[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 9120-9127]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




MOTION TO INSTRUCT CONFEREES ON S. CON. RES. 70, CONCURRENT RESOLUTION 
                   ON THE BUDGET FOR FISCAL YEAR 2009

  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to instruct 
conferees.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Clerk will report the motion.
  The Clerk read as follows:

       Mr. Ryan of Wisconsin moves that the managers on the part 
     of the House at the conference on the disagreeing votes of 
     the two Houses on the House amendment to the concurrent 
     resolution on the budget, S. Con. Res. 70, be instructed to 
     increase negative budget authority and outlays in section 
     101(19), function 920 (Allowances) of the House amendment, by 
     $2.02 billion over the period of fiscal years 2009 through 
     2013.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from 
Wisconsin (Mr. Ryan) and the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) 
will be recognized for 30 minutes each.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Wisconsin.
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  First off, Mr. Speaker, I would like to celebrate the fact that we 
are here in this well talking about this motion to go to conference, 
and I want to compliment our chairman of the Budget Committee, Mr. 
Spratt, the gentleman from South Carolina. And I mean this in a very 
sincere way.
  The budget process doesn't work if you don't have a budget, and I 
want to compliment the gentleman from South Carolina for making it 2 
years in a row for actually bringing forward and getting through a 
budget resolution. It looked like it wasn't going to happen. We won't 
be supporting it, but the fact that the budget chairman is keeping the 
budget process intact speaks very good to this institution, good to the 
process, and I want to compliment the gentleman from South Carolina for 
doing that.
  Now, on to the motion to instruct. Everyone agrees, Mr. Speaker, that 
we need to reduce our reliance on foreign oil. But frankly, if we 
really want to move forward with greater energy independence, we should 
increase our petroleum supply by increasing our domestic production of 
oil. The motion accomplishes just that.
  The Republican motion calls on the conferees to increase the receipt 
levels in the final budget resolution by expanding leasing in Federal 
areas in the West, in the Outer Continental Shelf and in the Arctic 
National Wildlife Refuge in an environmentally sound manner.
  Yesterday, the House voted overwhelmingly to suspend the purchase of 
the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as a means to increase oil supply and 
reduce gasoline prices. It's unclear whether this will have any impact 
on oil prices, much less gas prices.
  This motion would accomplish that result. It would, No. 1, increase 
domestic oil production and put downward pressure on oil prices and 
gasoline prices; No. 2, it would reduce our reliance on foreign oil; 
and, No. 3, it would reduce the deficit.
  More than a year ago, the Democratic majority pledged to bring 
gasoline prices down. On January 4, 2007, the day the Democratic 
majority took control of the House, the price of gas was an average of 
$2.33 a gallon. Today Americans are paying an average of $3.76 per 
gallon to put fuel in their cars. Just 2 days ago in Kenosha, Wisconsin 
it was $3.95. It's $4 in some areas. This is an increase of at least 
$1.43 a gallon.
  Republicans are seeking to tap into America's great natural resources 
in an environmentally sound and effective way to provide the consumers 
the relief at the pump that they deserve, while reducing our reliance 
on foreign oil.
  This Republican motion is a step in the right direction to enhance 
our energy security and put in place a long-term plan to provide relief 
at the pump. These are the steps we need to take to assist families, 
communities, small businesses, those that are suffering with soaring 
prices of oil and gasoline.
  With that, I would like to yield 5 minutes to the distinguished 
gentleman from Alaska (Mr. Young).
  Mr. YOUNG of Alaska. I thank the chairman for yielding.
  This is about energy and about the budget, and this is about the 
Arctic wildlife range in Alaska.
  We have voted 12 times on this floor; in fact, I think Mr. Spratt 
voted for it, Mr. Dingell voted for it, or will vote for it, to try to 
open the last great known elephant in oil fields in the continental 
United States. If we were to do so today, we would deliver to the 
American public 1 million barrels of oil for 30 continuing years--a 
day. Thirty years, 1 million barrels a day. That's the very minor 
estimate.
  But more than that, it would provide, this year, if we were just to 
lease it, $191 billion in revenue for the budget, $191 billion for the 
lease and the development of ANWR. And in 3 years I can deliver to the 
American public 1 million barrels a day or more. That's more than 
Venezuela. That keeps Venezuela from jacking the prices around.
  If we were to do it, my good friends, it would drop the price of oil 
about $10 a barrel immediately; not because we're delivering it, but it 
would be the first time this Congress has worked on the supply side, 
and the speculators would stop speculating if they saw that Congress 
was serious about developing our national and our Federal lands in 
fossil fuels. Why we don't do that I cannot understand.
  Yes, we do have to change our modes of transportation in a period of 
time. But there's no way you can bridge the ability of not using fossil 
fuels in the short-term.
  Now, you think about the consumer today in Alaska, and you think 
about the consumer in the rest of the Nation and what they have to do 
at $4 a gallon, maybe $5. And I have estimates it may go as far as $10 
by the end of the year, and that's going to be on your watch.
  We're here talking about the budget. But if we want to solve the 
budget problems, let's create some dollars. But more than that, let's 
create less dependency on foreign oil.
  How we can sit here as a body and send dollars overseas, and the 
billions of dollars; to give you some idea, the average tax for every 
man, woman and child, everybody listening to this station tonight is 
paying $2,085 per every man, woman and child in tax to the foreign 
countries, burning their oil. Seventy percent of their oil.
  And some people say, well, it's the oil companies. Nonsense. This is 
about demand globally and supply. We're not the only buyers anymore. 
America's not the only ones that have automobiles. America's not the 
only one using fossil fuels. China is burning more barrels of fuel 
today than we are, and that drives the price up. We're no longer the 
only buyer, and the seller can ask for the price they're going to get.
  The only way you can relieve that is start developing our national, 
on Federal lands, our oil for the good of the American people. Why 
we're not doing this, I don't know.
  And remember, you heard me before on this, well it's not your fault, 
it's not our fault, it's this fault, the body of
this Congress. We've got to stop pandering for those who say no to 
developing our fossil fuels. We have to stop pandering for those saying 
it's going to be a total climate change because it is going to happen 
in this world. They will be burning oil, and we'll be unable to take 
and support our people until we develop our fields as we should develop 
them.
  I'm hoping America's listening. I hope America will wake up to the 
fact. We have the ability to do it here today. We have the ability to 
solve the budget problem, but we have a better ability to solve the 
energy problem in America.
  I'm asking my fellow colleagues, let's do it. Let's do it today. 
Let's do it in the future. Let's solve the problems of energy in this 
Nation.

[[Page 9121]]

  Mr. SPRATT. I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, on March 13, we passed the budget resolution. It's a 
good resolution. It moves the budget to balance by the Year 2012 and, 
along the way, it accumulates less debt than the Bush budget. It limits 
spending to a reasonable level.
  But I can truthfully say that this bill does more for education, more 
for the environment, more for energy, more for science and innovation 
than the President's budget or the Republicans' resolution. And also, 
critically important, it avoids the deep cuts in Medicare and Medicaid 
that are provided for, called for in the President's budget. And it 
protects the middle income tax cuts; provides AMT relief for middle 
income families for whom it was never intended.
  Therefore, we have the outline of a good budget for the coming fiscal 
year, and we need to pass it, send it to conference, bring the 
conference report back. We have an excellent chance, I think, of 
passing the first conference report, back to back, since the year 2000.
  What my friends on the other side of the aisle have introduced is, to 
my way of thinking, a distraction, a red herring. ANWR is never 
mentioned in our resolution. And to my recollection it was not 
mentioned in your resolution. So the topic here is wholly out of the 
scope of the resolution on either side, particularly ours, and wholly 
outside the jurisdiction of our committee. We don't assume ANWR 
revenues, we don't preclude ANWR revenues because we don't have the 
authority to prescribe that.
  The most we can provide for in a budget resolution is a certain 
revenue floor, a certain amount of revenues be collected over the year 
to be applied against the expenditures that we broadly distribute in 
something called the 302(a) section of our bill and the 302(b), 
providing for 302(b) allocations.
  So this budget resolution, this resolution to instruct, motion to 
instruct conferees, goes off on a tack that is totally different from 
what the resolution's all about, what the committee's jurisdiction is. 
If you want to debate this, there's another forum for debating it. 
There's another committee, the Resources Committee.
  We don't have the authority to do what you would call upon us to do. 
We don't take a position for ANWR or against ANWR in the budget 
resolution because it's not the place for that kind of policy 
resolution. There are other places here for that to be established.
  So we've got a good budget resolution. We do not need this 
resolution, this motion to instruct conferees, to do anything towards 
balancing the budget. You've got a very nominal sum of money in here 
when it comes to a 5-year period of time.
  And one question I would leave with you, is you call for an increase 
in negative budget authority and outlays. If I didn't know what that 
meant, I wouldn't know what it meant when I first saw it on the printed 
page here. But I would take it that not only does oil revenues fall 
under this rubric, but so would forest products, national parks and 
things of that nature.
  So it's not clear exactly what you're calling for here. I can only 
say it's a distraction. It's a red herring, it's not needed, and it 
does not really belong in the budget resolution process.
  I retain the balance of my time.
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time 
remains on each side?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Wisconsin has 23 minutes. 
The gentleman from South Carolina has 26\1/2\ minutes.
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I will yield myself 30 seconds simply to say, 
using the chairman's argument, then there's no money in this budget for 
veterans, no money in this budget for science, no money in this budget 
for education if you use that line of argument. There's only money for 
discretionary spending in here.
  A budget resolution is a series of numbers, and we're saying, let's 
adjust the numbers to accommodate the policy we're talking about here, 
drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the Outer 
Continental Shelf, the Intermountain West.
  At this time I'd like to yield 4 minutes to the distinguished ranking 
member of the Commerce Committee, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Barton).
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. I thank the distinguished ranking member of the 
Budget Committee.
  Before I speak in favor of the Ryan motion to instruct conferees on 
the budget, let me give you a post-SPR suspension update. The price of 
oil went up $1.73 on the mercantile market yesterday after we voted to 
suspend shipments into the SPR. At some point in time I sure hope it 
does come down and we'll work together, hopefully, in a bipartisan 
basis to bring oil and energy prices down. But our symbolic vote 
yesterday had the opposite effect of what it was intended because 
prices went up.
  Let me speak now in favor of this motion to instruct. I would point 
all the Members in the body to the quote above the Speaker's rostrum by 
Daniel Webster. It says, the very first part of that quote, ``Let us 
develop the resources of our land.'' And this motion to instruct is a 
direct descendant of that sentiment.
  We are not helpless, we are not hopeless in this country in terms of 
energy. If we will develop the resources of our land, we could, in all 
probability, within 5, maybe 6, 7 years, double the amount of oil or 
oil equivalent that we're producing right now in the United States.
  We're currently producing somewhere between 6 and 7, maybe a little 
over 7 million barrels. As Congressman Young has just pointed out, if 
we were to drill in ANWR, it would start out with a production 
capacity, in all likelihood, of about 300,000 barrels a day. And in the 
optimum case, it could be ramped up to about 2 million barrels a day 
within 5 or 6 years.
  We have over a million barrels a day of production off the coast of 
California. We have 2 trillion barrels of oil equivalent in the shale 
oil deposits in Wyoming and Colorado.

                              {time}  1745

  We haven't even inventoried what is off the coast of the east coast 
of the United States. We have the Chinese drilling between Cuba and 
Florida, and yet we're not allowed, because of moratoria, to drill 
there.
  So we're not hopeless. We can also develop our coal resources. 
Congressman Shimkus has a bill on coal-to-liquids that is very helpful, 
and yet we stand here and refuse to adopt any supply-side policies at 
all as prices go higher and higher and higher.
  If you live in an urban area where you don't depend on an automobile, 
you may not feel those high prices. But if you live in a suburban or 
rural area, well, you have to drive to work and drive to shop. If you 
work for a trucking company, if you work for an airline company and you 
see the price of diesel and the price of aviation fuel go higher and 
higher and higher, you feel it. It's not an academic exercise.
  This motion to instruct simply says let's have some domestic 
development of our resources. Let's try to bring those prices down not 
with just the conservation component, but with the supply component. 
And with world markets where they are today, production of oil is 
somewhere around 85 million barrels a day. The consumption of oil is 
somewhere around 85 million barrels a day. The demand for oil in the
United States in the last 2 months in a row has gone down, but the 
demand for oil in the rest of the world has gone up. And it's gone up 
more in the rest of the world than it's gone down here in the United 
States.
  But if we were to be producing another 1 million, 2 million, 3 
million barrels of oil a day in the United States, that would create a 
cushion that would take some of the heat out of the market and the 
price would go down.
  I can't imagine any Member of this body that doesn't have a 
constituency that's concerned about higher food prices, higher energy 
prices, and higher prices of living.
  Let's vote for the motion to instruct and try to get a supply 
component to our energy policy.


[[Page 9122]]


  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Mr. Markey).
  Mr. MARKEY. There is a certain absurdity to this debate that the poor 
oil companies have had their hands tied. We've had a President from 
Texas, an oil man; a Vice President from Texas, an oil man; the 
chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee was from Texas; the 
chairman of the subcommittee on energy was from Texas; the majority 
leader was from Texas, all over the time that the Republicans 
controlled the House, the Senate, and the Presidency.
  So during that time, by the way, and this is the good news, the Bush 
administration actually gave to the oil and gas industry 268 million 
acres of American land to drill on for oil and gas. Said, You just go 
and drill there. And guess what we got? Last year, ExxonMobil, the 
other four big companies, they reported $142 billion worth of profits. 
Pretty good tipping the American people upside down.
  How much of it do they put into renewables? How much do they put into 
the supply side, the new energy sources: wind, solar, all of the new 
technologies? ExxonMobil: $10 million. They made $42 billion. They put 
$10 million into renewables. And what else do they say? When we come 
and say, How about giving back some of those tax breaks so we can give 
them over to wind and solar, the oil executives said, You can't touch 
our tax breaks, and by the way, we're also not going to invest in 
renewables.
  Well, there's our future. Our future is saying let's go to the most 
pristine parts of the country. Let's go drill there. Let's not invest 
in solar; let's not invest in wind; let's not reinvest. That's the 
plan.
  By the way, the price of oil under the Bush watch has gone from $30 a 
barrel to $126 a barrel. It's gone from $1.45 a gallon to $3.72 a 
gallon. And the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, when the Strategic 
Petroleum Reserve is filled and ready to go so we can deploy it, the 
President says he doesn't want to use it.
  Well, here's the spigot, Mr. President. It's on top of the White 
House. You just have to turn it, deploy the Strategic Petroleum 
Reserve, the price of a barrel of oil will begin to drop immediately.
  This is a phony debate.
  Mr. RYAN from Wisconsin. At this time, Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes 
to the gentleman from Illinois, a member of the Energy and Commerce 
Committee, Mr. Shimkus.
  Mr. SHIMKUS. I always love following my friend from Massachusetts.
  You know, most countries view their resources as a strategic 
advantage. But we in this country in the majority view our resources as 
an environmental hazard. This motion to instruct is critical. If we can 
get a million barrels out of ANWR at today's prices, do you know how 
much money goes into the Federal Treasury? $192 billion. Go tell that 
to your Blue Dogs who are holding up emergency supplemental bills 
because of PAYGO.
  That's just ANWR. Let's talk about the other resources that we have.
  Here is the reality. It wasn't President Bush that promised in 2006 
that the Democrats have a plan to lower gas prices. That was Speaker 
Pelosi. In fact, she made the same mistake today. She claimed numerous 
times that the ag bill would lower prices, gas prices.
  Now, I voted for it. I'm an ethanol guy. I'm a cellulosic guy. But if 
we don't bring more supply into the market, we're not going to lower 
prices. The demand from China and the demand from India and the demand 
from Europe just overwhelms us and is overwhelming the market. It was 
$58 when this majority came into power, $125 today.
  I haven't used this for a while, but the Pelosi Premium, $2.33 when 
you came into the majority, Speaker Pelosi said, We're going to lower 
gas prices. $3.77 today. Chairman Dingell is here. He's pulled this 
bill off the table, but climate change would add 50 cents a gallon. 
$4.20 is what we would be paying under climate change and current gas 
prices.
  What's the solution? The great Outer Continental Shelf. Billions of 
barrels of oil, trillions of cubic feet of natural gas. There are. You 
can't deny it. The eastern gulf, off-limits by appropriation bill. Not 
resources bill. It's an appropriation bill that puts this off-limits. 
It's the OCS off the western coast. Billions of barrels of oil, 
trillions of cubic feet; we can't have it.
  What would we do with the $192 billion from ANWR royalties? Let's go 
and take American coal, United Mine Worker jobs, let's build coal-to-
liquid refineries, operating engineer, building-trade jobs. Let's build 
pipelines. Major organized labor jobs. And let's use it to lower the 
cost of jet fuel so we don't have the aviation industry going bankrupt. 
$192 billion would go a long way to do the solar, to do the wind power, 
to do everything we want to do.
  We want more supply, not less. Environmental resources is a national 
advantage for our country, but we won't take use of it.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from 
Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz).
  Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, it doesn't really surprise me 
that our good friends on the other side of the aisle have yet another 
drilling solution to our energy problems. Because it seems that with 
every energy problem, they have never found an energy problem that 
drilling won't solve. When will our colleagues in the minority get it 
into their heads that we cannot drill our way out of our energy 
problems?
  What I think is amazing is that they have actually finally realized 
that there is a problem that needs to be addressed. Some of them have 
finally acknowledged that global warming is a problem. But they still 
refuse to let go of the tired direction that they continue to want to 
travel in, which is to prop up their wealthy corporate interests, prop 
up the oil industry, which is the most profitable industry in this 
country, with billions of dollars in oil subsidies.
  And today's solution, in this motion to instruct, is that we should 
drill for more oil in a pristine environmental track in Alaska, go off 
the coast of Florida and the Outer Continental Shelf, drop some oil 
drills so that we can really severely negatively impact the tourism 
across the coastal regions instead of trying to make sure that we can 
truly invest in alternative energy research. Which part of ``No, we 
need an alternative'' don't they understand?
  Well, consistently the voters have said they want to move this 
country in a new direction. They want to make sure that we invest in 
alternative energy research and wean ourselves truly off of our 
dependence on oil. Not just hear more talk about it.
  Mr. Speaker, drilling is not the answer. It is inappropriate to 
suggest that we should have more drilling in ANWR, in Wyoming, off the 
coast of Florida. We need to make sure that we can finally step up and 
make a bipartisan commitment that we will invest in alternative energy 
research so that we can finally end this energy crisis that we find 
ourselves in.
  I'm glad to see that the Republicans finally acknowledge it's a 
problem.
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the 
gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Terry).
  Mr. TERRY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate this opportunity.
  Let's look at this in perspective.
  We just learned from Mr. Shimkus that over the lifetime of ANWR, if 
we just opened up that area to produce, that we could provide revenues of 
up to $192 billion on the lease bids and royalties. And we always seem 
to be looking, at least the bills that keep coming forward from our 
friends from the other side of the aisle, from the majority, always 
seem to be trying to raise revenues. And certainly the $6 billion per 
year that we could get just from the ANWR royalties in bids would pay 
for the GI Bill that they're going to raise taxes for tomorrow.
  Not only is this a bonus that we raise revenue. By the way, we have a 
deficit that we're running. So I think where we can raise revenues 
without raising taxes is somewhere we could look.
  But over the weekend, I had the opportunity to sit down with a 
trucking company in Omaha. They were telling 


[[Page 9123]]


me that the average price 
of diesel across the Nation is $4.50. It's costing them almost a dollar 
per mile. What does that mean to the consumers? Well, it means that 
your family budget is going in the tank, literally. That means that 
when you go to the grocery store, that you're paying higher prices for 
food, not because some portion of corn is being used for ethanol; what 
it means is that the transportation costs of the food from the farm to 
the grocery stores is so high and is being absorbed in the prices at 
the grocery store.
  So that's why your milk is going up, that's why the eggs have gone 
up, that's why your grain-related foods, like cereals and bread, have 
gone up. Yes, we need to focus on demand here. But we can also win-win 
by focusing on supply.
  Let's do the right thing. And good job, Mr. Ryan.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Becerra).
  Mr. BECERRA. I thank the gentleman for yielding and his work on 
putting forward a budget that brings us to balance and that is fiscally 
responsible.
  Mr. Speaker, what we have here is a repeat of what we heard during 
the 12 years that our friends on the Republican side of the aisle tried 
to push forward a very failed policy as our friend, Mr. Markey from 
Massachusetts, mentioned with regard to ANWR.
  This is a policy that was tried over the years by a Republican 
Congress with a Republican President, and never once did it pass 
because of the flaws and challenges that it would present.
  What I think we have here is a classic case of what many of us will 
recall from the George Foreman-Muhammad Ali fight: a case of rope-a-
dope where you're trying to deflect what's really going on on this 
floor tonight. And that is the fact that this budget presented by this 
Congress will bring us to a balanced budget faster than the President's 
budget at the same time that it's providing for some fiscal 
responsibility when it comes to tax cuts, energy policy, how we treat 
our kids in school, what we do for our kids when it comes to health 
care. All of that's done in a way that not only brings us to a point of 
having fiscal sanity in the way we do things, but it does it without 
having to deal with these gimmicks that we have now with ANWR.
  The reality is that if you don't divert the American public's 
attention to what's going on in this budget, they would be very happy. 
The fact that we are restoring fiscal responsibility by making sure 
that anything we propose to do that costs money will be paid for so 
that we don't continue to see rising budget deficits is phenomenal and 
it's new.
  What we see here is an effort to devote resources to energy that's 
renewable sources that provides with renewable sources on energy, that 
provides us with efficient sources of energy that moves us towards 
solar, towards wind; and we put money there, and we do it in a fiscally 
responsible way.

                              {time}  1800

  We don't cut the moneys that the President never provided for his No 
Child Left Behind education program. We provide the money. We do all 
those things, and we do them in fiscally responsible ways.
  That's the story in this budget. You don't need to do rope-a-dope to 
get past that. This is a time for us to move in a different direction. 
We intend to do so. I urge Members to vote against this motion to 
instruct.
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, let me inquire as to how much 
time remains on each side.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Altmire). The gentleman from Wisconsin 
has 13\1/2\ minutes. The gentleman from South Carolina has 20\1/2\ 
minutes.
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. SPRATT. I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from West 
Virginia (Mr. Rahall), the chairman of the Resources Committee.
  Mr. RAHALL. I thank the chairman of the Budget Committee, Mr. Spratt, 
for yielding me the time.
  While the Republicans continue to argue that opening more land is 
essential to lowering gasoline prices, the facts prove otherwise. We 
simply cannot drill our way to lower prices at the pump, and let's look 
at those facts.
  Since 2000, the amount of drilling on Federal lands has steadily 
increased. Between 1999 and 2007, drilling permits on public lands has 
increased more than 361 percent; yet gas prices, as we all know too 
acutely, have risen dramatically. There is simply no correlation 
between the two.
  Despite the Federal Government's willingness to make public lands 
available to energy production, of the 42 million acres of onshore 
Federal lands currently being leased by oil and gas companies, that's 
the red column here, only about 12 million are actually in production 
or producing oil and gas. The industry has this much available to them, 
and this is all they're using right here. They are obviously 
stockpiling these leases, and it's been evident for at least the past 
decade.
  In 2007, for example, the government issued 7,561 permits to drill. 
Yet only 4,704 wells were started. Over the past 4 years, there have 
been 9,800 more permits issued than the wells drilled.
  Today, the oil and gas industry holds in excess of 3,000 permits for 
onshore oil and gas development that they are not using to increase 
domestic production.
  Now, here's the most important point for my colleagues on the other 
side of the aisle. Some would argue that the entire Outer Continental 
Shelf should be opened to oil and gas development. This is a specious 
argument as drilling off the coasts of California, Florida or Virginia 
has been consistently and repeatedly opposed by both parties.
  And for those on the minority side who may want to vote for this 
motion to recommit, just remember: This will be viewed as a vote to 
allow oil and gas drilling off your shores.
  According to the Department of the Interior, the parts of the OCS, 
primarily the Gulf of Mexico, that are currently open to drilling 
contain 79 percent of the oil and 82 percent of the natural gas that 
exists on the entire OCS.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman's time has expired.
  Mr. SPRATT. I yield the gentleman 1 additional minute.
  Mr. RAHALL. And as is the case with onshore, out of the 40 million 
acres currently being held by oil and gas companies, under lease, in 
the Outer Continental Shelf, the oil and gas industry has put less than 
7 million of those acres into production. It's already there. It's 
available to them. Yet they're not using it, and they want to go 
elsewhere to drill.
  In a nutshell, the industry has access to most of the estimated 
technologically recoverable natural gas that's occurring in the Federal 
OCS, in fact four times as much as is estimated by the Minerals 
Management Service to occur in the moratoria areas, but the industry is 
not developing it.
  You cannot drill your way to lower gas prices at the pump. The 
industry has plenty available to them. Let them use what they already 
have before going into other pristine areas like ANWR.
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. I continue to reserve my time.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
Michigan (Mr. Stupak).
  Mr. STUPAK. I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.
  I hope we will defeat this motion to recommit. I sit on the Energy 
and Commerce Committee. I've done a lot of work on oil and gas, and I 
was in my office when I heard all these myths coming from the other 
side, and I thought we had to come down and refute this.
  My friends on this side of the aisle keep saying Congress needs to 
open more areas to domestic drilling. The U.S. has already increased 
domestic drilling, and gas prices have continued to climb.
  Since 2000, the number of wells drilled on Federal lands has 
increased by 66 percent, from 3,000 to nearly 5,000 wells. During that 
same time, the price of gas has doubled.
  According to the Federal Government, 79 percent of the oil in the 
Outer 


[[Page 9124]]


Continental Shelf is already available for leasing. Eighty-two 
percent of the gas in the Outer Continental Shelf is available for 
leasing. And still, we open up more lands to leasing in 2006. The U.S. 
cannot drill its way out of high energy costs.
  The other fact that my friends always try to put forth is that 
environmental laws are stopping oil companies from building refineries. 
Completely false. In the 2005 Energy Policy Act, we actually put in 
there a section that, as Secretary of Energy Bodman said, eases the 
constraints that have strangled new refinery construction. We put that 
in in 2005; yet no one has ever come forward and said we want to use 
that provision to put forth more refineries.
  The U.S. has actually shut down its refineries. Since 1981, there 
were 324 refineries. Now, there are only 149 refineries. As chairman of 
Oversight and Investigations, we have the memos from Texaco, Chevron, 
Mobil that all said in order to raise our prices we have to shut down 
refineries, and they've shut them down.
  Mergers in the oil industry have affected prices. In 2004, the 
Government Accountability Office found more than 2,600 mergers in the 
U.S. petroleum industry since the 1990s.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman's time has expired.
  Mr. SPRATT. I yield the gentleman 1 additional minute.
  Mr. STUPAK. Gasoline inventories actually have a surplus. March 7, 
2008, we had a surplus of 22 million barrels of gas more than the 
previous year. Gas supplies are up. Oil gas demand is actually down. 
And what do we have? We have a 51 percent increase in that same period 
of time. Gas went from $3.10 to $3.61 since April 1.
  Look, we've had mergers. We've had refineries not being built. We 
have more exploratory. We have more supply. Supply is up, demand is 
down, the prices have gone sky-high. Why is that? Look at the profits.
  ExxonMobil, first quarter of 2008, $10.9 billion; Royal Dutch Shell, 
$9.1 billion; BP, $7.6 billion, up 63 percent from last year; Chevron, 
$5.2 billion; Conoco Phillips, $4.1 billion. That is almost $40 billion 
in their first quarter. That's why gas prices are so high. That's why 
this Congress must act to lower gas prices.
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. At this time, Mr. Speaker, I'd like to yield 2 
minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence).
  Mr. PENCE. Well, I don't know what it's going to take, Mr. Speaker. 
Indiana is right up there with the rest of the country pushing about $4 
a gallon. We'll get people out on the road for vacations this summer, 
and I don't know what it's going to take for Congress to take dramatic 
action to lessen our dependence on foreign oil.
  I've got to tell you I was little bit encouraged last night, Mr. 
Speaker. The Democrat majority brought a bill to the floor that 
actually endorsed the idea that the cost of oil and gasoline is 
affected by supply and demand. We voted to suspend purchases by the 
Strategic Petroleum Reserve, therefore lessening the demand on global 
oil, believing that the price would come down.
  Well, today, this motion to instruct conferees is all about 
increasing the supply. Look, we hear a lot about oil profits; we always 
have. And no one respects the previous speaker more than me. But who in 
the world thinks that raising taxes on oil companies is going to lower 
their prices at the pump?
  I mean, for heaven's sakes, we understand as Americans that 
commodities and the price of commodities are dictated by supply and 
demand. We simply have to take those measures in an environmentally 
responsible way to explore and further exploit the resources that we 
have in the ground, and I speak specifically of the Alaska National 
Wildlife region and the other areas that are affected by this motion to 
instruct conferees.
  As long as we are going to continue to look at the most volatile area 
of the world for the majority of our energy needs, we are going to 
continue to see the extraordinary per barrel prices that we're seeing 
today, and Americans and Hoosiers are going to be suffering at the 
pump.
  Let's get real. Let's do something about the supply. Let's lessen our 
dependence on foreign oil. Vote for this motion to instruct conferees 
so that America can begin to realize on the vast natural resources that 
this country has.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from 
Illinois (Mr. Emanuel).
  Mr. EMANUEL. Mr. Speaker, a number of folks have mentioned on the 
other side, brought up stories about talking about the Speaker and what 
Democrats claim.
  In 2005, when the Republican Congress passed the President's energy 
bill, let me tell you what some folks said. The minority leader at that 
time says, ``This will lower energy prices for consumers.'' The 
minority whip, Mr. Blunt, said, ``Vote for lower gas prices and 
increase energy independence for America.'' This is what was offered 
and was sold when you did your energy bill. That's what you claimed.
  My colleague from Illinois, Congressman Shimkus, says, ``I do believe 
that it will help us become more independent of foreign oil, will 
expand our use of renewable fuels, and will make our electricity 
production and transmission more reliable. All of which will help slow 
price increases.''
  That hasn't been accomplished by any stretch of the imagination. When 
you passed it at that point, gasoline was at $59 a barrel. Today, as 
you know, it's 124 bucks a barrel. So it hasn't accomplished any of 
that goal. This is all what you claimed in your marketing at that point 
when you had an energy bill on the floor in 2005 because you only had 
one strategy. You didn't want to do anything about conservation. You 
didn't want to do anything about renewable energy sources and 
investment in future technologies. And you didn't want to do anything, 
as my colleague from West Virginia told you, that there were over 9,800 
permits out there, force American companies to start drilling in those 
permits rather than holding those permits here in the United States 
where we have some of the energy. There's plenty of that to go around.
  What we've done is put a budget together that breaks with the past. 
It offers a change in the sense it puts our budget in balance. It 
invests in education over what the President does. It invests in energy 
technologies for the future, and also, it ensures that the middle class 
gets a tax cut. This is a budget that's not only in balance but is in 
balance with our values and our priorities here.
  Now, you all have come up with a unique slogan, change you deserve. 
That's what you've marketed. All you've offered is more of the same, 
more of the same of $3 trillion of debt, the largest increase in debt 
in the shortest period of time in American history. That's the change 
America deserves?
  You've offered 10 million children without health care to go walking. 
Is that change you can deserve?
  You've offered an energy policy that has continued to rely on just 
drilling without looking at conservation, without looking at future 
technology. Is that change you can deserve?
  The American people deserve better, and they're offered here in a 
budget that is in balance with our priorities, balance with our 
economic goals. We put resources towards our education,
 towards energy technology and towards, in fact, making sure the middle 
class get a tax cut.
  In 2005, when you controlled the House, the Senate and the White 
House, you put together an energy bill that led America to where it is 
today. I think the American people deserve a change.
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, at this time, I'd like to yield 4 
minutes to a senior member of the Commerce Committee, Mr. Upton from 
Michigan.

                              {time}  1815

  Mr. UPTON. I thank my friend, Mr. Ryan.
  You know, gas prices yesterday in Kalamazoo, Michigan hit $3.99 a 
gallon. You know, I can remember when our imports from other countries 
for oil

[[Page 9125]]



and gas crossed the 50 percent threshold. And then it was 60 
percent. In a few years, it's going to be 88 percent of the oil that we 
consume is going to come from overseas. Sadly, I report that this 
country is woefully unprepared for the future for a country that's 
going to need 50 percent more energy by the year 2030.
  Now, we've done some things on conservation. We've done some CAFE 
standards, but that's not overnight, it's going to take a number of 
years. We've done some things on building standards and appliance 
standards, lighting. Those things kick in a few years from now. But you 
know what? I think all of us here, based on last night's vote, believe 
in the theory of supply and demand.
  Worldwide, the demand is going up dramatically. China and India, 10, 
15 percent annual growth rates. Our demand has actually declined 
because of the price by about a percent over the last year, but the 
supply has stayed the same. Yes, you can talk about more wells drilled, 
but the old existing wells aren't producing the oil that they used to. 
From the nineties to now, Alaskan oil has declined by 50 percent. And 
yet Bill Clinton, when he vetoed the ANWR bill 10 years ago, said, 
that's 10 years off, we don't need that now. Well, guess what? Ten 
years later, we need that oil. We need greater supply.
  Last night's vote, taking oil out of SPR, 60,000 barrels a day, a lot 
of us voted for it because that means that the supply is going to go up 
for consumers by 60,000 barrels a day. So we're onto that. That passed 
overwhelmingly here in the House. But whether it's Alaska, whether it's 
offshore drilling--I don't know how many of you here know that China is 
drilling off Cuba, 45 miles off the Florida coast. China is drilling 
off Florida, yet we can't do that. I think we have a limit of 100 
miles. Eighty-five percent of our offshore drilling is off-bounds. We 
need to reverse that.
  Last year in this House, we had a vote that prevailed by six votes 
that took land in our BLM lands, public lands out in Colorado, Utah, 
and Wyoming, it took it off so that we can't allow the permits to get 
oil shale. The oil shale reserves there are expected to exceed a 
trillion barrels. That's more than the Saudis. And we can't even allow 
the permitting for companies to go in and explore and perhaps increase 
the supply so that we can decrease the price with such a provision. I 
look forward to a revote on that same amendment perhaps this year.
  The Canadians. I met with a Canadian Minister of Energy a couple of 
weeks ago, with a Canadian ambassador. They are now successfully 
extracting a million barrels a day from oil shale in Alberta. And 
because of a certain section that was in the energy bill offered 
successfully last year, we can't take that in this country. If you want 
to increase the supply so that the price can come down, we have to look 
at domestic resources, whether they be off our shores, whether they be 
in our own lands and we know that we can produce it safely, or in 
Alaska as well, ANWR.
  We want the oil here. And we want to help have some decreasing 
pressure on that price that is costing consumers in lots of ways, not 
only their transportation, but food and all those different things.
  So I would like to think that we can adopt this resolution, looking 
for more receipts for the domestic industry.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. DeFazio).
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Well, here we have the Republicans engaging in fuzzy 
math again.
  Unlike the eight budgets submitted by George Bush, which are taking 
this country toward bankruptcy, they're so incredibly out of balance, 
unlike the 12 budgets given to us by the Republican majority here, this 
budget gets us to balance by 2012. And guess what? It has nothing to do 
with the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge, it's not an issue in the 
budget. You want to have that debate, let's have that debate in the 
Resources Committee and other appropriate venues.
  But if you want to have that debate, I've got a few things to say. I 
serve on the Resources Committee. We have 6,669 leases that are out 
there with the oil and gas industry that aren't producing; 30 million 
acres of land that's covered by that and offshore. We have nearly a 
quarter of a million acres in the Naval Petroleum Reserve. Bill Clinton 
leased our Naval Petroleum Reserve to the oil industry. Guess what? 
They're not yet developing the Naval Petroleum Reserve. There is a 
tremendous amount to be developed there. But you want to jump and 
leapfrog somewhere else for imaginary bits of oil.
  Under the most optimistic estimates, there's 100 days in ANWR. Now, 
we could do better if every American properly inflated the tires on 
their cars and their trucks and their SUVs. Try and find an air pump 
these days, they're darn hard to find. You want to do something? Let's 
have a Federal program to put air pumps out there and get people to 
fully inflate their tires. There is a sustainable way to cut demand. 
But the fantasy of ANWR, which the Republicans want to engage in, is to 
distract us from the speculation, the profiteering by the oil 
companies, speculation of the commodity markets driving up prices 50 
cents a gallon--legislation they passed for Enron, now bankrupt and 
defunct. And then we have the issue of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. 
We have come together on a bipartisan basis to say let's lower the 
price of gas at the pump by not buying the most expensive oil in 
history. They don't agree with us on going after the OPEC countries.
  So, you know, let's not talk about something that's potentially 10 
years out, that doesn't have anything to do with the budget. Let's talk 
about real measures on energy. And let's talk about a real budget to 
get this country back on the path to fiscal sustainability and 
responsibility.
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, at this time, I would like to 
yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Peterson).
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. I'm delighted today that we're talking 
about energy. I think it's vital because I want to tell you something; 
if we don't get a lid on energy prices in America, there will be no 
level of government with a budget that will balance. The cost to heat 
our schools, the cost to heat our hospitals, the cost to do everything 
is going to explode. The cost to move goods and services is exploding. 
And it's about time, Americans.
  I had a young lady say to me last week, she said, Mr. Peterson, I 
make $320 a week. I used to spend $90 to drive to work, now I'm 
spending $140. How do I pay my bills? What she doesn't know is she 
heats her home with natural gas, and the natural gas that we're putting 
in the ground today for next winter's heating is $11.50. Last year, it 
was running between $6.50 and $7. She's looking at a 50 percent 
increase in home heating costs next year, which she cannot meet.
  Folks, the average working American is struggling to pay their bills 
because of energy costs. Our State governments, our county governments 
and our hospitals and our schools are going to take money away from the 
classroom to heat those facilities. If this Congress does not address 
the energy issue, we're going to collapse the economic viability of 
this country.
  Energy runs this country. We've had $2 gas and $10 oil most of our 
lifetime, with a few spikes in the seventies,
eighties and nineties. Folks, we have $125 oil, $11.50 gas. We have not 
had a storm in the gulf in 2 years that always causes spike prices. 
We've not had a major country that supplies oil to us all tip over or 
have a coup that took away the government and took away that supply of 
oil.
  I'm predicting that countries like China, who are amassing energy all 
around the world, we'll read one of these days where they have 
purchased all the oil and gas that one of the major contributing 
countries can produce for the next decade and we won't get any of it.
  Folks, if we have a storm in the gulf this summer like they're 
predicting, and they're predicting them, if we have any kind of 
terrorist attack on a supply system, $125 oil will seem cheap to 


[[Page 9126]]



 us.  I'm not sure this economy can handle $125 oil.
  I am for every renewable there is, but let's look at the Energy 
Department's prediction: Oil, gas, coal, nuclear, renewables, hydro and 
non-hydro, that's their prediction. We've spent $30 billion for 
renewables. Folks, if we double wind and solar--and I wish we could 
double it every year--but if we double it, we will still be less than 
three-quarters of 1 percent of our energy needs.
  Where is the renewable coming? The renewable that's grown the fastest 
is wood waste. With pellet stoves heating hundreds of homes, with 
factories heating their factories with wood waste, wood waste has been 
the fastest growing energy renewable.
  Folks, America better get serious. And we'd better open our Outer 
Continental Shelf, we'd better do ANWR, we'd better do the Midwest. 
Coal-to-liquid, coal-to-gas, wind, solar, we need it all, folks. 
America is in an energy crisis.
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, let me say again, but say more emphatically, 
what I said at the outset, and that is that ANWR is never mentioned, 
never mentioned in the budget resolution, never mentioned in the report 
that accompanies the resolution. So it's wholly out of scope; it has 
nothing to do with the budget resolution before us, And it's also 
outside the jurisdiction of our Budget Committee. The jurisdiction over 
this drilling in Alaska, or wherever in the continental United States, 
belongs to the Resources Committee, not to the Budget Committee. So if 
you want to do what they're proposing to do here, you're in the wrong 
place before the wrong committee with the wrong proposal.
  Revenues from ANWR are not provided for in this budget resolution, 
they're not precluded in this resolution. The Budget Committee does not 
have the jurisdiction, as my good friend, Mr. Ryan, knows to tell the 
Ways and Means Committee or any other committee that has the power to 
produce revenues exactly how to do it. We simply tell them how much, 
not by what policy. We don't make policy prescriptions as to revenues 
in our committee. We simply tell the Budget Committee, the Ways and 
Means Committee, or the other committees that have the capacity to 
raise revenues or offsetting receipts, or what we have here called 
negative budget authority.
  In addition, if you read the cryptic language of this resolution, you 
will find it doesn't mention oil, or ANWR either, anywhere in it. You 
have to make some mighty extrapolations to get to the conclusion that 
this is talking about ANWR drilling and ANWR oil. It simply says we 
should issue instructions to increase negative budget authority, which 
could apply, in my estimation, to selling parkland, selling other 
assets of the United States which would be negative budget authority 
just like the revenues coming from a lease for drilling in ANWR.
  In any event, this is a red herring when it comes to the resolution 
before us. It has nothing to do with our budget resolution. Our budget 
resolution should be looked upon on its own four legs, and let it stand 
or fall on those merits. I think we've got a budget resolution.
  As I also said at the outset, we come to balance by the year 2012. 
And along the way we accumulate less debt than the President's budget. 
We limit spending in a reasonable fashion, but we provide more for 
education, more for the environment, more for energy, more for science 
and innovation than the President's budget. We protect the income tax 
cuts for middle-income Americans, we provide tax relief from the AMT 
for middle-income Americans, for whom it was never intended.
  This is a good budget outline for our country and will move us over 
time, if we adhere to it--and we do adhere to the PAYGO rule throughout 
the resolution--if we further adhere to it, it will move us to a 
balanced budget within the foreseeable future.
  Therefore, we do not have to vote for this motion to instruct 
conferees. It's not necessary. We need to go to conference and come 
back next week with a conference report that we can put to work so the 
House can get on with its business.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the remainder of 
the time.
  I'll begin by stating what I said in the beginning, which is, as a 
person who believes in having a strong and intact budget process, I 
want to compliment the chairman for getting us to a Budget Resolution, 
for doing it 2 years in a row. It's not an easy accomplishment. So on 
behalf of the institution, it's important that we pass these budget 
resolutions.

                              {time}  1830

  The problem is we're not going to pass a good budget resolution. The 
reason the gentleman's budget resolution achieves a balanced budget is 
because it contains the largest tax increase in American history. It 
cuts the child tax credit in half. It repeals the relief for the 
marriage penalty, raises income taxes across the board, raises capital 
gains and dividends taxes, brings the death tax back in, and puts us on 
a path for the largest tax increase in American history by replacing 
the alternative minimum tax. So, yes, the gentleman's budget does 
balance because it only increases spending by $280 billion while it 
increases taxes by $683 billion. That's how the gentleman balances the 
budget.
  But more to the point here, today the House voted to waive PAYGO to 
give farm subsidies to millionaires. Tomorrow the House is going to 
support PAYGO. They're going to enforce PAYGO to raise taxes on small 
businesses.
  So this is what we're doing here in this Congress. Whenever it's time 
to keep PAYGO in place to control spending, it's out the door. It's 
waived. It's swept under the rug. It's baseline shopping, number 
cooking, gimmicking, cliffs. But whenever the time comes to raise 
taxes, that's when we enforce PAYGO.
  Mr. Speaker, PAYGO doesn't exist. PAYGO is not in place. It is not 
being enforced. It is a sham. The only thing that PAYGO does today is 
give the majority an excuse to raise taxes. It doesn't cut spending. It 
doesn't reduce the deficit. It just raises taxes to fuel more spending.
  Watch what happens tomorrow. Today millionaires get agriculture 
subsidies because we waived PAYGO; tomorrow, taxing small businesses to 
create a new entitlement program.
  But to the point of this motion to instruct, what we are trying to 
achieve with this motion to instruct is to try to make this budget a 
little bit better, a little bit better by talking about the issue of 
the day, which is people are not being able to spread their paychecks 
as far as they were before. They can't get as much out of their 
paychecks because of $4 gasoline.
  Why do we have $4 gasoline? Because we don't have an energy policy in 
this country. And what we are simply saying is one of the reasons is we 
have so much supply we're not getting: 16 billion barrels at ANWR; 2 
trillion barrels in oil shale in Wyoming and Montana; 86 billion 
barrels in the Outer Continental Shelf.
  Let me say that one more time: 16 billion barrels in Alaska, 2 
trillion barrels in shale in the Intermountain West, and 86 billion 
barrels in the Outer Continental Shelf. All off-limits.
  If we just did ANWR, according to the CRS, the Federal Government
would see a surge in revenues, no new taxes, not even cutting spending, 
$191 billion; $191 billion, according to the CRS, from just doing ANWR. 
That's the smallest of all of our reserves. Think what we could do with 
$191 billion. We could reduce the deficit. We could create a Manhattan 
Project for research and development for renewable energies to put 
fossil fuels out of business.
  But, no, we're doing none of this. So this is the economic equivalent 
of shooting yourself in the foot, of cutting off your nose to spite 
your face. This is not an energy policy.
  This is a bad budget resolution that raises taxes on the American 
workers and families and businesses. The worst time we should be 
raising taxes is when we are possibly in an economic recession, and the 
last thing we ought to be

[[Page 9127]]


doing is raising taxes on people. 
Furthermore, with high food prices, high gas prices, we shouldn't be 
raising people's taxes. That's what this budget does.
  So to try to make it a little bit better, let's get some of our own 
oil and gas from our own country instead of being so reliant on 
foreigners for it. We're giving the wrong people our money, people who 
are not our friends overseas.
  So pass this motion to instruct. Make this budget a little bit 
better, and open up production so we can actually truly do something to 
lower the price of oil and make us less dependent on foreign oil.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Without objection, the previous question is 
ordered on the motion to instruct.
  There was no objection.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion to instruct.
  The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that 
the noes appeared to have it.
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and 
nays.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, further 
proceedings on this question will be postponed.

                          ____________________