[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Pages 15144-15146]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                 ENERGY

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I wish to say first that I had the 
chance to hear not only the Senator from North Dakota but the Senator 
from New Mexico, Mr. Bingaman, and what was going through my mind is 
that this is exactly what the Senate ought to be doing every day--every 
day--until we have a full and complete debate about all of the causes 
of the current high gasoline prices, all of the solutions that we can 
put in place today, until we consider all of the amendments that we 
need to bring up, and that we come to as a result. That is what the 
Senate is supposed to do. It is wonderful that we have 36 minutes to 
get up and present our sides, but our mode of business for the most 
difficult problem facing our country ought not to be back-and-forth 
arguments, or it ought not to be just to consider one bill brought up 
by the Democratic leader just because he is the majority leader and can 
do that and not consider all of the other ideas.
  I would like to hear all that Senator Bingaman has to say, for 
example, about why he doesn't like the idea of State options for 
offshore exploration. He is a thoughtful Senator and chairman of the 
energy committee. I would like to hear all that Senator Dorgan has to 
say about speculation. He is a thoughtful Senator and, as he said, has 
been willing to support more offshore exploration in some cases, and 
might do more.
  We need to have a full debate about the extent to which speculation 
is a problem. For example, Senator Dorgan cited speculation as one 
reason we have gas prices above $4 a gallon. Republicans believe 
speculation is part of the problem as well. The Gas Price Reduction Act 
we introduced, with 44 Republican Senators supporting it--and we hope 
it earns significant support on the other side--has as one of its four 
parts speculation and putting 100 more cops on the beat to deal with 
it.
  But we are also aware that Warren Buffett, who is invited to lunches 
on the other side of the aisle because he is a well-admired person who 
understands the market well enough to make a lot of money on it, Warren 
Buffett said in June: ``It is not speculation; it is supply and 
demand.''
  The International Energy Agency, an energy policy organization with 
27 member nations, says:

       Blaming speculation is an easy solution which avoids taking 
     the necessary steps to improve supply side access and 
     investment, or to implement measures to improve energy 
     efficiency.

  So we need to consider a full debate on the extent to which 
speculation makes a difference.
  We believe--and we are not the first to have this idea--that the 
solution to $4 gasoline prices is to find more oil and to use less oil. 
I wasn't the best student in economics at Vanderbilt University years 
ago, but that is what I was taught in economics 101, that the reason 
gas prices are high is because we have had growing demand and 
diminishing supplies. Also--I will get back to this more--what we do 
today about future prices can make all the difference in today's 
prices. I am not the only one who believes that.
  Martin Feldstein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under 
President Reagan, a Harvard professor and member of the Wall Street 
Journal's board of contributors said in an article a few days ago: Any 
steps that can be taken now to increase the future supply of oil--that 
is finding more--or reduce the future demand for oil in the United 
States or elsewhere--that is using less--can, therefore, lead to lower 
prices and increased consumption today.
  Not 10 years from now, not 5 years from now; what we plan for the 
future can make a difference in the prices today, and we need to be 
doing that.
  April is a single mother of two in Sevier County, TN, who took a job 
40 miles away 2 years ago so she wouldn't have to live off welfare. 
With gas prices rising, she is spending about $160 a week on gas and 
can't afford to pay all the bills. She sent me that letter in the past 
couple of weeks.
  Dave from Murfreesboro was laid off from his job at a trucking 
company in Jackson because they had to declare bankruptcy. They 
couldn't afford the gas. The company just expanded the dispatch office 
and they bought new trucks when they ran out of money from rising fuel 
prices. He is now worried our middle class is disappearing.
  Robert in Elizabethton, TN, a retired police officer, worked his 
whole life so he could retire. But now with gas prices so high, he says 
he has to cut back on his trips to the doctor and the grocery store 
because it has gotten so expensive.
  Glenna from Lafayette is on social security and lives on a very fixed 
income. She can barely afford to leave

[[Page 15145]]

 home. Even the food at her local grocery store has gotten more 
expensive because they have to pay a gas fee for deliveries.
  David from Knoxville has had to cancel his family's vacation this 
year. He will be having a ``STAYcation,'' as he says. He just got a 
promotion and raise at work, but the increase in living costs with food 
and gas has left him with no net gain. Instead, he is struggling to pay 
his bills.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record 
these five letters and e-mails from Tennesseans who are Americans hurt 
by high gas prices.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

       Senator Alexander, yes, I would like to share my gas price 
     story.
       I live in Sevier County where majority of the jobs pay well 
     below $10 an hour. In my hopes of no longer being dependent 
     on any form of welfare, I needed not only a well paying job 
     but one with really good benefits. I took that job (a federal 
     government position) back in April 2006 and it is 40 miles 
     away from where I live or can afford to live. I am a single 
     mother of two. When I took this job, I didn't realize I would 
     a year later be spending $100-$160 dollars a week in gas just 
     to get to work, get my kids to school and get to stores for 
     necessities. We are surviving only because I do not pay all 
     my bills and the ones that I do pay are usually not on time. 
     It saddens me that I am again in a position of choosing 
     between bills, food or gasoline and that there are others 
     like me going through the same. We have enough issues in this 
     country to deal with that we are unable to help, like the 
     floods in Iowa wiping out farms which I do expect to increase 
     food prices. We can help what we do with the gas prices. 
     Thanks for reading my story. I would say more but it just 
     plain makes me angry.
     April, Sevier County.
                                  ____

       Dear Senator Alexander, I very much appreciate your fight 
     to prevent a 53-cent gas tax hike that had been included in 
     climate change legislation currently being debated in the 
     U.S. Senate.
       I also welcome your support of legislation to explore now 
     for more American oil and natural gas in a way that preserves 
     the environment for future generations. We MUST have energy 
     independence from the middle east if America is to survive as 
     an independent, sovereign nation.
       Your proposal for a new Manhattan Project may be just what 
     we need for that survival. As a former US Navy Submariner, 
     and Plankowner on the USS Tennessee (SSBN 734) I am keenly 
     aware of the narrow lead we had during WWII, and how (with 
     God's help) the Manhattan Project barely gave us enough of an 
     edge to win WWII. Today the balance may be even more delicate 
     and narrow than many realize.
       I was laid off from a trucking company (St. Michael Motor 
     Freight) in Jackson TN, when they ran out of money to buy 
     fuel.
       I had previously applied for a job with American Freight in 
     Christiana TN, around the time I went to work for St 
     Michael's in Jackson. They had ordered about 60 new 
     International 9400i class 8 road tractors, at a cost of 
     around 110 to 120k each.
       So when the Jackson company ran out of money, I went down 
     to American Freight between Murfreesboro and Christiana, on 
     US 231. When I got there, American Freight had been forced 
     out of business, due to the high fuel prices. There sat 60 
     brand new trucks on the fence, with the whole place 
     padlocked. They had just expanded the dispatch office, not to 
     mention many other improvements; all wasted as the place sat 
     closed up in bankruptcy.
       Many Americans in general, and Tennesseans in particular 
     are becoming more than frustrated by the systematic 
     degradation and destruction of America's middle class in 
     general.
       It is basically the disappearing middle class in America 
     that is the last group that still believes in American 
     sovereignty. Many of the super rich would like to see this 
     country forced under the subjection of the United Nations. I 
     think we are seeing that happen each day as more companies 
     close doors here and ship jobs over seas.
       Let me encourage you to keep up the good fight and not back 
     down from big business as you continue the fight to keep 
     Tennessee's working middle class from disappearing.
       Thank you for your time and interest in your fellow 
     Tennesseans.
           Sincerely,
     Dave.
                                  ____

       Senator Alexander, I am a retired police officer. I worked 
     my whole life just to get to the point where I could retire 
     and travel. I have had to cut back on trips to the doctor, 
     medicines and groceries. I hope that you can help the 
     American people, we deserve better. Good luck in trying to do 
     something about this problem.
     Robert, Elizabethton, TN.
                                  ____

       Mr. Alexander, regards to you and your family. I commend 
     you on your outstanding job and your very informative email 
     updates on our economy.
       Gas prices have really affected me as an individual. I am 
     on Social Security and my income doesn't increase with the 
     rise in gas prices. I rarely leave the house anymore due to 
     the expense of buying gas to get around with, I haven't 
     bought gas in over a month now, luckily I still have about a 
     quarter tank. Others around me have felt the sting as much; 
     some have gas stolen right out of their cars. Since gas has 
     risen so rapidly, the groceries and utilities have also 
     risen. I even heard the local grocer state that the reason he 
     had to raise prices on the shelf goods was because the 
     delivery trucks now charge him a gas fee for delivering the 
     goods. He tried to apologize and I could see the pain in his 
     eyes because he had no choice but to go up on the prices. Not 
     only has the prices risen, the size of most goods are 
     smaller. That causes us to have to go back to the grocery 
     store more often and with a fixed income, that really hurts! 
     I have considered selling my 2005 Ford Escape (was a used 
     automobile when I bought it) and buying a pedal car or a 
     bicycle of some sort or even start using the lawn mower to go 
     out in town. I shudder to think that in Jan. the little raise 
     we get on Social Security will only be an insult compared to 
     the extent of the expense of surviving. It wouldn't surprise 
     me if our landlord decided to go up on the rent and if he 
     does, which would be to cover his deepening expenses, that we 
     would have to move and sell all our belongings that we need 
     to sustain this home. Can the government find us a place to 
     live? The tornado that ransacked Macon Co. has made it almost 
     impossible to find rent houses here. Yes, it has affected us 
     drastically and will continue to suck the life out of us 
     making it impossible to have any luxuries like cable tv, 
     which isn't a choice anymore to get a picture and groceries; 
     already we have had to cut out fresh vegetables and fruits.
       I pray there will be a solution soon.
     Glenna, Lafayette, TN.
                                  ____

       Senator Alexander, I recently received a promotion and 
     raise that resulted in a 20% increase in my salary. Prior to 
     this year, my family and I were always able to afford to 
     vacation for a week in Florida every summer. After the raise, 
     the price of gas has gone through the roof. We have seen our 
     ``windfall'' become a non-factor in our budget. On average, 
     we are spending $50 more per week resulting in $100 more per 
     pay period on gas alone. In addition, our grocery bills have 
     gone up 20% due to increased prices from higher fuel costs of 
     delivery and the price of materials in packaging. All of this 
     has resulted in creating a ZERO net gain for our family out 
     of a promotion and raise that I have worked on for over 2 
     years!!!
       To add insult to injury we are having to do what a lot of 
     other Americans are doing this summer, a STAYCATION. In case 
     you don't know what that is, it is a vacation that you take 
     at your home. You don't go anywhere, you stay put. I don't 
     know about you but I would think that this development in 
     itself will have a detrimental effect on the entire country 
     given that money from leisure activities will be way down.
       How did 30 years go by and we are no further along with 
     solar and wind energy conversion? How is it that we allowed 
     our pursuit of nuclear energy to be stalled? When are we 
     going to open up the pipeline in Alaska to prove to the rest 
     of the world that we have adequate supply so demand pricing 
     goes down? What is the plan???? We need one right now or my 
     children and your grandchildren are going to inherit 
     something that none of us envisioned and the Democrats are 
     going to tax all of us as a way to cure a problem that they 
     don't have an answer for. Please provide your excellent 
     leadership to our Congress so that we can save this country!
                                              Dave, Knoxville, TN.

  Mr. ALEXANDER. The writers of these letters may say: All right, you 
are United States Senators. You are in charge of the Congress. Do 
something.
  Well, we say find more, use less. We have a bill, 44 Senators 
cosponsored the bill, and we asked to bring it up. Senator Vitter of 
Louisiana brought it up the other day, and on behalf of the Democratic 
side, it was objected to. Now, I can understand that. Maybe it wasn't 
convenient to bring it up that day, but it is not convenient for the 
letter writers who wrote to me to wait another 2 days for us to 
seriously deal with the issue of gasoline prices either.
  So my suggestion is that the Democratic leader--and the whole Nation 
should understand this. The Democratic leader may not have much of a 
majority, but he has control of the agenda. If he wants to put gasoline 
legislation on the floor of the Senate, he can do it the next hour. He 
can do it before noon.
  When he does it, I would respectfully ask that the American people 
expect us to have a full discussion and full debate about how we can 
fix this problem, and

[[Page 15146]]

that means what can we do about finding more, what can we do about 
using less.
  We just heard two of the most prominent Democratic Senators who 
understand energy and who say we do need to do a variety of things. 
They say that. We had a second bipartisan breakfast yesterday morning 
on gas prices. Fifteen Senators attended-- eight Democrats, seven 
Republicans--or maybe it was the reverse. I wasn't there because I was 
in Chattanooga for Volkswagen's announcement of a new plant in 
Chattanooga, for which we are grateful. But we had a good discussion 
the week before, and we had a good one yesterday. We should be having 
that discussion on the Senate floor.
  Our plan, the Republican plan, which we hope earns Democratic 
support, is very simple. It would increase American production by one-
third over time--by one-third, one, by giving States the option to 
explore offshore for oil and gas and keep 37\1/2\ percent of the 
revenues. If I were the Governor, as I once was--we don't have a coast 
in Tennessee, but I would have been delighted to have that money. I 
would have put it in the bank and built the best higher education 
system in America, kept taxes down, and done some other things. That is 
what the four States in the South do. Virginia might decide to do it, 
North Carolina, Florida might. The oil market would get the oil and our 
prices would begin to stabilize. That would be 1 million barrels a day 
the Department of Interior estimates. Remember, 85 percent of the area 
on the Outer Continental Shelf in which we could drill is now off 
limits. We are going to have to deal with that issue. We should be 
dealing with it on the Senate floor.
  Two, we could go to three Western States and lift the moratorium on 
oil shale development. We should proceed with that in environmentally 
sound ways. That should produce, according to the Department of the 
Interior, 2 million barrels a day. What do those numbers mean? It means 
we could increase our production by one-third--increase American energy 
by one-third.
  Now, we only produce maybe 10 percent of the world's oil, but we are 
the third largest producer. Many on the other side have said: Well, 
let's sue OPEC, the Middle Eastern countries, and make them produce 
more oil. By analogy, we should be suing ourselves for not allowing the 
U.S. to produce more oil. We produce about as much oil as Saudi Arabia. 
We are the third largest producer. We should make our contribution to 
finding more American energy by producing more oil, and there are many 
Republicans and some Democrats who are ready to do that. So why are we 
not debating that and acting on that and voting on that on the Senate 
floor? That is what the Senate is expected to do.
  Then, use less. We are willing to do both. We understand both parts 
of the equation of supply and demand. Our suggestion and our 
legislation--and I believe, personally, the most promising way for our 
country to rapidly reduce our reliance on foreign oil--is to use plug-
in electric cars and trucks.
  Now, when I first began talking about this, some people thought I had 
been out in the sun too long. But Nissan, Toyota, Ford, General Motors, 
are all going to be making and selling to us within a year or two or 
three electric hybrid cars, or in Nissan's case an electric car that 
you simply plug in at night. Where do we get the electricity to do 
that? We have plenty of electricity at night when we are asleep. In the 
TVA region, for example, where I am from, the Tennessee Valley 
Authority, we produce about 3 percent of all of the electricity in 
America. We have the equivalent of 6 or 7 nuclear powerplants worth of 
electricity available at night which is unused. So TVA can bring me a 
smart meter and say: Mr. Alexander, you can fill up with electricity at 
night and drive your car 30 miles a day without using any gas. When I 
am here in the Senate, that is about all I drive. Three-quarters of 
Americans drive less than 40 miles a day. Over time, the Brookings 
experts believe we could electrify half our cars and trucks, and do it 
without building any more new powerplants because we already have 
unused electricity at night. So we are willing to do more and use less.
  We hear too much coming from the other side of the aisle to avoid the 
finding more part. They are dancing around the issue. We say: More 
offshore exploration with some exceptions. We hear: No, we can't.
  We say lift the moratorium on oil shale, with some exceptions. They 
say, no, we can't. We say more nuclear power, which is clean and we can 
use it for electricity and to plug in our cars and trucks. They say, 
no, we can't. We need to be finding ways that we can say, yes, we can, 
to finding more and using less.
  My last comment is this: I hope not to hear anybody else ever say on 
the floor of the Senate that we cannot do something because it will 
take 10 years. Did President Kennedy say we could not go to the Moon 
because it would take 10 years? Did President Roosevelt say we could 
not build a bomb to win World War II because it might take 3 years? Did 
our Founding Fathers say we cannot have a Republic or a democracy 
because it might take 20, 30, or 40 years? Our greatest leaders have 
said this is the way we go in America. This is what we should be like 
in 5 or 10 years. We should have a new ``Manhattan Project'' for clean 
energy independence, to put us on a path toward that independence with 
5 or 10 years.
  From the day we take those actions, the price of oil and gasoline 
stabilizes and begins to go down. That is what was so eloquently said 
in the Wall Street Journal article by Mr. Feldstein. Let me conclude 
with the very words he said 2 days ago:

       Now here is the good news. Any policy that causes the 
     expected future oil price to fall can cause the current price 
     to fall, or to rise less than it would otherwise do. In other 
     words, it is possible to bring down today's price of oil with 
     policies that will have their physical impact on oil demand 
     or supply only in the future.

  The United States and this world are waiting for us to enact a plan 
that will find more American energy and use less oil, so it can see 
that in the future we are on a path to energy independence and, as a 
result, the prices of oil today will stabilize and begin to go down.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Nelson of Nebraska). The Senator from 
Texas is recognized.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, how much time remains in morning business?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is 22 minutes 25 seconds.
  Mr. CORNYN. I will take the first 10 minutes and ask unanimous 
consent that the Senator from New Mexico be accorded the final 12 
minutes of our morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________