[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Page 16656]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                 ENERGY

  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I came to speak about a 
personal tragedy in the lives of a Florida family. But I wish to say at 
the outset, here we go with all this talk about it is a certain way or 
the highway to solve this energy problem. As I said on the floor of the 
Senate a few days ago, if we had the political will where we could take 
a balanced approach of looking not only at now and drilling what is 
available, but look to the future for alternatives and renewables so 
that we wean ourselves from this dependence on specifically foreign 
oil, but also on our dependence for decades in the future on oil as the 
staple of our energy, realizing that if we continue to do that, we are 
just going to be digging a hole for ourselves maintaining dependence on 
oil as the No. 1 source of energy.
  Don't we have enough evidence now that when you have to depend on 
upwards of 70 percent of foreign oil that is not a good economic 
posture as well as a defense posture for national security for this 
country?
  Don't we have enough evidence now that the United States has only 3 
percent of the world's oil reserves, and yet we consume 25 percent of 
the world's oil production? And is that not enough to get it through 
our skulls that the way of the future for this country is to cut that 
dependence on oil and go to alternative sources?
  We are confronting on that side of the aisle, that is very cozy with 
big oil--they want to have it all their way and say, ``drill here, 
drill now,'' a simple slogan when, in fact, it is a lot more 
complicated today. Yet we cannot get agreement to do what all of us 
deep down understand is the commonsense thing to do, and that is bring 
a comprehensive measure in which we start doing a number of things at 
once, including pouring the money into research and development and 
financial incentives, such as tax incentives, to develop new sources, 
alternative fuels. That is the way to go. Yet we hear this high-blown 
rhetoric about ``drill here, drill now.''
  It is with a heavy heart that I have to continue to say what I just 
said because all we are is wound around the axle in the Senate since we 
cannot get anything passed unless we have 60 votes. And if we cannot 
get the two sides to get along, we have what we have, which is 
gridlock.

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