[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 6]
[House]
[Pages 8911-8912]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          ENERGY INDEPENDENCE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Madam Speaker, just a little while ago, we 
voted to suspend the acquisition of petroleum for the Strategic 
Petroleum Reserve and for other purposes, a bill, H.R. 6022, which is 
going to take about 70,000 barrels of oil a day that would be going 
into the petroleum reserve and put it into the market for Americans to 
use in gasoline and other products.
  It sounded very good and I voted for it because it is one small step, 
if you can call it a small step, in the right direction, but it's 
really not going to solve the problem.
  The problem we have is that the United States is not energy 
independent. We have been talking about energy independence for the 
last 35 to 40 years, and we haven't done anything about it.
  This House, and primarily the Democrat party, is being held hostage 
by the environmental lobby that won't allow us to drill in places like 
the ANWR in Alaska. Alaska is three-and-a-half times the size of Texas. 
It's huge. I've been up to Alaska. Drilling up there in the ANWR isn't 
going to hurt anybody or anything. And I cannot understand why we can't 
get 1 million to 2 million barrels of oil a day out of there that would 
help the American people see the price of their gasoline and other fuel 
products reduced dramatically.
  We can't drill off the continental shelf, even 100 miles out, because 
of the

[[Page 8912]]

environmental lobby, and yet Fidel Castro, and his brother Raul Castro, 
90 miles off of the Florida shore, can drill within 45 miles or 50 
miles of the United States of America and actually drill into oil 
reserves that we have down in that area. In other words, taking our oil 
reserves and pumping them out of that area and into their coffers, and 
they're selling that under contract to China, our oil reserves that we 
could drill for down in the area between us and Cuba.
  We also have such dependency on the Middle East it isn't even funny. 
We have dependency on Venezuela. One of our chief adversaries now is 
the President of Venezuela, and he controls in large part the price of 
oil and gasoline in this country, as do the people in the Middle East 
that have great oil reserves and are pumping it.
  And it's extremely important, in my opinion, that we do something 
about becoming energy independent. We talk about it all the time. We 
talk about moving toward other forms of energy and I'm for that, but 
it's going to take time for that transition to take place. And in the 
meantime, the environmental lobby is blocking us from drilling in the 
ANWR, drilling offshore on the continental shelf, and allowing our 
enemies to make a huge profit at our expense.
  The gasoline prices that the American people are paying today is a 
direct result of us caving in this country to the environmental lobby 
year after year after year. We could move dramatically toward energy 
independence if we could just pass an energy bill that would allow us 
to use our resources.
  And we come to this floor and talk about it all the time, and the 
American people are getting a steady diet that President Bush is 
responsible for the high gas prices. That's absolutely absurd. The 
reason the gas prices are as high as they are today is because we can't 
drill the oil out of our country and get our reserves to the market so 
that the gas prices can be reduced.
  We can't do it because the Democratic party primarily is caving in 
after year after year to the environmental lobby, and we can extract 
oil out of the ANWR and off the continental shelf in an environmentally 
safe way. So, if the people of this country are really concerned about 
gas prices, they ought to find where the fault really lies, and that is 
with this Congress and the liberals who are controlled by the 
environmental lobby and will not allow us to drill to get the oil 
reserves that we have in our country and off the continental shelf.
  It's a tragic shame, and I just wish the American people could get 
the information and the drive-by media, as Mr. Limbaugh calls it, would 
report the facts as they are. We have the ability to move toward energy 
independence, and we don't do it year after year after year, and we 
continue to be dependent on foreign oil. That's one of the main reasons 
why the price of gasoline is approaching $4 a gallon.

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