[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 12]
[House]
[Pages 16452-16457]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  2015
                       30-SOMETHING WORKING GROUP

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to come 
down once again with my good friend from western PA, just over the 
border, Mr. Altmire from Pennsylvania, to just kind of clear up the 
record here a little bit and talk a little bit about what we have been 
doing here over the past year-and-a-half in Congress, to talk a little 
bit about the hole our country is in and how it has led to a lot of the 
stress that most American families are feeling now, most small 
businesses are feeling now.
  But I'm going to take some liberties here, Mr. Speaker, and 
congratulate my brother and my sister-in-law. A few days ago, Andrea 
Maria was born to my brother and sister-in-law, and now my godchild, 
Nicolas, and the second-in-command, Dominick, now have a little baby 
sister. So I wanted to congratulate my mom and Joe and Shari Burkey, 
the grandparents, and my brother and sister-in-law for having another 
one, three for three. So, if the gentleman has a few kids of his own, 
he knows they're not getting much sleep, but the baby is healthy.
  Also, I want to talk about, I think with that in mind, is what kind 
of legacy we're leaving to this next generation of Americans. And our 
friends today who spoke before us and spoke on the floor a little bit 
earlier today, you know, were talking about the importance of getting 
oil into the market and how if we would get oil into the market that it 
would reduce the cost of a gallon of gas.
  And what the Democratic leadership has done--and just today we voted 
on taking 70 million barrels of oil out of the Strategic Petroleum 
Reserve, which is what we have as a country, 700 million barrels of 
oil, just in case, if there's some kind of catastrophe, if there's some 
kind of crisis, that we can go to this oil and use it for whatever 
purposes we deem necessary.
  So, a few months ago, as we put oil into this reserve every day and 
every month, we said, as Democrats, that starting I think on June 30 
that this oil would not go into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve every 
day; instead, we would divert it out of the reserve and into the 
market. And analysts were telling us that that would have some short-
term effect in bringing the cost down.
  We have seen the cost of a gallon of gas go down in the past few 
days, not

[[Page 16453]]

significantly enough, but we feel like that strategic move that we made 
is having some effect.
  So, today, we wanted to take that to the next step and say that we're 
going to take 10 percent of this reserve, 70 million barrels of oil, 
and pump it right into the market, and it would affect all the 
speculation that's going on through the Enron loophole, and it would 
inject oil into the market.
  And today, we had a vote. And a lot of our friends, who were down on 
this floor, Mr. Speaker, just minutes and hours ago and have been 
railing on how we need to get oil into the market, voted against this 
oil going directly into the market. And you can't have it both ways, 
Mr. Speaker. You can't say you want more supply of oil into the market, 
and then when we bring up a bill and just cause the Democrats bring the 
bill up and say take 70 million barrels of oil and put it into the 
market to drive down costs immediately, our friends all voted against 
it. You can't have it both ways. Either you want oil into the market, 
you want more supply, or you don't. And just because the Democrats say 
use the reserve and put it in to stop the speculation and drive the 
price down, our friends voted against it.
  I yield to my friend.
  Mr. ALTMIRE. I thank the gentleman, and I do congratulate him on his 
new niece as well.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Thank you.
  Mr. ALTMIRE. And the gentleman is correct, and we were sitting here 
listening to some of the Members that came before us talk about the 
importance of supply, and there's a couple of issues.
  One is the fact that we are dealing with folks who are advocating 
increasing supply 10 and 20 years from now. The policies of drilling 
off the coasts and opening up new areas of the Outer Continental Shelf, 
opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, the first 
drop of oil does not come for 10 years. We don't achieve peak capacity 
in either of those areas for at least 20 years, according to the 
Department of Energy, President's Bush own Department of Energy. Those 
aren't our numbers; that's their numbers.
  So the issue of increasing supply--and they have a really nice slogan 
that they like to use: Drill here, drill now. And we'll see them 
wearing their buttons, and you hear some of the radio talk show hosts 
around the country: Drill here, drill now. And that's a great slogan, 
but that's not what ANWR is. That's not what opening up new areas of 
the Outer Continental Shelf is. If you are advocating that policy, if 
that's your energy policy, then your slogan ought to be: Drill here, 
drill in 10 years, drill in 20 years. So that's one side of the 
equation.
  But to what the gentleman talks about, if you're going to make the 
argument that the only way to solve this energy crisis is to increase 
the supply of oil, domestic supply, let's get more oil on to the 
market--and again, what they're advocating isn't doing it immediately--
but if you're saying we need to do it immediately, well, there is one 
way to do it immediately, and let's take a look at the history.
  The gentleman talked about, effective July 1, the 70,000 barrels a 
day every day that this country was placing into the Strategic 
Petroleum Reserve is now going into the private market, effective July 
1. What's been the impact? Well, on July 7, which was that first day 
after the July 4 holidays, the price of gas was at an all-time high. I 
believe it was four-eleven-and-a-half, highest it's ever been. We're 
right now about 6 cents less than that, not a substantial decrease. But 
instead of the exponential increase that we had seen for months, 
trajectory of price straight up, we've now seen a very slight decrease, 
but a decrease nonetheless. Certainly, some stability in the market 
where none existed before as a direct result of the action this 
Congress took to begin withholding shipments in the Strategic Petroleum 
Reserve, and now we've seen the impact. It has reduced the price.
  Well, what do you think the impact would be instead of 70,000 barrels 
a day, how about taking 70 million barrels out of the Strategic 
Petroleum Reserve, over a certain period of time, not all at once, but 
putting 70 million barrels into the market? You would see an amazing 
decrease in the price, as the gentleman knows, and that's what we 
advocated here today.
  And while we were sitting here listening to the Members that came 
before us, a couple of them in particular talked about how this 
Congress has done nothing advocating increasing supply. Well, today, 
not last week or last year, today before we came on the floor for this 
speech, this whole House took a vote a couple of hours ago on releasing 
70 million barrels. You want to talk about now, that's now, 70 million 
barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, put it into the market.
  It would have an incredible effect, not only on decreasing gas prices 
because you have more supply, but maybe even more importantly, on these 
speculators who are betting on the price of oil continuing to go up and 
manipulating the price in the market, and that's a very real issue. 
It's a very big part of why gas prices have gone up as high as they 
have because of this market speculation. They wouldn't know how to 
react if we put 70 million barrels in a time sequence over time into 
the market. That would have real impact on their ability to continue to 
manipulate, and they would lower the cost in the market as well. It 
would have two impacts.
  And how do those Members who talk about increasing supply and the 
need of this Congress to do something about gas prices--it's all they 
talk about. Well, what did they do? Well, most all of them voted 
against it. We have the numbers here on the vote. 157 Republicans 
opposed that vote today. 157 voted against increasing domestic supply 
of oil. After all the lectures we've had to endurefor the last several 
months about how we need to put more oil in the market, we had a vote 
to do just that today. A hundred plus of them voted against it.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And that's the thing. We get a card, you've got a 
vote, the board lights up, your name's up there, you either hit the 
green button for ``yes'' and the red button for ``no.'' And the same 
people that said, you know, we've got to get oil, we've got to put it 
on the market, voted against it. And as you said 157 Republicans.
  Now, we're big on third party validators here with our 30 Something 
because we know you may not necessarily believe everything that we are 
saying so we make sure that we back some of this up.
  Now, here is the statistics, and I will share also some quotes. This 
is what's happened in the past when we've taken out of the Strategic 
Petroleum Reserve this oil that's just sitting there and we've put it 
into the market.
  In 1991, this was done by the first President Bush, and prices went 
down by 33 percent. In 2000, it was done again, 18.7 percent prices 
went down, and it was done in 2005, which is 9 percent. So any of these 
examples in which we took directly out of the Strategic Petroleum 
Reserve and put it into the market has driven costs down and in 1991 to 
the tune of 33 percent, but even if it was 10 percent, you're talking 
about immediately knocking 40 cents a gallon off of a gallon of gas.
  And that's what we tried to pass today, and 157 Republicans prevented 
that from happening. That's the bottom line. And so you can't say one 
thing and then do the other.
  So you know Mr. Altmire is saying this. I'm saying this. Speaker 
Pelosi is saying this. But that's not it. We're not the only ones 
saying it. Former Speaker Newt Gingrich says, First thing is dump about 
half the Strategic Petroleum Reserve into the world market. You can 
pump about 2 million barrels a day. The marginal effect of that will 
bring down the price of oil very substantially.
  Mr. ALTMIRE. If the gentleman would yield, to put that in 
perspective, former Speaker Gingrich by that quote is advocating--did 
he say half the Strategic Petroleum Reserve?
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Yeah.
  Mr. ALTMIRE. To put that in perspective to what we did today, half of 
the Strategic Petroleum Reserve would be approximately 350 million 
barrels. We voted today on 70 million barrels, time released over time. 
Speaker Gingrich recommended a much more drastic

[[Page 16454]]

course of action, 350 million barrels, and again, 157 Republicans voted 
against a much smaller version of that today.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Right. So we had an opportunity today to do this, 
and the Republicans have prevented it. You can surmise why maybe they 
wanted to do that, but we have experts who we try to listen to when 
it's coming to these major economic decisions that are going to reduce 
the price at the pump, and we had the opportunity to do that today and 
it was prevented. So it wasn't just Speaker Gingrich.
  Mr. ALTMIRE. I'm sorry, if the gentleman will yield, because I hadn't 
seen this quote before we came on today, that quote--because people at 
home might say, well, when was that from? Was that from 1996? What are 
we talking about? That quote was from June 12 of this year. Last month 
is when that quote came from. So that's a real-time quote, talking 
about half the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as a course of action.

                              {time}  2030

  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Absolutely. So just a few days ago, our good friend 
from Tennessee, Representative Wamp--who I sit on the Energy and Water 
Subcommittee of Appropriations with--Rodney Alexander, a Republican 
from Louisiana, Johnny Isakson, Republican from Georgia, there are some 
Republicans who are saying, ``put this into the market,'' but not 
enough to actually have the kind of impact to actually get this done, 
not as many as we need.
  And when you look at the American Trucking Association, when you look 
at the National Farmers Union, when you look at the Air Transportation 
Association, all of these groups wanted us to do this today. We did it, 
and it was prevented from happening: 70 million barrels of oil going 
into the market today.
  But part of it--and I know the gentleman wants to talk a little bit 
about this as well--is what is happening with the dollar and how the 
dollar has been, because of its weakness at this point, the dollar has 
increased the cost of a lot of these commodities.
  And I'd like to yield to my friend.
  Mr. ALTMIRE. And I appreciate the gentleman yielding.
  And I would put it in the perspective of, let's take a look at how we 
got where we are today, take a little walk down memory lane. And why 
have gas prices gone up so dramatically? And the speakers on the other 
side will bring up their charts with their timelines and try to point 
fingers and cast blame.
  The three major reasons that gas prices have increased so 
dramatically over the past several months is the increased demand for 
growing economies like China and India. There is nothing we can do 
about that; that is going to continue to grow, it's going to continue 
to be a problem. And we're going to have to continue to deal with that, 
the increased demand in growing economies.
  However, two of the other main reasons why the price of gas has gone 
up so much over the past several months, the speculators in the market 
manipulating the price, driving it up beyond reasonable levels because 
they're betting that the cost of oil is going to continue to go up. 
That's something we can do something about, something we are going to 
do something about.
  And the other factor, a major reason for the price of oil in the 
market having risen to all-time record highs--before we stopped the 
Strategic Petroleum Reserve shipments, which has led to the decrease in 
recent weeks, but it's still at a near record high for the price of 
oil--is the U.S. dollar and the low dollar around the world.
  Oil is traded in the world market with the U.S. dollar. Obviously we 
use the U.S. dollar, so we're going to pay more for oil as a result of 
the deflation that has taken place with the dollar at near record lows 
in relation to other currencies around the world. Anyone who has 
traveled this summer to other countries can see the impact of the low 
dollar on your exchange rate.
  Well, let's take a look at why that happened. Why do we have such a 
low dollar? Two of the main reasons:
  Our trade deficit, the imbalance in trade from what we're shipping 
out overseas to what we're bringing in. We're bringing in a lot more 
from overseas than we're exporting. The trade imbalance plays a huge 
role in that.
  And of course the debt, the national debt. And we've talked many 
times--I won't give you the long lecture on it. But suffice it to say 8 
years ago we were looking at a $5.5 trillion surplus over the next 10 
years, could have paid off the entire national debt. Because of the 
economic policies of this administration and the previous Congresses 
when they controlled both the White House and Congress on the other 
side, the decisions that were made have led to a skyrocketing national 
debt, deficits every year, deficits as far as the eye can see. And now, 
instead of having paid off the entire national debt, what do we have? 
We have a debt ceiling that's now over $10 trillion. That's why the 
dollar is at an all-time low. That's one of the big reasons why oil has 
skyrocketed in the world market.
  So the very people who made those decisions, the very people who are 
responsible for those economic policies and those trade policies that 
have led to devaluation of the dollar in the world-wide market, the 
very same people who made those decisions are now coming forward with 
their ideas on what to do with regard to the energy crisis. And we 
should take that with a grain of salt, at minimum, because we've seen 
the impact of their policies, we know what happened. The American 
people have cast judgment on what they thought about those policies.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Well, let's think about it. When the second 
President Bush got in in 2000, two oilmen in the White House, and Vice 
President Cheney has this secret meeting--that nobody was allowed to 
know about--to begin to implement the energy policy of this 
administration, Republican House, Republican Senate, Republican White 
House, and here we go, here comes the energy policy.
  Now, an energy policy that we agree on today doesn't necessarily have 
an effect today. Moving barrels out of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve 
is a unique example of something having an immediate effect. But with 
energy policies, today's decisions have an effect years later. And so 
in 2000, when the Bush administration came, Mr. Speaker, and 
implemented this policy, headed up by the Vice President, we are now 
feeling the effects of it.
  There was no massive move towards alternative energy. There was no 
expansion of nuclear. There was no expansion of biodiesel. There was no 
significant investment into alternative energies so that we can become 
independent. And when you look at the fact that we import--nearly 70 
percent of the oil that we use in this country is imported from other 
sources, completely dependent on the Middle East and other countries in 
South America.
  So they have implemented their energy policy, and today we have $4 a 
gallon gas. And the comments saying somehow that it's not their fault, 
it's not their responsibility, when their policies have been 
implemented, is ridiculous.
  Mr. ALTMIRE. And I would remind our colleagues and the gentleman--he 
probably was sitting here when President Bush stood right behind him at 
that podium in this House for his State of the Union Address--probably 
2005, I think--and talked about our addiction to oil, spent most of his 
speech talking about our addiction to oil and how we need to do 
everything we can and have a national priority to get away from our 
addiction to oil. Well, his energy plan is inconsistent with that 
rhetoric because his energy plan is all about furthering our addiction 
to oil, cementing it----
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Right.
  Mr. ALTMIRE.--in a way that we have never seen before in this 
country, where everything they want to do has to do with expanding our 
dependence on oil, making us more dependent.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And if you think about what, in my estimation, 
great leaders would have done after 9/11, and you think about what the 
Lincolns and the Roosevelts and the Kennedys would have done in that 
particular situation,

[[Page 16455]]

we had so much political clout in the world after 9/11. President 
Bush's approval ratings were off the charts. He failed to seize that 
opportunity to call up the oil companies, sit them down in the Cabinet 
room and say, boys, the party's over. We're all getting together, it's 
going to be a public/private partnership, and we're going in the 
alternative energy realm together as a country, public and private. He 
didn't do that. He asked everyone to go shopping; that was the big, 
creative challenge to the country. And that was a missed opportunity 
that few Presidents ever get, and he got it.
  Mr. ALTMIRE. And we would be 7 years down the road of that initiative 
right now.
  You think about the Apollo moon landing and the Manhattan Project, 
when Americans came together, worked towards a common goal, put our 
best and brightest and all of our resources on the task, and we got the 
job done. So we would be 7 years into that right now. We would have 
made such tremendous progress.
  And it wouldn't have just been us, it would be the entire world. The 
people at Honda and Toyota are putting out hydrogen fuel cell cars and 
hybrid battery-operated cars. The hybrid car in the 2010 model for 
Toyota is going to get 90 miles for the gallon. And there are going to 
be kinks and they're going to be too expensive at first, but we're 
getting there, we're making progress. Imagine 7 years ago, if we had 
had a national and worldwide commitment led by the United States of 
America, how different things would be today instead of paying $4 a 
gallon for gas.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And when you think about that, and we had T. Boone 
Pickens in our caucus this week, he was on the Hill talking to both 
Democrats and Republicans--many people may have seen his commercials 
about his plan for transferring energy from being oil-based into some 
of these alternative energy fields, including wind, primarily, for 
him--but here's a geologist from Oklahoma University who is worth $4 
billion in the oil industry, kind of understands what's going on, 
telling us ``You can't drill your way out of this.''
  But his main point was, not only that we're importing 70 percent of 
our oil, but there's a $700 billion transfer of wealth from the United 
States into these other countries. And what we're saying is that $700 
billion, that should be put to work here in the United States of 
America building windmills, building nuclear facilities, moving forward 
with a lot of these other alternative energy sources that are clean and 
renewable.
  And you add to that what we're spending on the war in Iraq, $10 to 
$12 billion a month in Iraq. This is going to be a trillion dollar war, 
at the end of the day it's going to cost us $3 trillion when you factor 
in the cost of dealing with a lot of the veterans who have come back, 
who we have an obligation to take care of in order to honor their 
service. If that money was spent focusing on investments in alternative 
energy here in the United States 7 years ago, we would be so far down 
the path. We would have a green country. We would have green energy. We 
would have control of the lithium batteries that are being made. You 
would have plug-in cars. This all could have happened in the last 5 or 
6 years.
  And so we need to get out of this mentality that somehow we're stuck. 
And I think for public officials to tell us that somehow, when you only 
have 4 percent of the world's oil reserves, you can somehow drill your 
way out of this problem is misleading. And Boone Pickens said that, 
``They mislead the public.'' This is what he said the other day when he 
was here, July 23, ``They mislead the public.'' The public thinks we 
can go and drill and they mislead it, and that we're going to get $2 a 
gallon in gas.
  Let's have an honest conversation about how we can prevent us from 
getting into the same situation a decade from now, where you and I--
maybe here, maybe not here--that we're not having the same 
conversation.
  And we have an opportunity to do that now. Speaker Pelosi, we've put 
hundreds of millions of dollars into research and development for these 
alternative energy sources, and some are starting to come online. But 
this should have been done 30 years ago, but especially 7 years ago.
  Mr. ALTMIRE. The gentleman is correct. We had an energy crisis 35 
years ago where people had to wait in line for their gas, and depending 
on whether you had an even or odd number ending your license plate, you 
had to alternate days to even have the right to buy gas. And when that 
crisis subsided, this country, unfortunately, took a sigh of relief and 
said, well, I'm glad that's over. Let's keep doing it the way we're 
doing it, let's keep doing what we're doing. And we are not going to 
let that happen again.
  We are not going to leave this for people like your niece, who was 
just born that you're talking about. We are going to address the 
problem now. We're going to take the steps, in a very long-term away, 
to be thoughtful, and take an approach that's not going to continue our 
addiction to oil, that's not going to continue our dependence on oil. 
We're going to move forward in a way that's going to move us away from 
oil and look at every possible source.
  Mr. Pickens, who you have the chart behind you, the gentleman from 
Ohio, he has his ideas on how to do that. And I don't know if it's 
going to be windmills--which is what Mr. Pickens advocates. I don't 
know if it's going to be hydrogen fuel cell or hybrid cars or solar or 
nuclear or clean burning coal or something we haven't thought of, but 
let's put everyone we have, all of our resources, the best and 
brightest, on the job. Let's get it done.
  And the mission should be to get us off of oil. That's where we want 
to go. That's something we didn't do 35 years ago and, unfortunately, 
we're the worse off for it. It's something we didn't do 7 years ago 
when we had a national crisis where we could have made that step in the 
right direction, we didn't do it. But we are here now, and we are not 
going to let the same mistakes be made this time that were made in the 
past.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And when you look at--and you mentioned it 
earlier--when you look at a lot of the situations that we have to deal 
with, that hopefully we can fix in time that my nieces and nephews 
don't have to deal with, but the debt, just in the last few years, $3 
trillion increase in the debt ceiling here to $10 trillion. So we're 
borrowing this money because of the irresponsible tax cuts that the 
Bush administration passed when they got in, giving tax cuts primarily 
to the wealthiest people in the country who are making billions of 
dollars a year, benefiting from the system we have, and increasing the 
pressure with health care and energy costs on the middle class at the 
same time. And so these increases and the money that we're borrowing is 
coming from China, is coming from Japan, is coming from OPEC countries.
  So when you think about the situation we're in now and you're paying 
$4 at the pump because the Bush energy plan, the Bush/Cheney energy 
plan has been implemented, you're paying $4 at the pump, and then you 
realize that your country is borrowing money for the war and the debt 
and the tax cuts that are going primarily to the top 1 percent, and 
that money that you're borrowing is coming from China and oil-producing 
countries--so they're loaning you the money, and they're getting 
interest, you're paying them interest on it just like you would do to 
the bank--and the oil-producing countries are producing moringe oil and 
shipping more over here, so we have a $700 billion transfer of payments 
over to these oil producing countries. When you think about borrowing 
money from China, paying them interest on the money, and they take the 
interest that they make off the money you're borrowing and they invest 
that into basically state-run operations over there, whether it's 
steel, or any other kind of manufacturer that they lure over with the 
money that they get from the Americans to build industrial parks, to 
build roads and bridges so that companies will move over there, to 
build Navy ships so that they can have a

[[Page 16456]]

strong fleet in the Pacific, we're funding all this because of the 
irresponsible practices.

                              {time}  2045

  So we're trying to dig ourselves out of this hole, and we're still 
getting resistance. Even to the tune of trying to put 70 million 
barrels of oil on the market, we have trouble getting that passed 
because our Republican friends, Mr. Speaker, continue to prevent us 
from doing that.
  I yield to my friend.
  Mr. ALTMIRE. I will tell you what else is irresponsible. The 
gentleman from Ohio has a chart behind him that has quotes from T. 
Boone Pickens about the oil industry and advocates of this ANWR and 
offshore drilling, ``Drill Here, Drill Now,'' and we have talked about 
that, and he says, ``They mislead the public.'' That's Mr. Pickens' 
quote. That's what's irresponsible. It's irresponsible to put forward a 
policy that is specifically designed to score political points; to, in 
a very cheap way, take advantage of the American people's exasperation 
with the fact that gas prices have skyrocketed out of control in recent 
months.
  So instead of trying to solve the problem, instead of joining us in 
voting today to release 70 million barrels of oil into the market 
immediately, instead of joining us to force the oil companies to use 
the nearly 90 million acres that are already permitted and leased and 
ready to go and force them to drill on it right now or we're going to 
give that lease to somebody who will, instead of joining us in these 
efforts, they oppose it, and we have been unable to pass them out of 
the House because of their opposition, when we have almost unanimously 
on our side supported it. That's what is going on here, and that is why 
Mr. Pickens talks about the public being misled on this because when 
your slogan here is ``Drill Here, Drill Now'' and the only policy that 
you're advocating for doesn't create the first drop of oil for at least 
10 years, there's a disconnect there and you are misleading the public.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And from my perspective, I certainly don't want to 
put the philosophy that got us into the problem that we are in and 
reaffirm it and continue to go down that road. We only have 4 percent 
of the world's oil reserves. What don't you get about that picture, Mr. 
Speaker?
  Mr. ALTMIRE. And we use 25 percent oil.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And we use 25 percent. So we only have 4 percent 
and we use 25 percent, and we're shipping $700 billion a year to those 
countries that are sending their oil over here, and we can't drill 
enough. Even if we open everything up, we still can't get enough oil to 
solve the problem. It is simple math and it's disingenuous, Mr. 
Speaker, to somehow mislead the American public, in the words of T. 
Boone Pickens, who is an oilman from Texas who is saying the same 
thing. It is misleading to say that we can drill our way out of this.
  There are 68 million acres that the oil companies now have, up to 90 
million. They've done the research as to where they wanted to purchase 
the lease. They think there is oil there. They know there's oil there. 
Go and drill it and stop the political games of trying to say that 
somehow some of the American people are against it. Go ahead and drill. 
But that is not going to solve the problem.
  And I know in your district and I know the people that vote for me in 
my district want me to come down here to solve problems, not to mislead 
them and score political points.
  When I am eating at Vernon's Restaurant about two blocks from me, the 
best Italian restaurant on the planet, Mr. Speaker, people want to know 
exactly what we are going to do to solve the problem. And if you 
explain to them that we don't have enough oil reserves to keep this 
train going, they're smart enough to realize that they know how the 
movie ends, and it's not pretty because now we're 10 years from where 
we are today, gas is at $8 a gallon, and we are more dependent on oil 
from the Middle East, and we have done nothing with wind and nuclear 
and biodiesel; so we are in a worse spot than we are today.
  Now, I would love to go to my friends who are at Vernon's Restaurant 
and say, ``If we just keep drilling, we're going to be okay.'' But 
that's not the reality. Those aren't the facts. And the facts have got 
to dictate what public policy is or we are not doing our job for the 
American people.
  Mr. ALTMIRE. And there may be some, Mr. Ryan, who are watching us 
today among our colleagues who would say, well, what are the facts? 
You're giving your set of facts and figures. How do I know that what 
you're saying is true?
  I would encourage any of our colleagues who are watching this to go 
to the Department of Energy's Web site, pull up EIA, the Energy 
Information Administration, which is where all these figures that we 
talk about come from. That's President Bush's own Department of Energy 
that is telling us what numbers we're using today.
  And when you hear us talk about the 68 million acres, we are talking 
about in the Continental United States, areas that are leased, ready to 
go. The oil companies have in an auction bought those leases. Clearly 
they think there's oil there. They are paying rent on those leases 
right now for the right to keep that land. They would not do that if 
they didn't think there is oil there. But our friends on the other side 
will still come one by one and parade up and say, well, there's no oil 
there. Those are dry holes and there's nothing there. They're wrong, 
but let's just let that go and say, okay, let's talk about the 20 
million acres in Alaska that we also talk about where there's a 
similar, though not identical, circumstance where the Congress has 
approved the ability of the oil companies to lease and start drilling 
there. We're not standing in the way. We have opened it up. The oil 
companies can drill there. It's the Department of the Interior that has 
dragged their feet in getting these leases out. We want them to have 
the lease sales and the auctions to get the process going. It's closer 
to Prudhoe Bay than ANWR; so the pipeline construction wouldn't take as 
long, and it's estimated that we could pull oil out of this area in 3 
to 4 years instead of the 10 years it would take to pull it out of 
ANWR, which is a little bit further away.
  So what's the point of all this? The point of all this is our friends 
on the other side will say the same thing: There's no oil there. That's 
not the fruitful area. It's ANWR where the oil is, the Arctic National 
Wildlife Refuge.
  Well, you might buy that argument except for fact what is the name of 
this territory that we're talking about in Alaska? The name of the 20 
million acres that we are talking about is the National Petroleum 
Reserve. Now, it would seem to me that if the name of the area is the 
``National Petroleum Reserve,'' there's probably some oil there. I 
think that's a pretty safe guess. So you would have a pretty hard time 
saying that's the reason why we're not pulling oil out of the ground, 
because it's not there, in the National Petroleum Reserve.
  So we brought to the floor last week a bill that said the Department 
of Interior is directed to hold the lease auctions, to get the process 
going. The big oil companies are encouraged and, in fact, more than 
encouraged. They will either use the land for drilling or they will 
lose the right and we will give it to somebody who will. And we brought 
that bill to the floor. And as the gentleman knows, what happened? All 
those same people who stand over on the other side and lecture us about 
the need to increase domestic supply, ``Drill Here, Drill Now,'' they 
voted against it. Not all but most. The vast majority voted against it. 
Now, that seems pretty inconsistent to me.
  So what's the motivation? Well, I'm not going to speculate on 
individual Members' motivation. But if your mantra, if your cause 
celebre is ``Drill Here, drill now, increase domestic production, let's 
get more oil on the market,'' and when the Congress brings to the floor 
a bill that does exactly that and sooner than the course of action that 
you advocate, I think you need to go home and explain to your 
constituents why you voted against that bill.

[[Page 16457]]


  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I agree. But it's important for us to realize too 
that we are moving on the energy issues. We are trying to fix it, short 
term and long term. Short term by releasing the barrels of oil out of 
the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, have a short-term impact, reduce the 
cost; and then long term, invest in these alternative energy sources 
with different kinds of cars and incentives and tax credits for 
renewables and all of these different policies that will help stimulate 
a lot of the renewable energy fields long term.
  We are also trying to do other things along public policy areas that 
will have an effect for families who are getting hurt today and getting 
squeezed because of energy and because of health care and because of 
tuition.
  One of the things I would like to talk about that we have been doing, 
families want their kids to have a better life than they had, and they 
want their kids to move further on in life than they have. And the key 
in 2008 for that is an education. And what has happened just a week or 
so ago, one of the policies that we have implemented is reducing the 
cost of student loans. The cost of a student loan used to be 6.8 
percent, or the interest rate on a student loan used to be about 6.8 
percent last year. As of just a few days ago, this went down to 6 
percent. And this is going to continue to go down over the course of 
the next few years to about 3.4 percent for a student loan because when 
we got in, when the Democrats got in, and Speaker Pelosi has a major 
priority and a major emphasis on education, this is where we put our 
resources. This is where we made the investment.
  So for my friends, Mr. Speaker, who don't seem to think there is a 
difference between the two parties, when you go to get a student loan 
and its .8 percent less this year than it was last year, that's because 
the Democrats are in and it was a priority for us to reduce the 
interest rate on a student loan. And when you go next year and it's 
even lower and when you go the following year and I think by 2010 it's 
down to 3.4 percent, the average student loan is going to be reduced by 
about $4,400. So when you take the $4,400, you take the increase in the 
minimum wage, you look at all of these different little policies that 
we have, they add up to where families and kids can have a better, more 
prosperous future than their parents had. But those are the kinds of 
investments that we're making. And just today the minimum wage went up 
again because of what the Democrats have done.
  There's a clear focus and a clear philosophy of what we are trying to 
implement here, and that's for middle class families to have success 
and for them to move forward and have their kids have more opportunity 
than they had. Whether it's energy or health care or education, that's 
where we are moving towards to make sure that we can advance that 
cause.
  Mr. ALTMIRE. I thank the gentleman. That is something that we have 
worked on in this Congress and something that we have a great record of 
achievement is higher education. When you look at families struggling 
with the economy and look at the problems that we have with increased 
health care costs, certainly gas prices like we're talking about, the 
cost of higher education is right there with the struggles that most 
middle class families or many middle class families in this country are 
facing. And this Congress took, in the very early days, a step, a very 
big step, to help families.
  We cut in half the interest rates on student loans from 6.8 percent 
to 3.4 percent. And as the gentleman indicates, that by itself is going 
to save the average student borrower in this country $4,400 over the 
lifetime of the loan.
  But we didn't stop just there. We increased Pell grants to their 
highest level in history, and we capped at 15 percent of income the 
amount of discretionary income that the borrower after they graduate 
will be required to pay, which will help them minimize their debt, 
prevent them from getting overextended with their debt obligations when 
they're not making a lot of money right from the start, and avoid some 
of the problems that we have seen in the credit market now where 
people's homes have been foreclosed because they got overextended.
  Those are real accomplishments on real issues that matter to the 
American people and matter to American families, and that's something 
that we have to stand on when we talk about what this Congress has done 
proactively.
  We're talking about gas prices, and something we didn't even mention, 
which is a major reform, hadn't been done in 30 years, we increased the 
average miles-per-gallon standards, the fuel efficiency standards, from 
24 miles per gallon on average to 35 miles per gallon. The first time 
it had been raised for American-made cars or cars sold in America in 
30-plus years. So that's another real accomplishment of this Congress.
  And we could go on. The gentleman talks about the minimum wage and 
others. So we are taking steps to help American families and people 
struggling in this downturn economy.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And that's the best thing from our vantage point: 
Prove to the American people as to what your beliefs are and how it's 
going to affect their lives. And if you have a couple of jobs and 
you're making the minimum wage, you got a pay raise twice already in 
the last year, just over the last year. If you're going to school, 
there is more grant money available for you to go get an education. 
There is a lower interest rate on the loan that you're going to take 
out or your parents may take out to send you to school.

                              {time}  2100

  Those are significant investments that Democrats have made into the 
future of our country so that middle-class people can be successful and 
take advantage of these tools. We can't do it for anybody. But these 
are tools that average families will use and implement to move forward.
  Two of the things that we can't forget, we have also passed the GI 
Bill out of the House which will say that if you served this country in 
Iraq or Afghanistan over the past 3 or 4 years that you will have all 
expenses paid to go to college. In Ohio, there is a policy now that the 
Governor has implemented that you can come to Ohio, any veteran around 
the country, can come to Ohio and have in-State tuition rates if you're 
a veteran.
  And look at what we've done for veterans' health care. The largest 
investment in the 77-year history of the VA was made by the Democratic 
Congress when we got in here. A lot of us weren't for the war. And I 
will be the first to say I wasn't for it. But what we all are for is 
honoring the service of the veterans who go over there and make the 
great sacrifice and the sacrifices that their family makes. So we have 
made that investment into the VA program so that the vets have the 
benefits that they need. And we're honoring their service by making 
that investment.
  And if you look to the previous 7 years or 6 years, what the 
President made, Mr. Speaker, and what the Republican Congress made, it 
was $14 billion in corporate welfare to the oil companies. It was tax 
cuts to people who make millions and millions of dollars a year. It was 
an energy policy that got us $4 a gallon gas. It was a health care 
policy that gets 15 or 20 percent increase on your health care. A 
dramatic difference. And I'm proud to stand up here and talk a little 
bit about what we've done and what we're going to continue to do, 
because I feel like we're just getting started. And we have an election 
coming up now in November. And I think there is an opportunity for us 
to really move forward.
  So, I'm honored again to be with the gentleman from Pennsylvania. And 
Mr. Speaker, we're going to wrap up. Again, congratulations to my 
brother and sister-in-law, they're grandparents to Andrea. And we will 
yield back the balance of our time.

                          ____________________