[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 14]
[House]
[Page 19202]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




   THE SOLUTIONS TO ENERGY INDEPENDENCE ARE THERE AND AVAILABLE TODAY

  (Mr. HALL of New York asked and was given permission to address the 
House for 1 minute.)
  Mr. HALL of New York. Mr. Speaker, I agree that we need energy 
independence. All Americans agree that we need energy independence. 
There used to be bipartisanship on this issue. In fact, it was the 
first President Bush who proposed an executive order banning drilling 
on the Outer Continental Shelf.
  We've had eight budgets sent here by President George W. Bush, who's 
his son. Every one of them, including this February when we got the 
budget for fiscal 2009, included language banning drilling on the Outer 
Continental Shelf.
  Somebody got a poll this last spring, and the prices went up because 
they're being manipulated by oil companies and OPEC, and we wind up 
with a situation where it becomes a campaign issue that was made into a 
partisan issue by, I believe, the party that had originally supported 
these things, whose President sent us eight budgets with banning the 
Outer Continental Shelf language.
  So I would just say calm down. We are working on a genuine, all-of-
the-above, bipartisan--we hope it will be a bipartisan bill. It's up to 
my colleagues and my friends on the other side of the aisle, but the 
solutions are there. They're available today. The renewables are in 
front of us, and they hire more people than fossil fuels.

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