[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 17]
[Senate]
[Pages 23798-23800]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            ECONOMIC CRISIS

  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, for the next few minutes I wish to connect 
the dots. What am I saying? Well, I wish to take us from where this 
Senate was last night, when on a 74-to-25 vote it voted out one of the 
largest financial assistance packages in the history of the Nation--
700-plus billion dollars--to try to stabilize the credit markets of our 
country and make sure that Main Street--whether it be in small-town 
Colorado or small-town Idaho--still have credit in its banks for its 
citizens and its small business people to conduct business and make 
payroll.
  We have, by a series of actions over the last decade, placed the 
American economy and the American consumer--the taxpayer--in peril. 
Last night was

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an effort to recognize that and to do something about it. Because of 
its size, and because of its early billing--that it was a ``Wall Street 
bailout''--I suspect your constituents and mine backed off and said: 
``Whoa, wait a minute, government; wait a minute, politician, don't put 
the taxpayer at peril with this kind of effort.''
  At the same time, you and I, and many of us here, were looking at all 
of the issues at hand, recognizing this was not a bailout for Wall 
Street. In fact, from its original concept to its evolution to the bill 
that was passed last night, it was a much different document--
safeguarding and protecting the taxpayer and trying to recognize the 
need of a growing credit crisis on Main Street USA. I think, and I 
hope, we have accomplished that.
  But how did this come to be? Well, there are a lot of fingers that 
can be pointed. We can point at the liberal lending policy and advocacy 
of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and subprimes, and too much credit in 
the market, and the explosion of the housing industry--or at least the 
explosion of the bubble in the housing industry. But something else 
came along about the time all of those elements in our economy were 
coming together that I think was probably the tripwire that helped 
create the current situation.
  Let me connect the dot, the dot of too much credit, of subprime, of 
an economy that was maxed out, of a consumer who was maxed out. Let me 
connect the dot of the average consumer having to pay anywhere from 
$100 to $150 more a month on his energy bill at the gas pump. What 
happened in our economy as energy prices went through the roof and that 
spread out across our economy in food costs, in transportation costs, 
in the costs of everything we do because our economy is so intricately 
linked with energy and the availability of energy? You didn't hear 
anybody on the floor last night talk about energy. You did not hear 
anybody on the floor last night talk about the $4 gas or the $140-a-
barrel oil that was true a few months ago, but it was there and it was 
lurking in the background. It had already hit our economy along the 
side of the head with a fatal blow. We have over the last several years 
tried to recognize that.
  When we left here in July for the August recess, Democrats and 
Republicans were at odds over energy. I was saying let's drill, let's 
produce, and the American consumer was awakening to this energy shock 
that our economy was having and they were saying the same thing; 65 to 
70 percent of the American consumers were saying, What's wrong, 
politician? Why are you locking away the great resources of this 
country? In the name of the environment? In the name of no growth? In 
the name of good feelings? The bad feelings were at the pump. The bad 
feelings were in the pocketbook.
  Stay with me for a moment and think about this. Think about that 
consumer. He and she, working hard, maybe bringing home $45,000 or 
$50,000 a year amongst the two--mom and dad--they have their credit 
cards maxed out. They have maybe $5,000 on their credit cards and they 
are paying a couple of hundred dollars a month each month on that 
credit card and making their house payment and barely getting by and, 
all of a sudden, in the last year and a half or two, their energy bill 
goes through the roof and they are paying $150 to $200 a month, and 
they don't have it.
  Then the value they had in their house that they might have taken a 
second mortgage out on to bail them out, all of a sudden begins to 
disappear. That is an American family in crisis. That is an American 
family in crisis without question. That is the crisis we began to deal 
with last night. That, of course, was that $5,000 they had on their 
credit card that they were paying $200 a month on, the credit card 
company called them up and said we are going to pump it up to $400 a 
month, we are going to drop your credit line, and we are going to 
charge you more interest. That is what was happening, and it was 
brought on by practices in the economy over the last good number of 
years, and the energy crisis coming down on top.
  In the midst of all of this great debate about the economy, something 
happened at the end of September. Politicians who couldn't face the 
vote to deal with the issue of taking off the offshore oil moratorium 
let it expire. There were a few stories about ``offshore drilling 
moratoria expired.'' Even some of the cable news stations had charts up 
showing graphs--graphs I had used here on the floor--of areas that were 
now available offshore. Somehow there was a little story out there that 
possibly we were going to get back into the business of drilling and 
production and therefore bring down our risk as a nation and stop the 
huge flow of money going offshore and the consumer would be better off.
  I am here today to connect another dot and to suggest to the American 
consumer that is an illusion. The reason it is an illusion is because 
there are a few politicians around here saying when we get back next 
year, we can slip that moratorium back on. There are others saying 
good, it is off, it will stay off, and we can begin to work the process 
of getting the Department of the Interior, USGS, and others to do the 
surveys and environmental impact statements that will allow us to 
drill.
  Therein lies the question: To drill--when? Let me tell you how it 
works, because the day the moratoria came off, and they came off the 
last of September, if everything were to work right, it would be 7 to 8 
years before any rig could go out there into the deep waters and begin 
to drill. That is normal process and time. If you look at the example 
of Alaska where there are offshore leases and the environmental impact 
statements have been done, guess what else happened. Along came the 
interest groups and they filed suits and they have extended that 
drilling time out another 3 or 4 years while the oil companies go 
through the courts and fight the battles of the environmental groups 
that do not want you there to begin with.
  America, please awaken. Do not think the energy crisis is over 
because we have turned the economy down, we have turned consumption 
down around the world and all of a sudden oil is now down to $92, $93, 
$94 a barrel. Because the very thing we hope for, and that is for the 
economy to come back and people to come back to work and homes to be 
built here and around the world, means that energy consumption will go 
back up against a relatively static supply market.
  The good news is we hopefully did the right things to bring the 
economy back. The bad news is we haven't done a darned thing to 
increase the supply of hydrocarbons in our market--except to run a few 
tickertapes or billboards that we let the moratorium expire on offshore 
oil. But we have not indemnified the companies, we have not done the 
right things it would take to bring drilling to the areas where the oil 
is. And there is oil out there--billions of barrels of oil.
  Every time the gulf, where there is a lot of deepwater drilling, gets 
hit by hurricane--whether it was Katrina or Ike recently, that knocked 
hundreds of platforms off their foundations out in the deepwater 
production area--there was no environmental problem because we are so 
good at doing what we do today. We insist that the best talent come, 
the best equipment come, and we have those kinds of environmental 
protections that deny us the ghosts of Santa Barbara of three decades 
ago. Yet there is still a large number of Americans wanting to deny us 
that. There is a great number of politicians who would love to run from 
the reality of getting this country back into the business of producing 
energy.
  We talk about it. We play the game. But I am here today to say we do 
not connect all of the dots and it is not going to be 2, 3, 4 years 
after the moratoria goes off. After you work all the systems and all 
the lawsuits through all the courts, you would be very lucky to get any 
field into production in the next 12 years. That is the way it is. That 
is the problem we have to deal with. That is the problem the new 
Congress will have to deal with and deal with it in a very real way.
  What are we talking about? The estimation of the domestic recoverable 
oil

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and gas resources in the Outer Continental Shelf. In old geology, in 
old surveys that do not keep up with the modern techniques that we have 
today, where we are finding the truly deep oil out in the gulf, we know 
there are at least 30 billion barrels of oil. We believe in the 
undiscovered resource areas there could be as much as 85 or 100 billion 
barrels of oil. There are literally trillions of cubic feet of gas--
200, 250, 350, 400, we are not sure, but we know this. When you take 
the old technology and you go out there with the new technologies and 
you apply it to the old geologies, you usually get two to three times 
more than you thought you were going to get. That is a fact and we know 
that today.
  Therefore, it is critically important that we get the rigs into the 
water, get the rigs out there, and begin to explore and develop; that 
is, if you do not want another runup in energy values and an energy 
crisis of the kind we have put our people through when this economy 
comes back--and it will come back, hopefully soon, but within the next 
couple of years. Congress's failure to act, Congress's willingness to 
march down the old path of no exploration, no drilling, no production, 
buy it from our enemies, the ``send our money offshore'' syndrome will 
plunge us back into another energy crisis.
  I say to those who might be listening today, connect the dots. One of 
those dots you will connect is with your politicians, with your 
policymakers. Insist that they do the right thing, and the right thing 
is to free this country up and get us back into the business of 
production.
  While the OCS moratorium has lifted, here is another little problem. 
A couple of years ago, with a political compromise here on the floor of 
the Senate, we took a little piece off the Florida coast, down off the 
Alabama coast, called lease sale 181. The reason we opened that was 
because it was very close to the infrastructure--meaning the pipes and 
the refinery areas. We know there is a lot of gas and oil there. We 
created special conditions. We even indemnified, or protected from 
lawsuits, some of the companies going in there. Those sales are let and 
those companies are headed there. We believe there could be several 
billion barrels of oil there.
  But, very quietly, in the language it also prohibits us from going on 
east toward the Florida coast where there are billions more barrels of 
oil that were once under the OCS moratorium but have special language 
and special protection and still have that special language and still 
have that special protection, even with the moratoria expiration being 
lifted this past week.
  That is another dirty little secret that nobody wants to talk about--
the Floridians most assuredly don't want to talk about--even though in 
Florida today they are saying drill it, go after it, get it, help us 
out; drop our energy bills, help our pocketbooks, help our family 
budget. Congress, do the right thing.
  Those are some of the challenges the new Congress will face. We have 
a staggering economy, we are in a major credit crunch, we have 
consumers who are maxed out in a lot of ways, but the one thing they 
grew so very angry about the last 6 months was that somebody was 
robbing them blind--or at least they thought they were--at the fuel 
pump. The reason we had an energy crisis was because we began to have a 
political crisis on the floor of this Senate years ago when we 
continually locked up our resources, all in the name of some worthy 
cause, denying the riches of our country and our land to the American 
people.
  As some know who have been listening or have been watching the floor 
for the last hour, I am not going to be here. I am retiring. I spent a 
lot of my years dealing with the very issue I am talking about now, all 
in the name of increased production, fighting unbelievable odds because 
of the beliefs many of our Members of Congress have about locking it up 
in the name of something.
  I would hope Congress got real and recognized the reality of the 
world we live in. Just as we live in a worldwide economic market, we 
also live in a worldwide energy market. The great tragedy of today has 
created, in part, the economic crisis we are in. While it was at the 
gas pump for the average citizen every day, at least when oil was $140 
a barrel, we were sending upwards of $1.2 billion offshore to buy oil.
  America cannot continue to do that and remain a wealthy and 
prosperous nation. We simply are draining our Treasury dry. Yet we have 
oil all around us. Consumers are now seeing ads on television talking 
about the great shale pools of natural gas the new technology is 
bringing. Yet very quietly we are trying to keep a lot of that out of 
reach, all in the name of the environment.
  We have all other kinds of energy resources we ought to be going 
after and developing. I believe the next decade in front of us is the 
decade of energy. I think as a Congress we are awakening. I know the 
consumers have awakened and they are going to demand that Congress do 
what is right, all in the name of new production, new technologies, 
diverse kinds of energy portfolios for our country.
  We will not be a wealthy nation 20 years from now. We will not be a 
nation that allows our citizens and our young people to pursue the 
American dream as we and our parents before us and our grandparents 
before them.
  We need to recognize the next 20 years ought to be and must be 
dedicated to the production of energy; all forms, clean, diverse. That 
is our challenge. So let's connect the dots.
  Last night we talked about a credit crunch and a credit crisis. I 
believe it was worsened by an energy crunch and an energy crisis we 
have lived through and are currently continuing to live through.
  If the Congress does not bring that together, then we will fail, or 
at least we will not allow the greatest hope and the greatest 
expectation of our country, this great country, to see its natural 
level. Those are our challenges.
  Bold votes last night, bold and necessary steps were taken. Can this 
Senate as a policymaking body be as bold in energy as we were with the 
economy? That is the challenge we face. I will not face it anymore. But 
everybody who serves here will. I hope they can meet that challenge. 
Because if they fail, then our great Nation is weakened and the 
opportunities many of us have worked for, for our children and our 
grandchildren over the years, simply cannot be realized.
  So Senate, Congress, connect the dots. Work at getting the economy 
right, work at getting energy production back online, work at giving 
this great enterprising country of ours the opportunity to create and 
to be what it can be. That is a necessary and important challenge. I am 
confident, if the citizens of our country demand it, the Congress will 
rise to that occasion.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado is recognized.

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