air, wind, like solar, like hybrid cars, 
like coal shale, like hydrogen-powered cars, all those things, while we 
are moving toward those, which is going to take probably at least 10 
years, or longer, some people say as many as 20, we need to have the 
energy to keep this country afloat without depending on Saudi Arabia, 
the Middle East, Venezuela and the Communist leader down there, Mr. 
Chavez. We need to move toward energy independence. The American people 
are paying between $4 and $5 a gallon for oil.
  The Fourth of July parades just took place and I know that all of my 
colleagues heard from their constituents: Do something about the price 
of gasoline. The best thing we can do is start drilling and looking for 
energy in America. I believe, and I think many experts believe, that if 
we start drilling in America and make a movement toward energy 
independence, you will see the price of oil drop very rapidly and, 
along with it, the price of gasoline.
  But as long as we stand around here and don't do anything, we run the 
threat of a real economic chaos in this country because we aren't 
prepared to be dealing with our own energy problems if we can't get the 
oil from Venezuela and from other parts of the

[[Page 14508]]

world, like Saudi Arabia. We are just not prepared for it.
  We have the energy in this country and we are not drilling for it. We 
are sending as much as $500 million a day, a day, to Saudi Arabia and 
Venezuela for oil that we have right here in this country. We could 
keep that money at home, we could create more jobs while we are coming 
up with alternative sources of energy. But we are not doing it.
  So I say to my Democrat colleagues again tonight, and I will be down 
here day after day and week after week saying, Let's get together and 
solve this problem.
  I saw that the popularity of the Congress is now down to 7 percent. 
You know why? The American people are fed up with us not doing 
anything. We need to get together and solve this energy problem. We 
need to have energy independence. And we need to start doing it right 
now.
  Remember what I said. If a conflict breaks out over there, all of us 
are going to be sorry that we didn't do something about it, about 
dealing with energy here at home.
  Energy independence. Drill in America.

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