[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 14589-14593]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          LEGISLATIVE PROGRAM

  (Mr. BLUNT asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. BLUNT. Madam Speaker, I yield to my friend from Maryland, the 
majority leader, to tell us what is planned for next week.
  Mr. HOYER. I thank my friend, the Republican Whip, for yielding.
  On Monday, the House will meet at 12:30 p.m. for morning hour and 2 
p.m. for legislative business, with votes postponed until 6:30 p.m. On 
Tuesday, the House will meet at 9 a.m. for morning hour and 10 a.m. for 
legislative business. On Wednesday and Thursday, the House will meet at 
10 a.m. for legislative business. On Friday, no votes are expected in 
the House.
  We will consider several bills under suspension of the rules. The 
complete list of suspension bills will be announced by the close of 
business tomorrow.
  In addition, we will consider H.R. 415, a bill to designate segments 
of the Taunton River in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as a 
component of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers.
  In addition, we will consider H.R. 5959, the Intelligence 
Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009; H.R. 3999, the National Highway 
Bridge Reconstruction and Inspection Act; and, we may also consider 
important energy-related legislation.
  Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentleman for that information.
  On H.R. 415, the Taunton River bill, the Wild and Scenic Rivers bill, 
does the gentleman know, does the location change at all? Or was it the 
location that was on the bill that earlier was scheduled for this week?
  Mr. HOYER. In response, if the gentleman would yield.
  Mr. BLUNT. I will.
  Mr. HOYER. It is the same bill.
  Mr. BLUNT. I think one of our concerns about that on the energy 
topic, which I would hope to go to for a few minutes next, is there was 
a proposed liquid natural gas facility in that area that I think this 
designation will impact unless it is defined somehow out of that. And 
if the gentleman wants to respond to that, I would yield.
  Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  There is an extensive letter to all of our colleagues from 
Congressmen Frank, McGovern, Kennedy, Langevin, and Lynch.
  I don't want to read the whole letter; but responding to the points 
in question, I am looking at the letter to see whether or not--one of 
the points they make is that notwithstanding this bill there are 
several barriers to this proposal going forward, that is the LNG plant. 
Killing the bill that would provide environmental benefits to people of 
our districts would in no way save the LNG plant from the rejection it 
has already received. The point being, and I have not read the entire 
letter, but that there are other impediments apparently to moving 
forward on that LNG plant. As I say, it is a long letter, I haven't 
read it fully, but I do know that each one of the points that was 
raised in the article today have been responded to and therefore will 
be the subject of debate once the bill is considered.
  Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentleman for that. And that is exactly right. 
That will be a bill to be debated, and leaders shouldn't be expected to 
know everything about every aspect of that, and particularly on a bill 
that will be debated. I would assume that this designation would create 
an additional obstacle, and there may be other obstacles already in 
place and I am sure that will be part of the debate.
  The gentleman's last comment about work for next week indicated that 
there may be other energy-related bills scheduled for the floor next 
week. Does the gentleman have a sense of what some of those options 
might be, and which ones may be more likely to be on the floor next 
week?
  I would yield.
  Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Yes. As you know, we have been talking about, on both sides of the 
aisle, developing greater domestic supply from that which we have 
control over here in this country. I think both sides agree that that 
is an objective that ought to be pursued. The differences have been I 
think where that should be done at least in the short term, maybe not 
in the long term.
  In the short term, it is our belief that there is very substantial 
areas available for further exploration and development of energy 
resources from our own country. As the gentleman may have heard me say 
on the floor earlier today, there is about 88 million acres that we 
believe is currently available for leasing that experts indicate are 
prime opportunities for finding, drilling, and producing energy for our 
country. We may well consider legislation which will try to accelerate, 
particularly in Alaska, where there is 23 million acres in the National 
Petroleum Reserve area designated and approved by the Congress for 
drilling, where approximately 1 million acres of that has been 
currently let for lease but there are substantial millions of acres 
still available. So we may well have legislation which will direct the 
administration to accelerate the leases for that area and speed the 
development.
  In addition, we may well include in that legislation the Use It Or 
Lose It bill, we had disagreements on whether

[[Page 14590]]

that was appropriate, which essentially says to companies: Don't 
inventory large segments. If you are not going to use it, let's get it 
back and give it to some who may well use it at this point in time. 
Again, an opportunity to accelerate the exploration and securing of oil 
within our control here in this country.
  In addition, that legislation I think will include a requirement that 
any oil petroleum products that are produced as a result of this 
legislation or as a result of these leaseholds being extended, that 
petroleum would need to be used in the United States of America, not 
exported to Japan or to other nations.
  You had in a piece of legislation that you had in 2005 a similar 
provision. I can't recall the phrase right now, but essentially 
requiring due diligent requirement as they proceeded with the leases to 
develop the energy. So we think our Use Or Lose It is, while not 
exactly what you include in your 2005 bill, certainly a similar 
objective of saying: You get the leases, let's develop the oil.
  We will also be calling I think in that legislation, Mr. Whip, on the 
President to pursue finishing construction of the natural gas and the 
oil pipelines from Alaska as soon as possible. If that requires 
resources, for the administration to ask for those resources.
  We share again a view that it is prudent for us to develop all of the 
lands that we currently have available. And pretty significant, again, 
I don't know whether you were there, but the 88 million acres 
essentially covers Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, 
Connecticut, New York, Delaware, New Jersey, and most of Maryland. So a 
pretty large area that is available now.
  So we want to pursue that, but clearly want to see further 
exploration, further drilling, and further utilization of our own 
resources here in this country, all with the view of bringing prices 
down.
  Now, we don't know specifically why prices have spiked so rapidly, 
but we are very concerned about it. As you have heard me say before, 
prices during the last 8 years of the nineties went from $1.06 to 
$1.46, about one nickel a year. Prices during the last 7\1/2\ years 
have spiked from that $1.46 to now $4.15 or so. All the energy policies 
that have been adopted have obviously been adopted in the last 7\1/2\ 
years with President Bush's signature. There is no energy bill that is 
passed without his signature. So that we believe that we have not been 
successful over the last 7\1/2\ years of getting an energy policy in 
place which has given us independence and provided for stable prices.

                              {time}  1600

  Both the President and proponents of the 2005 legislation, which I 
voted for, by the way, because I think we need to seek energy 
independence, but the proponents of that bill indicated 3 years ago 
that it would keep prices down and make sure that we had supply. That 
hasn't been the case. Obviously, that was not the intent of anybody who 
was for the bill that that wouldn't happen, but that is the legislation 
that we currently are looking at. We are developing that now and trying 
to write the language essentially with the objective of utilizing the 
88 million acres that we currently have authorized on which to drill 
because we think that is the quickest way to proceed.
  Mr. BLUNT. In that regard, on the 2005 energy bill that I voted for 
and the gentleman just said he voted for, I think we did head things in 
the right direction. Of course from the 6 years prior to 2007, energy 
gas prices increased by about 50 cents a gallon; and in the 17 months 
since then, they have better than doubled. Everybody can take the 
numbers and do lots of things with them. Nobody likes the doubled 
number. There is no doubt about that.
  In one of the early bills, I think it was H.R. 6, actually this 
Congress voted to repeal the incentives that we put in that bill that 
you and I voted for in 2005, the House voted to repeal those incentives 
which would have made it easier to promote the NPRA drilling area. I 
think maybe the position we would hopefully take in the future would be 
that we would want to continue to make those things easier to do rather 
than harder to do.
  I would also say in terms of the 68 million acres, I have heard that 
a lot and I am sure we will continue to hear it a lot. Number one, not 
all of that land has oil or gas on it. Two, even if it does, you don't 
drill on every acre to drain this important resource from it. We are 
all going to learn a lot more about the gas and oil business, even than 
we know today, and my guess is that we know a lot more than we did even 
6 months ago.
  I do know in the last 6 years, as we frankly have accelerated 
exploration, that lawsuits to slow down exploration have gone up 718 
percent in the last 6 years.
  So if we want to deal with things like lawsuits and trying to 
expedite the process, that's a very appropriate thing to do, and at 
that point it is even more appropriate to hold people to their strict 
lease standards that they have.
  The 22 million acres in Alaska, while that is some place we ought to 
look for both oil and gas, I don't know that we are going to be in an 
either/or environment, and particularly in this case where we want to 
look at what makes the most sense the quickest. I would also mention to 
the gentleman that we have a bill on the ANWR itself, it is H.R. 6107, 
that already adopts that principle that none of the petroleum coming 
out of there would go anywhere but to the United States. So many are 
already cosponsoring legislation that accepts that principle. It is a 
principle that if it's an easy way to open up new resources, I think it 
is something that we should be talking about and making sure that we 
get it just right. We do not want to assume that the oil companies can 
be micromanaged by Congress. We want to do what we can to make sure 
that we are producing American energy in the maximum way, and also 
understand that every oil lease does not result in oil. If it did, my 
good friend and I could open up Hoyer & Blunt and become oilmen if we 
could just get a lease. A lease doesn't mean there is anything there, 
but we ought to be sure that these leases are being vigorously pursued. 
We also should be sure that we are doing anything we reasonably can do 
to remove impediments, whether those impediments are lawsuits or the 
language that was in H.R. 6 that the House of Representatives passed. 
The Senate didn't pass it so the law didn't change, but the message to 
people out there looking for oil is that there is a new sheriff in town 
and the rules are different than they were under the old sheriff, and 
maybe we ought to get out of town.
  A lot of this hesitancy about exploring could result from debates 
right here on the floor. We want to do things in debate, and I take my 
friend's word that he wants to, too, that encourages exploration, not 
discourages exploration.
  I yield to my good friend.
  Mr. HOYER. You mentioned H.R. 6. First of all, as you heard in my 
list, we are not contemplating adding that into this legislation that 
we might be considering. However, let me say this, very honestly. You 
and I both, I think every Member in this body very much supports the 
free market system. We have found it provides the greatest good for the 
greatest number throughout the world.
  In 2005, you put incentives in the bill, $14 billion worth of tax 
breaks for oil companies. Oil was then, as you point out, about half of 
what it is bringing today at the pump. The free market system, in my 
view, is if you are getting a high price for your product, you try to 
produce more of it and you try to find more of it. The oil companies 
are earning the highest price that they have ever received in the 
history of the sale of oil. That ought to be the incentive, not 
taxpayers who are paying the highest price at the pump they have ever 
paid, also having to pay higher taxes because the oil companies are 
getting an incentive of $14 billion of tax cuts to incentivize what 
ought to be incentivized by the price that they are getting for their 
product.
  I want to say further that the information I have, and I think you 
will find this interesting, is that Exxon made $40 billion in profits 
last year. I am informed $32 billion of that profit

[[Page 14591]]

was spent to buy back stock. Not to do additional research, not to 
drill in America or any place else, but $32 billion to buy back their 
stock. Obviously that did have a very good effect on those stockholders 
who remained because their equity clearly went up. I do not criticize 
that, but I point it out because it was not spent either to produce 
more oil product, petroleum product, or to pursue alternative energy 
sources which we think is important which is what we will use the $14 
billion in H.R. 6, whether it was hybrid cars, ethanol research, water, 
wind, hydroelectric, or from my perspective, nuclear.
  Let me also say that I understand what you are saying, but when we 
talk about this 68 million or 88 million acres, let me give you this 
point. The oil and gas companies hold leases on these 68 million now, 
land and water. They are not producing on these acreage, and 81 
percent, according to experts, of the estimated oil and gas resources 
on Federal lands and the OCS are currently available for development in 
these reserves, and they are equal to 107 billion barrels of oil and 
658 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
  So what we are saying and what we will say in this legislation is 
that you have about 14 years supply here for America if you would 
develop this 107 billion barrels of oil or 658 trillion feet of natural 
gas on the land or offshore that you currently have leases on.
  So I think this is a good debate to have, and ultimately hopefully at 
some point in time we will get through the politics of this issue on 
both sides and we will get to a point where frankly we develop this.
  But I will also tell my friend that if we focus only on petroleum, we 
will not serve your young son or my grandchildren--you are much younger 
than I am--or my grandchildren very well because I will tell you, and 
as you know, I have a great granddaughter. She is 18 months of age. 
When she is my age, petroleum will not be her major source of energy. 
We know that. Petroleum is a wasting resource. By that I mean it is a 
resource that is going to go away. We don't know how much is left. 
Experts don't know how much Saudi Arabia still has. But we need to 
pursue vigorously alternatives while at the same time, as you and I 
would agree, developing that 107 billion barrels that we have here in 
this country that are currently available for lease.
  Frankly, if the companies tell us that they really can't produce from 
that, then maybe we ought to look at other sites as well. But certainly 
it seems to us, you ought to use what you have first; and if that 
doesn't work, we ought to go on to a second or third or fourth site.
  I thank the gentleman for his tolerance in my taking that time.
  Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentleman for that. I am old enough now that I 
never argue with anyone who suggests I am a lot younger, even if I am 
not a lot younger. My children and grandchildren, too, I think, will 
live in a world much different than the world we are in right now; but 
it will take awhile to get there. And I absolutely agree we should be 
at an all-systems-forward effort to find the next technology, and while 
we are finding the next technology, to use the resources we have as an 
economic asset, not to see them as an environmental hazard. We need to 
get there. We need to have a debate that gets us there.
  We are going to have some figures that we are going to disagree 
about. It is hard with these sort of believed reserves to know what 
they are. I personally think I will have a lot of facts that suggest 
that 81 percent of the known reserves in oil and gas are not in those 
68 million acres, but I am also for pursuing those 68 million acres 
vigorously.
  The oil shale in the West, we had a hearing last week that only 
members of my party attended because we wanted to talk about this whole 
issue of what this Congress could have done, and just the oil shale 
amounts in the West that I think are not calculated into your figure 
are hugely significant in how we use our resources in the future. We 
want to do that. We want to remove obstacles.
  On the $14 billion, and we have debated this before and I am not 
going to spend a lot of time on this, but I think everybody in this 
room understands that $14 billion so-called tax break for the so-called 
oil companies is their part of the domestic manufacturing tax incentive 
that every American business gets. Now if we want to take that away 
from companies that are successful, that's a different principle. Maybe 
we take it away from computer companies. Who do we take it away from? 
We want those jobs here. That is what that is about. I would like to 
have that debate one of these days about whether or not those 
manufacturing jobs need to be here. We think that they need to be here 
for every other industry in the country. Why is this the one industry 
where we say, they are going to manufacture here anyway, particularly 
based on everything we know about the worldwide oil challenge we face, 
why would we want to do anything that would encourage the oil product 
to be refined somewhere outside of this country? That is what that 
domestic manufacturing incentive is for. I think every time when we 
talk about this as a big tax break for the oil companies, it sounds 
like we have gone into the tax law and said if you are an oil company, 
you get something that nobody else gets. What we have done in the tax 
law is say if you are an oil company and you refine a product, if you 
manufacture a product, if you produce a product in this country, you 
get exactly what everybody else gets that makes that decision to make 
their computer in Texas instead of Romania. That's what that incentive 
is.
  Now, every time it is discussed on the floor, it is this big benefit 
that was just designed for the oil companies, and that is just not the 
fact. It is a domestic manufacturing benefit.
  Mr. HOYER. Will my friend yield just on that?
  Mr. BLUNT. I yield.
  Mr. HOYER. I just want to say that I understand what you have just 
said. But, of course, they never did have that until the 2005 bill, or 
one of the tax bills that was passed around that time. Prior to that 
time, the manufacturers had that, as you observed, that's correct, but 
the oil companies were never included in it originally or for long 
periods of time. They were added just in the last 2005 or 2006 or 2004, 
I am not sure exactly which bill added it. So it is not as if that had 
been in place when the tax to which you refer, the incentive to which 
you refer, was originally included in the code.
  Mr. BLUNT. I thank my friend, but part of the unfortunate 
circumstance we find ourselves in is, as we have restricted access to 
some of our own supply, we in fact saw in the last decade that this 
industry that had been forced to be totally domestic, and we hoped it 
could be totally domestic again, was sending jobs out of the country 
because we were bringing in refined product for the first time.

                              {time}  1615

  Because we were bringing in refined product for the first time, we 
were doing other things that the Congress should want to reverse.
  One other topic I have today, and I look forward to a good debate on 
these energy issues. I would hope these energy issues could come to the 
floor under a rule, by the way, and I would ask my friend if there is 
any plan to bring the energy bills that he would hope to bring to the 
floor in the next week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks with a rule that allows more 
than a 40-minute debate on a suspension bill.
  And I would yield.
  Mr. HOYER. That's under discussion. As I said, we're discussing the 
component parts of the bill. We haven't decided how that bill will come 
to the floor. But I will certainly look forward to discussing it with 
you.
  Mr. BLUNT. I thank my friend. I think that will be a helpful addition 
to this debate.
  You know, when you have a suspension debate on a bill, particularly a 
bill that maybe has a majority but it can't get a suspension number, 
you check a box but you really don't move the agenda forward. I would 
hope that we could see some of these under rules.
  My final topic of the day, unless you raise another one, is I read in 
the Associated Press just yesterday that the

[[Page 14592]]

chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Chairman Obey, announced that 
the House will not consider a single appropriations bill this year. If 
that was true, this will be the first time in at least 22 years, maybe 
ever, that the House has failed to consider a single appropriation bill 
in any given session.
  The committee has passed five bills that are out of full committee 
ready to go to the floor: Homeland Security; Military Construction; 
Energy and Water; Commerce, Justice, Science; and Financial Services. 
And I guess I'm asking my friend to verify whether or not the 
chairman's view on this is the view of the majority, and if we would 
expect not to see any appropriations bills on the floor.
  And you can take this question in whatever order in July, in August, 
or as he said, this year.
  And I would yield.
  Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  I cannot confirm, because I haven't seen the report on that, nor has 
the chairman told me that he made such an announcement. I did read an 
article in which he indicated that he thought that might be the case.
  As you know, he tried to move the Labor-Health bill through to markup 
through the full committee, and as you know, the ranking member moved 
to substitute the Interior bill rather than do the Labor-Health bill.
  The chairman believed he was pursuing the regular order. I have never 
seen, in the 23 years that I served on the Appropriations Committee, 
one of the appropriations bills substituted for another one of the 
appropriations bills in the appropriations process.
  So a lot of unusual things are happening, unfortunately. And we 
haven't been pursuing regular order. I lament that, personally. I think 
that we ought to do that.
  I will say that last year, as you know, we passed every 
appropriations bill through the House of Representatives by the August 
break. We had some difficulty at the end doing that, but we got them 
all passed. And we passed them all in the year, in the calendar year 
that we were supposed to pass them, not in the fiscal year, in 
December. As you know in a number of years we didn't do that until the 
following year: nine one year, eight the other passed in January, the 
end of January or the middle of February, as I recall, 2 years. I 
forget whether it was 2004 and 2005 or 2005 and 2006.
  So I share the gentlemen's concern. I think both sides share the 
concern that the appropriations process is not proceeding in the 
regular order. But I want to say to the gentleman that from my 
perspective, I have not concluded that we're not going to consider any 
appropriations bills on the floor.
  Mr. BLUNT. I just suggest, the statement I read, and perhaps it was 
not accurate, but it seemed like an incredibly definitive statement on 
the part of the chairman; and since this is the work that the Congress 
has to do to fund the government, I would assume that the chairman will 
soon be conferring with the leader and the Speaker to determine if 
bills are coming to the floor or not.
  Mr. HOYER. Will my friend yield on that?
  Mr. BLUNT. I would
  Mr. HOYER. Thank you.
  Senator Reid in the other body has made it pretty clear that he does 
not believe, again, given the failure to pursue regular order in the 
Senate, that he will be able to get any bills passed, the Senate 
appropriations bills.
  So one of the factors under consideration by Mr. Obey is that if the 
Senate is not going to consider any bills, that because they cannot get 
the bills through the House and to the President--of course, the 
President sent down a number, said, If you go over that number, I'm 
going to veto all of the bills anyway. And we had real difficulty last 
year, as you know, with that happening. That's not happened in my 
career before. I don't mean that a President hasn't indicated he would 
veto, but there was always room to work on that.
  But that is one of the complicating factors or two of the 
complicating factors: the President's position and the Senate's 
position as well.
  But I think the major problem is that the regular order Mr. Obey did 
not feel was being pursued in the committee.
  Mr. BLUNT. We might ask Mr. Obey what his views might be about his 
bills that are already through the committee in regular order and why 
those five bills couldn't come to the House.
  You know, we have, in the years of our majority, always with an open 
rule, taken substantial time. It seemed to me 1 year we took five full 
days of hearing amendments on the Labor HHS bill and other bills, 
numerous bills at a time.
  The evaluation of last year, the House passed its bills, but at the 
end of the day, we had one vote on one big bill which may not have been 
nearly as healthy as having nine individual votes and then having to 
carry three bills over into the next year to get them done one at a 
time. But that's not really the question.
  The question is what about the bills that are out of the committee 
now and what would be a violation of any regular order problem to bring 
those to the House and take the time that we clearly have? We're 
passing a lot of legislation off the House floor, but not very much of 
it winds up on the President's desk. If we begin to determine the House 
schedule based on what the Senate is willing to do and a bill that can 
get to the President, not much of what we've done in the last several 
weeks really had much impact.
  But I would yield.
  Mr. HOYER. I would not agree with the gentleman. After all, we did 
pass the Iraq funding, we passed a very substantive supplemental, we 
passed a GI bill, we passed an unemployment insurance extension. We 
passed an energy bill last year signed by the President. I think much 
of what we passed in our '06 that was passed, that got through the 
Senate, was signed by the President and supported by a significant 
number of Republicans.
  Furthermore, let me just remind you, and I'm sure you recall this, 
that we took 50 hours longer to do the appropriations bills last year 
than we did in 2006 when your side was in charge. And we had extensive 
debate. We had 10 open bills, open rules, and we had two rules at the 
end, because it was clear that we were having great difficulty getting 
our bills done in a time cramp. Even under those bills, we spent hours 
debating them. We spent 17 hours on the Homeland Security bill, for 
instance, and 12 hours on the Labor-Health bill on the floor.
  Mr. BLUNT. If we don't deal with any bills this year, I guess our 
average is going to go down quickly. If we had 12 hours on Labor H last 
year and zero this year, I guess for this Congress we will say we spent 
an average of 6 hours debating the bills because one of them never got 
debated at all.
  Mr. HOYER. I don't want to get too testy, and you and I are good 
friends.
  Mr. BLUNT. We are.
  Mr. HOYER. But very frankly, it was not a process that we thought was 
very substantive last year, and every indication that we have received 
this year, it is not going to be very substantive this year when we 
consider appropriation bills.
  Now, having said that, we didn't pursue the regular order on the 
Labor-Health bill. The gentleman is correct there are five bills which 
have passed, and I would reiterate that I have not yet, from my 
standpoint, concluded that we're not going to consider appropriation 
bills on the floor this year.
  So I want to make it clear. I'm not sure exactly what Mr. Obey 
announced. There was an article that said I was supporting Mr. Obey's 
position. I went a little further. What I supported of Mr. Obey's 
position was that regular order was not being followed in the 
appropriations committee, not the representation that you say he made 
with reference to no bills coming to the floor.
  I think he's correct that regular order is not being pursued, and 
very frankly--and I'm going to talk to you about that, talk to my 
friend about this, because I think it is unfortunate that we have come 
to this place where the consideration of these bills last year became 
very politicized, and this

[[Page 14593]]

year the announcement clearly was very early on out of your conference 
or your retreat and subsequently that it wasn't going to be a very 
happy process this year. I don't mean an agreement process. No reason 
why there should be an agreement. But Mr. Obey has concerns that it 
would simply be impossible for him to get the bills through.
  Mr. BLUNT. He's a capable man, and I'm sure he can figure out a way.
  So I would like to close by saying we would like to see at least the 
bills that are through the full committee on the floor and would hope 
that the energy bills that the gentleman is looking at can come to the 
floor with a rule that allows a substantial and full debate on this 
critical problem of both gas prices at the pump now and home heating 
and other things that are going to quickly become problems for 
Americans.

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