[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Pages 12102-12149]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




          CONSUMER-FIRST ENERGY ACT OF 2008--MOTION TO PROCEED

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will 
resume consideration of the motion to proceed to S. 3044, which the 
clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       Motion to proceed to S. 3044, a bill to provide energy 
     price relief and hold oil companies and other entities 
     accountable for their actions with regard to high energy 
     prices, and for other purposes.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland is recognized.
  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I take this time on behalf of Marylanders 
who are worried. They are worried because of the high cost of energy. 
They are worried about the cost of filling the tanks in their cars with 
gasoline. They want us to do something about it. They are looking to 
us. They recall just 7 years ago, when President Bush took office, and 
the price of gasoline at the pump was less than $1.50 a gallon. Today, 
it is over $4 a gallon. It is having a direct impact on people in my 
State and around the Nation being able to afford to operate their 
automobiles.
  I can tell you businesses in Maryland--and I am sure my colleagues 
have similar stories around the Nation--particularly small businesses 
that rely upon their car or truck for transportation, don't have the 
ability to afford the increased cost of energy. They are on the brink 
of going out of business because of the rising energy cost. They want 
us to do something about it.
  I am particularly disappointed and frustrated that the Republicans 
decided twice this week to deny us an opportunity to do what we should 
be doing--legislating on this very important issue.
  The Consumer-First Energy Act of 2008 would have made a major 
difference in the cost of energy in the United States. I am proud to be 
a cosponsor of that legislation. Yet the Republicans used a procedural 
roadblock--a filibuster--to prevent us from taking up that legislation, 
debating it, acting on amendments, and doing what we should be doing. 
The Republicans said the status quo is acceptable. Well, the status quo 
is not acceptable.
  What would this legislation do? First, it would say taxpayers don't 
need to subsidize the oil companies. The oil companies are making 
record profits. In 2002, their profits were $29 billion. Last year, 
that grew to $124 billion. They don't need public subsidies. Taxpayers 
should not be subsidizing them. By the way, they are not investing 
their profits back into this country. They are not looking at ways to 
make this Nation more energy secure, nor are they investing in 
renewable energy sources. The President said, on April 14, 2005, that 
if oil reaches $55 a barrel, there is no need for the Government to 
subsidize further efforts on behalf of the oil industry. The price now 
is $140 a barrel. So the subsidies were provided. That $17 billion 
should be reinvested in America, rather than subsidizing oil companies 
for even greater profits. Let's use that for making this Nation energy 
secure, and let's use it for renewable energy sources.
  That is exactly what this legislation would do.
  There has been a lot of talk about a windfall profits tax. I happen 
to believe the oil industry is entitled to a profit--just not an 
obscene profit, taking advantage of the world circumstances in oil. 
With the windfall profit provision of this legislation, it would tell 
the oil companies to invest a little bit of that money here in America, 
in renewable energy sources. That is what it does. It is a clear 
message about the security of America.
  This legislation would take on the speculators. A large part of the 
cost is not that we are using more oil because,

[[Page 12103]]

actually, we are using less oil today because of the high cost. We have 
speculators, who are people buying oil futures and driving up the cost 
of oil, and we are paying more at the pump. This legislation says those 
types of speculators should be regulated. There should be margin 
requirements that make sense, and they should not speculate without 
sound investment principles. That is what this legislation does.
  This legislation expresses our concerns that the OPEC countries that 
are sending oil into America and depend upon U.S. consumers should be 
subject to our antitrust laws. This legislation would help in the short 
term, help bring down the cost of gasoline in the short term, but it 
would also provide us some long-term strategies for energy security.
  What did the Republican leadership do? They said, no, let's not talk 
about it. The status quo is acceptable.
  Well, it is not acceptable. Then, on H.R. 6049, the Republican 
leadership again exercised the filibuster procedural roadblock, and we 
could not take up that legislation, which would provide $18 billion for 
tax incentives for renewable energy sources so we can energize the 
American marketplace to develop our wind, solar and geothermal and we 
can develop the answers to our energy problems in America by energizing 
innovative individuals and companies in using our market forces to 
solve the problems here in America.
  The legislation also provided for more energy-efficient buildings, 
which makes sense, and extended the expiring tax provisions, including 
research and development, which would also help us in dealing with the 
problems of our country, and extending the alternative minimum tax 
relief, which is so important. The Republicans said, no, with 
procedural roadblocks.
  The American people want us to act. I have heard my Republican 
colleagues say we can produce enough oil to solve this problem. Let me 
give you the numbers and facts. I hope the public will make its own 
judgment. America, unfortunately, doesn't have a large reserve of oil. 
We have 3 percent of the world's reserve, including that in ANWR. If we 
allowed production in that environmentally sensitive area, ANWR, at 
full production we would produce about six-tenths of 1 percent of the 
oil in the world. Does anyone think the OPEC nations would not just 
reduce their supply to us by that amount, meaning there would be no 
impact whatsoever as a result of the production of that small amount of 
oil?
  As the majority leader pointed out, when I had the opportunity to sit 
in the chair earlier today, we have sources of oil, and we are 
utilizing those sources. We are exploring where we can fulfill the 
energy needs for our own country. But the truth is, we consume 25 
percent of the world's oil and only have 3 percent of the reserves. We 
cannot produce enough oil to deal with our needs.
  We need to develop alterative energy sources. I will give you one 
other statistic. If we would have passed the CAFE standards 10 years 
ago, we would be saving more oil than three times the amount that is 
currently in reserve in ANWR. So we need to become energy secure, and 
we need to do it for several reasons. We need to do it because of our 
security, because of our economy, and because of our environment.
  If we develop alternative fuel, if we do better in conservation, and 
if we invest in more efficient transportation, we cannot only become 
independent of the OPEC countries and the hold they have on us in 
determining how much oil they will make available to us, but we also 
can be friendlier to our environment. We can deal with the serious 
environmental issue we have and America can restore international 
leadership.
  What do the Republicans say? We cannot even talk about these issues 
with a bill, with amendments before us, because they use procedural 
roadblocks to prevent us from taking up this issue. Well, we should be 
taking up these bills.
  Marylanders want us to act and vote and make the tough decisions. 
They want us to do that. They want us to develop an energy policy that 
will wean us off oil, that makes us energy secure, that allows us to 
control the economic cost of energy, that puts America in the forefront 
of the international community on global warming to deal with pollution 
and to deal with the risks that are involved.
  But what Americans want us to do today is to move forward on the 
legislation that is before us, the Consumer-First Energy Act that could 
and would have an impact on the price of gasoline in the short term so 
those Marylanders with whom I have talked, who have told me that they 
literally cannot afford to operate their cars and are in danger of 
losing their businesses, that we are taking every reasonable step here 
to deal with their concerns and to help them. That would be the 
responsible action for us to take.
  I urge my colleagues to put aside this partisan differing and let's 
act in the best interest of the people of this Nation.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the majority 
reserve the remainder of their time and that I be recognized out of 
order for 10 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I wanted to come and talk about the 
Democratic bill called the Consumer-First Energy Act. We go through the 
same things over and over. We have an energy bill that has no energy in 
it. I said this on the floor last December. We keep talking about 
energy, and every time we try to expand energy, try to expand the 
supply, it dies right down party lines.
  The Consumer-First Energy Act does nothing to increase access to 
America's extensive oil and gas reserves. It does nothing to promote 
nuclear energy. It does nothing to increase our refining capacity, 
something I have been trying to do for a long period of time. It does 
nothing for electricity generation or transmission and does nothing for 
the utilization of clean coal technology.
  Instead this act increases taxes on America's oil and gas producers, 
which means we are going to be paying more at the pump--we know that--
and increases Government bureaucracy.
  A cornerstone of the bill establishes criminal penalties of up to $5 
million and 5 years in prison if a fuel supplier sells his product at 
an ``unconscionably excessive price.'' But the agency responsible for 
its enforcement, the Federal Trade Commission, says this legislation is 
unnecessary and even counterproductive. FTC Commissioner William 
Kovacic told Congress recently:

       My intuition is that it would create hesitation in the 
     response to shortages and that that might tend to exacerbate 
     rather than mitigate shortages.

  In addition to the FTC's opposition, price-gouging investigations are 
nothing new. They have been occurring for decades, with each reaching 
the same conclusion.
  The Investors Business Daily last month had an editorial:

       Senators also want to impose steep penalties on ``price 
     gouging''--despite the fact that some 17 separate studies 
     have found it doesn't exist. The plan amounts to little more 
     than an attempt to impose price controls--a socialist tool 
     dressed up in a populist garb. Democrats hailed their new 
     measure as an attack on ``the root causes of high gas 
     prices.'' That's one of the more laughable comments to emerge 
     from the Senate in some time.

  Recently, in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the FTC 
issued another report after an extensive investigation into price 
gouging. Once again, it is the same conclusion. The FTC found:

       No evidence to suggest that refiners manipulated prices 
     through any means . . .
       No evidence to suggest that oil companies reduced inventory 
     to increase or manipulate prices or exacerbate the effects of 
     a price . . .


[[Page 12104]]


  Additionally, Bill Richardson, former Secretary of Energy for the 
Clinton administration, when asked last year in a Democratic 
Presidential debate if oil companies are price gouging the American 
consumer, bluntly answered:

       No, they're not.

  Price-gouging legislation is a solution in search of a problem. Also, 
it is more of class warfare. If they want to blame somebody, they want 
to blame oil companies, the people who are actually plowing back more 
than 100 percent of profits into exploration at the present time. 
Federal law already bars companies from colluding to fix prices, and 
the Federal Government currently has all the legal tools necessary to 
address price gouging.
  According to the Congressional Research Service, ``at least 30 states 
. . . have laws that prohibit gouging, excessive price increases, or 
unconscionable pricing. Other states may also exercise authority under 
general deceptive trade practice laws depending on the nature of the 
state law and the specific circumstances in which price increases 
occur.''
  So knowing what we do about price gouging, this provision is 
repetitive, unnecessary, and potentially counterproductive. This could 
have the effect of increasing the price at the pump.
  The other major component of the Democrats' Energy bill reinstates 
the windfall profits tax. Democrats want to impose a windfall profits 
tax despite the fact that we had this same tax almost 30 years ago and 
the results were predictable and harmful. Again, it is more class 
warfare.
  In 1980, under President Jimmy Carter, Congress imposed an excise 
levy on domestic oil production called a crude oil windfall profits 
tax. According to a 1990 report by the nonpartisan Congressional 
Research Service, the results of the Carter windfall profits tax were 
very counterproductive. Quoting from that report:

       The windfall profits tax reduced domestic oil production 
     between 3 and 6 percent, and increased oil imports from 
     between 8 and 16 percent . . . This made the United States 
     more dependent upon imported oil.

  This is what happened last time. We are supposed to learn from our 
experiences.
  Looking back to 1980, we now know what a windfall profits tax will 
do. It will decrease domestic production and increase America's oil 
imports--the exact opposite of what we need to do.
  Additionally, a 1984 General Accounting Office report called the 
windfall profits tax ``perhaps the largest and most complex tax ever 
levied on a U.S. industry.''
  In May, Investors Business Daily editorialized in response to this 
new tax proposal:

       As any student who has taken Econ 101 at the local junior 
     college can tell you, higher taxes don't encourage 
     production; they discourage it. But Senate Democrats 
     apparently played hooky the day the taxes were discussed.

  American oil and gas companies reinvest their profits into 
exploration, production, and other energy. This is how we can get on 
the road to expanding our production in America. America's major oil 
companies already pay the second highest corporate tax rate in the 
industrialized world. An additional $17 billion in tax increases will 
only further harm the international competitiveness of U.S.-based oil 
companies.
  Using the Energy Information Administration's numbers, oil and gas 
industry profits can be calculated to roughly account for about 8 
percent of the price of a gallon of gas. So for a $4 gallon of 
gasoline, oil and gas companies profit approximately 32 cents.
  It is then arguable that if oil company profits were slashed in half, 
as has been proposed, it would only reduce the cost of a gallon of gas 
by 16 cents. And people are led to believe it will be $2 or $3. It is 
not true.
  It is arguable that if oil company profits were slashed in half, that 
would be approximately 16 cents a gallon.
  Mr. President, $17 billion in tax hikes will also ship American oil 
and gas jobs overseas. If indirect and other employment resulting from 
the direct activities and the earnings of these direct oil and gas 
employees is included, the total U.S. employment resulting from oil and 
gas activity is almost 8 million.
  For American jobs, for the international competitiveness of American 
companies, and for the consumers at the pump, Congress has to reject 
these Democratic attempts to increase taxes and implement backdoor 
price controls.
  What should we be doing? Oil and gas exploration and production is 
currently prohibited in 85 percent of America's offshore waters. We 
talked about the huge reserves, but it is prohibited. We are willing to 
do it, but it is prohibited in 85 percent of the waters.
  Other nations don't do this. Canada allows offshore drilling in the 
Pacific, the Atlantic, and the Great Lakes. Additionally, Cuba is 
looking to expand drilling which could occur 45 miles from the shores 
of Florida, and that is with technology that is much less 
environmentally sound. So we would have the effect of increasing any 
adverse effect that would come from that type of activity.
  Exploration and production activities are currently prohibited in the 
Pacific and Atlantic regions of the Outer Continental Shelf which hold 
an estimated 14 billion barrels of oil and 55 trillion cubic feet of 
gas. This is equivalent to more than 25 years worth of imports from 
Saudi Arabia. Looking to Alaska, ANWR is estimated to contain 10 
billion barrels of oil, about 15 years worth of imports from Saudi 
Arabia. If President Clinton had not vetoed the bill back in 1995, we 
passed a bill that was in concert with what they want in Alaska and 
that is to be able to explore that very small area up there--if that 
had not happened, we would be in a position today, we would have 1 
million additional barrels a day coming from ANWR. We know what that 
would do to reduce the price of gas at the pump.
  The Heritage Foundation describes ANWR's 19 million acres as the same 
size as South Carolina:

       Of that area, President Bush proposes opening about 1.5 
     million acres to exploration (roughly 6 percent of ANWR). Of 
     those 1.5 million acres, only 2,000--an area the size of 
     Washington's Dulles International Airport--would be devoted 
     to drilling.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has used 10 minutes.
  Mr. INHOFE. I believe what we need to do is understand that supply 
and demand still works. We have to increase the supply domestically, 
and we can do it by passing the Consumer-First Energy Act that has been 
proposed by Senator Domenici, myself, and others. The price at the pump 
would directly respond on notice of that type of legislation passing.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the blocks 
of time be extended for another hour, with the majority controlling the 
first half hour of the extension.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I just got back from my home State of 
Minnesota. Let me tell you, the price of gas is not just one of the 
issues people are talking about, it is the issue they are talking 
about.
  In this last week, as we all know, gas prices have risen above $4 a 
gallon as the national average, and many of the people in the country 
cannot afford it. If you drive past a Costco store--I am a Costco 
member--you will see in the Twin Cities cars lining the block trying to 
get in to save a few pennies, to save a few nickles, to save some 
money. Those gas lines remind me of the OPEC oil embargo we have not 
seen since the 1970s. If you talk to people in the rural parts of our 
State, you will be shocked at their out-of-pocket expenses. They have a 
longer way to drive to work. With gas at $4 a gallon, some people are 
spending $20 a day to get to work in the morning and to get home at 
night.
  Mr. President, as you know from your home State of Colorado, in some 
areas, there is not going to be a lot of mass transit. In some areas, 
they have to drive longer to get to work. Families cannot afford these 
prices. A few weeks ago, we saw stories in the paper saying that 
consumers were not changing their driving patterns, that they

[[Page 12105]]

were comfortable with their commuting habits, and they were willing to 
pay a few dollars extra each week. Well, $4 gas has changed all that. 
One in twelve Americans now have found a new way to go to work because 
they can't afford week after week of these gas prices. And we need more 
mass transit. I support that. That is a good thing. But we know for 
many Americans who have less income and are dealing with the problem of 
increased health care costs and who are dealing with the issue of an 
increase in the cost of food, and now these gas prices up to 4 bucks a 
gallon, when they have less disposable income, less money in their 
pocket, it is hard to afford things.
  We simply cannot continue business as usual. When we have people 
going to a gas station and can only afford to fill half their tank with 
gas, we can't afford to keep going. That is why I am so shocked when I 
have seen what the other side has done. Time and time again, the same 
old argument. Well, I think these same old ideas are running on empty, 
just as the people in this country are running on empty.
  The other side has blocked consideration of some new ideas and a new 
way to go forward with energy, both for short-term and long-term relief 
for the people of this country. I say this to my colleagues who voted 
against that bill and voted against allowing us to debate and allowing 
us to move forward with a new energy future: They are running on empty, 
and the American people know it.
  Remember back when President Bush was asked about $4-a-gallon gas on 
February 28? The President said:

       You are predicting $4 a gallon gasoline? That is 
     interesting. I hadn't heard that.

  Well, for the people in my State, $4-a-gallon gasoline isn't 
interesting, it is a budget buster. The fact is, this administration 
has failed to provide Americans with a meaningful energy policy that 
would provide relief from high gas and energy prices. They have been 
running on empty. This is why I am so frustrated that our colleagues 
blocked consideration of this important bill.
  We are not proposing anything radical. We are simply asking that the 
Government enforce the laws on the books and make the marketplace work 
like it is supposed to.
  As the Presiding Officer does, I come from a prosecutor's background, 
and I know we can have all the laws on the books we want, but if we 
don't enforce them, we are not going to get the relief we need. We are 
not going to help victims--or in this case consumers--if there are no 
cops on the beat and no one is enforcing the laws or drawing the line.
  As part of this important bill, the other side blocked us from even 
considering, from even debating having Federal regulators provided the 
tools to do their job, to crack down on speculation in the futures 
market and on speculators who trade in offshore exchanges just in order 
to avoid regulation. We want the Attorney General to have the authority 
to prosecute collusion by foreign governments.
  We heard a witness in recent months come before multiple committees 
in Congress, the CEO of an oil company, and say: You know what. A 
barrel of oil shouldn't cost over $100. A barrel of oil should cost 
somewhere between $55 and $60. That is the true cost. We heard a 
witness in recent months describe our energy markets as a giant 
gambling hall without rules, as a superhighway without a traffic cop.
  That is what we are dealing with. So we need a cop on the beat. The 
Consumer-First Energy Act gives us that cop on the beat. It addresses 
the problem of market speculation by stopping traders from routing 
transactions through offshore markets in order to get around the limits 
on speculation put in place by U.S. regulators. Why would they go to 
these offshore markets? We know why they are going there. They want to 
avoid any regulation in this country.
  In fact, you don't even have to go offshore to find unregulated 
energy trading. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is allowing 
the Dubai Mercantile Exchange in New York and the Ice Electronic 
Exchange in Atlanta to trade in U.S. oil futures without Federal 
oversight. I can't tell my constituents to rest easy because the Dubai 
Financial Services Authority is looking out for their interest.
  We need to take action not only by regulating these offshore markets 
but also by making sure what is going on in this country is right. Now, 
we closed the Enron loophole, or we tried to do that with the farm 
bill, Mr. President, but there is clearly a lot more that needs to be 
done. There is a lot of speculation that is offshore and out of reach 
of our negotiations and our regulators. This bill will make those 
foreign trades in American oil and gasoline futures subject to 
reporting requirements so we can have a paper trail and keep track of 
what is going on.
  The bill would also require the Commodity Futures Trading Commission 
to increase the margin requirement for oil trades. The margin 
requirement is currently set by exchanges themselves, kind of like the 
fox guarding the henhouse, and they have set the requirement so low--5 
to 7 percent--that speculators can buy enormous amounts of oil with 
only a small amount of cash, and this has caused a tremendous amount of 
volatility in the price of oil and gas.
  Remember what the CEO of the oil company said: Oh, no, no, no, this 
shouldn't be. Oil shouldn't be priced at over $100 a barrel. It should 
be $55. Well, where is all this money going? It is going to build five-
star hotels in the middle of the desert somewhere. We have been 
investing in the sultans of Saudi Arabia instead of the farmers and 
workers in this country where we should be developing a long-term 
energy policy.
  A final area where we can take immediate action is in our dealings 
with the OPEC nations. OPEC is a cartel of oil-producing countries that 
meet and decide how much oil to produce and thereby control prices. 
They make no pretense of having a free market system. They do not obey 
the laws of supply and demand. They gather together and they set 
production, which determines prices. As a former prosecutor, I call 
that kind of behavior collusion, and it is illegal in this country. But 
the members of OPEC are foreign governments, and so far they have 
gotten away with it.
  As oil exporting nations, the members of OPEC could provide us with 
some relief. They have the spare capacity to increase their production 
of oil and ease the pain being felt by the people in this country. But 
OPEC recently met and decided not to increase production, at least 
until the fall, after the summer driving season when prices always 
rise. Not only that, Saudi Arabia has actually decreased production 
since 2005.
  Think about it. Our country spends $600,000 every minute on imported 
oil. That is money leaving the pockets of American consumers, American 
drivers, going into the coffers of foreign countries. By refusing to 
step up production, OPEC nations are saying: We don't think prices are 
high enough yet. Let's let them go higher. Well, I think they are.
  This bill that was blocked by the other side was going to put a stop 
to some of this OPEC price setting by allowing the Attorney General to 
bring enforcement action against foreign governments that are engaging 
in collusion and hold them to the same standards of fair dealing we 
already have in place in this country.
  So those are some short-term ideas, in addition to the ones we were 
able to pass, which was to temporarily halt putting oil into the 
Strategic Petroleum Reserve when the prices are high. We got that done. 
But there are other things even more important. To do something about 
what is called the gambling hall when it comes to oil speculation, to 
do something about price gouging, to do something about the OPEC 
nations--these are short-term things that are doable and that the 
people in my State, who are lining up in those Costco lines, want to 
see. But, once again, we were blocked by the other side.
  Our people are running on empty. They are tired of this, and the 
other side is running on empty when it comes

[[Page 12106]]

to ideas. We need a bold new future, a long-term solution. American 
consumers also expect that their corporations should invest sensibly 
for the long-term interests of our country and our economy. That is 
what works. That is how business works.
  But here is what is going on. This Congress, in the past few years--
before I got here--gave a bunch of giveaways to the oil companies. I 
don't know, $17 billion, something like that. So we, the people, have a 
say in what these oil companies do when we are giving them a bunch of 
tax giveaways.
  The Consumer-First Energy Act imposes a windfall profits tax on oil 
companies. It doesn't just say, no; every oil company gets a windfall 
profits tax. We could say that given that the big oil companies raked 
in $36 billion in just the first 3 months of this year. But it says, if 
they invest in renewables and do what they are supposed to do given 
they have gotten these subsidies--that they invest in their refining 
capacity and do things like that--then they would not have this 
windfall profits tax. But if they don't and they are taking the 
taxpayers' money and they are raking in the bucks and the prices are 
getting jacked up, then they are going to get a windfall profits tax.
  Why should these big companies be getting $36 billion in the first 3 
months, making no progress in terms of a long-term energy policy, and 
then the consumers are paying over $4 a gallon at the tank? It makes no 
sense. The oil companies' profits since this administration took office 
are over $600 billion and counting.
  Now, you can make the argument for high profits if this money was 
being used to develop alternative resources, but it is not. Time and 
time again we keep going backwards, not forward.
  So this provision says if they take their profits they get from 
American families and businesses and reinvest them in the country's 
energy future, that is fine. If they don't, we are going to take a 
portion of their money and invest it in the farmers and the workers of 
the Midwest instead of the oil cartels of the Mideast.
  We know what we need for a long-term energy policy. We need 
investment in hybrid electric cars. We are not that far away. In 2 
years, the Chevy Volt is going to give us 30 to 40 miles by plugging it 
in and then it converts over to fuels. We have great advancements in 
biofuels, something the Presiding Officer and I have worked on very 
hard, going to cellulosic ethanol but going beyond even corn-based 
ethanol so that we look at getting energy from switchgrass and prairie 
grass and algae and all kinds of biomass and residue from logging. 
These are all in our future. But we have to actually put those 
incentives in place so the investment follows.
  We have tried. We have done some things, but we need a bold energy 
direction in this country, and that is what this bill was about that 
the other side blocked. They are running on empty with ideas, and the 
American consumers are running on empty with their tanks. When American 
families are facing the kind of economic squeeze they are facing today, 
they expect action from their Government. They expect that their 
Government will protect their interests to make sure the markets are 
fair and honest and transparent. They expect their government is going 
to watch out for them, not for the oil companies.
  We have proposed legislation that would do these things. It would 
give the Government the tools to protect consumers in the short term, 
and it would begin to set our country on a smart, sustainable course 
for the long term toward energy independence. You can put your head in 
the sand and pretend it is not happening, or you can look for a new 
future. Does that involve, as our friends on the other side have been 
saying, increased production in our country? Of course it does. We live 
in Minnesota, next to North Dakota, where we are seeing the discovery 
of more oil. That is a piece of this; that is a piece of it. But the 
other piece is looking to the future with renewables and biofuels and 
new kinds of technologies. And if we keep going the old way, giving 
that $17 billion to the oil companies and not investing in a new 
future, we are going to end up even worse than we are now, and that is 
running on empty.
  It shouldn't take $4-a-gallon gasoline to bring us to the brink of 
action on sensible market reforms and a smart long-term energy policy, 
but that is where we are. That is where we are. It is time to act. I 
implore my colleagues on the other side not to filibuster this bill. We 
must move ahead and we must do something for the American people.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I yield back the remainder of 
the majority's time in this half hour as well.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.
  Mr. MARTINEZ. Mr. President, I want to speak on this issue, the 
energy problem we find ourselves in, and I want to begin by a moment of 
reflection upon the problems described by my dear colleague from 
Minnesota.
  The fact is, the more we can find a way to work together and the less 
we make clever rhetorical points about whether one party is on full or 
another is on empty, or anything else, the quicker we will get to a 
solution. The fact is, we are not going to find solution to the energy 
problem in America by doing it as Democrats or Republicans. We are 
going to find it by working together as Americans.
  We all know when the minority is not permitted the opportunity to 
impact a bill by amendments there is not a real debate taking place 
and, therefore, our ideas, the ideas of 49 Members of this Senate, are 
not worth considering. We all know that is not the way the Senate 
legislates. That is not the way to do things when you are serious about 
an outcome and not just looking to make political points.
  We are, for sure, in the midst of an energy crisis like nothing we 
have seen in recent times. A gallon of gas is more than $4 a gallon, 
with diesel more than $5, and natural gas prices continue to rise. 
These high prices are putting an unexpected and heavy burden on 
millions of American families. As I talk with Floridians, it is clear 
that people are feeling the pain and families are hurting. The rising 
costs are digging into the family budget.
  In addition to high energy costs, we are also in the midst of 
increasing food costs and putting an even greater strain on families 
who are growing increasingly anxious. They want and deserve solutions. 
They don't want and don't deserve partisan bickering.
  There are a number of factors impacting the price of gas--including 
the influence of speculators and the weak dollar.
  We are seeing a large and increasing demand for fuel while supplies 
remain stagnant.
  Since the automobile was invented, it took the United States until 
the early 1980s to reach 100 million cars. In China, the same thing 
happened in less than 15 years. According to the International Energy 
Agency, Chinese oil imports are expected to rise 80 percent in the next 
4 years.
  And by the way, we know the Chinese are looking for ways to increase 
their own oil production--but despite what is cited as fact here on the 
Senate floor on frequent occasions, China is not drilling off the coast 
of Cuba. I have taken the time to research this issue because of my own 
interest in this area of the world.
  According to the Congressional Research Service, China only owns one 
plot where they could explore. It is this little green spot. Whether it 
is under production or not is not clear, but it is not offshore--it is 
on the island itself. According to University of Miami Center for 
Hemispheric Policy fellow Jorge Pinon, there is no drilling taking 
place offshore in Cuba by the Chinese or any other country.
  Reports to the contrary are false; they are rumor; they are akin to 
urban legends. China is not drilling for oil 60 miles from the Florida 
Keys. There is one oil company--Spanish Respol RTF--that has purchased 
one lease off of Cuba's shore and there is no current drilling or even 
plans to drill in the forseeable future. There is the possibility that 
the Canadians may have something happening there, but I am not aware of 
that either.
  So any talk of using some fabricated China/Cuba connection as an 
argument to change U.S. policy has no merit.

[[Page 12107]]

  To address the supply side of the equation, one solution I have 
always favored involves using our existing natural resources to 
increase domestic production.
  Congress has made some progress in this area in recent years, but 
more needs to be done.
  Offshore drilling is one area where we have made progress. In 2006, I 
helped to negotiate the opening of more than 8 million acres in the 
Gulf of Mexico as a result of negotiations and conversations on a 
bipartisan basis here in the Senate.
  The area is estimated to contain up to 5.8 trillion cubic feet of 
natural gas and 1.25 billion barrels of oil. That is a tremendous 
amount of resources in areas open to drilling right this minute, all as 
a result of an agreement Senator Nelson and I made, protecting 
Florida's beaches yet understanding the need to open up this area of 
the Gulf.
  While 8 million acres have been opened in the Gulf, to date no 
exploration has taken place. I know they are still in the process of 
leasing, but to date we have had no product out of that area. It makes 
sense to me that we would go here first, well away from Florida's 
beaches, before this area, where we also have a military mission area 
to protect.
  I hope that before we talk about opening areas closer to our beaches, 
that we will first attempt to get to the one billion barrels of oil 
already available in the Gulf.
  Another promising domestic resource is in ANWR in Alaska.
  Five different times during my Senate career, I have voted to open 
this remote area for oil exploration. It is environmentally safe, the 
people of Alaska favor it, and our country needs it.
  I will continue to support efforts to obtain resources from the area.
  The size of the land we are talking about for exploration is merely 
2,000 acres within 19.6 million acres of wilderness--that is the 
virtual equivalent of a quarter on a football field.
  Estimates indicate this area in Alaska contains approximately 10.4 
billion barrels, meaning we could have another one million barrels of 
oil coming into the U.S. supply every day for decades.
  I will continue to support increasing the U.S. domestic production as 
long as it is supported by those most directly impacted by it.
  Along with working to increase the U.S. oil exploration efforts, 
there is also a tremendous need to build more oil refineries.
  Part of the reason why our oil supplies are stretched thin is because 
despite the rise in demand for gasoline, a new fuel refinery has not 
been built in three decades.
  Once crude oil is shipped from overseas, it still has to be refined.
  With so few oil refineries in this country and the demand so high, 
this results in a bottleneck and further contributes to the domestic 
demand that is outstripping supply.
  We can do a great deal more in the short term to alleviate the burden 
high gas prices are having on America's families.
  An integral part of any energy plan moving forward has to focus a 
heavy emphasis on conservation. We are not going to drill our way to 
energy independence.
  We have to have a comprehensive approach: more exploration, more 
conservation, renewables, biofuels, and new technologies.
  We are paying high prices at the pump for that demand, and it is also 
something we are paying for environmentally. I think there is huge 
promise in answering some of our energy demands and contributing to a 
cleaner environment by investing in alternative fuels.
  Most people are familiar with ethanol--but I think that is just the 
first step. Florida's research universities have been working on 
cellulosic ethanol, which is a second generation biofuel.
  This process generates fuel from orange peels, grass clippings, corn 
stalks--not the corn but the waste after the corn is gone. Any sort of 
organic material that has carbon in it can be turned into fuel.
  One thing should be clear--it is that the tension on the world's oil 
market is not going to lessen anytime soon and the need to lessen the 
U.S. dependence on foreign oil could not be any greater.
  Frankly, this Congress has been absent on the matter. The fact is, 
although we talk about President Bush and what he has and has not done, 
we have an obligation to act as well. The fact is, when the Democrats 
took over the Congress the price of oil was $2 a gallon; today it is 
over $4 and going up. We have to put down the partisan rhetoric. We 
have to come back to the fact that we must come together, work 
together, Republicans and Democrats, to do what serious legislating 
usually can accomplish when people of good faith come together to get 
something done.
  I invite my dear friend and colleague, the Presiding Officer today, 
to find ways we might work together so we can help American families. I 
know there are many things on which we can agree. We ought to try to 
diminish the points of disagreement and find the common ground and move 
forward to a better energy future for our country so we might leave the 
kind of legacy for our children that I know is the reason we came here 
to the Senate in the first place.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho is recognized.
  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I join with my colleague from Florida to 
talk about an issue that is probably on the minds of nearly every 
American today, especially if they just pulled their big SUV away from 
a gas pump and they fed their credit card into that gas pump and it 
registered $100. That is the reality the American consumer is being 
subjected to today in an unprecedented way. So my advice to the Senate 
today goes back to an old country song that was popular a few years 
ago, by a female country artist, called ``A Little Less Talk And A Lot 
More Action.''
  That is exactly what ought to be going on in the halls of Congress 
today: a heck of a lot less talk and a lot more action. What ought that 
action be for the American consumer who today is paying more money than 
ever in the history of our country for energy? In the short term, the 
``more action and less talk'' ought to be production, producing oil out 
of our known oil reserves in this country. That is not the answer for 
the future. That is the answer for tomorrow, next year, and 8 or 10 
years into the future. I call it a bridge solution to the reality of a 
new generation of energy that is the cellulosics, that is electric, 
that is the hybrid. But we are always going to need oil or hydrocarbons 
in our economy to produce the kind of transportation fuels for the big 
trucks and many of our rail engines and all of those kinds of heavy 
transportation needs. That is not in part what the consumer is paying 
for today. The consumer is paying $4-plus at the pump today, depending 
on where you live, because this Congress over the last 20 years has had 
an attitude that is quite simple: Put that in wilderness, protect it, 
deny it, we can conserve our way out of it. The Clean Air Act says it 
is too expensive to retrofit refineries so we take one, two, three 
refineries offline. We have taken many of them offline because they 
simply couldn't comply with the Clean Air Act and they were too 
expensive to retrofit and our overall capacity to refine, with our 
overall capacity to explore and develop, went hand and hand down while 
the American consumer was consuming more.
  What does that ``a little less talk and a lot more action'' mean? It 
ought to mean this: It ought to mean going where you know you can get 
it, going where you know you can drill. Where might that be? Here is 
that reality that American consumers ought to know about, and then I 
hope they will pick up the phone and call their Senator or e-mail their 
Senator and say: Why did you do this? Why over the last 30 years did 
you deny us access to these areas where we have known oil reserves?
  In a modern world, for me to quote 20-year-old statistics doesn't 
make a lot of sense. But for 20 years we have said: No, we are not even 
going to use new seismographic measuring efforts

[[Page 12108]]

to determine where the other oil is. We are going to take the old 
information, 20-year-old information in the red zone represents this.
  American consumer, listen, because you ought to be on the phone 
today, calling your Senator and saying: A little less talk and here is 
the action. Start drilling. Open these areas. Get the bid process 
going.
  What can it yield? The U.S. Geological Survey says that in these red 
zones we have a known resource of 29 to 30 billion barrels of oil. In 
the undiscovered areas where we believe it is, there is 85 billion, or 
about 115 billion. You do the math.
  If we could produce a few more million barrels a day, what would the 
market do? What would the speculators do? They would run for cover. We 
would take $30 or $40 a barrel right off the top of the market that is 
a speculative price today that is betting that America will not do this 
because they are betting Congress is going to be doing a lot more talk 
and no action.
  If we act, if we do what we ought to do, if we go where we know we 
should go, where the oil is today, and we find that there are 120, 130, 
150 billion barrels of oil, down comes the market.
  If the market comes down for America, the market comes down for the 
world. That is the price in the market, because we are talking about 
market trends that are world trends--not only us. If you think we are 
having a bad time here and we are paying $4, what is a European paying? 
They measure by liters, but they are usually, probably at $9 or $10 
now. So they are as angry as consumers as we are as consumers about the 
reality of the market in which we all live.
  I am talking crude oil. I am not talking natural gas. In these areas 
we believe there could be as much as 633 trillion cubic feet of gas. 
For the chemical industry of our country, for the world as we know it, 
that is hugely important. For all of the costs of the goods and 
services we are buying at the market shelf today that are going up in 
price, they are reflecting their need to have the ingredients that flow 
from oil or that flow from gas. Whether it is the transportation that 
gets them to the shelf or whether it is the ingredients of the product 
that is on the shelf, this is a world today that is dominated by what 
we call hydrocarbons--oil and oil derivatives, and gas. We are all 
going to be paying a great deal more.
  The thing that is most visible is the pump, that $4 or $4.20 or 
$4.50. The Senator from Alaska told me this morning that in areas of 
rural Alaska where they barge the gas up and offload it during the 
summer for the locals to use, it is well over $5 a gallon.
  And it is going to that consumer at well beyond their inability to 
pay. They are growing frightened; they are relating to that Senator 
fear that they can no longer live their lives the way they would like 
to live them because they simply have to deny themselves access to gas, 
access to oil.
  Well, that is the reality of where we live and what we have done to 
ourselves. It all started in this Congress 20 years ago in the name of 
the environment. We began to deny, deny, deny, and deny. Consumers are 
saying something much different today than they did then. Because they 
recognize that in a state of denial there is a price to be paid. They 
are now paying that price.
  So what happened and what is happening? Well, on May 19, a Gallup 
Poll came out. They asked Americans: Shouldn't we allow drilling in the 
U.S. coastal waters and up here in the ANWR area, the Alaskan National 
Wildlife Refuge?
  A few years ago, a majority of Americans said: Oh, no, no, no. Let us 
protect those areas. Today, well, this was even before $4 gas, this was 
May 19, not this week, and 57 percent of Americans said: Drill it.
  There is a new Rasmussen Poll out today which is even higher than 
that. Americans are saying: Drill it. Go where the oil is. Explore it. 
Develop it. Bring it online. Do it in an environmentally sound way.
  And our technology today can take us there. We do not risk the 
environment when we do this. Anybody who stands on the floor of the 
Senate today and says: Oh, save the environment, is in a 20-year-old 
environmental time warp. And it is quite obvious why. They haven't seen 
the technology. They do not know what we now can do; that we have 
learned from the 1960s spill in Santa Barbara. Have you heard some 
Senators quote the facts about Katrina? Over a thousand wells were 
knocked offline, drilling rigs knocked off point. Not a drop of oil 
spilled. Why? Technology.
  So America, awaken. Pick up the phone. Call your Senator and say: Get 
with it. A lot more action and a lot less talk. Because right now we 
are talking. We are jawboning, we are politicking, and the consumer is 
having their budgets burnt up by the reality of the marketplace that 
this Congress helped set decades ago.
  Hear me. A lot less talk, Senate, and a lot more action. Let's go to 
work. Let's drill our reserves. Let's produce them in an 
environmentally sound way and let's give this consumer and our economy 
and the world a better place to go.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Menendez). The Senator from Colorado.
  Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about the pain that 
$4-a-gallon gas is inflicting across the country. For the last 8 years, 
our energy policy has been stuck in the past. Today, we suffer from 
that neglect. Our national security is compromised by our alarming 
overdependence on foreign oil. Our economy is held hostage to other 
countries that control the oil reserves.
  Every day--every day--most Americans, most of the 300 million 
Americans are feeling the real pain of high gas prices and diesel 
prices resulting from these failed policies.
  Americans know the past all too well. Since 2001, the price of oil 
has risen more than 400 percent. The cost of a gallon of gas from 
Colorado is up almost 300 percent. Oh, yes, we all remember those dear 
old days in 2001, when in Colorado we were paying $1.08 a gallon in the 
beginning of the Bush administration. Yet today we are at $4 a gallon 
in Colorado.
  U.S. expenditures during that same time period on foreign oil that we 
are importing into our country have more than tripled; a family's 
transportation costs have more than doubled. Projections show gas may 
reach $5 a gallon this summer.
  But the numbers do not even begin to tell the real story of how our 
dependence on foreign oil is hurting the American people. They do not 
tell the story of the farmer in Kit Carson County, on the Eastern 
Plains of Colorado, who is worried, worried that he will not be able to 
afford the diesel needed to harvest the wheat at the end of the summer.
  They do not tell the story of the trucker in Elizabeth, CO, whose 
weekly income has fallen $700 in this economy and can barely afford to 
fill his truck because fuel costs are higher than they have ever been.
  They do not tell the story of how fuel prices have pushed several 
airlines into bankruptcy and led United Airlines to cut over 1,000 jobs 
in recent days.
  In rural communities, in particular, gas prices are taking a huge 
bite out of the family budget. This map shows the average proportion of 
a family's income that is going for filling the tanks in counties 
across the country.
  You can see which parts of the country are the hardest hit. Those are 
the rural counties, where upward of 16 percent of the entire budget is 
going for gasoline. So you see in the broad swath of what is rural 
America, this yellow area. Down here is my San Luis Valley, where 16 
percent of the family budget essentially is going to fill the tanks of 
gasoline for those families.
  Across the country we are paying almost $5 billion more every day for 
oil than we did 5 years ago. These moneys are going to the Middle East, 
to Russia, and to Venezuela. They are not moneys that are staying in 
America to make us strong. Revenues for oil-producing states and oil 
companies, primarily oil companies controlled by foreign governments, 
will reach $2 trillion this year, $2 trillion.

[[Page 12109]]

  So while American farmers and ranchers are facing $10,000-a-month 
fuel bills, Saudi Arabia is using its oil riches to build four new 
cities in the desert; the Sudanese are building new skyscrapers and 
five-star luxury hotels; and Russia, Russia is using its oil windfall 
to increase its Federal budget tenfold.
  Over the last 8 years, we have not only become more dependent on 
foreign oil, today we import an increasing amount of oil from those 
foreign countries. Thanks to the failed energy policies of the past, we 
are at the mercy of OPEC and the oil-producing nations of the world.
  We need to move forward with a new ethic and new imperative of energy 
independence. We must succeed in a sustained policy that is not a stop-
and-start policy on energy independence but one that will succeed in 
addressing the cause that I believe most of the Members of this Senate 
believe in; that is, to end our addiction on the importation of foreign 
oil.
  How are we going to do this? First, we must continue to develop our 
domestic oil and gas resources. You heard my friends on the other side 
of the aisle say we are not doing enough, that we have not drilled 
enough in the United States of America. Yet when you look at the 2005 
Energy Policy Act which I helped craft, along with Senator Domenici and 
Senator Bingaman, that legislation took sensible steps, in my view, to 
stimulate new exploration and energy development and opened the door to 
a whole host of items on a portfolio toward energy independence.
  In 2006, we worked together, again, Democrats and Republicans, to 
open an additional 8 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for energy 
development. Those areas contained 5.8 trillion cubic feet of natural 
gas and 1.26 billion barrels of recoverable oil. We were then asking 
that we produce more oil from our own resources in America.
  Colorado is a proud contributor to our Nation's energy supply, and we 
are working to do more. So it is false when people say we are not doing 
things in America to produce for our energy supply. We have more than 
34,000 active gas wells in my State right now. We have almost 5 million 
acres of land under lease. We are producing 1.2 trillion cubic feet of 
natural gas each year, up sixfold from 14 years ago.
  Over the coming years, we will contribute even more to our Nation's 
energy supply. The BLM estimates that over the next 20 years we could 
have 17,000 more gas wells in 3 of our western counties alone.
  Let me say, are we against energy development in America? You tell me 
that the construction, the drilling of 17,000 wells in 3 of my counties 
in the State of Colorado is not contributing to the American supply of 
oil and natural gas that we need in America? We are doing a lot already 
here.
  But for those on the other side who accuse us of doing nothing, they 
are wrong. I have also introduced legislation to open additional areas 
in the State to oil and gas development, including the Roan Plateau in 
western Colorado. But we want to do it the right way.
  Let's not kid ourselves. Expanding domestic oil and gas production 
will not lower gas prices or kick our addiction to foreign oil. 
Americans consume 25 percent of the world's produced oil, but we hold 
less than 1.7 percent of the world's proven oil reserves.
  This chart shows us a little slice of the pie that is 1.7 percent. 
One of my colleagues earlier said it is 3 percent of the world 
reserves. These are the figures from the Central Intelligence Agency. 
The CIA tells us we control 1.7 percent of the global proven reserves 
of oil. Yet we are consuming 25 percent of those reserves.
  So what my colleagues on the other side are saying is that we are 
going to take this little slice of the pie and somehow magically 
address the huge oil security problems we are facing today. That is not 
accurate. We need to be honest with ourselves and the American people 
about our energy future. We simply cannot drill our way to energy 
independence.
  If we threw open the doors of America's most treasured landscapes to 
drilling, it would still just be a drop in the bucket. According to the 
Energy Information Administration, drilling the Arctic Wildlife Refuge 
would, at peak production, which would be somewhere between 2018 and 
2030, reduce the cost of gasoline by less than 4 cents per gallon.
  We need to be honest with ourselves and the American people about our 
energy future. We simply cannot drill our way to energy independence.
  Some dream that oil shale will save the day.
  Oil shale deposits in Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah amount to somewhere 
between 500 billion and 1.1 trillion barrels of oil. That is more than 
double the proven reserves of oil in Saudi Arabia.
  The trouble is, the oil is locked up in rock and, even after $10 
billion of research and development, nobody has figured out an 
economical way to get it out.
  If the technology were ripe, companies like Shell would already be 
developing oil shale today on their own lands. Shell and other 
companies already own nearly 200,000 acres of prime oil shale reserves 
in Utah and Colorado. Nobody, not the Federal Government, not the 
Congress, not the State, is stopping them from developing these tracts. 
But they are not ready, and that's what they have all told us in 
testimony. They are still struggling to overcome technological and 
economic barriers.
  We can help companies such as Shell overcome these barriers through 
research and development incentives like the ones I helped put in the 
2005 Energy Policy Act, but even under the most optimistic estimates, 
the technology won't be ready for commercialization until 2015.
  So let's be honest about oil shale. Let's not pretend there is a 
magic wand that we can wave that will unlock the mystery of oil shale. 
Let's be honest about our energy future. Let's be honest with the 
American people.
  Responsibly expanding our domestic production is only one part of the 
solution. As I have said repeatedly over the last 4 years, we also need 
to be improving our energy efficiency, investing in technologies, and 
developing our clean energy economy. We have taken several steps in the 
right direction.
  At the end of 2007, Congress passed legislation to increase fuel 
efficiency standards in cars and light trucks by over 40 percent by 
2020. This will save over 1.1 million barrels of oil a day.
  The bill we passed, the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, 
also helps spur the rapid development and deployment of advanced 
biofuels, such as cellulosic ethanol. The bill quintupled the existing 
renewable fuels standard to 36 billion gallons by 2022, 21 billion of 
which must be from advanced biofuels, such as cellulosic ethanol. That 
is more than enough to offset our oil imports from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, 
and Libya combined.
  I was also proud of the work we did in the farm bill to spur 
cellulosic biofuel production, which has the potential to dramatically 
reduce carbon pollution. The farm bill includes a provision I sponsored 
that provides a $1.01 per gallon tax credit for the production of 
cellulosic biofuels. It is the first incentive for cellulosic biofuels 
of its kind.
  Why is this so important? Because cellulosic biofuels have the 
potential to displace 3 billion barrels of oil annually, equivalent to 
60 percent of our country's yearly consumption of oil in the 
transportation sector, without affecting our need for food, feed or 
fiber, 3 billion barrels of oil a year.
  Dramatically increasing our biofuels production can and will help us 
get control of gas prices and reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
  In fact, if it weren't for current ethanol production, gas prices 
would be even higher than they are today.
  Merrill Lynch estimates that gas prices would be 15 percent higher if 
it weren't for our ethanol production. Do not make biofuels the 
scapegoat.
  In addition, studies are showing that, as a result of our renewable 
fuels standard enacted in 2005, U.S. oil imports recently declined for 
the first time in a quarter century.
  Unfortunately, there are some who just cannot accept the fact that

[[Page 12110]]

biofuels can and should be a larger part of our energy future. They're 
finding any excuse to advocate yesterday's energy policies and step 
back into the past.
  These renewable energy opponents claim, for one, that biofuels 
production, in particular corn ethanol production, is to blame for high 
food prices.
  This is absurd. There are three factors that are driving food prices 
up, and ethanol production is not one of them.
  First, food prices are rising because global demand for grains, 
particularly from China and India, is rising.
  Second, the global food supply is down because of drought conditions 
in several areas of critical agricultural production. Still, U.S. 
producers are doing everything they can to boost supplies. Not counting 
corn used for ethanol production, we produced 17 percent more corn food 
product and exported 23 percent more food product overall in 2007 than 
in 2006.
  Third, rising oil prices are making it more expensive to produce 
food. Petroleum costs are embedded in every part of the global food 
supply chain. Recent studies by USDA reveal that for every dollar we 
spend on food, only 20 cents is the cost of the food product itself. 
The other 80 cents or so are the costs of labor, energy, 
transportation, and other factors.
  The best economic minds agree that ethanol production is having 
little, if any, effect on food prices. Ed Lazear, chairman of the 
President's Council of Economic Advisors, recently reported that 
ethanol production accounts for less than 3 percent of the increase in 
global food prices.
  Those who claim that biofuels production is driving up food costs are 
flat-out wrong.
  Let's not forget where today's high gas prices are hurting most, it 
is in America's rural communities. Farmers, ranchers, small business 
owners, families in small towns, they know the true cost of our 
addiction to foreign oil. They feel it every day.
  They also know that the solution is not far away. They know that the 
solution lies in our farms and fields, in the promise of cellulosic 
ethanol and in the ingenuity of the American worker.
  Our rural communities know we can grow our way to energy independence 
if we continue to pass and implement policies that stimulate our clean 
energy economy.
  So let's not let them down. Let's not turn the clock back to the 
failed energy policies of the last 8 years. Let's not pretend that the 
1.7 percent of the world's oil reserves that we possess will meet our 
energy needs. Let's be honest with the American people. Let's build our 
clean energy economy. Let's pass the tax extenders that Senator Baucus, 
I, and others have developed that will stimulate renewable energy 
development. Let's give these growing industries the tax certainty that 
they and their investors need to move forward with projects that are 
creating good-paying jobs across the country. Let's get after the 
speculation in the oil market. And let's get to work on breaking our 
addiction to foreign oil.
  I will conclude by making a few additional comments. We have heard 
from the other side of the aisle that oil shale somehow is magically 
going to develop as part of the solution for our energy independence 
and deal with gas prices today. The truth of the matter is, we 
supported the oil shale provisions in 2005 and have been moving forward 
in the development of oil shale in Colorado in a responsible way.
  Yet we know that even after the investment of billions of dollars, 
the technology is some 6 to 7, maybe 8 years away before it can be even 
commercially developed, if it is proven it can be done. Yet there is 
this accusation that is coming from the other side of the aisle that 
somehow the development of oil shale is going to deal with the 
immediate crisis we face today. That is simply a false charge. We need 
to move forward and attempt to look at the development of oil shale in 
an environmentally responsible way.
  Another point, before I conclude, is we need to continue to grow our 
way to energy independence. I am a proud sponsor, with Senator 
Grassley, of the 25-by-25 resolution. I think America's farmers and 
ranchers can help us move forward so we can produce 25 percent of our 
energy from renewable energy.
  I am hopeful this energy crisis does not create an opportunity for us 
to take a step back on the investments we are making in biofuels. 
Biofuels are a significant way in which we will move forward to energy 
independence.
  I believe strongly there are parts of our energy agenda that 
Republicans and Democrats can come together on, but I am hopeful the 
stalling tactics that keep us from moving forward to crafting an energy 
bill will end so we can deliver on solutions to the American people.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.
  Mr. TESTER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Colorado for his 
solid, pertinent remarks about the energy situation we face and 
solutions for the crisis.
  The energy crisis we face today is putting a squeeze on our working 
families. This morning, AAA announced another new record high on the 
national average for the price of a gallon of gas at $4.05 a gallon. 
Diesel hit a new record of $4.79 a gallon. The price of oil is at $134 
a barrel. Yesterday in the Senate, Republicans blocked some solid 
measures by which we can lower the cost of energy which would directly 
impact working families, small businesses, agriculture, and the 
trucking industry.
  Today, I rise to urge my Republican colleagues to allow us to pass 
legislation that will make a difference to free America from this grip 
of foreign oil. Although my Democratic colleagues have produced 
commonsense legislation to deal with this energy crisis, the folks on 
the other side of the aisle continue to block any reasonable attempt to 
take effective action. We have sound policy proposals on the table, and 
it is time for the other side to help lead or follow or get out of the 
way.
  My Montana neighbors are hurting from the high cost of energy. Our 
manufacturers are at the risk of shutting down because of high energy 
costs. Truckers struggle to make ends meet, facing the high prices of 
diesel fuel. Family farmers are suffering from record-high diesel, high 
fertilizer, and other input costs. This energy crisis is real. We feel 
it every day. We have been feeling this effect for many months. The 
phone in my Senate office is ringing off the hook with folks asking for 
relief. Unfortunately, Republicans yesterday voted to deny any of that 
relief. They continue to block action even on the commonsense plan of 
my colleague from Montana, Senator Baucus, to extend tax incentives for 
promising alternative energy.
  The facts are clear. We cannot drill our way out of this energy 
crisis. Drilling is a part of the mix of solutions we need, but we must 
find innovative and creative solutions to the challenges of this 21st 
century. Investing in renewable energy at home is the only way we can 
get on a path toward energy independence.
  In short, we must pass the tax bill by Senators Baucus and Grassley 
to support energy innovations such as wind, solar, and biofuels. The 
bill extends the production tax credit for wind, geothermal, landfill 
gas, solar, and biomass.
  The United States has led the world for 3 years in wind power 
capacity. Last month, the Department of Energy said the United States 
can get fully 20 percent of its power from wind. But all of this grinds 
to a halt if we don't extend the production tax credit that expires at 
the end of this year.
  This bill also includes incentives for homeowners to take the 
initiative to put renewable energy systems in their homes. It advances 
carbon capture technology so that we can expand coal power into the 
future while fighting climate change, and it extends credits for 
cellulosic ethanol and biodiesel. We have heard a lot of talk about 
ethanol influencing food prices. If we want to develop biofuels that 
don't compete with food, we need to extend the tax credits that help 
get these fuels into the marketplace.
  Perhaps most importantly, it continues our focus on conservation in

[[Page 12111]]

homes and businesses. This is the low-hanging fruit of good energy 
policy.
  If this package has any shortfalls at all, it is that the extensions 
are not long enough. I know a lot of my colleagues on the other side of 
the aisle also like the tax provisions. The difference is, they don't 
want to pay for it. It is not free. We can't just get out the credit 
card and forget about it. If we don't pay for it, our kids do.
  This package by Senator Baucus takes a fiscally responsible approach 
to the tax incentives. That means closing the loophole in the Tax Code 
that allows wealthy hedge fund managers, many of whom engage in the 
very speculation that drives up the cost of oil, to defer paying taxes 
on the money they make outside the United States.
  Why anyone would hold up $55 billion in tax cuts for small 
businesses, working families, and our Nation's renewable energy 
industry is beyond me. More importantly, families in Montana and rural 
America wouldn't tolerate it, and they should not.
  Unfortunately, the other side of the aisle continues to block this 
bill. We need to pass this important Federal support and expand it so 
energy diversification efforts can count on a more steady and reliable 
backstop.
  Montana is already leading the way toward a more sustainable energy 
future. We need to use the power of the Federal Government to reach the 
full potential of these homegrown renewable energy projects. Let me 
give a couple examples.
  Across the Great Plains, wind is one of our most reliable and most 
plentiful natural resources. We are harnessing the power of wind to 
generate electricity and to power homes and businesses across my State. 
We need the support of the U.S. Tax Code to build on this progress. On 
the agricultural front, camelina is a crop that can be used in biofuels 
without competing with food crops. In fact, the byproduct of camelina 
fuel production can be fed to cattle as a nutritional feed. This is an 
example of the innovative approach this Nation needs to free ourselves 
from the grip of OPEC and corrupt oil regimes of the world.
  There is no reason the Senators cannot work together to support 
innovative solutions to this challenging problem. Unfortunately, the 
Republicans seem only interested in covering for the President, who has 
been asleep at the switch. Their own solution is to drill for oil in 
our most environmentally fragile areas.
  We need commonsense solutions to address the cost of energy. The 
energy provisions in the Baucus bill will take a giant step forward in 
developing the 21st-century solutions our people deserve. We must start 
today to put America back on a path toward energy independence.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SCHUMER. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum 
call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I rise to talk about high gas prices and 
the fact that so many of my colleagues from across the aisle have no 
interest or seem to have no interest in addressing the problem. 
Republicans seem not to care about the pain at the pump, but they may 
well care about the pain at the polls that could come from ignoring 
this crisis and their constituents.
  The bottom line is, we are asking to have a debate on the issue of 
how to reduce gas prices, and the other side just says no. They may 
have a different solution than we do. They think ANWR is the answer, 
the Alaska oilfields. We all know that would take 7 years before a drop 
of oil would come, and most estimates say it would not reduce the price 
by very much at all. But let's debate it. We are willing to debate 
ANWR, an issue they care about. Why are they not willing to debate the 
windfall profits tax or dealing with speculation or dealing with the 
cartel of OPEC? We are happy to debate it all.
  Make no mistake, we are facing an energy crisis that has led to a 
painful and unprecedented spike in the price of oil--$140 a barrel, $4 
a gallon--and the minority, the Republicans say this is a problem that 
is not worthy of our attention or action. It is hard to believe. When 
you go home, whether it is at a parade or a veterans hall, even at 
weddings and christenings, people are coming over to you and asking: 
What are you doing about gas prices? The other side says: Let's not 
debate it.
  It is incredible.
  Eighty-six percent of Americans are unhappy with the state of our 
economy. The most tangible symbol of this is $4 a gallon gasoline. I 
can't understand why my colleagues on the other side of the aisle 
refuse to address this issue and block us from helping American 
consumers as our economy continues to falter.
  They can filibuster all they want. We are up to 75 filibusters. 
Seventy-five times, they said: We don't want to move forward. We don't 
want to debate. But they cannot play the American people for fools. 
Come November, they will reap what they sow. My colleagues on the other 
side of the aisle will filibuster themselves right out of their Senate 
seats. The American public will not take lightly the fact that Senate 
Republicans have prevented anyone from helping. They will see through 
the shams and the false ideas. The strategy of playing to a base that 
is becoming more and more narrow is going to cost them dearly because 
the American people know which party is blocking action on energy 
prices and on tax extenders.
  For all the talk about how American families have benefited from the 
Bush tax cuts, for all the emphasis Senator McCain is placing on making 
them permanent, the simple, undeniable, you-can-look-it-up, no-spin 
truth is that the average American family is paying far more in higher 
gas prices this year than they received from the Bush tax cuts. So set 
aside for a moment higher health care costs, higher tuition costs, 
higher food prices, and all the other ways American families are 
feeling the pinch. They are paying more this year in gas prices alone 
than they received in the Bush tax cuts. Let me repeat that. They are 
paying more this year in gas prices alone than they received in the 
Bush tax cuts. Our friends across the aisle have turned the economic 
stimulus plan into the big-oil stimulus plan. It is unconscionable that 
the American public is being forced to use their stimulus checks just 
to pay for gas.
  I have asked myself, Why don't they even want to debate the issue? We 
are willing to debate ANWR. We are willing to debate some of their 
solutions. Why aren't they willing to debate ours? I will tell you why. 
There are too many people who don't want to vote yes or no. They are 
torn between their base, their oil company constituency, and the rest 
of America. So they want to duck. But that policy is not going to 
work--not this time, not this place, not this year.
  So we are here today to ask that we be allowed to debate the two 
issues they blocked us on yesterday. This week in the Senate 
Republicans are blocking lower energy costs. Let me repeat that because 
clear as a bell, that is what is happening. This week in the Senate 
Republicans are blocking lower energy costs. We cannot even debate 
them. Yesterday, they blocked us twice from debating legislation to 
address rising gas prices.
  The Senate majority leader put together a comprehensive energy 
package, the Consumer-First Energy Act. Senator Baucus put together the 
Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act that extended tax credits to 
promote renewable energy and break our dependence on foreign oil. What 
did they say to either of these in terms of not just a lack of support 
but debate? No, no, no.
  So we are stuck with high oil prices, and instead of letting us 
debate these pieces of legislation, my colleagues on the other side and 
the Bush administration keep going back to the same old tired idea: 
Drilling in Alaska. And do not be fooled because presenting this idea 
is like a poorly performed magic trick. It does not work, and if you 
look closely enough, you can see through the smoke and mirrors.

[[Page 12112]]

  Let me ask my colleagues, when would ANWR drilling have an impact on 
prices? When are we going to get the first bit of oil? In 2018. Do the 
American people want to wait until 2018, 10 years from now? We 
Democrats--I was one of the leaders here--agreed last year to drill in 
the east gulf. That would have increased domestic production over the 
next few years. So when the other side says: We don't want to drill--we 
believe we cannot drill our way out of the problem. We need a profound 
change in energy policy. But to alleviate the short-term pain--not 10 
years from now but more immediately--we have said drill in the east 
gulf. I helped round up Democratic votes to pass that bill.
  So we are not saying do not drill, but we are saying we need a 
profound change in energy policy. ANWR is too far away. We should be 
changing the policy long before 2018 when the first drop of ANWR oil 
would come.
  Perhaps the only thing we have done that will help reduce the price 
of oil and gas in the last while is something that had to wait for a 
Democratic Congress and Senate: Higher mileage standards in the cars. 
That will be something. But we need to do a lot more. We need to go 
after the oil companies. We need to go after OPEC. We need to stop 
rampant speculation.
  The Consumer-First Energy Act does those things. We need to change 
our tax policy so instead of giving breaks and subsidies to the oil 
companies, we start encouraging alternative energy: Solar, wind, 
biomass--you name it.
  In conclusion, yesterday we heard simply: No, we will not debate oil 
prices. They are blocking lower energy costs. We hope over the next day 
or two our Republican colleagues will rethink that position and join us 
in a fulsome debate because otherwise we will not get gas prices to go 
down.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, could you let me know when 5 minutes 
have expired, please.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Yes.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I will give the Senator from New York 
an A+ for creative imagination. Here we are wanting to debate the 
climate change bill--which is a 53-cent-per-gallon gas tax increase 
proposed primarily by Members of the other side, and which includes a 
$6.7 trillion slush fund that Members of Congress could spend as they 
see fit--and members of the majority party were so embarrassed by it 
they tried to bring it down and pull it from the floor. This is a bill 
we should be spending all month talking about. If it is really 
important to deal with gas prices and electricity prices and climate 
change and clean air and our overdependence on foreign oil, where are 
the debaters on climate change? That is the bill we are on today. We--
the Republicans--said let's continue to discuss this important issue. 
They said: No, let's bring it down. And for what purpose? To bring up 
their no-energy bill. Their solution to gas prices--very cleverly 
disguised by the Senator from New York--is more lawsuits, more taxes, 
and no exploration. Our solution is more American energy now.
  The Senator from New York said: Well, why should we drill in the 2000 
acres of Alaska that would produce a million barrels of oil a day? It 
would be 10 years before we would see that oil. The answer is that it 
would be 1 million barrels of oil a day, which would add 1 million to 
the 6 million we produce. Ten years ago, President Clinton vetoed 
legislation passed by a Republican Congress to permit more oil 
exploration in Alaska. If he had not, we would have 1 million more 
barrels of oil a day of American energy.
  So that is the reason we should go ahead. We need more American 
energy now. We are for it; they are not. We are for it; they are not. 
More American energy now.
  We know the future is a different kind of future for energy. I have 
suggested--with support from many of my colleagues--that we have a new 
Manhattan Project, in effect, to focus on things we do not know how to 
do. How do we get solar power down to the cost of fossil fuel? How do 
we make plug-in electric cars commonplace? How do we safely dispose of 
nuclear waste by reprocessing it? How do we have more research for 
advanced biofuels, made from crops we do not eat? We want that kind of 
future, where America has achieved clean energy independence. We want 
to start today to move toward it with the same intellectual horsepower 
and speed and dollars that we moved toward splitting the atom and 
building a bomb in World War II.
  But that is the future. The bridge to the future is to use more 
American energy now. Gasoline is made from oil. We use 25 percent of 
the world's oil. Until we get to this future, we are going to need more 
of it. We can either buy it from the Middle East and from Venezuela, or 
we can make more of it here. It is that simple.
  Today, and in days to follow, I will be reading letters from 
Tennesseans who have written to me about the effect of gas prices on 
their families. I received 400 such e-mails in the last few days. Let 
me read one from Lounita Howard from Lascassas, TN, which is in 
Rutherford County:

       The high gas prices have hit my husband and myself 
     especially hard. We are both self-employed. Bobby is a full-
     time farmer (one of few remaining in Wilson County, 
     Tennessee), and I own a small community newspaper, The 
     Watertown Gazette.
       I live nearly 20 miles from my office, but working from 
     home is not an option. I'm spending close to $70 a week on 
     gas just commuting to Watertown from our farm in Lascassas. 
     (We live just in Wilson County.) Two years ago, it cost me 
     $30 to $35 a week.
       Diesel fuel is another story. Road fuel is running around 
     $4.70 a gallon. Off-road fuel for tractors is around $4.30 or 
     $4.40.

  She goes on to tell about her husband Bobby, who is a seventh 
generation farmer.
  I have a letter, also, from Jonathan Henry, a marine for 18 years, 
who is a Tennessee native who returned from 12 months in Iraq. His 
family was given a flat rate for moving costs. Gas is so high, they 
have had to make cuts in about everything else, he says. He had to 
forego his family vacation. It is too expensive to go on now.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator will be advised 5 minutes have 
expired.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Thank you, Mr. President. I will continue for about 
another 60 seconds, and then I will conclude my remarks.
  I have letters from Kathy Crowe from Hendersonville, TN; Joseph Rizzo 
from Townsend, TN, where I live; and Marti Lewis from Pleasantville, 
TN.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the letters be printed in 
the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

     From: 1st Sgt Jonathan Henry.
     To: Senator Alexander.
     Subject: A Marine's opinion.
       Dear Senator Alexander: I am writing as a Marine who 
     returned from Iraq in February from a twelve month tour, my 
     second in three years. I appreciate your concern to hear from 
     Tennesseans including active duty service members from 
     Tennessee like myself who represent our great state. Shortly 
     after I returned to my home base in North Carolina and 
     executed orders to Camp Pendleton, CA where gas is now in 
     excess of four dollars and thirty-one cents as of 1 June 
     2008. My family felt the expense of gas prices as we are paid 
     a flat rate for moving that includes fuel cost. The high 
     prices for gas reduced the flexibility we had for use on 
     other moving expenses.
       The high prices of gas are having a serious affect on 
     Tennesseans like myself who are assigned outside Tennessee 
     and pay the highest prices in the nation. I have proudly 
     served in the Marine Corps for over eighteen years and will 
     gladly go anywhere assigned but it strains my family during 
     times like this when we travel. This summer we had planned 
     vacation time together we missed during my deployment in 
     2007. We have had to change our plans considerably because 
     there is no way an enlisted member like myself can afford to 
     travel distances outside the immediate area and have 
     expenditures beyond what we would pay for fuel. My wife is 
     thrifty and she made our home run smoothly while I served in 
     Iraq and assures me that we can still make the most of what 
     we have here at our new duty station.
       I appreciate your concern and hope that Congress will see 
     how Americans are sacrificing because of soaring gas prices.
           Thank You Sir,
                                                Jonathan S. Henry,
                                                     1st Sgt USMC.

[[Page 12113]]

     
                                  ____
     From: Lounita Howard.
     To: Senator Alexander.
     Subject: High Gas Price Stories.
       Dear Senator Alexander: The high gas prices have hit my 
     husband and myself especially hard. We are both self 
     employed. Bobby is a full-time farmer (one of few renaming in 
     Wilson County, Tennessee), and I own a small community 
     newspaper, The Watertown Gazette.
       I live nearly 20 miles from my office, but working from 
     home is not an option. I'm spending close to $70 a week on 
     gas just commuting to Watertown from our farm in Lascassas 
     (We live just in Wilson County). Two years ago, it cost me 
     $30 to $35 a week.
       Diesel fuel is another story. Road fuel is running around 
     $4.70 a gallon. Off-road fuel for tractors is around $4.30 or 
     $4.40. It just keeps going up--almost daily. There's no way 
     to budget for this. We row-crop, growing corn and large 
     amounts of hay, and raise cattle. Obviously, Bobby uses 
     thousands of gallons of diesel in his business just to keep 
     the tractors going. He uses a substantial amount of road-fuel 
     as well, as he must have heavy-duty dually diesel trucks to 
     pull trailers loaded with equipment or hay. Diesel fuel used 
     to cost less than gasoline. Now it costs far more. It costs 
     hundreds of dollars just to fill the tanks on one truck.
       We're really wondering how we can survive. Bobby is a 
     seventh generation farmer on the same land in Wilson County 
     settled by his ancestors when they came to Tennessee in the 
     early 1800s. My dream was to own my own business--I saw that 
     dream come true five years ago, but with the cost of fuel 
     coupled with the high cost of health insurance as a self-
     employed couple, I beginning to question the wisdom of 
     continuing to pursue that dream.
       Before the gas prices started skyrocketing, we were holding 
     our own--not getting rich, mind you, but we were ok. Now, 
     it's hand-to-mouth. Gas prices are impacting the cost of 
     everything else--groceries, household supplies, you name it I 
     heard today that sales at Goodwill Stores in Tennessee have 
     gone up 12 percent--not surprising. Who can afford to buy 
     ``new'' when they've got to fill up their fuel tanks to do 
     their job, or get to the office?
       Thank you for your time and efforts to address the problem 
     of high fuel prices.
           Sincerely,
                                                   Lounita Howard,
     Lascassas, TN
                                  ____

     To: Senator Alexander.
     Subject: Impact on Small Business.
       We supply lighting to the residential building community in 
     Sumner and Wilson county. Many of these builders have gone 
     from building 30 homes a year in 2007 to this year just one. 
     Some have even gone out of business completely.
       I took a second mortgage out on our home and used 
     retirement funds to purchase this business several years ago. 
     We built a thriving business with a bright future until this 
     year. Today, I can barely make payroll. Our key was always 
     customer service. Part of that service included going to a 
     client or builder's home and personally consulting on the 
     project site. This consultation is at no charge. We have free 
     delivery. We can no longer afford to drive to Wilson County 
     or the far roaches of Davidson County without charging a fee 
     just to pay for Gas! It pains me to charge for what my heart 
     says should be at not charge. It cost $110 to fill my tank 2x 
     per week.
       Our sales to the building community are down 47% over 
     previous year(s).
       My supplies are charging 25% of the cost of goods as fuel 
     charges.
       UPS is charging 25%--55% cost of goods as delivery charges.
       Product made in China (90% of inventory) is rising monthly,
       Two of my employees are considering leaving us due entirely 
     to fuel costs from Gallatin to Hendersonville everyday.
       If this continues, we will close. Several new people will 
     be on the state's unemployment, the $50,000+ local sales tax 
     we contribute to will be eliminated and we will foreclose on 
     our personal home and property.
       Please help.
                                                      Kathy Crowe,
     Hendersonville, TN.
                                  ____

     From: Joseph Rizzo.
     To: Senator Alexander.
     Subject: Gas Prices.
       I am a student at UT and live in Townsend. It cost me $100 
     per week just to travel back and forth to school. I was faced 
     with dropping out of school, because I could not afford the 
     fuel, or dip into my savings and purchase a scooter that will 
     give me the economy of $20 per week in fuel cost. If the cost 
     of the scooter offsets the cost of the fuel, then I made the 
     right choice in the long run. My biggest concern now is the 
     safety of traveling back and forth on a scooter. Had no 
     choice. Education or no education.
                                                     Joseph Rizzo,
     Townsend, TN.
                                  ____

     To: Senator Alexander.
     Subject: Gas Prices.
       I am a disabled veteran who requires a lot of medical 
     treatment and doctor visits. And because I live in a small 
     town I have to drive up to 100 miles for treatment. I have 
     been forced to try and schedule appointments to coincide with 
     my family's appointments so we can share the ride. As a 
     result, I am not getting the treatment I require as often as 
     is needed and am left suffering with symptoms that have 
     caused me to be disabled. I should go to the doctor for 
     treatment every two weeks but have to now wait up to a month 
     because the gas prices are so high. In the meantime I suffer 
     with terrible pain. But, I have little choice since I can't 
     afford the gas it would take to drive such distances. I pray 
     that the prices will go down so that I can seek the treatment 
     I need for a condition that arose while serving my country. I 
     appreciate all that you do to ensure we can have reasonable 
     and affordable gas.
                                                      Marti Lewis,
                                                Pleasantville, TN.

  Mr. ALEXANDER. As we debate high gas prices, and as we hear these 
stories from Tennesseans and other Americans, let's be clear what we 
need to do. We all want an energy future where America has achieved 
clean energy independence, but that is very different than what we have 
today. But the bridge to that future in a country that uses 25 percent 
of all the energy in the world is more American energy now. We 
Republicans support that, and most of the Democrats do not--which is 
why they propose more lawsuits and taxes, but no exploration.
  Just as one example, to conclude: Why not let Virginia do what four 
other States do and put oil and natural gas rigs 50 miles out where you 
cannot see them, and take 37.5 percent of the revenues and put it in a 
trust fund for schools or beach nourishment, give 12.5 percent of the 
revenues to the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and put some more 
American oil now into the world marketplace so prices would stabilize 
and begin to go down? I offered that amendment to the Budget Resolution 
earlier this year. It was defeated 51 to 47. Most Republicans voted for 
it. Most Democrats voted no.
  We are for more American energy now, and they say no.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be allowed to 
speak for up to 10 minutes and the remaining block of our time be 
reserved for the Senator from New Hampshire.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I want to also read a letter from one of 
my constituents, Jerry from Denton, TX. That is just around Dallas. He 
wrote to me:

       I work full time, have two part time jobs, and go to school 
     full time and with living expenses I am having trouble 
     keeping my head above water. My parents are both retired and 
     drawing social security, my dad is also working as much as he 
     can, but still they are just barely able to get by. My health 
     insurance expires next month and I cannot afford it because 
     of what I'm spending on gas right now.

  Jerry adds:

       We need a long term plan that allows for new sources of 
     energy, but that does not involve the complete doing away 
     with gas or making gas prices go so high. Something needed to 
     be done months ago.

  Well, I think Jerry is being overly generous. Something needed to be 
done far earlier than just a few months ago. We needed to do something 
about this 10 years ago. But, unfortunately, the birds have come home 
to roost, and now the American people are suffering high gas prices 
which affect every aspect of their lives.
  Two days ago, I was in Houston, TX, at the Houston Food Bank. I heard 
from a senior citizen--a woman--who is disabled and whose food costs 
have gone up by 50 percent. Now, you may wonder, what is the connection 
between food costs and gasoline? Well, the fact is, the diesel or the 
gasoline the farmers need in order to produce the crop--to bring it in 
so it can be made available for us to buy and prepare for our tables--
has driven food prices even higher.
  As to some of the choices we have made in Congress--for example, to 
use food for fuel, things such as corn for ethanol--about 25 percent of 
our domestic corn crop now is used for biofuels, and we need to revisit 
that. But in the short term what we need to do is to bring down the 
price of gasoline at the pump. There are basically three ways we can do 
that: One is we can increase supply which, to me, is the most obvious 
answer.

[[Page 12114]]

  I heard one of my colleagues this morning cite a new Gallup survey 
which points to the fact that American attitudes have changed 
dramatically with the facts; that is, as gas prices have gone higher--
from January 4, 2007, when they were $2.33 a gallon to today where they 
are $4.05 a gallon--attitudes have changed about producing oil from 
domestic sources. We are talking about in Alaska. We are talking about 
the Outer Continental Shelf where now China, off of our southern 
coastline is producing oil in basically an area where we could be 
producing it, but China is producing it for themselves while we have 
put a moratorium on producing that for ourselves.
  Then there is a vast oil shale out in the Western States. It is 
estimated that in the Green River formation in Colorado, Utah, and 
Wyoming, there are as many as 2 trillion barrels of oil potentially 
available from that one location but approximately 6 trillion barrels 
of oil from producing oil shale using new technology that has not 
always been available. So we could bring down the price of gasoline, 70 
percent of which is composed of the price of oil, by increasing 
American supply which will, in turn, reduce our dependency on imported 
oil from the Middle East.
  Our colleague and friend, Senator Schumer of New York, acknowledged 
this recently--that supply can affect price--but he was talking about 
Saudi Arabia increasing their supply. I am not for increasing our 
dependence on Saudi Arabia or any other country; I am for greater 
independence by depending on our own domestic resources. But he said on 
this argument--on the supply-and-demand issue--on April 30: If they 
produced a half a million more barrels a day, the price would come down 
a very significant amount. At the same time, it would stop the 
speculation that keeps driving the price of oil up.
  Well, I say he is half right. More supply--more American supply--
would help dampen the speculation and help bring down the price which 
would help make more oil available to make into gasoline which would 
help all of our consumers and constituents at the pump. It would help 
people such as Jerry, who is trying to get by while going to school and 
trying to hold down two jobs in Denton, TX.
  Fifty-seven percent, at last count, of the American people in a 
Gallup survey said they believe we ought to take advantage of the 
natural resources that God has given this country. I remember when I 
was in school; we would look at different countries and try to figure 
out why one was more successful, more prosperous, than another. 
Invariably, the teacher would say because the natural resources this 
country has are so vast, that is one of the reasons for the tremendous 
prosperity. America is the only country I know of that has this 
bounteous natural resource known as oil and gas and we have consciously 
decided--Congress has consciously decided--to put it out of bounds 
through various appropriations acts dating back to about 1982.
  We need to reconsider this. I believe we need to change our ways and 
help relieve some of this pressure consumers are feeling at the pump, 
and the woman I was referring to at the Houston Food Bank who sees her 
food prices driven up, requiring her to be more in need of the good 
works and the charity of others, to help her with her food costs. This 
is something that I, frankly, do not understand--why Congress continues 
to be the impediment and not part of the solution.
  Our friend from New York and others say: Well, we have a solution. 
There was a bill that was introduced and voted on yesterday, and 
frankly I agree with the Senator from Tennessee that it was not an 
energy bill because it didn't contain one additional drop of new 
energy. What it said was: Well, we are going to sue OPEC--the 
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries--including Venezuela and 
Iran, Saudi Arabia, and others, presumably to get them to open the 
spigot even wider so we can be more dependent on imported oil while 
continuing to put America's natural resources out of bounds. That is 
not a solution. Then they said: OK, we have an even better idea. People 
are mad at oil companies, so let's raise taxes on oil companies. That 
would be great, wouldn't it? It would make everybody feel good.
  Well, the problem is that happened back in the 1980s, the so-called 
windfall profits tax, and do you know what happened? The Congressional 
Research Service has documented the fact that domestic oil production 
went down by 6 percent. In other words, it made us even more dependent 
on imported oil from the Middle East and elsewhere, not less dependent. 
So we want to repeat our mistakes. It is true that those who forget 
history are condemned to relive it, and I guess our friends on the 
other side of the aisle want us to relive that bad part of our history 
as far as our energy independence is concerned.
  So as good as it may feel to some people to raise taxes to stick it 
to the oil companies, it is sticking it to yourself. In the end, 
everybody understands that when you raise taxes, eventually those 
taxes--those costs--are going to be passed down to--guess who. You got 
it: to the consumer. Rather than bringing down the price of gasoline, 
it is going to continue to drive up the price.
  Last week we saw what I think is fair to say a very poorly timed 
presentation of the Boxer climate tax bill which, rather than bringing 
down the price of oil and gasoline, would have driven the price up. The 
National Association of Manufacturers estimated if we had passed that 
bill, it would have driven up electricity costs and gasoline costs by 
more than 145 percent.
  So there is a better way for us to do this, but it is not by trying 
to force bad solutions, big Government solutions with $6.7 trillion in 
costs associated with it--ones which will backfire on us and increase 
the costs of gasoline and electricity. That is not a good solution. I 
think most people of good will and common sense would agree. We need to 
find a solution that will bring down those costs as we work toward that 
clean energy future that Senator Alexander and others have talked 
about; as we use more of our own natural resources, as we develop 
nuclear power to make electricity in a larger percentage as countries 
such as France do where 80 percent of their electricity is made from 
nuclear power; so we have electricity to recharge the battery on that 
hybrid plug-in vehicle that is going to be produced by General Motors 
and others in 2010 and beyond.
  We are going to have to change some of the way we operate such as by 
conservation, by paying more attention to the environment, but also 
from a national security and economic perspective by trying to make 
sure we develop clean sources of energy. But as we are on that bridge 
to the future to clean energy independence, we are going to have to 
continue to depend on oil and gas. Doesn't it make sense that we would 
rely more on ourselves and less on others to help us with this 
important element of a prosperous economy, not to mention the thousands 
of additional jobs that would be created right here in the United 
States, if we would develop more of our own resources rather than 
depend on our adversaries to sell it to us so they can use the money to 
buy weapons to perhaps use those weapons against us?
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire is recognized.
  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I rise to discuss further this issue of 
energy which is, of course, a massive and important priority for us as 
a nation and for people simply trying to get through the day--driving 
to work or whatever they have to do that uses energy--with the price of 
gasoline at over $4 a gallon and, at least in my part of the country, 
the fear of oil prices next winter--which is the primary source of 
heating fuel for us in New England--being well into the middle $4 price 
range and potentially higher. That is something most people find almost 
inconceivable but, more importantly, it is extremely hard to afford and 
it puts a tremendous amount of pressure on the family budget.
  The question becomes: How do we address this as a culture and how do 
we address it as a Congress? We have had a proposal brought forward by 
the other side of the aisle which seems to

[[Page 12115]]

ignore the concept of supply and demand and turns basically to trial 
lawyers and to taxes to try to address how you produce more energy. 
That is unlikely to encourage or to address this issue in a positive 
way. The simple fact is to set up an American procedure where you are 
now allowed to sue Saudi Arabia or the Gulf Emirates or Iran over their 
production of oil is cutting off your nose to spite your face. These 
are independent nations. The idea that you are going to resolve the 
issue of production and availability and price by suing these nations, 
some of which--for example, Venezuela--have great antipathy for us to 
begin with; at least their leadership does--is absurd on its face. It 
is plain absurd. It may make a good press release, it might make a good 
hyperbolic statement, but it certainly does not do anything to produce 
more energy for us as a nation at a more affordable price. It may make 
a few trial lawyers happy, but that is about all it is going to do.
  In fact, it will have the opposite reaction. If I led a country and 
the U.S. Congress passed a law that said they could sue my country, I 
would simply say to the United States: You can go pound sand. We don't 
have to ship you any oil at all. We certainly don't have to take the 
revenues that we generate from those oil shipments and reinvest them in 
the United States, which is critical to us as a society for our own 
capital formation. So this policy is counterproductive and, as I say, 
is cutting off your nose to spite your face.
  It is followed closely by an equally incoherent policy from a 
standpoint of substance--maybe not from a standpoint of politics--which 
is the idea that you are going to tax American corporations at 
excessive rates over which you tax other corporations because they make 
profits that are deemed by Members of the other side of the aisle to be 
excessive. Basically the philosophy of this position is: Well, we in 
Congress know how to spend your profits better than you, the company 
that produces those profits knows how to spend them, and that somehow 
we in Congress are going to produce more oil and, as a result, reduce 
the price of oil if we simply take control over your profits so you can 
no longer invest those profits in the exploration for new oil or for 
new energy sources or for alternative energy sources. The idea that 
Congress could in any way efficiently handle these dollars has been 
proven to be a fallacy, of course. Congress would simply take those 
dollars and spend them on whatever political issue we happen to feel 
the most appropriate and whatever constituency we want to benefit the 
most--dollars which could be much more efficiently used. Remember, most 
of these dollars, these profits, don't end up going to some pie-in-the-
sky exercise; they either go back to the exploration to produce more 
energy or they go to stockholders through dividends. Most Americans are 
stockholders. Working Americans are invested in pension funds through 
their place of employment and they are stockholders. In fact, well over 
65 percent of senior citizens receive dividend income. Of course, those 
dividends are a function of profit for the companies that pay the 
dividends. The money flows back to the employees of those companies and 
to the people who own pension funds which have invested in those 
companies, whether it is an auto worker or somebody working in a 
factory in New Hampshire or a high-tech individual who has a 401(k). So 
those profits usually get reenergized into the economy to produce more 
economic activity. They certainly are more efficiently used in that 
manner and through exploration than they would be for us to basically 
confiscate those profits through an excessive tax because some Members 
of the other side think it is good politics and as a result wish to 
target these companies which they see as good political fodder.
  A much more logical approach to production and reducing the cost of 
energy in this country would be to actually do something about 
producing more available energy for the American people. Unfortunately, 
on every attempt to do that, we have been stonewalled by the majority 
party--stonewalled on the issue, for example, of producing more nuclear 
power. We have a unique experience of this in New Hampshire. New 
Hampshire was the last State to bring online a nuclear powerplant. It 
came online years after it should have come online at a cost which was 
dramatically more than it should have cost because of the opposition of 
the left--aggressive and very effective opposition in stalling--in 
bringing that nuclear powerplant online, Seabrook.
  What has happened since it has been brought online? It has produced a 
lot of good, clean energy, not only for the people of New Hampshire but 
for the people of New England who have benefited from that nuclear 
powerplant. Unfortunately, the people of New Hampshire have been stuck 
with a bill of almost $100 million which is the result of cost overruns 
driven almost entirely by the left by delaying tactics which were put 
upon the plant and the production of this energy. That attitude hasn't 
changed much on the other side of the aisle. There is still genuine 
opposition to nuclear power. Nuclear power is a clean form of energy 
and it is something we should be turning to.
  France--a country which is not often held up as an example around 
here for policy, but it should be on this issue--has 80 percent of its 
energy coming from nuclear power. We as a country should be equally 
aggressive in that area.
  Another area we need to be aggressive in, for those States that feel 
it is appropriate, they should be allowed to do over-the-horizon 
exploration for oil and for gas off their shores. It works in 
Louisiana. Ironically, one of the few things that results from Katrina 
that you could look at as positive--and Katrina was a horrific 
disaster--was the fact that there wasn't one barrel of oil spilled as a 
result of that hurricane--a level 5 hurricane--coming up the gulf and 
going through New Orleans. It wiped out the city of New Orleans, but 
all the oil rigs that were functioning--and there were a lot of them in 
the Gulf of Mexico--survived without a leak, without a spillage of any 
kind. That shows that drilling in deep water can be done in an 
environmentally safe way.
  Yet the other side of the aisle resists and stops any attempts to 
allow other States that might wish to pursue this course of over-the-
horizon exploration for oil and gas from pursuing that course. Virginia 
has expressed interest in doing it, and Virginia may have a very large 
potential energy source right off its coast. It may be fairly far out, 
and it will be deep water, but it may well be there. There is no reason 
we should not look at that type of approach and produce energy there.
  We need to produce more American energy because we cannot rely--and 
this is fairly obvious--on energy from nations in the Middle East 
especially.
  Another example is oil shale. The technology for the recovery of oil 
shale has gotten to the point where it is extremely sophisticated and, 
again, environmentally safe. All the activity occurs below ground. 
There is virtually nothing occurring above the ground, other than the 
actual pumping out of the final product, which is a kerosene-type 
product that can be used for jet fuel. We have a reserve of oil from 
oil shale that exceeds the reserve of Saudi Arabia. Think about that. 
We have, in our Western States, enough oil from shale, which can be 
recovered by underground methods and have no insignificant 
environmental impact, to actually produce more oil than Saudi Arabia. 
Are we able to pursue that? No. Why? Because the other side refuses to 
allow exploration for participation in oil shale in the West.
  Those are a few examples of the type of expansion and approach we 
should take toward producing more American energy, which is totally 
resisted, regrettably, by Members of the other side of the aisle who 
are speaking for aggressive groups on the left.
  We are not going to produce more energy or reduce energy costs by 
setting up a regime to sue Saudi Arabia or Venezuela. We will probably 
have the exact opposite effect. Certainly, it will affect the 
willingness of those countries to invest in the United States. We are 
not going to produce more energy or reduce energy costs by putting a 
confiscatory tax on companies that

[[Page 12116]]

produce energy and taking money that can go to individuals through 
dividends, working Americans, or can go to greater exploration out of 
the pipeline and giving it to people in Congress to spend on special 
interest groups.
  The only way we are going to get more energy and reduce our reliance 
on foreign energy is if we produce more in the United States, which we 
can do; we have the reserves. We are not allowed to use them. We can 
pursue nuclear, for example, and we can pursue renewables. They can 
have a positive effect, but they cannot obviously overwhelm the entire 
need, or carry the entire need. We also, of course, should look at 
other areas, such as conservation and using a different type of vehicle 
or engine--something that is either a hybrid or an all-electric engine. 
But to drive an all-electric car, you have to have electricity 
produced, which means you have to have more electrical plants, and you 
have to make sure they are clean and not putting carbon, nitrogen, and 
sulfates into the air.
  We should be using nuclear power and promoting clean coal technology. 
So you need specific initiatives that will actually produce something 
in the way of energy, not political statements that produce something 
in the way of hyperbole. Senator Domenici has proposed a bill that 
would carry a number of those issues--expansion in the effort of 
nuclear, the opportunity to pursue over-the-horizon exploration, and 
using shale oil through underground recovery. Yet that bill has been 
held up and stopped by the other side of the aisle. So the question 
today becomes, how do we better improve our position and make sure we 
have less dependence upon foreign oil and begin to bring down these 
prices of gasoline and home heating oil? The answer is simple: Beyond 
conservation and the renewable issue, which there is agreement on, the 
answer is to produce more American energy and make it clean energy, 
such as nuclear.
  I believe if we want to progress in this area, we need to take a hard 
look at over-the-horizon drilling for offshore oil and gas off the 
States that are willing to pursue that. Maine, which has the Gulf of 
Maine, is not going to be willing to do it because of the fisheries and 
neither will New Hampshire. If Virginia wants to do it, they ought to 
be able to do it. It can be done safely.
  Second, oil shale is a reserve that can be produced, again, 
underground and without environmental harm. These are substantive, 
specific approaches, which we need at this time.
  I yield the floor, reserve the remainder of our time, and I suggest 
the absence much a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that 
the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, our people are hurting. There 
is something wrong with the price of oil and gas. It is not a normal 
function of the marketplace of supply and demand that the price of oil 
hit, last Friday, $139 a barrel.
  few months ago, we had an ExxonMobil executive testify before 
Congress that the normal supply and demand of the marketplace for oil, 
even in a tight world market, the normal price would be about $55 a 
barrel. Yet, last Friday, oil sold for $139 a barrel. So what is the 
problem? Well, it is obviously not a supply-and-demand issue. A normal 
marketplace sets its price according to the supply, and when the supply 
is higher, the price is less; if the demand is higher than the supply, 
then the price is more. As you would expect, in a world where there is 
an increasing consumption of oil, you would think, even with the 
emergence of new countries that are demanding oil, the supply would 
keep going up and up and, in fact, it has. But if the ExxonMobil 
executive is accurate, and the price ought to be around $55 a barrel, 
what is the difference that has run the price all the way up to $139? 
We have to look closer to see. I think the American people are now at 
the point of hurting so badly we better shake ourselves out of our 
lethargy and do the congressional investigations that are necessary to 
pry open this secret box to determine what is causing oil to keep going 
up and up, so we can give our people some relief.
  Now, it is true it is a multifaceted problem, and it is true that in 
a world in which any kind of news would suggest that there is going to 
be a part of the world that is disturbed, that it sends jitters 
throughout the marketplace, particularly on oil--since oil is so much 
valued as a commodity. That would certainly be one reason that would 
increase the price. So bad news having to do with this or that--bad 
news with regard to the war, or Iran suddenly having small boats that 
would swarm the U.S. Navy fleet in the Persian Gulf at the Strait of 
Hormuz, that would certainly send jitters. Whatever the world event is, 
it is going to send jitters, and that will cause people to worry 
whether they are going to have the oil contracts and supply for the 
future.
  But that still doesn't explain the gap between $55 a barrel and $139 
a barrel. So what we have discovered is, lo and behold, back in 
December of 2000, on an unrelated bill, there was an insertion made in 
that bill, without any fanfare, that took away energy and metals from 
being a regulated commodities on the Commodity Futures Trading 
Commission. Whereas, in the past, that Commission would have had a 
regulation that says, if you are going to buy futures contracts of oil, 
you have to be a buyer who is planning to use that oil. You take away 
that regulatory effort that, if you want to buy it, you have to buy it 
for the purpose of using it, you take away that regulatory requirement, 
and then what happens? In an unregulated market, these contracts for 
future oil start to get bid up and speculators want to speculate and 
more and more they think it is a valuable commodity and the price keeps 
going up and up in pure speculation.
  It is similar to a potential owner of a house who wants to buy a 
house because they want to live there, but another potential buyer of a 
house who doesn't want to live there but merely wants to speculate on 
the house puts in a contract on the house, knowing the value is going 
to go up and would not even wait to close to own the house but will 
take the contract for this price and flip it to a new buyer who will 
buy it for a higher price. Thus, the speculative fever drives up the 
price. That is what has happened, in part, with regard to these oil 
contracts.
  There is another reason the price is going up too; that is, so much 
of the available money in the world to be invested--we call that 
capital--used to go into real estate, but we know what has happened to 
the housing market. We know what has happened to the value of real 
estate. Instead of, as it has over the past decade or so, continuing to 
go up, it is going down. So a lot of that money that was available for 
real estate investments is out there to be used and invested someplace 
else.
  Naturally, what looks like a good market is the one that keeps 
bidding up the price of oil. Now we have more money flowing into the 
bidding up of the oil contracts, which causes them to be bid up to a 
higher and higher price. And guess who pays at the end of the day. It 
is all of us. It is our people who are now paying in excess of $4 per 
gallon with the enormous consequences they are suffering, in many 
cases--I have just come back from almost two dozen townhall meetings in 
which I can tell you that our people are hurting. They are crying. 
Literally, people are standing up in townhall meetings weeping. 
Families cannot make financial ends meet; families cannot, with the 
cost of everything else going up, afford to drive their car; families 
who happen not to live close to their place of work, who have to depend 
on their own car for transportation, are getting into a terrible fix.
  So what are we going to do about it? Last week, our Commerce 
Committee heard testimony from a professor, Michael Greenberger. He 
suggested we close off the loophole by taking energy commodities, such 
as oil and natural gas, off the list of exempt commodities,

[[Page 12117]]

making it clear that energy commodities must be traded on regulated 
markets. We thought we did this on the farm bill which we passed a 
couple of weeks ago by closing that loophole that was allowed in the 
law in December of 2000. That loophole, by the way, is called the Enron 
loophole. It was done at the behest of the Enron company. And then the 
Enron company, once their commodity--energy--was not regulated, they 
utilized that--remember, in the early part of this decade?--they 
utilized that to run up the price of electricity contracts in the State 
of California. It was this same phenomenon: speculators speculating, 
bidding higher and higher on contracts for future electricity.
  Mr. President, am I under a time limit?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is a 10-minute time limit.
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, is there another Senator 
waiting? There is. I ask unanimous consent for 4 more minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I am just getting cranked up, 
but I will see if I can crank it up and conclude within 4 minutes.
  We saw the devastation of the electricity contracts being bid up by 
speculators as a result of the Enron loophole in the law. We thought we 
closed that Enron loophole a few weeks ago on the farm bill so that 
there will be new regulation, but there is disagreement on this floor 
among Senators as to whether we have closed it. This Professor 
Greenberger has opined to us in the Commerce Committee that we did not 
sufficiently close it off. I think we ought to examine how ironclad our 
closing of that loophole is and ask ourselves some important questions.
  Question No. 1: Should we consider the outright barring of trading 
energy except for a legitimate business purpose? In other words, if you 
want to buy a future oil contract, you have to plan to be able to use 
it.
  No. 2: Should we stop large investors and hedge funds from gambling 
in energy contracts? If it is for the purpose of just running up the 
investment cost, I think we should.
  No. 3: Should we regulate or shut down international exchanges that 
do business in the United States and whose trades and actions impact 
the lives of our people in this country? In other words, if they are 
not trading just on that commodities futures trading exchange but are 
trading on another exchange that they say is overseas, such as London 
or Dubai, but, in fact, are trading on electronic machines in this 
country, should we regulate that or shut it down?
  No. 4: Should we close the over-the-counter markets until the 
Commodity Futures Trading Commission can get its act together with this 
new law that says they should regulate these energy contracts?
  Energy is too precious and it impacts the economy too greatly. This 
endless game of speculation must stop. While the traders are making 
billions of dollars, our people are having difficulty in being able to 
afford to drive to work.
  There are a bunch of Senators who have been involved in this issue--
Senator Levin, Senator Feinstein, Senator Cantwell, Senator Dorgan, and 
a host of others I am joining. I support these efforts to find some 
answers quickly to help our people. At an appropriate time, it is this 
Senator's intention, if we have not gotten our act together and offered 
amendments, to do exactly what I have been talking about. This Senator 
intends to do it. I look forward to the debate on this issue.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I spent close to half an hour around 
lunchtime today with a number of governors. There were some 30, 40 
governors gathered in one of the Senate office buildings not far from 
where we are standing today. They were not governors in their thirties, 
forties, fifties, or sixties; they were, for the most part, teenagers, 
and these governors are about to become seniors in high school. They 
are part of the YMCA Youth in Government. They are here from all over 
the country. It was great to be with them and see young leaders coming 
up through the ranks and hoping to push old guys like us out of the way 
and take our places, whether it is New Jersey, Florida, Georgia, or 
Delaware.
  One of the issues we talked about was how difficult it is to get 
things done around here anymore. If you read the Constitution and you 
read the rules of the Senate, there is the opportunity for one person 
in the Senate to slow things down quite a bit, for a handful of people 
to really bollix things up and bring business to a halt.
  I have never seen a time when we have had so many filibusters in the 
Senate. This is my eighth year, about as long as the Presiding Officer. 
So far in this Congress, we are up to 75 filibusters.
  The issue we were dealing with yesterday was whether we were going to 
bring up a bill to fund the development of renewable fuels, such as 
solar, wind, and geothermal, and pay for that by rescinding some of the 
tax cuts oil and gas companies enjoy. The legislation would also 
crackdown on speculators and price gouging. Unfortunately, we were not 
able to get the votes we needed--60 votes, if you will, not 51 but 60 
votes--to be able to move to debate the bill.
  For everybody keeping score, this chart is not showing anybody's age, 
but that is how many filibusters we have had to go through during the 
course of the year.
  I believe sometimes a picture can be worth a thousand words. Let's 
look at a couple pictures on these charts and see what we have.
  This is a picture of what has gone on with oil prices over the last 
7\1/2\ years, starting in 2001 when the price of oil was little more 
than $20 a barrel, and by 2004, it was up to close to $40 a barrel. In 
2007, we were up to close to $70 a barrel. Today, gosh, it is 
approaching $140 per barrel.
  How does that translate, given that kind of history, into prices at 
the pump? I just filled up my old Town and Country Chrysler minivan the 
other day, which I am proud to say has 175,000 miles on it. It is a 
2001 model. Delaware is not a big State, but we have gone up and down 
that State many times in that vehicle, and it is still running. We 
changed the oil a couple times, but other than that it is doing just 
fine.
  It is getting expensive to fill up the tank. It is a 20-gallon tank. 
When I filled up my first tank in my Town and Country minivan, it cost 
me about a buck 30, a buck 40 to fill up. I filled it up this last 
weekend, and it was $75--a lot of money. It is the most we have ever 
paid. It was painful.
  This is what the runup in prices looks like. There is not too much 
difference from 2001 to 2003, and then they steadily climb. Recently, 
we have seen it take off.
  That chart was looking at 8 years. Let's look at 1 year. This is 
another way of--I don't think we will look at this chart. We just 
looked at something similar to this.
  This is 2008. This is just 1 year of gas prices. We saw at the start 
of the year about $3.11 per gallon; by May 26, $3.93; and in most 
cases, around the country it is up over $4 a gallon.
  To follow up on what Senator Nelson was talking about, why the runup? 
We had some really smart people come by and testify before the Commerce 
Committee last week. One was a guy named George Soros, a gentleman, a 
very wealthy man. The Presiding Officer probably knows him or certainly 
knows of him, as do many of us. One of the issues he talked about that 
was very insightful was the value of the asset that the oil-producing 
nations have, the oil under the ground, how that is an appreciating 
value, a rising value over time. We just saw the increase from 20 bucks 
a barrel up to 140 bucks a barrel, an appreciating asset underground. 
Our asset is a currency, a depreciating asset over the last number of 
years. We have seen the value of the dollar against most other 
currencies go down.
  If you are an oil-producing nation, why would you surrender an asset 
appreciating in value to take on an asset--our currency--which is 
depreciating in value? Why would you be

[[Page 12118]]

anxious to pump more oil, which is appreciating in value, to take on 
the dollar, which is depreciating in value? I think it is one of the 
reasons the oil-producing nations are reluctant to produce more oil. It 
is a problem we face and other oil-consuming nations around the world 
face.
  It is not just supply and demand causing the runup in prices. That is 
part of it. It is not just the drop in the value of the dollar causing 
the runup in prices. As Senator Nelson and others suggest, there is 
something going on with speculation.
  Not everybody who buys a contract on oil to deliver to this country 
has the intention of taking possession of that oil; rather, they are 
speculating that the price is going to go up, not unlike the way people 
would buy houses or condos--as in recent years we appreciated the 
housing bubble--expecting housing prices would continue to rise, and 
they did up until now. Speculators are trading on the idea that the 
value of oil is going to continue to go up. Maybe it will, but my guess 
is it will not be forever. Part of our challenge in this country is 
figure how it won't go up forever and provide some relief at the pump.
  This chart shows the percentage of oil owned by speculators from 
January 1996 to April of this year. In 1996 or so, less than 15 percent 
of the oil was actually owned by speculators. If you look at today, at 
2007-2008, we are up to almost 35, 40 percent not owned by those who 
are anxious to take oil and refine it but those who are speculating the 
value will continue to go up.
  What can we do about it? One of the things we can do about it in this 
country is to go after the speculators, and we certainly attempted to 
do that as recently as yesterday with the legislation we could not get 
60 votes to move to. But there are some other things we can do, and 
there are some actions we have already taken as a Congress, working 
with the administration, to encourage people to be helpful in bringing 
down the demand for the limited amount of oil that is out in the 
marketplace. Let me mention a few of them.
  I wish to mention the hybrid Dodge Durango and the hybrid Chrysler 
Aspen. A few years ago, a partnership was formed between our friends at 
General Motors, DaimlerChrysler, and BMW to develop the next generation 
of hybrid, and the first fruits of that have gone into the hybrid Dodge 
Durango and the hybrid Chrysler Aspen. Today, the Durango and the 
Aspen, in the city, get about 14 miles per gallon and, on the highway, 
about 18. Starting in August, when they will begin selling the hybrid, 
in the cities I think they will get close to 22 miles per gallon, and 
on the highway about 25 miles per gallon. That is not such terrific 
mileage, but compared to what it was, it is almost a 50-percent 
improvement over what was the case. For people looking for a larger 
vehicle and SUV, there is something to look for right here. People 
don't have to buy a big vehicle to be able to enjoy better gas mileage 
in our vehicles. I wish to mention, if I can, the Chevrolet Malibu 
hybrid. The Chevrolet Malibu was selected as the car of the year. Last 
year, the Saturn Aura was selected as the car of the year. We haven't 
competed too well for a while in this country for our vehicles, in the 
midsize sedan segment, but the Malibu is not only the car of the year 
but also J.D. Power announced last week that, in terms of midsize 
sedans, the Malibu is selected as a top-quality vehicle. That is 
against some tough competition in the Toyota Camrys and the Honda 
Accords and the Nissan Altimas of the world. For a top-quality car, the 
Chevrolet Malibu looks great and gets good gas mileage but also has a 
hybrid people might be interested in, for people looking to buy a new 
vehicle or maybe downsize or resize their vehicle. This is not a bad 
one to look at. There is the Saturn Aura up there.
  Here in the middle is a concept car I saw at the North American Auto 
Show about a year and a half ago. At the time, it was an idea, and they 
actually had a full-size mockup of what they called the Chevrolet Volt. 
I called it eye candy at the time--very good-looking vehicle, very 
attractive, very easy on the eye, but it turns out it is a plug-in 
hybrid vehicle. The idea is you plug it in and charge the battery. You 
plug it into your garage or wherever you have an outlet in your home, 
and the next day you can drive it for 40 miles without a charge. It has 
an auxiliary power unit onboard. It could be a low-emission diesel, 
could be an internal combustion engine, could be a fuel cell. It could 
be any one of those three alternative power systems that would recharge 
the battery. They don't run the vehicle, they recharge the battery.
  The idea for gas mileage in this vehicle, which is to be on the road 
in 2010, is about 80 miles per gallon. Now we are talking. One of the 
things we are doing in the Congress is providing investment monies, 
about $100 million for investing in lithium ion battery technology. So 
when 2010 actually rolls around, we will have a battery to do the job.
  The other thing we are doing is we are providing tax credits for 
folks who buy highly energy-efficient hybrids, credits anywhere from 
about $500 per vehicle up to about $3,500 per vehicle. When plug-in 
hybrids come along in 2010, I expect to see a credit there of up to 
about $5,000 per vehicle to incentivize people to buy those vehicles.
  We also have a requirement that for the Federal Government in the 
Postal Service, both on the civilian side of the Government and the 
military side of the Government, about 75 percent of our vehicles that 
we purchase have to be advance technology vehicles starting this year, 
and the same requirement for the Postal Service.
  Another thing we can do as Americans, as consumers, to bring down the 
demand side and try to put some downward pressure on prices, is simply 
to encourage folks to take transit more. They don't need a whole lot of 
encouragement because they are taking it. They are certainly taking it 
in Maryland, where our Presiding Officer is from, and they are taking 
it in Delaware a whole lot more.
  Transit saves nearly 4 million gallons of gasoline per day. At $4 per 
gallon, that is almost $16 million saved from transit every day. Not 
every year, not every month, but every day we are going to save $16 
million from transit. The typical public transit user consumes about 
one-half the oil an automobile rider consumes.
  What else can we do as consumers? Take the train. Not just MARC 
trains in Maryland between DC and the Delaware line, but they can take 
Amtrak. These are the ups and downs of Amtrak ridership since 1991. 
Ridership on trains peaks usually between Thanksgiving and New Year's 
Day. Ridership peaks during the summer months as well. Ridership at 
other times drops off. Right about here, Amtrak's on-time performance 
was not very good. I was on the Amtrak board at the time as Governor of 
Delaware. There was very good on-time performance and not very good 
ridership.
  Look at this. Ridership continues to climb. Ridership on Amtrak last 
year was up about 10 percent. Ridership is up this year, this fiscal 
year to date, up about 15 percent. I would tell the Presiding Officer 
that I rode the train on Monday. I went to Philadelphia, to New York, 
and came back to Delaware. Every train I took, and not peak-time 
trains, basically SRO--standing room only. A lot of people are taking 
the train. It is a great way not just to save money but to reduce 
congestion at the airports and on the roads too.
  Here is what is going on in commuter rail ridership from Seattle, WA, 
to Philadelphia, PA. We have worked with SEPTA, in a partnership there. 
Seattle, WA, ridership up there the first 3 months of this year is 
about 28 percent; Harrisburg, PA, of all places, up 17 percent; 
Oakland, CA, 16 percent; Stockton, CA, 14 percent; and Pompano Beach, 
not exactly a place you think of for transit, up 13 percent; and 
Greater Philadelphia, up about 10.
  The reason I come to the floor today is to say we in Congress have a 
responsibility to do a number of things: tax policy that encourages 
people to buy more efficient vehicles--hybrid and so forth--and we are 
doing that; investing our dollars to help develop lithium ion batteries 
and technologies for the

[[Page 12119]]

Chevrolet Volt and other vehicles, and we are doing that; we are trying 
to provide support for transit. The Presiding Officer and I have been 
very much in favor of doing that and working hard toward that end and 
providing reasonable support for Amtrak to help expand their capacity.
  But you know the old story ``You can lead a horse to water but you 
can't make him drink''? We as consumers have to take advantage. When 
Amtrak is offered, when transit is offered and it is available and it 
makes sense for us, and when it is time to trade in for a newer 
vehicle, keep in mind the kind of vehicles that are out there and 
produced in this country and from around the world and take advantage 
of those and buy one.
  That can be what we can do as individuals to make a difference on 
this issue.
  I thank the Chair.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Wyoming is 
recognized.
  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, the price of gasoline is the biggest issue 
in this country, and I appreciate the comments the Senator from 
Delaware made. However, the one-size-fits-all law is a little tough for 
this country. He probably doesn't realize we don't have any passenger 
trains or commuter trains anywhere in Wyoming. We used to, but they 
showed there wasn't enough use by changing the schedules so it always 
showed up 12 hours late, and most people weren't willing to wait 12 
hours for a train. Then when you don't have the use, you can take the 
train out.
  A lot of people in our State don't just drive their car to be able to 
get to work. Driving their truck or their car is their work. And we 
have these huge miles between places. One of my experiences recently is 
that I was driving between some towns and I, unfortunately, didn't have 
enough gas to make it to the next town. So I started to fill my tank 
and the pump stopped at exactly $75. Now, I can't tell you the last 
time I got a pump to stop right on the numbers. It used to be pretty 
easy because you could squeeze the handle and get it to an even number. 
But now you squeeze the handle a little bit and it goes zap and up 
quite a few cents. But it cut off right at $75. I thought, I don't 
think that is enough to fill this tank. When I checked, it wasn't. So 
there are some limits the credit card companies or the pumps are not 
used to, where they cut off, and that is making it a very important 
issue in Wyoming and the rest of the Nation. Because it is making it 
more expensive to take a vacation, it is making it more expensive to 
cool our houses, and it is making it more expensive to go to the 
grocery store.
  Unfortunately, at a time when the American people are begging us to 
take constructive action, the Senate refuses to have a serious debate 
on this important topic. Instead of working together to find sensible 
solutions we can agree on, the Democratic majority insists on playing 
``gotcha'' politics and bringing up policies that have not been through 
any committee. So they know they will not pass. They do it to score 
cheap political points. That is not how we are supposed to operate. 
That is how we have been operating now for several months. I think the 
farm bill is the last one that seriously went through a committee and 
followed the whole process.
  Earlier, there was a chart up that showed 75 filibusters. Well, the 
blame for 75 filibusters shouldn't all be placed on the ``other'' side 
of the aisle. That count of filibusters is anytime that a cloture 
motion is filed. I have noticed it has been very convenient for the 
Democratic side of the aisle to put in a bill on a Friday and file a 
cloture motion that we would vote on Monday or Tuesday morning. So far 
as I can tell, the purpose of that, with the 51-to-49 split and 2 
Presidential candidates gone on one side and one Presidential candidate 
gone on the other side, is they couldn't assure they would win a vote.
  So if you file cloture and you happen to win, it is going to be 30 
hours before there can be another single vote, which takes us to at 
least Wednesday night, and that means you don't have to get your 
candidates to come in until Wednesday night. So it has been very 
convenient to have this kind of process on the Senate side. That 
process was designed so the majority would have a say in what was 
happening and so the minority could put amendments on.
  Now, we have this little thing over here, it is a little 
parliamentary procedure, where you can file a couple amendments at the 
same time you file the cloture motion, and that prohibits any 
amendments, so you don't have to worry about the other side having 
anything difficult to vote on. The minority almost always, I think 
through the history of the Senate, has stopped debate on that kind of a 
process. The 40 in the minority stop the debate. That is what we have 
been going through.
  We had a perfect example of that yesterday. The Senate voted on a tax 
package that included an extension of wind and solar production tax 
credits. Democrats and Republicans both agree we need to extend those 
important tax credits. We came together to support the provisions to 
extend those credits by a vote of 88 to 8 in April. But instead of 
working together, working with our colleagues in the House to move the 
provision that had the support of the 88 Senators forward, the majority 
forced us to vote yesterday on an extension we all knew wouldn't pass.
  Now, I am mad about the price of energy, just like everybody else. I 
don't like going to the gas station and paying $4 for a gallon of gas. 
I look at the profits the oil industry is making, and I do find them 
shocking. They are big numbers, until--until--you compare them with the 
dollars we are shipping to Saudi Arabia and Venezuela and other 
countries every day. We are shipping money out of this country to get 
energy in much bigger numbers than we are paying to any American 
companies.
  But I also look at the situation we face, and I wish to do something 
that will improve it and not harm it. My colleagues on the other side 
of the aisle obviously don't have the same desire. How can you tell, 
you might ask? Because their proposal we voted on yesterday imposed a 
windfall profit tax on energy companies and increased the level of 
regulation on the energy industry, making it easier to sue them. As 
usual, their answer to a problem is, let's increase the taxes and let's 
hand the situation over to the trial lawyers.
  Now, we have tried the windfall profit tax before, when Jimmy Carter 
was the President. While it may have made people feel good for a few 
days, because they could say they were punishing those big oil 
companies for making profits, it didn't improve the situation. It made 
it worse.
  Businesses, to stay in business, reinvest profits. Most reinvest in 
what they know best. I wish to see a monthly report of the oil company 
investments. We do keep making it harder and harder for them to invest 
in America.
  In Wyoming, I know there was a powerplant that decided to do a little 
bit of wind energy. We had the proposal out there that all of them 
would have to get a certain amount of their power from alternative 
energies, so they planned and started building a wind power field. They 
were a little surprised at some of the environmental groups saying: You 
can't do that; you can't own that. You have to buy it from other 
people.
  We have to make up our mind if we want it and how badly we want it 
and who we will let have it. I don't know why anybody with the dollars 
to invest in wind power should not be able to invest in wind power. It 
is an alternative source of energy. It is something we can use, 
something we need. Hopefully we can get some better battery storage so 
when they are operating, and when people don't need it, we store it for 
when people do need it.
  There are a lot of inventions we need. I have a lot of faith in 
American ingenuity to know, whatever problems are out there, we can 
solve them. We have people with minds who can come up with creative 
ideas that can solve them. That is happening with energy.
  I was talking about the windfall profits tax. I can't sum it up any 
better than former Democratic Senator John

[[Page 12120]]

Breaux from Louisiana did. He said: A windfall profits tax is not going 
to produce a single barrel of oil. A windfall profits tax will produce 
less energy and not more.
  The Congressional Research Service, the nonpartisan researcher for 
Congress, agrees. A windfall profits tax doesn't improve our energy 
situation but it does score a cheap political point, and that is why we 
voted on it once again yesterday instead of having a serious energy 
debate. The problem we face is the problem of supply and demand: less 
American-made energy and more demand for that energy--prices go up. 
That is the problem Congress should be addressing. That is what those 
in control of both Houses of Congress do not seem to understand at this 
stage.
  The continued rise of gas prices is going to put an end to this dog-
and-pony show eventually. Then maybe the majority will be more open to 
responsible, limited oil production off our shores in States that want 
to have the production off their shores, such as the Commonwealth of 
Virginia, or we could open less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the 
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, an area smaller than Dulles Airport, 
to energy production with the most stringent environmental controls 
ever imposed. Maybe we could have a serious debate about using our 
Nation's most abundant energy source, which is coal, to produce diesel 
fuel or jet fuel that can be moved in our existing transportation 
infrastructure and can be made here in America.
  Wyoming passed some new laws that deal with carbon sequestration, so 
there would be a goal for people to shoot at. It is the first State to 
ever do that. The companies are responding. Of course, part of the use 
of that carbon is to inject into oil fields because the average oil 
field is able to recover about 20 percent of its product. With it they 
can get 30 percent of the product.
  It appears as though my time has expired. I still have quite a bit 
more I will say at a later time.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from New Mexico is 
recognized.
  Mr. DOMENICI. I wonder if the Senator from Wyoming would answer a 
question on my time, before he sits down.
  Mr. ENZI. Certainly.
  Mr. DOMENICI. I listened to the Senator's speech and I was very 
impressed. I think it would be helpful to those who are listening if 
you could define one word, because you use it and I use it and 
everybody uses it around here. What does ``cloture'' mean?
  Mr. ENZI. Cloture means the desire to cut off debate. It can be used, 
but it is a very lengthy process, very time consuming, and usually 
results in about 3 weeks of debate even if everybody wants the debate.
  Mr. DOMENICI. So cloture is an instrument whereby you stop debate, if 
you impose cloture?
  Mr. ENZI. If you impose cloture, you cut off a lot of amendments and 
a lot of debate and limit the amount of time that anything can be 
talked about. It is a parliamentary procedure. That is correct.
  Mr. DOMENICI. If anybody was listening, the Senator talked about 
that. At the time the cloture motion is filed, there are certain 
requirements, a certain number of Senators have to sign it. It is a 
request to the Senate that you vote on whether you are going to 
continue debate. When that vote occurs, you are voting on cloture, on a 
cloture motion regarding the pending motion or pending legislation.
  Last night I spoke to a group of energy experts and gave them the 
same warning I have been giving since the start of this year in a 
series of speeches on the Senate floor. That is that the United States 
faces a grave and growing threat to its well-being. Our economic 
strength and our energy security is being threatened by our vast 
dependence on foreign oil. I have said it before and I will say it 
again: If we do not address this problem in a serious way, America will 
become poor.
  I could have added a whole lot to that, but let me repeat: If we 
don't do something about this vast dependence upon foreign oil, America 
will become poor, p-o-o-r. Mr. President, $600 billion a year--it looks 
like is where we are headed--will be sent from this country to other 
countries to buy crude oil that we are going to turn into gasoline or 
diesel fuel to use here in America in our transportation system, 
essentially.
  We have seen the warnings for years now. I remember when President 
Nixon launched the Project Independence more than three decades ago. 
The goal of that project was to eliminate our dependence upon foreign 
oil within a decade. Since then, our dependence on foreign oil has more 
than doubled and we have literally put trillions of American dollars 
into the hands of others who often do not share our interests. The 
problem has gotten worse under both parties for decade upon decade.
  Yesterday, another warning was brought up to us in the form of trade 
numbers, international trade numbers for April. Our deficit in the 
international trade of goods and services rose by 7.8 percent to nearly 
$61 billion in the month of April. We were also told that this $4.4 
billion increase in trade deficit in April was nearly entirely 
attributable to imports of crude oil and petroleum products. The 
average price of imported petroleum and the total amount of fuel bought 
were both the highest ever. It is obvious it is because the price of 
crude oil was the highest ever for that particular month versus any 
other month.
  It is time we begin to do something about this. Family budgets are 
being strained by the price of gasoline. America's small businesses are 
being hurt by the cost of energy. America's trade deficit is swelling 
out of control by the importation of foreign crude oil and the money we 
pay to buy it. It is the time to act, to do something. Over the past 2 
months, Republicans have offered a new direction on energy policy. We 
have recognized we must open additional areas to American exploration 
and that we must put the decision of locking up our own areas to a test 
of whether closing the land to development meets a greater national 
interest than opening the land for exploration and production of oil 
and gas. In making such an assessment, we must listen carefully to the 
American people, who are hurting and who are asking us for some relief 
at the pump. A clear majority of Americans wants us to open more lands 
for oil and gas production. They want to understand what lands are open 
from which we could develop our own energy.
  We have sought to open ANWR. That would not work. We didn't have 
enough votes. We have sought new deep sea exploration. We have sought 
to develop oil shale, or at least to take off the moratorium which was 
imposed last year that will make it more difficult to develop oil 
shale, which we own in large quantities and in great abundance.
  We also have sought to turn coal into a liquid fuel. We could do that 
in any number of ways. The technique is available; it just costs a lot 
of money. But it is costing us a lot of money to pay for this 
dependence. So we could initiate a major program for coal to liquid and 
say we are going to contract to sell that to the military. Their needs 
are enormous. They buy a lot of it from overseas because we do not 
produce enough of our own. So why not take that huge resource called 
coal, use one of the existing ways of converting it, and arrive at an 
agreement where we could use the diesel fuel so produced to fuel our 
military and we would be using our coal, we would buy less overseas, 
our military would get the diesel produced here in America, and at the 
same time the other one we could do is commit ourselves to develop oil 
shale into oil.
  If those who have us by the throat can strangle us with the price of 
oil only believed we were going to develop ANWR in Alaska, that we were 
truly going to develop liquid from coal and use it for whatever 
specialized purpose we wished, know we could do it in large quantities, 
and then if we would commit to oil shale conversion and get started, 
even if it were only to produce a small quantity, the world would 
respond. They would say America is serious about minimizing rather than 
maximizing her dependence upon foreign oil. No doubt about it. Any of 
those three--and the offshore I talked

[[Page 12121]]

about, the exploration of our offshore which is subject to moratoria 
that have been imposed by Congress. There are a number of States that 
would do it, that could do it, and we would share the royalties as we 
are with Louisiana and Texas, that many of us voted for when we 
produced an energy bill, the second Energy bill the year before last. 
We did it, we knew how to do it, and we could do it elsewhere.
  It appears to me now is the time to move on. Each and every one of 
these American energy policies has been turned back by our Democratic 
friends on the other side of the aisle and they have sought to raise 
taxes, increase regulation, and ask Saudi Arabia for more oil.
  I ask unanimous consent I be given an additional 2 minutes.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered. The Senator is recognized.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Let's look at what we voted on yesterday. The Democrats 
sought to increase taxes on American business competing with foreign 
nations for a global commodity. They tell us this tax is the solution 
because the oil companies are making too much money. These new taxes 
will not lower prices, and they know it. What raising taxes on American 
companies would do is to ship the competitive business advantage to 
foreign oil companies. Raising taxes on American companies and not on 
their competitors costs American jobs. Raising taxes on American 
companies increases imports and lowers American energy production. This 
is not only my analysis, it is the analysis of the independent 
Congressional Research Service. It is the analysis of the Wall Street 
Journal and the analysis of officials from the Carter and Clinton 
administrations, who had experience with the windfall profits tax, 
which had a pretty-sounding name and a terrible-sounding effect, for it 
rumbled through the country causing oil companies to pay higher taxes, 
thus raising costs of oil and lowering the amount that was produced. So 
we are told by a consensus of our greatest experts that such a time is 
decades off.
  I have spoken with those who know about our needs. They say we need a 
bridge to secure our energy future--a bridge. On the far side of the 
bridge is America, where we are no longer dependent on these vast 
amounts of crude oil. On the far side of the bridge is cellulosic 
ethanol used widely around the Nation and in our plug-in hybrid cars 
that will influence the use of oil.
  However, we are told by a consensus of our greatest experts that 
bridge and that such a time when we will not be using oil could be as 
many as four decades from now. In the meantime, if we do not move to 
solve it, that bridge will be built of crude oil, if it is imported, 
and we will just pay more for longer periods of time to countries 
around the world that may not agree with our idea or our philosophy of 
life.
  We are also told from the IEA that our world oil production estimates 
for the year 2030 are well below what we previously thought. The 
question then becomes will this Nation get about the business today of 
producing our own American energy for tomorrow or will we continue to 
rely to a greater degree on foreign oil. The question is that simple. I 
ask my colleagues to seriously reconsider the Domenici American Energy 
Production Act.
  I ask them to reconsider the views that they held when oil was at $19 
in an era of $135 oil. I ask them to reconsider their views as many 
have done on nuclear power since I begin advocating for it more than a 
decade ago. Since then, we have seen a nuclear renaissance in America 
and we are seeing a growing number of people come over to our side on 
that issue. I ask my colleagues to listen to the 57 percent of 
Americans who are telling us to produce more here at home. And I ask my 
colleagues to consider whether the foundation of the bridge to our 
energy future should be built with American energy or foreign energy. I 
yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Louisiana is 
recognized.
  Mr. VITTER. Mr. President, in light of the comments of the 
distinguished Senator from New Mexico, I ask unanimous consent to use 
the remaining Republican time plus an additional 3 minutes.
  Mr. DORGAN. What remaining time exists?
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. There is 6 minutes 15 seconds 
remaining.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I will not object if an additional 3 
minutes is added to the time on this side following the Senator from 
Louisiana.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  (The remarks of Mr. Vitter are printed in today's Record under 
``Morning Business.'')
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from North Dakota.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, how much time remains on our side?
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. There is 33 minutes on the majority 
side.
  Mr. DORGAN. I ask unanimous consent to use 23 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, there has been a lot of helium in this 
Chamber in recent hours. I have been watching and listening and heard a 
lot of discussion about why we cannot produce more energy.
  Well, in fact, we are producing more energy. I announced about two 
months ago, with the U.S. Geological Survey, their assessment of the 
largest assessment of recoverable oil they have ever announced in the 
lower 48. That is called the Bakken shale, which underlies eastern 
Montana and western North Dakota.
  They say it has up to 3.65 billion barrels of technically recoverable 
oil in it. The fact is, we are producing more oil and gas. My 
colleagues who talk about the need to produce more should understand 
that I and three others, two Democrats and two Republicans, from the 
Senate who lead the effort to open what is called lease 181 in the Gulf 
of Mexico in the 109th Congress. Substantial oil and gas reserves exist 
there, and we have opened a portion of that--not nearly enough by the 
way.
  I notice that, in the Republican offshore proposal offered by my 
colleagues on the other side, they carve out opening the area in 
eastern Gulf of Mexico where there is substantial opportunity to 
achieve new oil and gas reserves.
  In fact, companies from India and companies from China are now 
exploring for oil in Cuban waters. Our companies want to go there, but 
American companies are not allowed access in that area. They are not 
allowed to drill in waters off of Cuba because of the embargo against 
Cuba.
  So this administration has decided, well, we do not want to produce 
oil off of Cuba despite the fact those waters are open. My 
understanding is some wells drilled by India have now struck oil. The 
Chinese are there too, but we cannot drill just miles away from Florida 
in Cuban waters. So next time I hear about people saying, well, people 
on this side of the aisle do not want to support additional production, 
we have supported additional production. That is a fact.
  The hood ornament on that argument from them is always about ANWR, a 
pristine area set aside in legislation signed by President Dwight 
Eisenhower. Well, the fact is, ANWR should never be a first resort; 
perhaps a last resort in a critical time. But there is much we can and 
should do. I am going to talk about some of it this afternoon to 
address these issues. Yes, produce more, and I have described how I and 
others have supported more production.
  We need conservation and greater efficiency. We waste a prodigious 
amount of oil and energy in this country. We can conserve much more. 
With everything we do, every switch we touch from the morning until the 
evening, all of the appliances that we use, dramatic new efficiency is 
important.
  We also need more focus on renewable energy from wind, solar, and 
geothermal. There are so many different forms of energy that need to be 
a part of the solution, including the biofuels which are a part of our 
future.

[[Page 12122]]

  Having said all of that, I want to go though a couple of charts 
because what is happening today is almost unbelievable. We have people 
driving to the gas pumps this afternoon, and we have people who have 
ordered a load of gas delivered to their farm this afternoon. We have 
airlines that pull the airline up to the gate and then have to load up 
with fuel. We have truckers at the truckstop trying to figure out at 
the next truckstop how they stop and get a load of fuel and afford it.
  Look at what has happened. Oil prices have doubled in a year. There 
is not one justification in the fundamentals of oil supply and demand 
for a doubling in price in a year. There is no justification for it. In 
fact, this country has had an economic slowdown, and we are using 
slightly less energy than we did before. So demand is slightly down in 
this country. Since January, the oil and gas inventories in this 
country have been up slightly. Demand is down slightly down, and 
production is up slightly. Yet, the price of oil doubles.
  There is nothing in the fundamentals to justify what has happened to 
this oil market. Now, I think I understand what has happened to this 
market, and here is the line that describes it. It is called 
speculation. We all know what speculators are. We have lived among 
speculators. Perhaps our neighbors speculate. We all know speculators.
  Will Rogers described them about 80 years ago. He said that these are 
people who buy what they will never get from people who never had it 
and expect to make money on both sides of the trade.
  That is speculation. Speculators in the oil market are not people who 
want oil. These are not people who ever want to take delivery of oil. 
They are not people who would know about the viscosity of oil or 
perhaps how to drill for oil, nor would they care. They are interested 
in trading in a commodities market for the purpose of making big 
profits.
  They are not ever wanting to take delivery of anything. They are 
simply speculators for the purpose of making a profit. Now, that is not 
why the commodities markets were established. They were established for 
hedging purposes, legitimate reasons to have a market. You should have, 
and must have, a market for commodities. For hedging purposes you need 
some liquidity in the market.
  But what has happened in this market is a perversion. We have 
speculators in this market who have driven the price way up. In fact, I 
have just spent an hour today with the head of an organization called 
New York Mercantile Exchange, NYMEX, in New York. He came down and we 
talked for about an hour. We agree on some things and do not agree on 
others.
  This is a pit in which they trade commodities in NYMEX. Well, they 
trade the crude oil on the NYMEX. One of them is West Texas 
intermediate crude, for example.
  You have people who wear these jackets, they bid. As you see, they 
throw paper on the floor. At the end of the day, people who have never 
touched a quart of oil, let alone a barrel of oil, have decided what 
the price is going to be for the coming days and months.
  It is not the only commodities exchange. This is also occurring on 
the Intercontinental Exchange in London and Dubai. It is a large, 
global market, but only part of it is regulated. Only part of it is 
available for us to inspect and see. Much of it is out of our view. 
Much of it I call dark money. It exists out there, but you cannot see 
it. It is not transparent or regulated. It has a profound impact on the 
price of oil, and therefore, it has a tremendous impact on what it is 
going to cost consumers to fill a car with gas, a farmer to order a 
load of fuel, airlines to buy jet fuel. We have airlines and trucking 
companies going bankrupt and many more struggling to make it through 
this.
  Now, I understand we have had 12 airlines in recent months declare 
bankruptcy. We have a lot of trucking companies, mom-and-pop trucking 
companies, who are going belly up because they cannot afford to buy 
fuel for their trucks.
  The airlines are barely able to afford to buy the jet fuel for their 
airplanes. Drivers pulling up to the gas pump are having a difficult 
time trying to figure out how to pay $60 or $70 for a tank of gas.
  I pulled up behind an old car about 30 miles north of Minot, ND, one 
day some while ago. It was pretty much a wreck. The back bumper was 
hanging down about halfway. It had a lot of dents and rust. And it had 
an old, faded sticker on the bumper which said: We fought the gas war 
and gas won.
  Probably not surprising. Gas won. Well, gas is sure winning these 
days, $4-plus a gallon, diesel well above $4 a gallon, and oil flirting 
with $140 a barrel. Now, some say, well, that is just the market at 
work. There is no market at work here. This is a perversion.
  Let me talk about the oil market. You have ministers representing 
nationalized companies under the banner of OPEC. Now, this is a cartel. 
Cartels are illegal in this country. It is a crime. It is criminal. So 
you have a cartel of countries that go behind closed doors and have 
their oil ministers make judgments about how much they are going to 
produce and what price they want to get for it in the international 
marketplace. That is No. 1. There is no free market aspect to a cartel. 
I expect most people would agree.
  Second, the major integrated companies are all much bigger and much 
stronger with much more muscle in the marketplace.
  Why? Because they have all merged. They all got romantically 
entangled, decided they want to pair up. Pretty soon, Exxon is not just 
Exxon; it is ExxonMobil. Phillips Oil is now ConocoPhillips. They all 
have two names and a lot more muscle. They are bigger, stronger, and 
more powerful forces in the marketplace.
  Third, you have a futures market that has become an unbelievable 
amount of speculation, driving up prices. So you have a cartel with 
OPEC; bigger, stronger oil companies; and a futures market that is rife 
speculation.
  Fadel Gheit, senior energy analyst, who worked 35 years with the 
Oppenheimer & Co., said:

       There is absolutely no shortage of oil. I am convinced that 
     oil prices shouldn't be a dime above $55 a barrel. I call it 
     the world's largest gambling hall. It's open 24/7. 
     Unfortunately, it's totally unregulated. This is like a 
     highway with no cops, no speed limit, and everybody is going 
     120 miles an hour.

  I have talked to Mr. Gheit by telephone. He was a witness at a 
hearing in December 2007. I have a sense of what he is about and what 
he thinks. He believes this market is a complete perversion. It is rife 
speculation, with people driving up the price of oil, having nothing to 
do with the fundamentals of supply and demand.
  It is not just Mr. Gheit from the Oppenheimer and Co. We see this in 
the New Jersey Star Ledger:

       Experts, including the former head of ExxonMobil, say 
     financial speculation in the energy markets has grown so much 
     over the last 30 years that it now adds 20 to 30 percent or 
     more to the price of a barrel of oil.

  If the former head of ExxonMobil is saying there is so much 
speculation that it has added 20 to 30 percent to the price of a barrel 
of oil, the question is whether that is credible?
  From the senior Vice President of ExxonMobil:

       The price of oil should be about $50 or $55 a barrel.

  The president of Marathon Oil, Clarence Cazalot, Jr.:

       $100 oil isn't justified by the physical demand in the 
     market.

  During a question-and-answer period with reporters, he suggested a 
more reasonable range for crude oil prices would be between $55 and $60 
a barrel.
  The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is supposed to be the 
regulating body. I know regulation is a four-letter word in this 
Chamber for some. It is not for me. A free market works only when it is 
open and free. When the arteries get clogged, bad things happen. We 
have seen a lot of clogging of the arteries in this so-called free 
market system. But we have a referee for the free market system. It is 
called the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the CFTC. The CFTC is 
supposed to be a regulator, but like a lot of regulators, it seems to 
be pretty much asleep at the switch. I will describe why and how in a 
minute.

[[Page 12123]]

  I have some experience with this because I chaired the hearings in 
the Senate over in the Commerce Committee on the Enron scandal. I had 
Ken Lay, now deceased, come to our hearings. He was the CEO of Enron. 
He raised his hand, took an oath, sat down, and took the fifth 
amendment. He was subsequently sentenced to prison but died before he 
went there. Once exposed, several in the Enron Corporation went to 
prison because we discovered it was a criminal enterprise. Among other 
things, it soaked billions of dollars of ill-gotten gains, particularly 
out of consumers on the west coast through wholesale electricity 
prices. That happened under the nose of what was supposed to have been 
a Federal regulator, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
  During that time, I raised the question about the speculation and the 
manipulation of the marketplace by Enron and others. Vice President 
Cheney scoffed and said: There is nothing going on here. Shame on all 
of you for suggesting there is something nefarious happening. It turns 
out Dick Cheney was dead wrong, supporting the energy interests ahead 
of the public interest. We found out later it was a criminal 
enterprise. We found out later that the regulator did nothing other 
than sat by and watched what was happening.
  Now we have a regulator, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, 
which is supposed to be wearing the referee's shirt with stripes that 
calls the fouls with respect to energy trading. The Commodity Futures 
Trading Commission has actually allowed a lot of this to occur, this 
speculation, by issuing what are called no-action letters so that a 
number of commodity trades can move to the dark side so they can't be 
seen and regulated by the regulator. In fact, the regulator is saying 
that it is OK for us not to see you or understand what you are doing 
which is kind of unbelievable. It defies credibility to hear a 
regulatory body say: We don't want the information with which to 
regulate you.
  Let me describe what Mr. Lukken, the head of the Commodity Futures 
Trading Commission, the regulatory body, has been saying. I am using 
the description that he is ``parroting'' the assertion by those 
involved in the market. These are the very speculators who make a lot 
of money in these markets and want us to believe that nothing is really 
happening. There is not substantial speculation. This is just a lot of 
good people selling and buying back and forth.
  Here is what Mr. Lukken says:

       Based on our surveillance efforts to date, we believe that 
     energy futures markets have been reflecting the underlying 
     fundamentals of those markets.

  That was last July. Mr. Lukken says: Gosh, things are fine. Don't 
worry. Be happy. Everything is OK. The fundamentals justify whatever is 
going on. That was last July.
  The acting Chairman of the Commission, Mr. Lukken, again said in 
January of this year:

       Based on our surveillance efforts to date, we believe that 
     energy futures markets have been largely reflecting the 
     underlying fundamentals of these markets.

  You will note he said in January exactly what he said in July, but he 
changed one word. It must have been a mistake. He changed one word. He 
essentially says: Hey, don't worry about the price of oil and gas. This 
is all about fundamentals. So the Chairman of the regulatory body says 
things are OK once again.
  In February, acting Chairman Lukken says:

       The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is confident that 
     U.S. futures exchanges and clearinghouses are functioning 
     well, especially during these turbulent economic times.

  Don't worry. We regulators have our hands on it. We have it all 
figured out.
  On May 7, the acting Chairman of the regulatory body says:

       We can say with a high degree of confidence that people are 
     not manipulating the energy markets.

  That is really interesting because just two weeks ago this same 
person, Mr. Lukken, who has told us now for a year, while the price of 
oil has doubled, there is really no speculation, this is just supply 
and demand at work. The fundamentals of the marketplace are working. 
Don't worry, be happy. Nothing nefarious is going on. There is no 
manipulation, then all of a sudden, two weeks ago, this man must have 
had some sort of epiphany. I don't know what he ate for dinner, but 
suddenly he woke up and made an announcement that the CFTC wants to 
find out what is going on in this marketplace and for the last 7 months 
they have been investigating it. Really? That is interesting. What 
about his statements during the last year they had already concluded 
nothing was wrong?
  I wonder at what point Americans should be relying on the word of Mr. 
Lukken when he was telling us in January there is nothing going on. It 
is just the fundamentals at work. Yet, he was reassuring us in early 
May there was nothing happening. Perhaps a couple weeks ago, he 
apparently, in some startling 180-degree turn decided to figure out 
what is happening.
  Mr. Lukken, the acting Chairman, and his nomination is before this 
body, said we are now going to something called the Intercontinental 
Exchange and others. Incidentally, it is a foreign exchange but an 
exchange in London, largely founded by American companies, trading on 
computer terminals in Atlanta, GA, and other places in the U.S. but 
allowed to do it without oversight or regulation by the CFTC because 
they exempted them with a letter of no action. It basically is saying 
we are not going to find out what is going on. Really? I thought you 
knew what was going on. You have been assuring us all along that you 
knew what was happening. Turns out now he admits they don't have nearly 
the information with which to judge whether there was excessive 
speculation.
  By the way, the Administration, to the extent it was doing anything, 
called for the creation of a task force of several agencies, including 
the CFTC. They act as if the barn is on fire at the moment. They go 
from no motion to slow motion to some sort of hyperspeed, I guess. But 
I have almost no confidence in statements for 6 or 8 months saying that 
the doubling of the price of oil is just fine, and it is unrelated to 
either manipulation or speculation.
  I had one of the presidents of one of the largest investment banking 
firms come to my office. I think we spent an hour speaking. At the end 
of the hour, he answered every question except the one he couldn't 
answer, the one I kept asking: If you say fundamentals are at the root 
of why the price of oil has doubled, then tell me what those 
fundamentals are that justify the doubling of the price of oil. Is it 
that supply is down and demand is up? If that is not the case, what are 
the fundamentals? Those who argue that this speculative binge cannot 
answer the question, what fundamentals justify doubling the price of 
oil?
  The importance of that is this: I used to teach a little economics--
not very much--in college. I taught economics briefly. I tell people I 
was able to overcome that experience and go on to lead, nonetheless, 
somewhat of a productive life. Economics is psychology pumped up with 
helium. That is all it is. Everybody says they know this, that, or the 
other thing. Economics is about human behavior. But I understand enough 
about the economics of this issue to understand you have binges of 
excess and speculation, and we have seen them in history. You can find 
books about them. They will take you back to the days when tulip bulbs 
were sold for $25,000 for one bulb in a binge of speculation that is 
still written about today, 400 or 500 years ago. We have bubbles of 
speculation that occur. In most cases, it is not terribly damaging to a 
country or an economy. Who cares if you can buy a tulip bulb? Who cares 
if you can afford it?
  Consider this. The price of oil jumps to $135 a barrel. The price of 
gas goes to $4 a gallon. You have OPEC countries going to the bank 
depositing our money in their accounts. The major oil companies going 
to the bank depositing our money in their accounts. Airlines are going 
broke, and trucking companies not able to afford to run their trucks. 
The average American

[[Page 12124]]

family is trying to figure out how they can afford to put gas in the 
car and get to work. When all of that occurs, it is long past time for 
this country to say: What on Earth is happening and how do we fix it? 
When you have a market that doesn't work, there is a responsibility for 
the regulator and the Government to take a step and fix that market.
  This futures market is not the market that was established many 
decades ago. That market was established for a specific purpose, a 
laudable purpose. It was to allow orderly trading for delivery of 
petroleum commodities. It has now become an unbelievable cesspool of 
speculation that has driven up the price of oil in ways that deeply 
damage this country. This Congress has a responsibility to deal with 
it.
  I am working on legislation that would mandate the Commodity Futures 
Trading Commission to take the steps that are necessary to shut that 
speculation down, to stop the dark money and markets, to put it all on 
the regulated side and then to increase margin requirements in order to 
wring the speculators out of this market. I believe that could decrease 
the price of oil and gas by 20, 30, 40 percent. It is not just me. I 
have quoted those who run some of America's major oil companies and 
experts involved in some of the trading at some of the largest 
institutions who believe speculation now has driven up the price of oil 
and gas by 20, 30, 40 percent.
  There is a lot to say about what is happening in our country and a 
lot to say about the need for regulators to begin doing what we pay 
them to do. I will describe the legislation I am working on at greater 
length. I appreciate the indulgence of my colleagues.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. McCaskill). The Senator from Rhode 
Island.
  Mr. REED. I believe I have been put in order for 10 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 9\1/2\ minutes at this point.
  Mr. REED. I thank the Chair.
  Madam President, we have heard a number of interesting opinions on 
the reasons and potential solutions to the energy crisis in which we 
currently find ourselves. Unfortunately, yesterday many of my 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle blocked our ability to have a 
meaningful debate about the proactive steps we should be taking to 
address the issues that are contributing to skyrocketing prices 
Americans are paying at the pump.
  All around the country, high gas prices are contributing to already 
shaky economic times for the American people. In my home State of Rhode 
Island, gas prices have increased by over 140 percent since 2001. 
Currently, Rhode Islanders are paying $4.09 a gallon for regular 
unleaded gasoline and $4.93 a gallon for diesel. Households in Rhode 
Island are paying $2,000 more per year for gasoline than they paid in 
2001. That is $2,000 more than they were paying in 2001.
  For the State economy, this means that families, businesses, and 
farmers in Rhode Island will spend $835 million more on gasoline this 
year than was spent in 2001 if prices remain at current levels. But 
these prices seem to be constantly accelerating. Rhode Island 
residents, farmers, and businesses are on track to pay over $1.44 
billion for gasoline this year. That is an extraordinary drain on the 
economy of my State and on States throughout the Nation.
  It is well known that our current energy crisis is due in part to the 
marriage of two uncontrollable circumstances: a fast-growing worldwide 
demand for oil and increasingly limited oil supplies. The Renewable 
Fuels, Consumer Protection, and Energy Efficiency Act, which was signed 
into law in December of last year, made important improvements to our 
national energy policy, and I am confident the provisions in that law 
will help to decrease our long-term dependence on oil and thus lessen 
our future vulnerability to its availability. However, there is also a 
number of controllable variables that are contributing to the 
volatility of energy markets that we must address immediately to ensure 
the high prices Americans are paying at the pump are not going into the 
wallets of speculators and oil companies looking to exploit these 
difficult times.
  The Consumer-First Energy Act would take action by incorporating 
proactive measures to protect against excessive speculation, keep the 
hedge funds and oil companies honest, and require investments by oil 
companies toward the development of our Nation's renewable energy 
infrastructure or face a windfall profits tax.
  Experts now estimate that well over 25 percent of the cost of a 
barrel of oil can be attributed to excessive speculation by the 
financial traders of energy commodities. Yet yesterday we failed to 
move forward on a bill that would clamp down on excessive speculation 
by preventing traders from routing their transactions through offshore 
markets in order to evade speculation limits and subject energy traders 
to stronger reporting requirements.
  Many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle say we must open 
up more land to drilling to solve the current crisis, increase the 
supply, and lower the demand. The fact of the matter is over recent 
years we have already opened up significant areas of the land and the 
Continental Shelf to oil companies and given them tax incentives to 
subsidize and encourage their exploration and drilling activities.
  Over that same span of time, oil companies have reported bigger 
profits--almost $600 billion. Yet we still find ourselves in a 
precarious energy situation today. Moreover, the Minerals Management 
Service has reported that of all the oil and gas reserves believed to 
exist on the Outer Continental Shelf, 82 percent of the natural gas and 
79 percent of the oil are located in areas that are already open to 
leasing. Onshore, 72 percent of oil and 84 percent of natural gas 
resources are either accessible already or are pending review.
  We also hear very little about the nearly 91 million acres of land 
currently open to leasing in the Alaskan arctic area outside of ANWR, 
of which only 11.8 million acres have actually been leased.
  The idea that we need to make more areas available to drilling to 
increase domestic production is not substantiated by the facts. We have 
broad swaths of land and Continental Shelf that are available for 
exploration and drilling. They are not being used. Until we have 
thoroughly reviewed and sited projects there, the idea that we have to 
open up ANWR is only a subterfuge, an excuse for inaction.
  Indeed, in the last 4 years, the Bureau of Land Management has issued 
28,776 permits to drill on public land. However, during that time, only 
18,954 wells were actually drilled. Thus, oil companies are currently 
holding onto 10,000 unused permits which could just as easily help to 
increase domestic production as the lands that are currently protected 
under law. Clearly, the problem is not that there is a lack of places 
to drill.
  Thus, drilling our way to energy independence is not the answer. 
Neither is increasing the importation of foreign oil and natural gas. 
The answer is investing in energy efficiency and renewable energy 
programs that currently save us more energy each year than the amount 
we consume from any single energy source, including oil, natural gas, 
coal, and nuclear power. These investments offer short-term and long-
term solutions to strengthen our national security by reducing our 
energy consumption and making us less reliant on oil from unstable 
regions of the world. Moreover, they enhance our economic 
competitiveness by creating American jobs in this new green economy, 
and they protect our environment by reducing our carbon footprint.
  There are actions the Congress can and should be taking, which were 
laid out in the Consumer-First Energy Act, that could ease the pinch 
people are feeling at the pump. My colleagues on the other side of the 
aisle also refused yesterday to debate a package of energy and tax 
extenders that would also go a long way to help investing in new 
renewable energy sources and the jobs these new sources would create.
  Other economic indicators are equally discouraging, in addition to 
those concerning the energy sector. There are particular concerns in 
our economy

[[Page 12125]]

today about inflation, slow growth in gross domestic product, 
significantly higher consumer borrowing, a rising Consumer Price Index 
for food, and other indications of difficult economic times.
  But perhaps the most growing statistic and worrisome statistic across 
the country is unemployment. New monthly job numbers were released last 
Friday, and they were far worse than economists had predicted. The 
unemployment rate jumped to 5.5 percent from 5 percent in only 1 month.
  In Rhode Island, 6.1 percent are jobless right now--unchanged over 
the past 2 months. This is the fourth highest unemployment in the 
United States, behind only the States of Michigan, Alaska, and 
California. It marks the highest unemployment rate in Rhode Island 
since August 1995--more than 12 years ago. The number of unemployed 
Rhode Islanders has risen to approximately 35,000, and it has been 
trending upward.
  The Providence Journal reported today that about 41 percent of Rhode 
Island's unemployed in January, February, and March have exhausted 
their benefits. This is the highest of any New England State.
  As we all know, the Senate and the House are currently reconciling an 
emergency appropriations bill. I was especially pleased the Senate 
version provided domestic spending for LIHEAP and unemployment 
insurance--two critical issues we are facing today: accelerating energy 
prices and exploding unemployment numbers. This domestic funding is 
critical to boosting our economy and helping those who are most in 
need.
  Indeed, many economists have pointed to an extension of unemployment 
benefits as a quicker way to stimulate the economy than the rebate 
checks that were being passed out and are being passed out today. An 
extension of UI benefits provides a very high return on the investment, 
generating approximately $1.64 in gross domestic product per dollar 
spent. This is especially helpful at a time when people are saving 
less, making them ill-prepared to cope with a long-term economic slump.
  In Rhode Island, it is estimated that the number of jobless who could 
immediately benefit from an extension of unemployment benefits ranges 
from 6,500 to 8,000 or more. Under the Senate-passed provisions, Rhode 
Island would not only qualify for an additional 13-week extension, but 
given our consistent 6.1 percent unemployment rate, we would trigger 
extended benefits of another 13 weeks. This means Rhode Island could 
receive up to 26 additional weeks of assistance to help amid these 
difficult times. That is why I will continue to press also for an 
extension of unemployment benefits.
  We had the opportunity yesterday to move forward on progressive, 
proactive energy legislation, and it was stymied by my colleagues on 
the other side. We cannot let that happen. And we cannot also let the 
unemployed go without extended benefits.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.
  Mr. ISAKSON. Madam President, I have listened intently for the last 2 
weeks to the climate change debate and the energy debate, to Republican 
ideas and Democratic ideas, to Republican speeches and Democratic 
speeches--all about what is wrong. While we have talked, the crisis has 
grown astronomically.
  In Georgia today, school systems looking to transport students this 
fall are wondering how they are going to be able to afford to run their 
schoolbus fleet because of the cost of diesel.
  Back in Georgia, today in Marietta, our sheriff and our police chief 
are wondering how they are going to be able to patrol the streets with 
the budget they have for gas with that tremendous cost. They are 
doubling up officers. They are leaving cars idle in the motor pool.
  Today workers are going to the pump, and they are filling up at $4 a 
gallon--a price that is unsustainable for them based on their wages and 
based on the cost of energy.
  While we may make a lot of speeches, it is time for Republicans and 
Democrats alike in the Congress of the United States to put aside their 
partisan bias when it comes to energy.
  I was a young man in the 1960s. A great U.S. President, John Kennedy, 
stood before the American people and the Congress, when America was 
confronting a great difficulty. We were falling behind in math, 
science, and technology. The Russians had already launched a satellite. 
They were on the way to developing a space program, and America was 
being left in the dust. President Kennedy stood before the Congress, 
and he declared the United States would launch a man to the Moon, land 
him, and bring him home safely before the end of the decade.
  We did not know how to do that. But the President was bold in 
declaring it. The Congress put its partisan differences aside and 
funded NASA, funded reach; and 7\1/2\ years later, on July 31, 1969, 
the United States of America landed two men on the Moon and brought 
them back safely to Earth.
  We are a great country, and we are at our best in a crisis. We have 
one today. Answers and solutions lie on both sides of the political 
spectrum. Enough, quite frankly, is enough. Republicans have to begin 
to embrace those things we said are not enough of a solution, such as 
renewables and conservation. They can help. They do not solve the 
problem, but they contribute to solving it. Democrats have to recognize 
we are sitting on a ham sandwich, starving to death, when we continue 
to keep our nuclear energy locked up and we do not expand and develop 
our nuclear program to generate safe, reliable, nonpolluting, carbon-
free nuclear energy.
  On the issue of exploration, it is possible to explore responsibly, 
develop the resources of our country, and contribute to our supply 
locally ourselves. It is important we have tax incentives for all forms 
of alternative energy--renewable energy such as wind and solar, future 
energy such as cellulosic-based ethanol, equalizing our incentives, 
making sure every megawatt hour is incentivized equally so we are 
putting all our solutions on the table.
  This is not just a political problem; this is not just a pocketbook 
problem; this is an American problem. Have you ever thought about it 
for a second? Regardless of your opinion on global warming and climate 
change, it is in our best interest as a country to reduce our 
dependence on foreign oil and reduce the production of carbon in the 
atmosphere. It is in our interest environmentally. It is in our 
interest geopolitically.
  Right now, the United States of America is buying oil from three of 
our biggest competitors/sometimes adversaries--Hugo Chavez in 
Venezuela, Ahmadinejad in Iran, and Vladimir Putin in Russia--paying 
prices of up to $139.26 a barrel for oil, the profit from which they 
turn around and buy our Treasury notes. They are buying equity in the 
United States of America with the very funds we are paying for their 
oil.
  Yet we sit here and do not develop the resources we should be 
developing that we know of and we have here today: the shale oil in 
Colorado and Montana and North Dakota, a reserve that is estimated to 
be equal to the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia. There are issues in 
Alaska with ANWR, but we can work them out. We can environmentally and 
safely explore. We did it 30 years ago with the pipeline in Alaska. We 
can do it again now. Off the coast of the Gulf of Mexico and my State 
and States on the Atlantic coast, we can drill safely and securely. We 
can drill aesthetically pleasing, because if you drill outside of 50 
miles, and in most cases 12, you are over the horizon so there is no 
damage to tourism. Yet you are extracting your own rich natural 
resource and supplanting those imports you would otherwise have to take 
from parts of the world you might not want to take from.
  It is critical that we develop our resources. We all know that oil 
will run out one day and we all know we have to develop the 
technologies to replace it. We all know we need a bridge over the next 
40 years as we develop those technologies to keep America running 
strong and vibrant and have our economy and our people prosperous. We 
are not going to do it with ever-spiraling

[[Page 12126]]

prices of gasoline, heating, fuel oil, and petroleum. We can't do it. 
It is time we put our biases aside. It is time we stood and spoke as 
Americans. It is time we look toward every possible resource that is 
available to us and make a declaration just as John Kennedy did. If 
this President of the United States and this Congress join united to 
say we Americans are going to reduce our dependence on foreign and 
imported oil by 33 percent over the next decade and we are going to do 
it by unlocking those things that we refuse to explore--by developing 
our renewables, by incentivizing equitably all sources of energy that 
reduce our dependence on petroleum such as nuclear, wind, solar, 
synthetic fuels, and biodiesel--the world will immediately take notice 
and the speculators who were discussed so much two speakers ago will 
speculate in a hurry that America finally woke up, the Congress finally 
decided to do something. They will know our insatiable desire for 
foreign oil is at an end, that we are looking toward an end game where 
we are energy independent. You know what happens when that happens: The 
price of oil begins to come down immediately.
  The way you have an immediate impact on a spiraling and rapid 
increase in price is to have an immediate declaratory decision that you 
are going to do something about it and delineate those solutions you 
have and you know are doable. Surely a country that faced in the 1960s 
a challenge without the technology at the time to even know how to do 
what it said it was going to do can now today in 2008 make a 
declaration we are going to take our resources we are going to invest 
in them, we are going to incentivize them, and we are going to reduce 
our dependence on foreign oil. If we do that, we will have the 
beginning of the end of the rapid spiral up in prices as well as a 
beginning of a new solution in the Senate of the United States. That is 
both sides of the issue coming together, finding the common ground that 
in the end benefits whom we serve: the people of the United States of 
America.
  When I left Atlanta, GA, on the 4:20 flight to come to Washington on 
Monday, I came here recognizing that every day it is my responsibility 
to speak not for myself but for the people I represent. The people I 
represent are hurting. It is hurting our business. It is hurting 
education. It is hurting public safety. It is hurting the economy. We 
have to put aside our partisan differences, make a declaration of war 
on the spiraling cost of gas, develop the resources that we as America 
know we have, and say to the American people: This is the most 
deliberative body in the world, but it also has the potential to be the 
most decisive body in the world if we will only make up our mind to do 
it.
  Madam President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska is recognized.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, there has been a great deal of 
discussion on the floor of the Senate today, certainly, about the price 
of oil and the impacts the high energy costs are having on our States 
across the Nation. I rise today to talk a little bit about one 
solution, one aspect of the solution for our energy woes in this 
country, and that is increased domestic production. Before I begin my 
comments, I acknowledge it is only one piece of the puzzle as we deal 
with the high price of energy in this country. Increased domestic 
production is one aspect of it, but we also have the other components. 
Certainly we must do more to focus our technologies to advance the 
renewables and the alternative energy sources in this country. Then the 
third leg of my three-legged energy stool is the focus on conservation 
and efficiency. I think it is fair to say that we in this country 
simply do not do enough yet, and that is something we must move toward 
and move toward in a dramatic manner.
  We had a situation in the capital of Alaska about 6 weeks or so ago. 
The community of Juneau was left without their source of hydroelectric 
power when a series of avalanches took out the transmission lines that 
connected the source of hydro to the State's capital. Literally 
overnight, that community was plunged into a situation where they were 
going to be powering that community off of diesel. They were looking at 
a fivefold increase in their energy prices. The communities said: What 
do we do? We can't do this. All of a sudden we had a community--a 
population--that said: I can't afford to pay utility bills that are 
five times what I am already paying in terms of energy usage. So that 
community came together in a time of crisis and in 1 week's time 
reduced their energy consumption by 30 percent, and moved on then 
further in the next couple of months to reduce their energy consumption 
in Juneau, AK, by about 40 percent.
  They did it through everything. Juneau, as my colleagues may know, is 
in a rain forest. It is pretty damp. There is usually not much need for 
clothespins, but every clothespin in Juneau was snapped up literally as 
people said: Well, I can't afford to run the dryer. We are going to 
figure out ways in our households where we learn to conserve. That 
focus--that very specific focus on conservation now because we are in a 
time of crisis--produced some pretty dramatic results. I think that 
community can stand as an example of how we in this country can work 
together to make a difference to reduce our energy consumption.
  I wish to talk a little bit this afternoon about the Arctic National 
Wildlife Refuge in the State of Alaska and how opening ANWR to oil 
exploration and development could help lower the price of petroleum for 
decades into the future. Over the past couple of days, we have heard 
several colleagues--well, not several; we have all been talking about 
the high prices of fuel that people are facing. I have heard a lot from 
some about encouraging foreign nations, whether it is Saudi Arabia or 
others, to produce more oil so that we can drive down the price of fuel 
for our benefit. We have heard that imposing perhaps a windfall profits 
tax on the oil companies would somehow or other lower prices, but the 
explanation for exactly why that would occur has been a bit sketchy to 
me. But I have heard almost nothing--almost nothing--from some of the 
Members of this body on why America should not produce more oil itself, 
keeping the jobs in America, keeping the wealth in America for our 
benefit, America's benefit, not the benefit of Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, 
or Nigeria.
  We can pass many laws in Congress, and we can repeal many laws, but 
we cannot repeal the law of supply and demand. I am not the first 
person to stand on the Senate floor and say that. If we want to lower 
our prices, we have to figure out how we can increase our Nation's fuel 
supplies.
  On June 5, in the Washington Post, there was an opinion piece by 
George Will. He talked about the fact that America does have a national 
energy policy. According to Will:

       America says to the foreign producers: We prefer not to 
     pump our oil, so please pump more of yours, thereby lowering 
     its value, for our benefit.

  That was his statement about our national policy. That is a crazy 
national energy policy. No wonder it hasn't worked.
  I ask unanimous consent that this full column by Mr. Will be printed 
in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                       The Gas Prices We Deserve

       Rising in the Senate on May 13, Chuck Schumer, the New York 
     Democrat, explained: ``I rise to discuss rising energy 
     prices.'' The president was heading to Saudi Arabia to seek 
     an increase in its oil production, and Schumer's gorge was 
     rising.
       Saudi Arabia, he said, ``holds the key to reducing gasoline 
     prices at home in the short term.'' Therefore arms sales to 
     that kingdom should be blocked unless it ``increases its oil 
     production by one million barrels per day,'' which would 
     cause the price of gasoline to fall ``50 cents a gallon 
     almost immediately.''
       Can a senator, with so many things on his mind, know so 
     precisely how the price of gasoline would respond to that 
     increase in the

[[Page 12127]]

     oil supply? Schumer does know that if you increase the supply 
     of something, the price of it probably will fall. That is why 
     he and 96 other senators recently voted to increase the 
     supply of oil on the market by stopping the flow of oil into 
     the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which protects against major 
     physical interruptions. Seventy-one of the 97 senators who 
     voted to stop filling the reserve also oppose drilling in the 
     Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
       One million barrels is what might today be flowing from 
     ANWR if in 1995 President Bill Clinton had not vetoed 
     legislation to permit drilling there. One million barrels 
     produce 27 million gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel. 
     Seventy-two of today's senators--including Schumer, of 
     course, and 38 other Democrats, including Barack Obama, and 
     33 Republicans, including John McCain--have voted to keep 
     ANWR's estimated 10.4 billion barrels of oil off the market.
       So Schumer, according to Schumer, is complicit in taking 
     $10 away from every American who buys 20 gallons of gasoline. 
     ``Democracy,'' said H.L. Mencken, ``is the theory that the 
     common people know what they want and deserve to get it good 
     and hard.'' The common people of New York want Schumer to be 
     their senator, so they should pipe down about gasoline 
     prices, which are a predictable consequence of their 
     political choice.
       Also disqualified from complaining are all voters who sent 
     to Washington senators and representatives who have voted to 
     keep ANWR's oil in the ground and who voted to put 85 percent 
     of America's offshore territory off-limits to drilling. The 
     U.S. Minerals Management Service says that restricted area 
     contains perhaps 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion 
     cubic feet of natural gas--10 times as much oil and 20 times 
     as much natural gas as Americans use in a year.
       Drilling is underway 60 miles off Florida. The drilling is 
     being done by China, in cooperation with Cuba, which is 
     drilling closer to South Florida than U.S. companies are.
       ANWR is larger than the combined areas of five states 
     (Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, 
     Delaware), and drilling along its coastal plain would be 
     confined to a space one-sixth the size of Washington's Dulles 
     airport. Offshore? Hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed or 
     damaged hundreds of drilling rigs without causing a large 
     spill. There has not been a significant spill from an 
     offshore U.S. well since 1969. Of the more than 7 billion 
     barrels of oil pumped offshore in the past 25 years, 0.001 
     percent--that is one-thousandth of 1 percent--has been 
     spilled. Louisiana has more than 3,200 rigs offshore--and a 
     thriving commercial fishing industry.
       In his book ``Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of 
     `Energy Independence,' '' Robert Bryce says Brazil's energy 
     success has little to do with its much-discussed ethanol 
     production and much to do with its increased oil production, 
     the vast majority of which comes from off Brazil's shore. 
     Investor's Business Daily reports that Brazil, ``which 
     recently made a major oil discovery almost in sight of Rio's 
     beaches,'' has leased most of the world's deep-sea drilling 
     rigs.
       In September 2006, two U.S. companies announced that their 
     Jack No. 2 well, in the Gulf 270 miles southwest of New 
     Orleans, had tapped a field with perhaps 15 billion barrels 
     of oil, which would increase America's proven reserves by 50 
     percent. Just probing four miles below the Gulf's floor costs 
     $100 million. Congress's response to such expenditures is to 
     propose increasing the oil companies' tax burdens.
       America says to foreign producers: We prefer not to pump 
     our oil, so please pump more of yours, thereby lowering its 
     value, for our benefit. Let it not be said that America has 
     no energy policy.

  Ms. MURKOWSKI. On the floor this week, some Senators have argued that 
by opening ANWR and causing physical disturbance to just 2000 acres, 
which is what we are talking about, of the Arctic coastal plain--and 
this area is about one-sixth the size of Washington Dulles Airport that 
would likely result in the production of about 1 million barrels of new 
oil a day--isn't going to have much of an impact on prices.
  I want to quote the senior Senator from New York, who said on May 13:

       If Saudi Arabia were to increase its production by 1 
     million barrels per day, that translates to a reduction of 20 
     percent to 25 percent in the world price of crude oil, and 
     crude oil prices could fall by more than $25 a barrel. . . . 
     In turn, that would lower the price of gasoline between 13 
     and 17 percent, or by more than 62 cents off the expected 
     summer regular-grade price, offering much-needed relief to 
     struggling families.

  Now, earlier this afternoon, the same Senator said opening ANWR would 
``have little impact'' on lowering prices. I am not going to suggest 
that I know what he was thinking there, but I believe what he intended 
to say was that opening ANWR would have little impact on lowering 
prices immediately. In fact, if we were to vote in Congress today, this 
very moment, to open ANWR, we would not actually see the oil down the 
line into the lower 48 States for between 5 to 7 or 8 years. But I do 
believe the Senator who made those comments is wrong about both the 
short-term and the long-term effects of opening ANWR to oil 
development. He was right when he said last month that adding more oil 
to the world supply chain would increase supply and help drive down the 
prices. I think that is just as true in the years ahead as it is today.
  We recognize that our actions in this Nation, in terms of the 
statements that we send and what we are willing to do and what we are 
willing to commit to--if America were to finally tell the world that we 
are willing to produce more fuel ourselves, that we are serious about 
producing more of the energy we consume, I believe it would result in 
lower prices immediately--not in the 5 years it is going to take to get 
ANWR oil flowing, but it would bring down prices because it would have 
a psychological impact.
  In 1995, President Clinton vetoed the legislation that would have 
opened ANWR. If he had not at that point done that, and we had moved 
ahead, more than likely we would be seeing an additional 1 million 
barrels of oil flowing to the market right now. I believe and contend 
that oil would have prevented the prices from reaching today's 
exorbitant levels.
  To go back to George Will's column, he says everyone who has worked 
to block U.S. oil development over the past several decades is 
``complicit in taking $10 away from every American who buys 20 gallons 
of gasoline.''
  We talk a lot about ANWR and the potential out there and the 
controversy that, well, you can't open something if it doesn't have the 
support of the American people. I think we are being deceptive if we 
are saying the American people do not support the exploration in the 
1002 area. According to a May 29 Gallup Poll, 57 percent of Americans 
support ``allowing drilling in U.S. coastal and wilderness areas now 
off limits'' to development.
  In Alaska alone, the Alaskans who had expressed their support over 
the years--it has historically been 75 percent-plus of Alaskans who do 
support opening ANWR. We are seeing that support grow not only in the 
State, but we are looking at truly exorbitant prices, and we are seeing 
it across the country as well.
  Just yesterday, there was a nice fellow from Indiana who called my 
office to say he started a petition campaign on his own--just acting on 
his own volition--to help win support for opening ANWR. He said in just 
a few weeks he gathered thousands of signatures from citizens, not just 
in Indiana but in a number of States, in support of opening ANWR. Just 
last night, I heard a radio commercial from a group, and I didn't even 
know they existed. They were gathering signatures in support of opening 
ANWR to exploration and development.
  I think the American people know what some Members in Congress 
seemingly don't; that is, the need for America to expand its domestic 
production, expand that in a manner that we can move as quickly as 
possible and affect the high prices that we are seeing in this country. 
Again, it is not just increased domestic production. That is one aspect 
of it.
  I spoke a little bit about the Juneau example and how we in this 
Nation need to be doing more to conserve and achieve greater 
efficiency. I was home in the State this weekend and folks in Alaska 
are driving through some pretty rough roads and are driving through 
tough conditions. People there like SUVs and trucks, but it is not just 
because they are big and powerful; they are necessary. So driving by 
some of the lots this weekend, I can tell you just about everything for 
sale in the lots was the big trucks. People are looking at them and 
saying: I can't afford to fill up my vehicle anymore.
  I was in the fishing community of Dillingham on Saturday. They are 
preparing to go out for their first fish opener on Monday. Some of 
those boats are not going out because they cannot afford to fuel up. In 
Dillingham, the spring barge just came in a couple weeks ago. The price 
of gas at the pump there jumped up over a dollar in

[[Page 12128]]

1 day. They are paying $5.50 for unleaded. Diesel is $6.50-plus. It 
affects everything in the community, not just what is happening when 
you fill up your car. They are paying $8 for a gallon of milk. They are 
paying $10 for a carton of orange juice.
  When I went in to get a cup of coffee, a young woman said: I don't 
know how long we can stay in business. People from the small villages 
surrounding Dillingham are coming in because they cannot afford to fill 
up. The communities are suffering terribly. It is not just anger that 
we are seeing from the people in Alaska over the high prices that 
happened this winter. People were angry about what they are paying.
  Now what is happening is they are scared. They have nowhere to go. 
When your village cannot keep the lights on and you have to move to the 
regional hub and you realize there is no place for you to live, it is 
just as expensive, and there is no way to go, you say: I will go to 
town, to Anchorage or Fairbanks. But do you know what. The people don't 
have the money to get the airplane ticket out of town to get to a 
community where, again, the energy prices are through the roof.
  We have challenges in this Nation the likes of which I don't know 
that we have seen before because it is our energy and our ability to 
utilize our energy sources that keep this country as great as it is. We 
cannot have rural Alaska and rural America imploding because we haven't 
helped address the high cost of energy. The answers are there. It is 
increased domestic production. It is renewables and alternatives and 
the technologies we can advance. And it is conservation and efficiency.
  We will keep working on it. I think the people are going to be 
hearing a lot more about what many of us think is the shorter term 
solution, and that is increased production.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  The Senator from New Jersey is recognized.
  Mr. MENENDEZ. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business for up to 20 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                           Illegal Detentions

  Mr. MENENDEZ. Madam President, our deepest obligation as Senators and 
Representatives of the American people is to make sure our Nation's 
founding promises are being kept.
  With a few strokes of Thomas Jefferson's pen, we were told that life 
and liberty would be unalienable rights, that a chance to seek 
happiness would be something to which we were all entitled.
  Our rights grew over time, and over time we grew out of restrictions 
of who was entitled to those rights. African Americans threw down the 
chains of slavery. Women marched to the polls. People came from all 
over the world to become full members of our society because of the 
promise that our country held and the guarantees that our Government 
made.
  But when agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement--also known 
as ICE--conducted raids in Texas not long ago, one 19-year-old U.S. 
citizen, who was dragged from her home while she was still in her 
pajamas, wasn't thinking about that history.
  An 18-year-old U.S. citizen, who was shackled at his ankles, 
handcuffed at his wrists, and tied at his waste, wasn't thinking about 
that history.
  They were thinking to themselves: My God, what is happening to me? 
What is going to happen to my family? What is happening in my country?
  When ICE agents banged on the door of a U.S. citizen named Arturo 
Flores and pushed their way into his house in Clifton, NJ, without 
showing a warrant, and when agents in North Bergen, NJ, stormed into 
the house of a legal immigrant, named Maria Argueta, in the middle of 
the night and held her without cause, taking her away from her family 
for 36 hours, those loud knocks on the door quickly woke these law-
abiding individuals up from their American dreams.
  Now, hearing these examples, some people might not hear well. They 
may say this is what happens when people enter this country without 
going through the proper channels. I hear that a lot of the time 
because it is the mantra of people who defend ICE raids.
  But these are not undocumented immigrants getting pulled from their 
homes in the dead of night. They are U.S. citizens who are targeted 
because of their race, because of their color, and denied every 
fundamental right guaranteed by the United States Constitution.
  Our fellow citizens may not have been surprised that they were yanked 
from their homes. They might have even known that their immigration 
status wasn't even necessarily relevant.
  They might have heard stories about friends who were U.S. citizens or 
legal permanent residents but who were seized in immigration raids, 
detained, and in some cases even deported. I am talking about U.S. 
citizens and legal permanent residents.
  They may have known that their accent, their name, the color of their 
skin, the place where they lived would have put them at risk. They may 
have known that regardless of what our politicians and historians say, 
fundamental constitutional rights still might not apply to them in 
today's America.
  We have been hearing these stories for too long, and it is time they 
were told on the floor of the Senate because together we need to face a 
blunt reality: Our legitimate desire to control our borders has too 
often turned into a witch hunt against Hispanic Americans and other 
people of color.
  Common sense repeatedly loses out to hysteria, and agents of 
intolerance repeatedly jump over the legal protections to which every 
single American is entitled.
  I am going to tell just a few stories today, but there are plenty of 
others similar to them.
  Last year, a 30-year-old mentally impaired man named Pedro Guzman, 
who was born and raised in southern California, was detained on 
misdemeanor charges and scheduled to be released.
  He is a U.S. citizen, but somehow his accent, his name, the color of 
his skin must have convinced immigration authorities otherwise. So 
instead of returning him to his home, they decided to deport him to 
Mexico.
  Even after immigration authorities realized their horrible mistake, 
they made no significant effort to correct it. Pedro attempted several 
times to cross the border home to the United States, of which he is a 
citizen, and was repeatedly turned away. He was forced to wander the 
streets of Tijuana, eating out of trash cans to survive--a U.S. 
citizen.
  His mother Maria was worried beyond belief and took off time from her 
job to search for Pedro. Finally, 3 months after he had been illegally 
deported, Pedro found his way home. When he came back, his mother said 
after so much trauma, only half her son had returned.
  Each of us in this country has to think: What if that happened to me? 
Why couldn't that happen to me next? What would happen to my children 
if I was taken away under those circumstances?
  Authorities harass U.S. citizens of Hispanic descent in other ways.
  Last fall, under the cover of darkness, a dozen immigration agents 
stormed into the Long Island home of Peggy Delrosa-Delgado, a U.S. 
citizen and mother of three. They pushed through her 17-year-old son, 
herded her children into the living room, and one of them drew a gun on 
a family friend staying in the house. This was the second time they had 
done this, supposedly looking for someone named Miguel, who had never 
lived there.
  Another U.S. citizen named Gladis was at her home one day when 18 
vehicles drove into her front yard and 20 agents jumped out. Agents 
banged on the door and threatened to throw gas inside the house if they 
did not let them in. While the children in the house ran and hid in the 
bedroom, the agents broke down the door.
  One of the agents grabbed Gladis and attempted to handcuff her. She 
said she could prove her citizenship and gave them her Social Security 
card. After interrogating Gladis and her family for 20 more minutes, 
the agents left

[[Page 12129]]

as fast as they came. They had no warrant, no probable cause, no reason 
for their actions besides suspicion about someone's name, their accent, 
and the color of their skin. There is one more detail I should mention. 
Gladis was 6 months pregnant at the time.
  Each of us in this country has to think: What if that happened to me? 
Why couldn't that happen to me? What would happen to my children under 
those circumstances?
  Very shortly, I will be introducing legislation to prevent the 
unlawful--unlawful--detention of U.S. citizens and legal permanent 
residents.
  The problem with our detention system is even larger. Beyond the U.S. 
citizens and permanent residents who are unlawfully detained, there are 
people who have come to the United States fleeing persecution, people 
who have committed no crime, who find themselves trapped and squeezed 
between the gears of the U.S. immigration system.
  The Washington Post has recently run a disturbing series on the 
catastrophic state of our detention system. I encourage all my 
colleagues to read it. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the 
Record the first of the Washington Post articles.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the Washington Post, May 11, 2008]

   System of Neglect: As Tighter Immigration Policies Strain Federal 
      Agencies, the Detainees in Their Care Often Pay a Heavy Cost

                   (By Dana Priest and Amy Goldstein)

       Near midnight on a California spring night, armed guards 
     escorted Yusif Osman into an immigration prison ringed by 
     concertina wire at the end of a winding, isolated road. 
     During the intake screening, a part-time nurse began a 
     computerized medical file on Osman, a routine procedure for 
     any person entering the vast prison network the government 
     has built for foreign detainees across the country. But the 
     nurse pushed a button and mistakenly closed file #077-987-986 
     and marked it ``completed''--even though it had no medical 
     information in it. Three months later, at 2 in the morning on 
     June 27, 2006, the native of Ghana collapsed in Cell 206 at 
     the Otay Mesa immigrant detention center outside San Diego. 
     His cellmate hit the intercom button, yelling to guards that 
     Osman was on the floor suffering from chest pains. A guard 
     peered through the window into the dim cell and saw the 
     detainee on the ground, but did not go in. Instead, he called 
     a clinic nurse to find out whether Osman had any medical 
     problems. When the nurse opened the file and found it blank, 
     she decided there was no emergency and said Osman needed to 
     fill out a sick call request. The guard went on a lunch 
     break.
       The cellmate yelled again. Another guard came by, looked in 
     and called the nurse. This time she wanted Osman brought to 
     the clinic. Forty minutes passed before guards brought a 
     wheelchair to his cell. By then it was too late: Osman was 
     barely alive when paramedics reached him. He soon died.
       His body, clothed only in dark pants and socks, was left on 
     a breezeway for two hours, an airway tube sticking out of his 
     mouth. Osman was 34.
       The next day, an autopsy determined that he had died 
     because his heart had suddenly stopped, confidential medical 
     records show. Two physicians who reviewed his case for the 
     Washington Post said he might have lived had he received 
     timely treatment, perhaps as basic as an aspirin. Privately, 
     Otay Mesa's medical staff also knew his care was deficient. 
     On Page 3 of an internal review of his death is this 
     question:
       Did patient receive appropriate and adequate health care 
     consistent with community standards during his/her detention 
     . . .?
       Otay Mesa's medical director, Esther Hui, checked ``No.''
       Osman's death is a single tragedy in a larger story of 
     life, death and often shabby medical care within an unseen 
     network of special prisons for foreign detainees across the 
     country. Some 33,000 people are crammed into these 
     overcrowded compounds on a given day, waiting to be deported 
     or for a judge to let them stay here.
       The medical neglect they endure is part of the hidden human 
     cost of increasingly strict policies in the post-Sept. 11 
     United States and a lack of preparation for the impact of 
     those policies. The detainees have less access to lawyers 
     than convicted murderers in maximum-security prisons and some 
     have fewer comforts than al-Qaeda terrorism suspects held at 
     Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But they are not terrorists. Most are 
     working-class men and women or indigent laborers who made 
     mistakes that seem to pose no threat to national security: a 
     Salvadoran who bought drugs in his 20th year of poverty in 
     Los Angeles; a U.S. legal U.S. resident from Mexico who took 
     $50 for driving two undocumented day laborers into a border 
     city. Or they are waiting for political asylum from danger in 
     their own countries: a Somali without a valid visa trying to 
     prove she would be killed had she remained in her village; a 
     journalist who fled Congo out of fear for his life, worked as 
     a limousine driver and fathered six American children, but 
     never was able to get the asylum he sought.
       The most vulnerable detainees, the physically sick and the 
     mentally ill, are sometimes denied the proper treatment to 
     which they are entitled by law and regulation. They are 
     locked in a world of slow care, poor care and no care, with 
     panic and coverups among employees watching it happen, 
     according to a Post investigation.
       The investigation found a hidden world of flawed medical 
     judgments, faulty administrative practices, neglectful 
     guards, ill-trained technicians, sloppy record-keeping, lost 
     medical files and dangerous staff shortages. It is also a 
     world increasingly run by high-priced private contractors. 
     There is evidence that infectious diseases, including 
     tuberculosis and chicken pox, are spreading inside the 
     centers.
       Federal officials who oversee immigration detention said 
     last week that they are ``committed to ensuring the safety 
     and well-being'' of everyone in their custody.
       Some 83 detainees have died in, or soon after, custody 
     during the past five years. The deaths are the loudest alarms 
     about a system teetering on collapse. Actions taken--or not 
     taken--by medical staff members may have contributed to 30 of 
     those deaths, according to confidential internal reviews and 
     the opinions of medical experts who reviewed some death files 
     for the Post. According to an analysis by the Post, most of 
     the people who died were young. Thirty-two of the detainees 
     were younger than 40, and only six were 70 or older. The 
     deaths took place at dozens of sites across the country. The 
     most at one location was six at the San Pedro compound near 
     Los Angeles.
       Immigration officials told congressional staffers in 
     October that the facility at San Pedro was closed to renovate 
     the fire-suppression system and replace the hot-water boiler. 
     But internal documents and interviews reveal unsafe 
     conditions that forced the agency to relocate all 404 
     detainees that month. An audit found 53 incidents of 
     medication errors. A riot in August pushed federal officials 
     to decrease the dangerously high number of detainees, many of 
     them difficult mental health cases, and caused many health 
     workers to quit. Finally, the facility lost its 
     accreditation.
       The full dimensions of the massive crisis in detainee 
     medical care are revealed in thousands of pages of government 
     documents obtained by the Post. They include autopsy and 
     medical records, investigative reports, notes, internal e-
     mails, and memorandums. These documents, along with 
     interviews with current and former immigration medical 
     officials and staff members, illuminate the underside of the 
     hasty governmental reorganization that took place in response 
     to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
       The terrorist strikes catapulted immigration to a national 
     security concern for the first time since World War II, when 
     120,000 Japanese residents and their American relatives were 
     locked away in desolate internment camps.
       After Sept. 11, the Bush Administration transferred 
     responsibility for border security and deportation to the new 
     Department of Homeland Security, which gave it to Immigration 
     and Customs Enforcement (ICE)--a reconfiguration of the 
     decades-old Immigration and Naturalization Service--in 2003, 
     the year the Post used as the starting point for counting 
     detainee deaths. Each year since, the number of detainees 
     picked up for deportation or waiting behind bars for 
     political asylum has skyrocketed, increasing by 65 percent 
     since July 2005.
       Government professionals provide health care at 23 
     facilities, which house roughly half of the 33,000 detainees. 
     Seven of those sites are owned by private prison companies. 
     Last year, the government also housed detainees in 279 local 
     and county jails. To handle the influx of detainees, ICE 
     added 6,300 beds in 2006 and an additional 4,200 since then. 
     They too are nearly full.
       These way stations between life in and outside the United 
     States are mostly out of sight: in deserts and industrial 
     warehouse districts, in sequestered valleys next to other 
     prisons, or near noisy airports. Some compounds never allow 
     detainees outdoor recreation; others let them out onto tiny 
     dirt patches once or twice a week.
       Detainees are not guaranteed free legal representation, and 
     only about one in 10 has an attorney. When lawyers get 
     involved, they often have difficulty prying medical 
     information out of the bureaucracy--or even finding clients, 
     who are routinely moved without notice.
       The burden of health care for this crush of human lives 
     falls on an obscure federal agency that lacks the political 
     clout and bureaucratic rigor to do its job well. The Division 
     of Immigration Health Services (DIHS), housed in a private 
     office building at 13th and L Streets, NW., several blocks 
     from ICE headquarters, had a budget last year of $61 million. 
     ICE spent an additional $28 million last year on outside 
     medical care for detainees.

[[Page 12130]]

       Medical spending has not kept pace with the growth in 
     population. Since 2001, the number of detainees over the 
     course of each year has more than tripled to 311,000, 
     according to ICE and the Government Accountability Office. 
     Meanwhile, spending for the DIHS and outside care has not 
     quite doubled, ICE figures show. ICE's conflicting population 
     and budget numbers make the trends difficult to determine.
       The agency is responsible for managing and monitoring 
     detainee medical care, about half of which is provided by 
     U.S. Public Health Service professionals and the rest by 
     contracted medical staff. When doctors and nurses at the 
     immigration compounds believe that detainees need more than 
     the most basic treatment, they have to fax a request to the 
     Washington office, where four nurses, working 9 to 4, East 
     Coast time, five days a week, make the decisions.
       A proud Statue of Liberty replica stands just beyond the 
     glass doors of DIHS headquarters to remind visitors of the 
     Public Health Service's historical role in screening and 
     treating European immigrants arriving at Ellis Island at the 
     turn of the last century. Its new role is to keep detained 
     immigrants healthy enough to be deported.
       The mission is accompanied at times by a sense of panic and 
     complicity. Many documents obtained by the Post make clear 
     that the people in charge know that the system is in trouble 
     and that piecemeal fixes are not enough.
       ``The onus is on us if it hits the fan,'' one official 
     complained during a high-level headquarters meeting about 
     staff shortages late last summer, according to records of the 
     conversation. ``We're going to be responsible if something 
     happens, because it's well documented that we know there's a 
     problem, that the problem is severe.''
       ``We are putting ourselves and our patients at risk,'' 
     another official said.
       Doctors express concerns about violating medical ethics and 
     fear lawsuits. In July, Esther Hui at Otay Mesa sent a memo 
     to DIHS medical director Timothy T. Shack, saying her 
     colleagues were worried that they might be sued because of 
     the substandard care they were giving detainees. The agency's 
     mission of ``keeping the detainee medically ready for 
     deportation'' often conflicts with the standards of care in 
     the wider medical community, Hui wrote. ``I know in my gut 
     that I am exposing myself to the U.S. legal standard of care 
     argument. . . . Do we need to get personal liability 
     insurance?''
       Nurses who work on the front lines see the problems up 
     close. ``Dogs get better care in the dog pound,'' said 
     Catherine Rouse, a contract nurse at an Arizona detention 
     center who quit after two months last year because she saw 
     what she regarded as ``scary medicine'' in the prison: 
     Patients taken off medications they needed and nurses doing 
     tasks they were not qualified to do. ``You don't treat people 
     like that. There has to be some kind of moral fiber,'' Rouse 
     said.
       In a statement responding to questions raised by The Post, 
     Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials pointed out 
     that the federal government spent nearly $100 million in 
     fiscal 2007 on medical care for immigration detainees. About 
     one in four immigrants in the detainee population has a 
     chronic health condition, the statement said.
       ``Among ICE's highest priorities is to ensure safe, humane 
     conditions of confinement for those in our custody,'' the 
     statement said. ``We make every effort to enforce all 
     existing standards and, whenever possible, to improve upon 
     them. When we find standards that are not being met, we take 
     immediate action to correct deficiencies and when we believe 
     that the deficiencies cannot be corrected, we relocate our 
     detainees to other facilities.''
       By their calculations, officials said, the mortality rate 
     among detainees has declined since 2004 to a level that is 
     lower than that in U.S. jails and prisons. The deaths, the 
     statement said, ``highlight the tremendous responsibility and 
     potential liability the government faces in providing medical 
     care to a population that often did not have access to 
     adequate health care before coming into our custody.''
       To this end, the agency recently increased its inspections 
     of facilities and is creating an inspection group at 
     headquarters to review serious incidents, including deaths or 
     allegations that standards are not being met.
       ICE declined to comment on specific cases, citing internal 
     policies on patient privacy or pending litigation.
       Neil Sampson, who ran the DIHS as interim director most of 
     last year, left that job with serious questions about the 
     government's commitment. Sampson said in an interview that 
     ICE treated detainee health care ``as an afterthought,'' 
     reflecting what he called a failure of leadership and 
     management at the Homeland Security Department. ``They do not 
     have a clear idea or philosophy of their approach to health 
     care [for detainees],'' he said. ``It's a system failure, not 
     a failure of individuals.''
       A new director for health services arrived six months ago, 
     following a stretch when the agency was run first by Sampson 
     and then by a second interim director. The new boss is LaMont 
     W. Flanagan, who brought with him the credential of having 
     been fired in 2003 by the state of Maryland for bad 
     management and spending practices supervising detention and 
     pretrial services. An audit found that Flanagan had signed 
     off on payments of $145,000 for employee entertainment and 
     other ill-advised expenditures. His reputation was such that 
     the District of Columbia would not hire him for a juvenile-
     justice position.
       ``Another death that needs to be added to the roster,'' 
     Diane Aker, the DIHS chief health administrator, tapped out 
     in an e-mail to a records clerk at headquarters on Aug. 14, 
     2007. Juan Guevara-Lorano, 21, was dead.
       Guevara, an unemployed legal U.S. resident with a young 
     son, was arrested in El Paso for driving illegal border-
     crossers farther into the city. He was paid $50.
       An entry-level emergency medical technician, with barely 
     any training, had done Guevara's intake screening and 
     physical assessment at the Otero County immigration compound 
     in New Mexico. Under DIHS rules, those tasks are supposed to 
     be done by a nurse.
       After two difficult months in detention, Guevara had 
     decided not to appeal his case. He would go back to Mexico 
     with his family. But on Aug. 4, he came down with a splitting 
     headache, what he called a nine on a pain scale of 10, his 
     medical records show. The rookie medical technician 
     prescribed Tylenol and referred Guevara to the compound's 
     physician ``due to severity of headache . . . and 
     dizziness,'' according to medical records.
       But Guevara never saw a doctor. Eight days after the first 
     incident, he vomited in his cell. The same junior technician 
     came to help but was unable to insert a nasal airway tube. 
     Guevara was taken to a hospital, where doctors determined an 
     aneurism in his brain had burst.
       His wife, pregnant at the time with their second child, 
     recalled that she rushed to the hospital but ICE guards would 
     not let her inside, until the Mexican Consulate interceded. 
     Guevara's mother waited five hours before they let her in. By 
     then he was brain-dead.
       ``My son is not coming back,'' sobbed Ana Celia Lozano 
     months later, sitting in Guevara's small mobile home as her 
     grandson played on the floor. ``I want to know how he lived 
     and died, nothing more.''
       What appears to be the most incriminating document in 
     Guevara's case has been partially blacked out. Still, what is 
     left shows that he did not receive adequate care. ``The 
     detainee was not seen or evaluated by an RN, midlevel or 
     physician. . . . At the time of the incident on 8/12/2007, 
     the detainee was seen and examined by EMTs.''
       Each immigration facility is allotted a different number of 
     positions, and a shortage of doctors and nurses is not 
     unusual at centers across the country. Records from February 
     show that about 30 percent of all DIHS positions in the field 
     were unfilled. ICE officials said last week that the current 
     vacancy rate is 21 percent. Concern about the vacancies is 
     voiced repeatedly at clinical directors' meetings. ``How do 
     we state our concerns so that we can be heard? . . . this is 
     a CRITICAL condition. . . . We have bitten off more than we 
     can chew,'' a physician wrote in the minutes of one meeting 
     last summer.
       In some prisons, the staffing shortages are acute. The 
     Willacy County detention center in South Texas--the largest 
     compound, with 2,018 detainees--has no clinical director, no 
     pharmacist and only a part-time psychiatrist. Nearly 50 
     percent of the nursing positions were unfilled at the 1,500-
     detainee Eloy, AZ, prison in February. At the newly opened 
     744-bed Jena, LA, compound, nurses run the place. It has no 
     clinical director, no staff physician, no psychiatrist and no 
     professional dental staff.
       Last August, Sampson, who was then DIHS interim director, 
     warned his superiors at ICE that critical personnel shortages 
     were making it impossible to staff the Jena facility 
     adequately. In a vociferous e-mail to Gary Mead, the ICE 
     deputy director in charge of detention centers, he wrote:
       ``With the Jena request we have been re-examining our 
     capabilities to meet health care needs at a new site when we 
     are facing critical staffing shortages at most every other 
     DIHS site. While we developed, executed and achieved major 
     successes in our recruitment efforts we have been unable to 
     meet the demand.''
       The slow ICE security-clearance process forced many job 
     applicants to go elsewhere, Sampson wrote. Of the 312 people 
     who applied for new positions over the past year, 200 
     withdrew, he wrote, because they found other jobs during the 
     250 days it took ICE, on average, to conduct the required 
     background investigations. Last week, ICE officials said the 
     average wait had decreased recently to 37 days.
       These shortages have burdened the remaining staff. In July 
     2007, a year after Osman's death in Otay Mesa, medical 
     director Hui strongly complained to headquarters about 
     workload stress. ``The level of burnout . . . is high and 
     rising,'' she wrote in an e-mail. ``I know that I have been 
     averaging approximately 2-6 hrs of overtime daily for the 
     past 2 months. I will no longer be able to sustain this pace 
     and will be decreasing the number of hours that I work 
     overtime. This being said, more will be left undone because 
     we simply do NOT have the staff.''
       The overcrowding has created a petri dish for the spread of 
     diseases. One mission of the

[[Page 12131]]

     Public Health Service is to detect infectious diseases and 
     contain them before they spread, but last summer, the 
     gigantic Willacy center was hit by a chicken pox outbreak.
       The illness spread because the facility did not have enough 
     available isolation rooms and its large pods share recycled 
     air, but also because security officers ``lack education 
     about the disease and keep moving around detainees from 
     different units without taking into consideration if the unit 
     has been isolated due to heavy exposure,'' noted the DIHS's 
     top specialist on infectious diseases, Carlos Duchesne. The 
     staff was forced to vaccinate the entire population in mid-
     July. In one 2007 death, memos and confidential notes show 
     how medical staff missed an infectious disease, meningitis, 
     in their midst. Victor Alfonso Arellano, 23, a transgender 
     Mexican detainee with AIDS, died in custody at the San Pedro 
     center. The first three pages of Duchesne's internal review 
     of the death leave the impression that Arellano's care was 
     proper. But the last page, under the heading ``Off the record 
     observations and recommendations,'' takes a decidedly 
     critical tone: ``The clinical staff at all levels fails to 
     recognize early signs and symptoms of meningitis. . . . Pt 
     was evaluated multiple times and an effort to rule out those 
     infections was not even mentioned.'' Arellano was given a 
     ``completely useless'' antibiotic, Duchesne wrote. Lab work 
     that should have been performed immediately took 22 days 
     because San Pedro's clinical director had ordered staff 
     members to withhold lab work for new detainees until they had 
     been in detention there ``for more than 30 days,'' a 
     violation of agency rules.
       ``I am sure that there must be a reason why this was 
     mandated but that practice is particularly dangerous with 
     chronic care cases and specially is particularly dangerous 
     with . . . HIV/AIDS patients,'' Duchesne wrote. ``Labs for 
     AIDS patients . . . must be performed ASAP to know their 
     immune status and where you are standing in reference to 
     disease control and meds.''
       Given the frequency with which ICE moves people within the 
     detention network, keeping track of detainees is critical to 
     stopping the spread of infectious illnesses. The purchase of 
     an electronic records system named CaseTrakker in 2004 was 
     supposed to help. But according to internal documents and 
     interviews, CaseTrakker is so riddled with problems that 
     facilities often revert to handwritten records.
       A study at one site found that it took one-third more time 
     to use CaseTrakker than to use paper. Thousands of patient 
     files are missing. Recorded data often cannot be retrieved. 
     Day-long outages are common.
       When detainees are transferred from one facility to 
     another, their records, if they follow them, are often 
     misleading. Some show medications with no medical diagnoses, 
     or ``lots of diagnoses but no meds,'' according to Elizabeth 
     Fleming, a former clinical director at one compound in 
     Arizona.
       After Yusif Osman's death and the discovery of the problem 
     with his computerized records, the DIHS ordered a review of 
     all charts at the Otay Mesa center. During the review, 
     auditors also found that 260 physical exams were never 
     completed as required. The nurse responsible for the error in 
     Osman's case was reprimanded, but the computer problem was 
     not fixed. The CaseTrakker system ``has failed and must be 
     replaced,'' Sampson, the DIHS interim director, wrote to his 
     ICE supervisors in August.
       In January 2008, medical director Shack told colleagues 
     that CaseTrakker ``is more of a liability than the use of 
     paper medical record system,'' according to the minutes of a 
     meeting. It ``puts patients at risk.''
       ICE officials said last week that they are not satisfied 
     with CaseTrakker and are working to replace it.
       Along with being at the mercy of computer glitches, 
     detainees suffer from human errors that deny or delay their 
     care. And with few advocates on the outside, they are left 
     alone to plead their cases in the most desperate ways, in 
     hand-scribbled notes to doctors they rarely see.
       ``I need medicine for pain. All my bones hurt. Thank you,'' 
     wrote Mexico native Roberto Ledesma Guerrero, 72, three weeks 
     before he died inside the Otay Mesa compound. Delays persist 
     throughout the system. In January, the detention center in 
     Pearsall, Tex., an hour from San Antonio, had a backlog of 
     2,097 appointments.
       Luis Dubegel-Paez, a 60-year-old Cuban, had filled out many 
     sick call requests before he died on March 14. Detained at 
     the Rolling Plains Detention Facility in the West Texas town 
     of Haskell, he wrote on New Year's Day: ``need to see doctor 
     for Heart medication; and having chest pains for the past 
     three days. Can't stand pain.''
       Ten days later he went to the clinic and became upset when 
     he wasn't seen. He slugged the window, yelled, pointed at his 
     wristwatch. He was escorted back to his cell.
       Another of his sick call requests said: ``Need to see a 
     doctor. I have a lot of symptoms of sickness . . . as soon as 
     possible!'' The next was more urgent: ``I have a emergency to 
     see the doctor about my heart problems . . . or the last 
     couple days and I been getting dizzy a lot.''
       The next day, Dubegel-Paez collapsed and died. His medical 
     records do not show that he ever saw a doctor for his chest 
     pains.
       Hanna Boutros, 52, who came to the United States 30 years 
     ago, waited seven months for surgery after receiving a 
     diagnosis of ``high-grade'' prostate cancer, which his 
     urologist urged be treated immediately. ICE officials sent 
     him to Krome Service Processing Center in Miami because, they 
     said, it could best deal with his condition.
       But he was seen by nurses, not a doctor, until he found an 
     outside lawyer to threaten a suit. Boutros finally got 
     surgery just before Christmas, before he was deported to 
     Lebanon, leaving two children and a wife in the United 
     States. ``I was miserable. I was very, very scared. It was 
     always burning,'' he said.
       Juan Guillermo Guerrero, 37, was denied his seizure 
     medication and given an ineffective substitute. Suffering 
     from one or two painful seizures a week, he told his lawyer 
     to drop his case, saying he preferred to be deported than to 
     die inside an immigration prison. A few days after he 
     returned to Mexico, Guerrero died of asphyxiation during a 
     seizure, according to his lawyers. Sometimes, to save money, 
     the government releases detainees instead of treating them. 
     Martin Hernandez Banderas, a 40-year-old Mexican, was 
     released from custody last year while he was in the hospital 
     following surgery to amputate his leg. An internal review 
     found that the system failed him before the surgery: Nurses 
     and doctors at Otay Mesa did not appreciate the severity of 
     his diabetic foot wounds, did not properly treat them or 
     prescribe the correct course of antibiotics, and did not 
     bring in a qualified surgeon to evaluate the problem.
       Simon Reyes-Altimirano, 25, a Honduran, was diagnosed with 
     chicken pox and sent back to his cell with Benadryl, only to 
     be hospitalized a day later and diagnosed with an inoperable 
     brain tumor. He died two weeks later.
       Shack, the medical director, found that Reyes-Altimirano's 
     care at the El Paso detention center had been ``appropriate 
     and timely.'' But a nurse at the center poured out her 
     remorse in a typed note placed in Reyes-Altimirano's medical 
     file. ``We always have to listen to the patient and the 
     reason I say this is because'' when he first reported his 
     problems, ``one of the nurses said, ``I think he is faking 
     his illness'' . . . this is not just a medical learning 
     experience but also an emotional one.''
       Three weeks after Reyes-Altimirano died, a nurse at the 
     Krome Service Processing Center accused the Rev. Joseph 
     Dantica of faking an illness, too. The 81-year-old Baptist 
     minister had fled Haiti in the fall of 2004, fearing for his 
     life after gangs set fire to the church overlooking Port-au-
     Prince where he ran a school, let people use computers for 
     free and quietly handed out money to needy families.
       As a younger man, Dantica listened to tapes to practice 
     English every day, but he never wanted to live in the United 
     States, said a niece, writer Edwidge Danticat, who was raised 
     by him. He visited once a year, to see his brother in 
     Brooklyn and raise money for his church.
       But after U.N. peacekeepers and Haitian riot police seized 
     the church to use as a base against gangs, and after the 
     gangs retaliated by burning the altar, Dantica slipped on a 
     woman's muumuu and wig and headed to the airport. He arrived 
     in Miami with a valid visa but decided to seek asylum because 
     he thought he might have to stay longer than his visa 
     allowed. In an earlier time, Dantica would have been 
     permitted to go on to New York while the government 
     considered his claim. This time, he was detained.
       Dantica and an immigration lawyer were sitting before an 
     asylum officer when the minister began to vomit violently. 
     The lawyer, John Pratt, said agents at the detention center 
     had taken away his client's blood-pressure medicine.
       Dantica ``turned very cold. His eyes wandered around, and 
     he appeared not to be conscious of his surroundings,'' the 
     asylum officer, Miriam Castro, later told investigators, 
     according to confidential documents. ``Applicant assumed a 
     rigid position with his legs stretched out and remained in 
     this position.''
       Castro called for medical help. No one came for 15 minutes. 
     When the public health nurse and a physician assistant 
     arrived, the nurse said he believed that Dantica ``was faking 
     because Applicant kept looking at him randomly,'' Castro 
     said. The nurse, Tony Palladino, ``then went on to 
     demonstrate that when he moved Applicant's head up and down, 
     Applicant maintained his head rigid as opposed to limp, thus 
     not allowing his head to fall back. [The nurse] stated that 
     was another way he determined Applicant was faking 
     symptoms.''
       Dantica died a day later in Miami's Jackson Memorial 
     Hospital, shackled to a bed. Pratt had called the hospital 
     repeatedly, trying to get information about the minister's 
     condition and permission for his family to see him. ``They 
     never said anything but they were doing tests,'' Pratt said. 
     Security reasons, hospital officials told him, prevented 
     visitors.
       The government's internal medical records say Dantica died 
     of pancreatitis. A one-page death certificate in his file has 
     ``VOID'' stamped across it. Two outside doctors who reviewed 
     his medical records for The Post said he probably died of 
     heart problems.

[[Page 12132]]

       Yusif Osman had been living in Los Angeles as a legal 
     resident for five years when he was detained crossing back 
     from Tijuana in 2006 with a passenger, also from Ghana, who 
     had a false ID. Osman was arrested on a smuggling charge, 
     which he denied and was fighting while locked up at Otay 
     Mesa. He seemed healthy to his friends and family who visited 
     him or spoke to him by phone.
       His girlfriend, Dorothy Weens, was stunned when she picked 
     up the phone in late June and a stranger broke the news. 
     ``Yusif Osman passed away,'' the man said.
       When Osman's lawyer called the compound to verify what had 
     happened, he was told only that his client was no longer 
     there. Weens and a cousin of Osman's called immigration 
     officials several times for answers. They were told that the 
     matter was under investigation. Eventually they stopped 
     calling.
       Osman's belongings from the prison arrived at his cousin's 
     house one day by mail. Pants. Socks.
       Scraps of paper with prayer verses written in Arabic. His 
     birth certificate. A letter from Dorothy: ``Hey Babe! Hang in 
     there. I'm trying everything I can do, to get you out of 
     there. I love you and God love you. And that all you needs. 
     I'm sending you $100.00. Love, Dot.''
       There was also an inventory of the rest of his personal 
     property on the day he died: ``4 yellow envelopes. 1 writing 
     pad. I religious beads. I Chap Stick. 14 Ramen soups. 1 grape 
     jelly. 1 jar peanut butter. 1 hot cocoa mix. 1 box Q tips.''
       The mortuary received a preliminary death certificate from 
     the coroner's office. It noted Osman's cause of death as 
     ``pending,'' enough to release the body. His mosque collected 
     money for a burial in a Muslim cemetery in the Mojave Desert. 
     Male friends dug the grave. They laid his corpse, wrapped in 
     white cloth, into the open earth and covered it with rocky 
     dirt.
       The final death certificate arrived in the mail sometime 
     later. Under cause of death, it still read ``pending.'' 
     Osman's passing remains a mystery to his grieving relatives 
     in Ghana and his adopted African community in Los Angeles.
       An uneven, blank concrete headstone marks Grave 26. The 
     truth of Osman's death is also buried, thousands of miles 
     away, past the Statue of Liberty replica near the front door, 
     inside a cabinet at the Division of Immigration Health 
     Services, in file #077-987-986.

  Mr. MENENDEZ. Madam President, the series is staggering, revealing 
deficiencies in our detention system that most of us could not dream up 
in our worst nightmare. The Washington Post has forced us as a nation 
to look in the mirror, and I, for one, am appalled at what I see.
  We, the United States of America, the greatest democracy in the 
entire world, have been injecting people with heavy dosages of drugs in 
order to deport them or to move them around the system with more ease.
  Immigration officials drug people going through U.S. facilities, and 
they drug people who are to be deported. They drug some people so 
heavily that when they get off the plane, they collapse on the tarmac 
or have to be rolled off the plane in a wheelchair.
  They do not only drug people to make it easier to kick them out. One 
story that stood out in both the Washington Post article and a segment 
on ``60 Minutes'' was that of a woman named Amina Mudey.
  Last year, Amina fled from Somalia to the United States to seek 
asylum after she was tortured and her family was killed before her 
eyes. When she arrived at JFK airport, she was shackled, thrown in a 
van and driven to a windowless, converted warehouse in New Jersey. 
Immigration authorities didn't so much as find an interpreter. Instead, 
they decided to lock her up and decided she was insane, without even 
talking to her, and decided to inject her full of a drug to treat a 
disease she didn't even have. The side effects were awful. Her tongue 
swelled so much she couldn't close her mouth. She drooled and vomited 
uncontrollably and began to lactate. When she complained, they upped 
the dose. She thought to herself: Maybe I am going to die here.
  Finally, 5 months after she was detained, she won her asylum case in 
court and was released from the detention center. Without the 
perseverance of her lawyer, Amina would never have emerged from her 
drug-induced state. She never would have found the asylum she so 
desperately needed.
  This case sheds light on another grim reality. Medical treatment at 
our detention facilities is atrocious. Overmedication is far from the 
only problem. Life-threatening lack of care is also a serious problem. 
Take the heartbreaking story of Francisco Castaneda. Francisco entered 
one of our detention facilities battling cancer, although he didn't 
know it at the time. All he knew is he had significant lesions on his 
reproductive organs.
  Offsite officials who never examined Francisco repeatedly denied him 
the biopsy he so desperately needed. After 11 long months in custody, 
Francisco argued for and eventually obtained a temporary release so he 
could pay for his own biopsy. Life-threatening cancer tumors were 
found. Despite amputation of the affected area and several rounds of 
chemotherapy, Francisco died of cancer at the age of 36.
  A Federal judge recently noted that this case appears to present 
``one of the most, if not the most, egregious Eighth Amendment 
violations [involving cruel and unusual punishment] the Court has ever 
encountered.''
  The United States of America essentially killed Francisco Castaneda 
by denying him the medical care he so desperately needed. Why? Because 
he had entered this country without the proper documentation at the age 
of 10, when his mother, fleeing civil war in El Salvador--a war the 
United States helped to fund, a war that sent thousands of refugees 
such as him to our country--chose to seek freedom.
  He was denied care because he tried to make a better life for himself 
and his family. These are hardly offenses that warrant death. We cannot 
in good conscience allow these conditions to continue. That is why I 
have joined together with Senators Kennedy, Durbin, Akaka, Lieberman, 
Kerry, and Bingaman to introduce the Detainee Basic Medical Care Act.
  First, the bill would require the Department of Homeland Security to 
establish procedures for delivering basic health care to all immigrant 
detainees in custody. It requires the Department to give people in 
custody access to any medications they urgently need, both during 
detention and transfers.
  Currently, a bureaucrat in an office can overrule a medical 
professional who is actually on-site and seeing a detainee. This bill 
ensures that treatment decisions are made by the professionals who 
actually see the patient.
  Finally, the bill would require the Department to report all detainee 
deaths to the Office of Inspector General and Congress.
  We can never lose sight of the fact that everyone who immigrates to 
this country, whether they are documented or not, is a human being. A 
detention should never amount to a death sentence. This kind of action 
to ensure humane treatment and prevent unnecessary deaths at these 
facilities is long overdue.
  Let us not forget that many in immigration detention are there for 
minor violations, many because of administrative errors or pending 
legitimate asylum cases.
  At this point, this becomes more than a legal issue; it becomes a 
human rights issue. It is our job to do all we can to secure our 
country while also protecting the dignity of all human beings. If we 
fail to do so, not only do we blemish ourselves, but we lose the moral 
high ground to be a beacon of democracy and a leader of human rights 
around the world.
  It is astounding to me that human beings could be treated as badly as 
some are being treated on our soil. When innocent people are drugged, 
tranquilized, and treated similar to animals, when agents attempt to 
handcuff a pregnant U.S. citizen, break down the door to her home, 
terrify her children and her family, when an agency of the Federal 
Government deports its own citizen, when all this is going on, each of 
us in America has to think: What is happening in our country? Doesn't 
my U.S. citizenship, whether by birth or naturalization, protect me 
from this kind of abuse?
  Some officials have claimed these incidents are rare, and some have 
suggested this is acceptable collateral damage in pursuit of 
undocumented aliens. Tell that to our fellow citizens who found 
themselves either detained illegally or deported. Tell that to Pedro, 
Gladis and Amina and everyone else and all the families who have had

[[Page 12133]]

to watch this happen. No matter how widespread this pattern of abuse 
turns out to be, one thing is clear: It isn't rare enough.
  There is only one way to prevent that kind of abuse, and it should be 
a universal policy that before we accuse someone of being undocumented, 
there is one other document we should inspect first. It is called the 
Constitution of the United States. It is time for immigration and law 
enforcement at all levels to rededicate themselves to respecting the 
rights the Constitution guarantees. That means respecting the need for 
probable cause and the right to be free from unreasonable search and 
seizure guaranteed by the fourth amendment, the right to due process 
guaranteed by the fifth and fourteenth amendments, and the full 
benefits of citizenship and equal protection for anyone born or 
naturalized in this country, guaranteed by the 14th amendment, and the 
entire range of rights and protections under our Constitution.
  It is going to take real leadership at every level of our justice 
system, from the Attorney General to the Secretary of Homeland Security 
on down. That is the only way that those who by birth or naturalization 
have a legitimate right to pursue the American dream and to make sure 
their lives do not turn into an un-American nightmare.
  This issue might not be the legislative business of the Chamber at 
this moment, but it is always our moral business. It is always our 
moral business to defend the most fundamental principle on which our 
Nation was founded: that all of us are created equal. Stopping illegal 
detentions of Americans based on their race is about more than properly 
enforcing the law. Above all, it is about respecting people who may be 
different from us but who share the same birthright.
  Martin Luther King said:

       We may have come on different ships, but we're all in the 
     same boat now.

  If we are worried about what to throw off the boat, it should be our 
oldest enemy, which is fear. Once that is gone, we can resume our 
course on the currents of freedom and let our sails be filled with 
liberty and justice for all.
  We can preserve the Constitution, defend our borders, and, at the 
same time, make sure no American citizen, whether naturalized or born 
here, ever faces the discrimination that is taking place widespread 
across the country in ways in which they are illegally detained, 
illegally put in detention facilities, their houses are broken into, 
and where even a U.S. citizen could be deported. That is a shameful 
time in our history, and I hope the Senate will work to stop it.
  To the extent I have any time remaining, I yield it to Senator Durbin 
for his presentation.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.
  Mr. DURBIN. Before speaking on the issue of energy, I wish to commend 
my colleague from New Jersey. I hope those who were following the 
debate of the Senate were listening closely to what he had to say. I 
wish I could remember the exact quote--perhaps he can--but someone once 
said:

       You can really measure the morality of a people by watching 
     how they treat their prisoners and those under detention.

  I think what he has brought to our attention today is nothing short 
of a critically important issue about the conduct of our Government in 
the treatment of people in detention, many of whom are not guilty of 
crimes, many of whom may be suspected and are being treated as if they 
have already been convicted, and treated extremely poorly.
  I thank the Senator for bringing up this issue. It is one I hope the 
entire Senate will reflect on, and again I thank him for bringing it to 
our attention.
  Madam President, if you go back to your home State of Missouri or my 
home State of Illinois--or you pick a State, pick a town, pick a 
street--and grab the first person who walks by and say: Is there 
anything on your mind that Washington is dealing with, do you know what 
the answer is going to be? Gasoline prices, Senator. Where have you 
been? Have you noticed what is going on here? Go to fill up the gas 
tank and pull out the credit card or the cash and you are paying twice 
as much as you did not that long ago. What are you going to do about 
it, Senator? A lot of talk about all the issues you are concerned 
about, but what is happening in Washington? Well, if you follow what 
happened this week on the floor of the Senate, you will understand that 
precious little--in fact, nothing--has happened this week in Washington 
when it comes to the issue of gasoline prices, diesel prices, and home 
heating oil. And it isn't for lack of effort.
  The Democratic majority brought a bill to the floor asking the Senate 
if we could move forward and start to debate this bill. The bill had 
specific elements in it to try to address the increased cost of 
gasoline, to stop what we considered to be an abuse to the American 
economy. And how bad is it? Well, take a look at this chart, which 
shows in graphic terms what has happened since President Bush was sworn 
into office in January 2001 until just a few days ago here in 2008. The 
average price of gasoline, when the President was sworn in, was $1.47 a 
gallon. It is now $4.04 a gallon. This dramatic increase has caused 
hardship to families, to businesses, to farmers, to airlines, and to 
truckers. You name it, the American economy is suffering because of it.
  It isn't just something that happened over a long period of time. We 
can see just this year what has happened with gas prices. Just since 
January of 2008, gasoline prices have gone up 93 cents, almost $1 a 
gallon. People are feeling that. I find it when I get back to Illinois, 
particularly in my part of the State, in downstate Illinois, where they 
live in smaller towns, in affordable housing, and commute to their 
jobs. They now find the price of gasoline to be beyond their budgets 
week after week and month after month.
  So we said: Let's bring a bill to the floor, and let's have a bill 
that deals with the reality. And here are the harsh realities. Not only 
has the price of gasoline gone up, but the profit-taking by the 
American oil companies has gone up dramatically. Since President Bush 
has taken office, the profit-taking by these companies has increased by 
over 400 percent, in the same period of time the cost of gasoline has 
gone up over 250 percent. It is no coincidence. These companies aren't 
making the biggest profits in the history of the oil industry, they are 
making the biggest profits in the history of American business. No 
other company has ever done this.
  We also understand what it means to businesses, passing along the 
expenses of energy costs on products. Whether they are food products or 
whatever it might be, it raises the cost of living for everybody.
  We know what is happening with airlines. Just this last week, the 
airlines--those that are still in business, because so many have gone 
bankrupt--those that are still in business announced dramatic cutbacks 
in their scheduling. Most of the major airlines took out of their 
fleets the less fuel-efficient planes and cut back on their scheduled 
aircraft by 20 percent. Well, welcome to our summer vacations as we try 
to move back and forth across America with fewer airplanes, stuffed to 
the gills with passengers. That is the reality of this energy crisis.
  We know what it means to truckers. They are facing diesel costs near 
$5 a gallon, and they are trying to fill up those big rigs and keep 
them on the highway, and it is hard to do. It is difficult to even 
consider that they can do this without passing along the cost of that 
added energy cost to those who are buying the products in the back of 
the truck.
  So what we have already done so far in the Senate is to pass fuel 
economy standards for cars and light trucks that will reach 35 miles a 
gallon by 2020. That is a good thing. American consumers will have a 
choice to buy more fuel-efficient vehicles. We have committed to the 
production of 36 million gallons of renewable transportation fuels, 
such as ethanol and biodiesel, by the year 2022. We have expanded 
research for plug-in hybrids. What is needed now, though, is not the 
long-term fix but something that can bring

[[Page 12134]]

some relief. So we brought this bill to the floor, and here is what it 
did:
  First, we rolled back the $17 billion Federal subsidy we are 
currently giving oil companies. How can you justify a subsidy to a 
company making recordbreaking profits? Why would you take taxes away 
from families, who are hard pressed with their own budget needs, and 
give them to the wealthiest, most profitable companies in America? That 
was No. 1 in our bill.
  No. 2 was a 25-percent windfall profits tax. We say to these oil 
companies: Enough is enough. You are entitled to a profit--you are in 
business for your shareholders--but when you have gone beyond a 
reasonable profit and it has gone into the area of greed, the 
Government is going to take it. And maybe the notion of a windfall 
profits tax would discourage the oil companies from continuing to raise 
those gasoline prices at the pump.
  We also protected consumers from price gouging. The bill gave the 
President the authority to declare an energy emergency and set a limit 
on unconscionably excessive prices, if necessary. Are we in an energy 
emergency at this point? I argue that we are, and I think the President 
should have this authority.
  Next, we would go after speculation in oil--the trading that goes on 
at the highest levels by some of the biggest investors--to make sure 
there is transparency and accountability, and that is something which 
is long overdue.
  We would send a clear message to OPEC--that cartel of nations in the 
Middle East that supplies us with oil--that we will allow enforcement 
actions against any company or country that is colluding to set the 
price of oil, natural gas, and other petroleum products.
  What was the Republican response to this bill? We needed 60 votes. We 
called for a vote yesterday. I took a look at it and I see that we 
had--it looks like 6, maybe 7 Republicans who joined us, 7 out of 49, 
one of whom was the Senator from Iowa, here on the floor now, who voted 
with us yesterday on moving forward on this bill. And I salute him. I 
wish some of his colleagues on the other side would have joined him. We 
needed 60 votes, and it failed. So the filibuster on the Republican 
side worked. They stopped the bill. They stopped the debate. We can't 
move forward on the bill because we couldn't bring over 60 Members. 
Unlike the Senator from Iowa, the vast majority of Republican Senators 
voted against even debating this bill, voted against amending it.
  That is not the first time that has happened in this Congress. The 
filibuster, which many people are familiar with, allows any Senator to 
stand up and object to any amendment, any bill, any nomination, and if 
anyone wants to say to that Senator that he or she doesn't have the 
right to do that anymore, we need 60 Senators who will stand up and say 
it is time to move on, it is time to debate the amendment, it is time 
to bring it before us. In the history of the Senate, the total number 
of filibusters in any 2-year period of time, the max, has been 57. So 
far in this Congress, which still has about 6 or 8 months to go, there 
have been 75 Republican filibusters.
  This most recent filibuster, on the Energy bill, stopped us from 
debating ways to bring down the price of gasoline in America, to send a 
message to oil companies that they have gone too far. We couldn't bring 
over, on a bipartisan basis, enough Republican Senators to reach the 60 
votes. So the 74th and the 75th Republican filibusters prevailed. They 
stopped us from moving forward. That is a sad reality and one that is 
hard to explain back home.
  This week in the Senate--with the exception of the Senator from Iowa, 
who is on the floor and whom I have saluted twice but I will salute a 
third time for joining us on this vote--the overwhelming majority of 
Republicans are blocking a bill to debate lowering energy costs across 
America. How can that be in the best interest of the American economy? 
How can it be in the best interest of the Senate? Aren't we elected to 
come here and address the issues that really count, the ones that 
families and businesses feel every single day? Well, because of the 
strategy on the Republican side, we were unable to do it.
  Now, I will tell you that the answer by most Republicans to the 
debate I have just talked about is that we should drill for oil in the 
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. I am opposed to that. And 
for years, whenever I would get up and say I am opposed to it, one of 
the Senators from Alaska would say: You have no business opposing it, 
you don't know what it looks like, you don't know what you are talking 
about. So I took it upon myself several years ago to go to the Arctic 
National Wildlife Refuge and to camp out two straight evenings there, 
with my son, two overnights, but I use that term loosely because the 
sun was up 24 hours a day by the time we went there to see what it was 
like. You understand, once you have flown over, landed, and walked 
through it, a large part of it, why President Eisenhower set this piece 
of real estate aside and said: Protect it. There is something special 
about this. Don't develop it unless it is an absolute emergency in 
America and there is no place to turn.
  From the Republican side, they believe that is the answer: Let's go 
drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. But the 
Department of Energy's own Energy Information Agency has made clear 
that it wouldn't make any difference if we drilled for oil in the 
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge because by the time the oil would be in 
peak production--which wouldn't be until the year 2030--Refuge oil 
would make up only .6 percent of the world's oil. It would literally be 
a drop in the oil bucket. That drop in the bucket is hardly a solution 
to today's high gasoline prices. In fact, the effect at the gas pump 
wouldn't be felt for two decades.
  This Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is one of America's last 
pristine, untouched wilderness areas. It is home to over 200 wildlife 
species, including polar bears, musk ox, which I spotted while I was 
there, and caribou. Can we trust that a rush of oil development will 
protect this wilderness that we hold stewardship over? Is this really 
the last answer America can come up with? I think not. I think we are 
smart enough, we are determined enough, and with the right leadership 
we can reduce energy costs in America, give consumers an option to buy 
more fuel-efficient cars and trucks, find more fuel efficiency, more 
homegrown fuels, such as ethanol and the biofuels and biodiesel, and 
make certain we hold true to the values that we are not going to 
compromise the water we drink, the air we breathe, or wildernesses and 
refuges that have been set aside for decades. That is what is 
critically important in this national debate.
  We know that despite even their best efforts, some of the major oil 
companies have pipeline problems. Just a couple of years ago, one of 
the major oil companies was responsible for the largest oil spill in 
North Slope history. That, unfortunately, is an indication that you can 
never be too careful.
  History is clear: We need to do the right things to meet this energy 
crisis, and the first thing we need to do is to act as a Senate and 
debate an issue that really counts in America.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I wish to speak on taxes, but I would 
like to comment a little on what I just heard from the Senator from 
Illinois. And he is absolutely right that I did vote to debate because 
I think a great deal can be accomplished through debate on this 
legislation. In regard to the overall bill and the motive behind it, it 
is good in the areas of antitrust and things of that nature, but taxing 
oil? The rule of economics 101 is that when you tax something, you get 
less of it. And the American people understand by now, with $4 gas, 
another rule of economics 101: If you are going to get prices down, you 
have to increase supply.
  I would not be flippant about 13 billion barrels of oil in Alaska 
that we have not tapped. Yes, by the year 2030 it might be .6 percent 
of the world's supply, but when you are using 85 million barrels a day 
worldwide and when there are only about 86 or 87 million barrels of oil 
being pumped out of the

[[Page 12135]]

ground worldwide, then you have to understand that a six-tenths of 1 
percent increase in a world supply that is not very flexible is going 
to make a big difference because it is the nervousness that is in the 
supply of oil, and when it might be cut back because of natural 
disaster or terrorism activity or some German worker being kidnapped in 
Nigeria, which sometimes is an excuse for oil going up, more 
flexibility in the supply of oil is what is going to help us with 
steady prices and lower prices as we increase supply.
  So even though I voted to bring the bill to debate yesterday, I want 
it fully understood that I am not a guy who believes taxing is going to 
increase supply. In fact, I believe more taxes is going to decrease 
supply.
  I wish to have a debate with the Senator from Illinois and other 
people from the other side that what we need is supply. I could easily 
agree with the Senator from Illinois--maybe not about drilling in 
Alaska, but if he were willing to drill on the Outer Continental Shelf, 
willing to drill more in the Gulf of Mexico, and willing to drill more 
on public land. These are places we know there is an ample supply of 
oil we ought to make use of to keep the money in the United States 
instead of buying from the Arabs to give them American dollars to shoot 
back at us.
  I think there are a lot of national security implications here that 
are as important as the price of gasoline for our suppliers. I said I 
would be willing to vote that way if we could get some understanding of 
drilling other places.
  What I hear from the other side is: No, to Alaska; no, to the Outer 
Continental Shelf; no, to public lands; no, to the Gulf of Mexico. But 
I don't hear anybody crying--you often hear from people about the Outer 
Continental Shelf that you are going to ruin tourism if we do it. You 
are going to ruin the view of the ocean. But I don't hear anybody 
complaining that 50 miles off of Key West, it is OK for China to drill. 
But if you want to drill 50 miles off of Florida for the benefit of 
Americans, you would have an outcry. I don't understand it.
  When I had my town meetings in Iowa during the Memorial Day recess, 
at every one of those meetings was brought up why don't we drill more 
where there is oil that is needed in the United States? Why don't we 
explore and make use of what we have? We can't fool the American 
public.
  To some extent the debate we had yesterday was on a bill because if 
we didn't get to these issues of more exploring and more use of these 
resources, it would be a figleaf to cover the opinion or position of 
the other party that, no, we can't drill anymore.
  Conserve? Yes, we ought to conserve. There is nothing the Senator 
from Illinois said about conserving that is not legitimate. But 
conserving is not the only answer to our problem. You have to have a 
three-legged stool of answers to our energy problems.
  One of them is to drill where we know there are resources. Now, since 
God only made so much fossil fuel, that is short term. Then renewables 
is second, and conservation, the third. We need a public policy in all 
those areas. We have public policies for conservation--tax credit for 
fuel-cell cars, for refurbished homes to be more energy efficient, for 
energy-efficient appliances. We have tax incentives for renewable 
fuels. Of course we have had tax incentives for petroleum for a long 
period of time. We need those incentives. But to think renewables or 
conservation is a solution to this problem is very misleading.
  Madam President, I want to talk a little bit about energy but also to 
talk more about taxes. That was an issue we debated yesterday. As I 
finished up last night, I spoke about the spike in gas prices. These 
increases in costs are hammering most Americans, including too many 
Iowans. Iowans have seen it firsthand in the gas stations in New 
Hartford. I say that because sometimes I get the impression from my own 
constituents that everybody thinks all 100 Senators have chauffeur-
driven limousines to drive around in so we don't know what the cost is 
to put gas in a gas tank. It is not true here in Washington, DC, except 
for a few of the elected leaders, and it is not true in Iowa, where I 
drive a 2003 Taurus. We do take care of ourselves and we do know the 
price of gas. In fact, I can tell you if I had been smart enough to buy 
gas when I left the Des Moines airport Friday night, I could have 
gotten it for $3.69, and I waited to buy it Sunday night and it was 
$3.89, and I know it is $4 out here. The point is, we feel it.
  By the way, I have some advice for some of the leaders who drive SUVs 
around here and have chauffeur-driven limousines while we are paying $4 
in taxpayers' money for gasoline. It aggravates me to high heaven when 
I see the SUVs idling out here, maybe to keep the car warm in the 
wintertime or cool in the summertime, and I saw it when the temperature 
around here was 60 degrees. Shut these cars off and save. There is no 
reason for the Senate of the United States to set an example that we do 
not conserve or care about the taxpayers' money by having these SUVs 
idle when nobody is in them, when they are not going anyplace.
  I read reports about the gas issue. I read reports about the stimulus 
rebate checks being eaten up at the pump with this high gasoline price. 
In addition to this hit from gas hikes, American families are facing a 
big hit from planned tax hikes. I wish to take a few minutes then to 
talk about the additional hit taxes make on the family budget.
  You would think no one would increase taxes in times of economic 
distress. Record tax hikes in an era of higher gas prices would seem to 
be a recipe for economic disaster. So people who think taxes are not 
high enough, complaining about the upcoming recession--hopefully 
avoided but probably not--why would you want to make it worse by 
increasing taxes?
  Some people do not seem to care. People on the other side, including 
Presidential candidates, proudly and passionately want to raise taxes. 
You see it in the debate. I am not telling you something you can't see 
on television. Candidates of the other political party are waiting to 
raise taxes. How do they want to increase taxes, you might ask? By 
increasing tax rates and taxing investment income.
  If the other side prevails in the November elections, we will be on a 
path to a tax hike; taxes that will go up, as a percentage of gross 
domestic product, higher than they have been at any time since World 
War II. If they stay on that path, yet higher. Taxes should rise by 
almost 10 percent with virtually every American paying more. If you 
want to create jobs, you don't tax labor. The rules of economics 101--
if you tax something, you get less of it. If you want labor, then don't 
increase taxes on labor.
  I wish to ask folks, particularly in the media, to take a serious 
look. It is in the Congressional Budget Office reports. It is the 
effect of letting the bipartisan Tax Relief Act of 2001 expire, and 
maybe a more partisan tax bill of 2003 expire.
  How much more taxes would we have to pay? A lot more, say people on 
the other side, especially those Americans who are defined by the other 
side as making a lot of money.
  What is a lot of money? The Democrats say if you are a family making 
at least $250,000 a year, you make a lot of money and don't pay enough 
taxes. That puts you in the current 33-percent tax bracket.
  Can Americans making less than $250,000 a year be sure they will not 
pay more taxes? What is to say that the other side will not tax 
Americans making $100,000 a year? Or even $50,000 a year? The 
bipartisan Tax Relief Act made sure that all Americans are paying less 
in taxes. In 2001 and 2003, Congress did the right thing and reduced 
the tax liability for all hard-working Americans.
  This tax relief should not be labeled the Bush tax cuts. Yes, 
President Bush had a great deal of involvement and deserves some 
credit. But I want to remind people that Congress passed the 2001 and 
2003 tax relief. In fact, that year the Finance Committee was divided 
50 percent Republican, 50 percent Democrat, because the whole Senate 
was equal, the number of Republicans and Democrats. We completely, as a 
body, rewrote the suggestions that President Bush put before the 
Congress.

[[Page 12136]]

  Max Baucus, the current chairman, was my partner in the 2001 bill. We 
overcame the White House's desire to write a ``Republican only'' bill 
and skip the committee process. So stop calling this tax relief the 
Bush tax cuts. This label is politically motivated to confuse the 
American taxpayers about what was truly a bipartisan tax relief 
measure.
  This label is repeated over and over. The head of the Senate 
Democratic Campaign Committee beats his partisan drum with this phrase. 
He relies on polls to drive a partisan message. The label is likewise 
parroted over and over in the press reports. The Sunday political talk 
show hosts are even getting into the act. If I had a nickel for every 
time I heard the words ``Bush tax cuts,'' especially from the political 
pundits, I would singlehandedly be able to pay off the national debt.
  Colleagues and friends in the media, I beg you--I have asked you to 
consider what I am saying--lay off the false label of Bush tax cuts. 
Instead, look at the substance. The substance of the 2001 and 2003 tax 
relief put more money into the pockets of hard-working Americans. This 
is how it came about, by lowering the tax rates, providing marriage 
penalty relief and by providing the child tax credit. I do not hear 
much press discussion about how much money hard-working Americans are 
going to have to pay if the 2001 and 2003 tax relief expires. I ask the 
media people: Take a look at the data. It is real. It means dollars and 
cents to virtually every American taxpayer. That cushion in the family 
budget will be critical to deal with the burden from the higher gas 
prices that have been involved in the debate today and yesterday.
  Other data: If the 2001 and 2003 tax relief expires, a family of four 
with household income of $50,000 will pay $2,300 more in taxes. That is 
a lot of money for a family earning $50,000. Here is a chart that will 
show you exactly the impact when 2010 comes and these expire, as the 
candidates on the other side want to do. In 2011 that family of four is 
hitting a tax wall, the tax wall, or $2,300 a year. These families have 
hit the wall. If the other side prevails, they are going to have their 
noses bloodied by the tax brick wall that the middle-income family 
hits.
  Here is more data. A single mother with two children earning $30,000 
will pay $1,100 more in taxes, if the tax relief bill is passed. This 
single mom with two kids will actually be crushed financially by a 
brick wall of higher taxes.
  There is a lot of talk about need for change in economic policy. It 
seems as if change, no matter what it means, is good on its face. Many 
in the media and the beltway punditry fawn over the soaring rhetoric of 
the eloquent Democratic candidate. Indeed, there is almost a cult of 
personality surrounding the charismatic junior Senator from Illinois. 
These folks in the media and beltway punditry need to cut through the 
fog and look at what the Democratic notion of changed economic policy 
will mean to folks beyond the beltway. Look at this change not from the 
perspective of high-paid, latte-liberal crowds in the bluest areas of 
the bluest States. Look at what this means in the offices, factories, 
and farms of the heartland. That is what I ask many in the media and 
the punditry to take a good look at.
  Gas prices are also squeezing the country's main job creators and 
that hits small business and farms. Small business has a tax hike to 
worry about as well. This tax hike piles on top of higher energy costs 
that are slamming small business.
  According to the Treasury Department, about 70 percent of taxpayers 
who are flowthrough business owners are in the top 5 percent of the 
taxpayers. So my friends on the other side of the aisle, along with 
their Presidential candidate, are effectively saying they want small 
business owners to pay at least 13 percent more in taxes.
  Small business owners are not Bill Gates or Warren Buffet. Small 
business owners are hard-working Americans who live on Main Street. 
They are vital to our economic well-being. Small business employs a 
vast majority of America's workers. Yet small business owners have to 
pay more money to their Government. That is less money they can use to 
hire somebody.
  The old law of economics 101: If you increase taxes, you get less of 
it; you tax labor more, you get less labor, you get less jobs. If that 
person is not hired, what happens? The individual is unemployed, has no 
income, has no health care. Instead, that worker stands in the 
unemployment line and collects unemployment.
  Economics, like I said. All these tax hikes on small business would 
pile on top of the gas price hikes already crippling small business. 
Why should they pay more taxes? Is this change good because they can 
afford it? That is what the other side is saying. But it makes no 
sense.
  What they are saying is, because these taxpayers can ``afford it,'' 
these taxpayers should be paying even a greater percentage of Federal 
Government taxes. But what does ``afford it'' mean? Do we not want all 
taxpayers, not just those make $250,000 or more, to pump their 
disposable incomes back into our economy?
  Do we wish to steer taxpayers, including upper income taxpayers, 
toward lower return, tax-favored investments? Do we wish to steer their 
money away from reinvesting in small businesses or start-ups?
  By the way, I wish to compliment one of Senator Obama's surrogates. I 
am referring to Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia. On FOX News Sunday, 
Governor Kaine indicated Senator Obama would propose a zero-percent 
capital gains rate for small start-up companies. Under current law, 
that is a 7.5 percent rate.
  Now, we Republicans could look at this proposal. But unfortunately 
for the American people, Governor Kaine said Senator Obama would 
substitute this rate with a 33-percent increase in capital gains on 
other investments.
  So the substitution would be bad for other investors. So let's focus 
on the progrowth side of the proposal and consider dropping the rate of 
start-ups from 7.5 percent to zero.
  The political talking point that we hear again and again, raise taxes 
on the country's top taxpayers to generate ``needed'' revenue, is 
communicated to the American public.
  It is said enough times and repeated by the press so many times that 
many Americans believe it.
  It is not the fault of that portion of the American public that 
believes it.
  It is refreshing that a vast majority of Americans think the general 
idea of a tax increase is a bad idea, especially in these economic 
times.
  But the notion that there are no downsides for taxpayers or for 
economic growth if income taxes go up by 10 percent is a notion that 
the other side believes. Many in the media seem to accept this notion 
without further examination.
  If middle- and upper-income taxpayers see a bigger tax bill, do they 
believe that our economy will be better off?
  It is clear lower tax rates have generated record tax revenues. I 
challenge some of the media who are skeptical about tax relief to take 
a look.
  Here is a chart that illustrates that lower taxes have generated 
record tax revenues.
  This chart illustrates that Federal tax revenues have been, and 
generally continue to be, coming into the Federal Treasury at or above 
the historical average of 18.2 percent of GDP.
  Now what the heck does that mean?
  It means that lowering the tax rates has not gutted Federal tax 
revenues.
  So don't believe the Chicken Littles who say the sky will fall if we 
keep taxes low.
  It means that keeping taxes low, even for Americans earning $250,000 
a year has brought in record-breaking revenue.
  It also means that the Government doesn't need to raise taxes in 
order to generate revenue.
  Now I can't let my colleagues on the other side, and some of the 
skeptics in the press for that matter, say to the American public that 
if you earn less than $250,000 a year, you won't see higher taxes.
  Why? There are millions of investors earning less than $250,000. They 
earn dividends and capital gains.

[[Page 12137]]

  Let's take a closer look.
  In 2003, Congress reduced the top tax rate on capital gains from 20 
percent to 15 percent.
  Congress also tied dividend income to the capital gains tax rate, 
that is, 15 percent.
  For low-income taxpayers, the tax rate on capital gains and dividends 
is currently zero.
  That's zero, with a capital Z.
  Millions of low-income taxpayers receive dividends and capital gains.
  All of these taxpayers were not making over $250,000.
  I will shed light on this fact with a chart. Nationally, over 24 
million tax returns reported dividend income.
  In Iowa, for instance, over 299,000 families and individuals claimed 
dividend income on their returns.
  Here is another chart dealing with capital gains.
  Nationally, 9 million families and individuals claimed capital gains. 
Over 127,000 of them were folks from Iowa.
  I have fought both Democrats and Republicans to ensure that our 
country is set on the right course.
  That course is economic prosperity.
  I would like to see a real discussion of the negative implications of 
changing current economic policy. With high gas prices squeezing 
taxpayers, it is more compelling than ever.
  Let's clear away the fog about the expiring bipartisan tax relief. 
Broad-based tax increases aren't gauzy ``feel good'' economic policy 
changes. Let's examine the benefits of keeping taxes low.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.
  Mr. ALLARD. Madam President, first of all, I wish to thank the 
Senator from Iowa for his graciousness in allowing me to speak. He is a 
tremendous leader for us on issues of tax policy and health care, and I 
appreciate my relationship with him a lot. He is a wonderful American. 
He is a wonderful Iowan. He does a great job for the people of Iowa in 
the Senate.
  We all know we are experiencing a time of dramatically increased 
energy costs. The price of gas sets new highs almost every day, and the 
price of oil continues to climb. In the face of this, the Democrats in 
this body think the proper response is to increase taxes and 
regulations on the energy industry.
  It reminds me of a saying from the Reagan era: If it moves, tax it; 
if it keeps moving, regulate it; and if it stops moving, subsidize it.
  Well, the bill the Democrats are trying to force on the American 
people would do at least two of those things. Increasing taxes and 
regulations do nothing to bring down the increase in fixed costs that 
result from high energy prices. It is not the right solution. 
Conventional wisdom dictates that in times when fixed costs are high, 
discretionary spending must decrease.
  As the last budget showed, we certainly do not follow conventional 
wisdom in DC. But families all over America have to. In plain and 
simple language: Spending more on what we need generally means we have 
less to spend on what we want.
  Now, make no mistake, we are spending more on what we need. Americans 
are feeling the pain at the pump due to high gas prices, but 
increasingly they are feeling pain at the kitchen table too. As gas 
prices go up, so do food prices. America's farmers and ranchers produce 
the safest and most affordable food in the world. But rising energy 
prices have affected almost every level of agriculture. It has caused 
the cost of everything from fertilizer to processing to increase.
  The high price of diesel and other types of energy are forcing up 
production costs, which also forces up food prices. My home State of 
Colorado produces some of the best-tasting produce in the world, 
including potatoes. It is not putting fuel in the tractor that is 
hurting our farmers. Last year, in Colorado's San Luis Valley, it cost 
a farmer about $90 an acre for starter fertilizer for a potato crop. 
This year, the cost is up almost $300, from $90. You heard that right, 
in 1 year, starter fertilizer costs have more than tripled.
  Weld County, CO, is one of the Nation's top-producing agricultural 
counties. But even in an area that produces as much food as Weld 
County, people there are fighting high food costs. Higher food costs 
hurt all Americans, but they are especially damaging to people dealing 
with food insecurity.
  Food banks are struggling to stretch dollars so they can keep food on 
their shelves. That is food that goes to our most vulnerable 
populations, impoverished individuals and their families. In Weld 
County, 32 percent of the individuals served by the local food bank are 
children.
  The price of food, and indeed all goods that need to be moved any 
distance, is also increased by the transportation costs. Listen to 
this. The trucking industry has been especially hard hit by the 
increases in diesel prices. In January of 2007, when the Democrats took 
control of Congress, diesel was $2.53 a gallon. Today the national 
average for diesel is $4.69 a gallon. That is an increase of $2.16 in 
the 18 months of Democratic control of Congress. In the 6 years 
preceding Democratic control of the Congress, the price of diesel rose 
about $1. That is right, $1 dollar for over 6 years, and $2.16 in 18 
months.
  I think the evidence is clear that the antiproduction Democrats in 
Congress are ignoring the needs of rural Americans in favor of liberal 
environmental elitists.
  Gasoline prices are also changing families' plans for their leisure 
time. In times such as these, we see an industry such as tourism both 
helped and hurt by families having more limited funds. Local tourism in 
places such as Colorado is helped because people stay closer to home. 
For example, a family from southeast Colorado might choose to forgo 
their planned week-long trip to Yellowstone Park and instead spend 3 or 
4 days at Rocky Mountain National Park.
  This is good for Rocky Mountain National Park because that family 
might not have visited if they could afford the gas necessary to go to 
Yellowstone. But it is bad for Yellowstone because they lost visitors. 
Businesses in the surrounding communities around Yellowstone also lost 
the opportunity to feed and house that family and to sell them their 
souvenir T-shirts.
  Unfortunately, though, tourism in a State such as Colorado is likely 
to be hurt by families' needs to visit locally, because although Rocky 
Mountain National Park will play host to a southeastern Colorado 
family, they are likely to lose visitation from families who have to 
travel farther to get there. Now, the Rocky Mountain National Park is a 
destination tourist area. So that people from all over the country, 
when they plan their weeks for a week vacation, they plan on making 
Rocky Mountain National Park their main focal point of that vacation. 
So families have to travel farther, and when they travel farther, they 
do not often want to spend more, and so it hurts destination tourist 
spots such as Rocky Mountain National Park.
  But it is not just families who plan to drive who are affected. 
According to the Air Transportation Association only 8 years ago, 15 
percent of the price of an airline ticket went to pay for fuel. Now 
that number has risen to 40 percent. Fuel prices for airlines are up 84 
percent over last year, forcing them to raise fares and add surcharges 
and fees to recoup costs. Airlines will continue serving their best 
markets but may be forced to reduce flight frequencies and the number 
of cities they can serve altogether.
  Small cities may keep service with a flight or two a day but only at 
much higher prices aimed at business travelers, while leisure travelers 
will have to drive to bigger cities to get more reasonable fears.
  U.S. airlines are projected to spend $61 billion on fuel this year; 
that is $20 billion more than in 2007, an increase equivalent to the 
compensation and benefits of 267,000 airline workers or the acquisition 
of 286 new jets.
  The rapid increase in jet fuel will add substantially to airline 
costs at a time when a weakening U.S. economy will make it more 
difficult to offset those costs with higher fares.
  While oil prices are soaring, the airline industry and Denver-based 
Frontier Airlines has been forced to analyze every facet of their 
business in an effort to combat the enormous financial

[[Page 12138]]

strain fuel costs are having on them. Airlines have been resorting to 
carrying less water per flight, removing bulky, unneeded carts and 
equipment, while even eliminating hot meal options so they could 
eliminate ovens and microwaves in the galleys.
  While I commend our airline industry for their innovative solutions 
and creativity during these constrained times, these changes combined 
with fare increases are having a dreadful impact on our domestic 
airline industry, which has been vital to national and international 
commerce and tourism. Denver, CO, is the center of much of that 
activity.
  United Airlines recently announced plans to take 70 more jets out of 
service and cut domestic capacity by 17 to 18 percent for the remainder 
of 2008 and 2009. Although Frontier Airlines prides itself on the 
ability to provide passenger service at relatively low cost, once again 
the high price of fuel has necessitated an increase to their fuel 
surcharge which is passed on to the customer.
  In addition to raising prices, they have reduced aircraft fuel burns 
and began using new flight-planning computer software to track fuel and 
flights to save fuel. Frontier has also had to reduce the number and 
frequency of its flights into Denver, which will have an adverse impact 
on the Colorado economy and Colorado tourism, which usually flourishes 
in the warm summer months.
  In closing, I would like to address the claim that Republicans in 
this body are the problem. Republicans in this body actually have 
legislation that will increase domestic production of energy, instead 
of cut it off. We are ready to talk about energy prices. We are ready 
to talk about gas prices. That is why we are here today doing that. We 
wish to help Americas alleviate the pain they are feeling at the pump 
by increasing production. That is the real solution to our problem.
  The laws of supply and demand dictate that increasing supply will 
work to drive down prices. Increased taxation simply suppresses supply, 
which, in turn, leads to even higher prices. What we should not do is 
act on a bill that will decrease domestic production by imposing 
increased taxes.
  What we should not do is act on a bill that will decrease domestic 
production by increasing the regulatory burden. That is what we have on 
the floor right now. That is what the ``no energy bill'' before us will 
do. I simply cannot support that. I am supporting the majority leader's 
effort to allow Republicans to be able to be a part of this process, to 
submit their amendments on the floor so we can actually move toward 
more production, instead of less production.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado is recognized.
  Mr. SALAZAR. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SALAZAR. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum 
call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                                Medicare

  Mr. SALAZAR. Madam President, I come to the Senate floor this 
afternoon to speak about the Medicare package we will be voting on 
cloture on, the legislation that Senator Reid filed for cloture 
yesterday. We will be doing that vote sometime tomorrow. Before I make 
my comments about that particular piece of legislation, I want to make 
a few comments in general about the importance of the health care 
agenda and the health care challenge that faces America.
  For all of us who are in elected office in all of our States, we hear 
about the pain the people of America are feeling from a number of 
different perspectives. We hear loudly and clearly that people in our 
States are very concerned about what is happening with the runaway 
prices of oil and the high cost of gas and diesel and the farmers and 
ranchers and the businesspeople and consumers in general, just concern 
about that cornerstone of our economy which is causing so much pain to 
the people of America today.
  We also hear about another cornerstone of concern, and that is what 
is happening with the housing crisis, the housing crisis which, in many 
ways, has ignited the economic instability we face in America today, 
where people are losing their homes, record foreclosures are occurring, 
and people want to know what it is we are doing in Washington to 
address the dream of home ownership for America.
  In my State, it is projected that in the year ahead and in 2009 there 
will be about 50,000 homes that will go into foreclosure. There will be 
about a third of the housing stock that will have a decline of anywhere 
from 12 to 15 percent in value over the next several years. Those two 
cornerstones of our economy--energy and housing--are trembling a little 
bit today. It is important for all of us in the Congress to do what we 
can to try to stabilize our energy policy and energy prices and also to 
deal with the challenges we face in the housing crisis.
  There is another cornerstone in our economy which is something we 
need to address. We will do small pieces of it here, but it has to do 
with health care. Health care today is a huge challenge and problem for 
America.
  In the Presidential debates, one of the hot topics will be how will 
the next leader of the greatest democracy in the world help us address 
the huge challenges we face in health care. One thinks about the fact 
that there are 47 million Americans who do not have health insurance 
today. One thinks about my State of Colorado with a population of under 
5 million people. Today there are 850,000 Coloradans who don't have 
health insurance, and of those 850,000, 180,000 are children, children 
without health insurance in our State.
  As I look at the issue of health care in general, one of the 
cornerstones that face our country in terms of the economic and real 
human pain we are facing, I am proud of the fact that there are people 
in the Senate who are trying to figure out a way forward already.
  First, Senator Baucus, chairman of the Finance Committee, has decided 
this is an issue we need to learn a lot more about. So we have a series 
of hearings on what is happening with health care, what is happening 
with health care in other places around the world. Next Monday we will 
be having a health care summit to try to further our understanding on 
how we can deal with this incredibly difficult issue. Then in the mix 
of all that dialog, my good friend from Oregon, Senator Wyden, who just 
happens to be on the floor--totally by coincidence--has offered for all 
of us to take a look at the Healthy Americans Act.
  The Healthy Americans Act is important because it is the only piece 
of legislation that has come to the Senate in a manner that is a 
comprehensive health care reform package, but also, importantly, it has 
the kind of bipartisan support which, at the end of the day, will be 
required in order for us to fix the very complex health care problems 
and challenges we face today.
  I applaud him and both my Democratic and Republican colleagues who 
have joined him in that effort. It is the only significant bipartisan 
piece of legislation that has been considered in Washington for a long 
time. But the issue of health care and health care reform is not going 
to go away this year. It is an issue I expect will loom large on our 
plates right after the January 2009 inauguration. Many of us will be 
working to try to find the right solution that fits the American 
population. I very much look forward to working with my colleagues on 
that on a bipartisan basis and to working with my good friend, Senator 
Wyden, on that agenda as well.
  I wanted to speak about a ticking health care emergency that, if 
unaddressed, will affect millions of doctors and patients across the 
country before the end of the month. In 19 days from today, Medicare 
reimbursement rates are scheduled to drop 10 percent, based on an 
outdated formula that we desperately need to fix. A 10-percent cut to 
Medicare reimbursement rates will force tens of thousands of doctors 
into the red, tens of thousands of doctors across America in

[[Page 12139]]

every one of our States. Millions and millions of Medicare patients 
will find that their doctor simply cannot afford to treat them. Every 
single Member of this body has heard loudly and clearly about the 
devastating effects these cuts will have on patients and on doctors. 
Here are just a few things I have heard over the last several days.
  This is from Dr. Mike Wasserman, a Colorado physician who is in a 
group practice that focuses solely on Medicare patients. He said:

       A 10 percent cut is untenable. I would have to seriously 
     consider immediately closing our practice if this were to 
     actually stick.

  Other comments that I have received in my office from others:

       Many primary care physicians will not only stop taking new 
     Medicare patients but will consider reducing their current 
     Medicare load. That means more patients being cared for by 
     higher cost specialists. Conceivably, this could actually 
     lead to greater Medicare expenditures.

  Finally:

       This cut will have a devastating impact on health care 
     across the board as most commercial insurers and TRICARE tie 
     their rates to Medicare.

  Let's keep these realities in mind as we try to forge ahead in the 
next 19 days, and hopefully sooner, to try to fix the Medicare issue 
which faces us today.
  The June 30 Medicare cuts will affect military health care plans 
through TRICARE. We will have the rug pulled out from under the feet of 
TRICARE if we don't fix this problem. For me and for the soldiers in 
Colorado at Fort Carson, for the airmen at Schriever, Peterson, and 
Buckley Air Force Bases, and for our Guard and Reserves, I know they 
will find that fewer doctors will see them, their spouses, and 
children. It will be more difficult for returning servicemembers from 
Iraq and Afghanistan to get treatment for PTSD and for wounds they have 
incurred on the battlefield on our behalf.
  As the largest purchaser of health services, Medicare rates also 
serve as a starting point for private insurers. This means the impact 
of a cut will eventually be felt by middle-class families as well.
  We cannot let this happen. We cannot let Medicare reimbursement rates 
fall on June 30. That is why I am pleased that Senator Baucus and a 
bipartisan group of Senators on the Finance Committee have introduced a 
bill that would correct this problem. I strongly support this bill, the 
Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act. I thank the 
leadership of Majority Leader Reid for giving us the time to bring this 
matter to full debate and conclusion, hopefully, on the Senate floor. 
We have to get this bill done. We have no choice.
  In addition to saving doctors and patients from the June 30 Medicare 
cuts, the bill makes several fiscally responsible improvements to 
Medicare and Medicaid, including, first, the bill improves critical 
programs to ensure seniors and individuals with disabilities on a 
restricted income can afford the health care prescriptions they need to 
stay healthy. Second, the bill extends and expands rural health 
programs. Third, the bill expands coverage of preventive services which 
are so needed in health care. Fourth, the bill reduces coinsurance for 
mental health services. Fifth, the bill addresses overpayments and 
unscrupulous marketing tactics in the Medicare Advantage Program. 
Finally, the bill will protect the long-term solvency of the Medicare 
Program.
  Curiously, the Medicare bill introduced today by Senator Grassley, my 
good friend and the ranking member on the Finance Committee, mirrors 
many of these provisions. While the differences may not be in number, 
the differences, nonetheless, in my view, require us to move forward 
with the version of the bill Senator Baucus has introduced.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator has expired.
  Mr. SALAZAR. I ask unanimous consent for an additional 30 seconds.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. SALAZAR. The one thing we have always agreed on is that the goal 
of the Medicare Program is to provide affordable, high quality health 
care to our Nation's seniors. The Baucus bill is the only option that 
does that, with nearly $4 billion in beneficiary improvements. The 
Baucus bill also addresses one of the biggest concerns of Medicare 
Advantage, the lack of reliable networks for private fee-for-service 
plans. By requiring private fee-for-service plans to have a written 
contract with providers, this bill makes sure patients have access to 
the providers they are promised, and doctors will get paid for the 
services they provide.
  For nearly 40 years, patients have relied on Medicare, knowing that 
they would not fall through the cracks. We must continue to protect the 
integrity of Medicare's good name by swiftly addressing inadequacies. 
The Baucus bill will do just that.
  Too much is at stake to let this bill get stuck in the politics of 
obstructionism. For Medicare patients, for their doctors, for parents, 
kids, soldiers, and servicemembers' families, we need to get this done 
before the June 30 deadline.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. WYDEN. I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 15 minutes as 
in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Pryor). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, before he leaves the floor, let me thank my 
good friend from Colorado, Senator Salazar, for his kind and gracious 
comments about the Healthy Americans Act. He has been a wonderful 
addition to the Senate Finance Committee. I know we are going to be 
spending a lot of time trying to deal with these important challenges 
in the days ahead. I thank him for all his thoughtfulness, both today 
and on a regular basis.
  Every day from coast to coast, millions of our seniors look at 
Medicare as a lifeline. These are the seniors who walk on an economic 
tightrope, balancing their fuel bills against their food costs and 
their food costs against their prescription costs. They are just trying 
not to fall off the economic tightrope. As the distinguished Senator 
from Missouri has pointed out, when you look at these skyrocketing gas 
and fuel prices over the last few months, that is enough to send 
seniors trembling about the prospect of being able to pay for 
necessities every month.
  This legislation is a substantial step in the right direction of 
major health reform. It is not everything that needs to be done. As 
Senator Salazar has noted, I and others are working with seven 
Democrats and seven Republicans on what we think is a comprehensive 
overhaul of American health care system. But, clearly, this legislation 
moves in the right direction. I want to touch on three areas--the 
question of physician reimbursement; protections for low-income people; 
and then, finally, marketing practices--to highlight the fact that this 
legislation, which I hope the Senate is going to vote to move along 
tomorrow, clearly makes changes that will be helpful for older people 
today, but also will pay dividends for the broader course of health 
reform in the future.
  First, with respect to this question of trying to ensure a step 
forward with respect to physician reimbursement--all over this country, 
we have physicians in small practices who are literally having trouble 
keeping the doors open. They can have a couple of people in their 
office and spend virtually the whole day trying to pry out of insurance 
companies information from their insurance matrix about what they are 
going to pay for various services. Literally, these physicians are not 
going to be able to keep their doors open if Medicare physician 
payments are cut by more than 10 percent.
  So this is not an issue of somehow protecting fat-cat doctors or 
those who are affluent in our society. This is a question of protecting 
primary care and primary care for the most vulnerable people in our 
society. I am of the view that if this cut were allowed to go forward 
on July 1, it would be a body blow to the older people of this country, 
those millions who are walking on an economic tightrope.
  I commend Chairman Baucus and Senator Snowe and the whole group on

[[Page 12140]]

the Finance Committee who are trying to move this forward. I hope we 
will do that tomorrow.
  Second, I believe the protections for the low-income older people are 
another step in the right direction. This legislation increases the 
amount of resources that Medicare beneficiaries can have and still 
qualify for the Medicare Savings Program. So what that does is it helps 
older people fill in the gaps in their coverage. The provision, also 
with respect to low-income people, adds money to boost the State Health 
Insurance Assistance Programs and the Area Agencies on Aging that are 
enrolling low-income older people in assistance programs.
  So those are the first two provisions that I think make a real 
difference for older people: the expansion with respect to services 
they would get from doctors if the reimbursement goes up, particularly 
in terms of primary care services for older people; and, second, the 
additional protections for the low-income Medicare beneficiaries.
  But what I wish to highlight this afternoon is the additional 
protection in the Baucus-Snowe legislation against abusive marketing 
practices.
  I will tell the Presiding Officer and colleagues, when I came to the 
Congress many years ago, in the days when I had a full head of hair and 
rugged good looks, it was pretty common for an older person to have a 
shoe box full of health insurance policies, and a lot of them were not 
worth the paper they were written on. They would be wasting money on 
these health insurance policies that they ought to be using on food and 
fuel and essentials.
  So in the early 1990s, we got a law passed; and we changed that. It 
was a law to reform what was known as the Medigap market--the market 
for policies sold to supplement Medicare. It has worked. It has 
standardized the market. It has been good for old people. It has been 
good for responsible insurance companies. It worked.
  But what happened? After the Medicare prescription drug program went 
in, we saw once again some people in the private insurance sector--
certainly not a majority, but some--say: Boy, here is another wonderful 
opportunity to make some fast money. We have seen some horrendously 
abusive practices in this area, particularly through a product that is 
known as Medicare private fee-for-service. That has been the area 
where, in effect, you do not even have the protections you would have 
in Arkansas, say, if an older person had an HMO, a health maintenance 
organization, plan or another.
  These programs exist outside the oversight and the scrutiny we ought 
to have for the protection of older people. And sitting next to the 
distinguished Senator from Arkansas on the Finance Committee, Mrs. 
Lincoln, we have heard in our committee about these abuses on a regular 
basis.
  I also point out that Chairman Kohl, the distinguished chairman of 
the Aging Committee, had some superb hearings which pointed out exactly 
the same practices: how you saw older people being victimized by cold 
calling arrangements and door-to-door sales activities. These agents 
would be swooping in to apartment buildings and senior living 
facilities, basically trying to get people into events where there 
would be a free meal, or calling it an educational program, and all of 
a sudden they would be selling these products that were not worth a 
whole lot more than the paper they were written on.
  So, in effect, what we saw in the last few years--it is a different 
product--but Medicare Advantage was going the same way we saw some of 
those Medigap programs going in the 1980s, which we eventually fixed.
  It is important for Senators to note when they vote tomorrow on 
moving this Medicare legislation ahead that Chairman Baucus and Senator 
Snowe, with the excellent work done by Chairman Kohl in the Aging 
Committee, are taking a real step in the right direction to protecting 
seniors from these marketing abuses.
  This bill would require the agents and brokers to set the scope of 
any sales appointment when they are setting it up. It would require 
inclusion of the plan type in the particular program. What happens now 
is it is hard for people to even figure out what type of plan is being 
discussed because there has not been the kind of openness and 
disclosure of those particular provisions.
  There also would have to be training for those agents and brokers who 
are selling Medicare Advantage in what has come to be known as Part D 
so they would be out in the marketplace in a position to answer the 
questions of older people.
  Also--and I thought this was a particularly important benefit in the 
Baucus-Snowe legislation--agents and brokers would have to be licensed 
and appointed as required by State law. We saw this in both the Baucus 
hearings and the Kohl hearings, that the lack of that requirement was a 
serious deficiency in terms of consumer protection.
  I hope tomorrow the Senate will move forward on this Medicare 
legislation. I think without the additional assistance, particularly 
for doctors in the primary care field, it will reduce access to older 
people. We need the protections, the low-income protections I have 
outlined. And, finally, we need the protections for older people in 
terms of ensuring we do not have these flagrant, outrageous cases of 
marketing abuses that take us back to the 1980s, when a lot of us 
thought we had gotten rid of that kind of fly-by-night flimflam rip-off 
of older people.
  The last point I want to mention--I know the distinguished Presiding 
Officer has been kind to talk to me about this in the past--is I think 
we need to pass this legislation as a foundation for the broader health 
reform effort that is going to take place next year. In other words, it 
is going to be pretty hard to go on to broader health care reform if we 
see physicians clobbered this year and that cutback in reimbursement 
goes into effect.
  If you have physicians cut 10 percent, and we lose a lot of 
physicians in primary care, it is going to be pretty hard next year 
when we have a new President and bipartisan interest in the Senate to 
go on to broader health reform.
  I think we have an opportunity with respect to comprehensive health 
reform that we have never had here in the Senate. For the first time in 
the history of the Senate, we have 14 Senators--7 Democrats and 7 
Republicans--willing to work in a bipartisan way. For the first time, 
the people who keep the budget numbers, the Congressional Budget Office 
and the Joint Committee on Taxation, say that the numbers add up for 
comprehensive reform, that we can do it in a budget-neutral fashion. In 
fact, they say in the third year of an effort it would actually start 
generating some surpluses for the Federal Government.
  So there is a lot to work with, particularly when we get Senator 
Kennedy back here, and he is going to be the champion of our effort. I 
think we can move forward with comprehensive reform, and do it in a 
bipartisan way. But to move forward next year with comprehensive health 
reform, we cannot make mistakes in this session of the Senate.
  It would be a huge mistake, for example, to let this physician 
cutback go through that is going to harm primary care. It would be a 
huge mistake not to have the protections for marketing abuses, not to 
protect the low-income older people.
  We can pass this legislation. I hope we will do it in a resounding 
fashion in the Senate, starting tomorrow with the important procedural 
vote.
  I close by saying, we ought to do it now. We ought to do it at this 
time because it will help seniors for the future but also because I 
think it will lay an important foundation for bipartisan health reform 
in the next year of the Senate.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I rise to talk about the squeeze on the 
family budget that is being imposed by a combination of circumstances 
that, frankly, cry out for some relief.
  As shown on this chart, this is how long it takes the average 
American family to work each year to pay their taxes: 74 days each year 
to pay their

[[Page 12141]]

Federal taxes. Then you add State and local taxes on top of that. As 
you can see, that is a good part of the year, about a third of the 
year, people have to work to pay their taxes, before they can begin to 
pay any of the rest of their bills.
  Then it takes 60 days out of the year to pay for their housing; 50 
days out of the year to pay for their health insurance; 35 days out of 
the year to pay for their food; and 29 days out of the year to pay for 
transportation.
  Now, this chart was prepared from a special report by the Tax 
Foundation, dated April 2008, having to do with Tax Freedom Day. That 
was the date they designated when you do not have to pay Uncle Sam or 
State and local taxes anymore, you are actually working for yourself. 
That is what we call Tax Freedom Day. But I daresay that this chart 
would have to be updated when it comes to the cost of food and the cost 
of transportation. That is what I wish to concentrate on with my 
remaining few minutes here.
  Those related to the rising costs of energy--I have mentioned on the 
floor before being at the Houston Food Bank 2 days ago, where I learned 
that the cost of food is being dramatically increased as a result of 
the cost of energy that it takes to produce it by our farmers. Of 
course, that is being passed along to consumers, making it harder and 
harder on the most vulnerable among us, particularly seniors, people on 
fixed incomes, to pay for their food costs. Then, of course, you add on 
top of that the rising costs of gasoline and fuel, and it presents a 
real human crisis in many instances.
  Many folks have said: Well, there is not much we can do about it--the 
cost of gasoline. They had said that when gasoline was at $2.33 a 
gallon. Actually, Speaker Pelosi, back before she became Speaker of the 
House, said if elected Speaker, the Democrats would present a 
commonsense plan to bring down the price of gasoline at the pump. That 
was the good old days. That was back when gasoline was only $2.33 a 
gallon. Now it is $4.05 a gallon, and we are still waiting--I would say 
with bated breath--for that commonsense solution which has yet to come.
  But in the absence of a commonsense solution being offered by Speaker 
Pelosi, we have offered a solution that deals with the simple fact that 
when you have increasing worldwide demand for the same commodity, that 
one of the ways you can bring down the price is to increase supply. 
When you talk about the ways we can increase the supply of gasoline, 
well, you necessarily have to talk about increasing the supply of oil. 
Then you get into the issue of how much of the oil we depend on to make 
into gasoline in our refineries is imported. Well, that figure now is 
about 60 percent of all of the oil we consume and the various 
petroleum-related products are produced abroad and shipped into the 
United States.
  But we are in an ironic situation of where our dependency on imported 
oil is a consequence of our own failed policies here in the Congress 
because since 1982 Congress has imposed a moratorium on the development 
of America's natural resources right here at home, whether they be on 
the western lands, the oil shale, the Outer Continental Shelf 
surrounding our country, or places such as the Arctic National Wildlife 
Refuge. Congress has placed those out of bounds. We are the only 
country in the world that has placed our own natural resources out of 
bounds and refused to develop those while we have increased our 
dependence on imported energy from dangerous enemies of the United 
States--countries such as Iran and Venezuela, which professes to be our 
enemy in South America.
  What is ironic is the fact that years ago, the United States and Cuba 
agreed to draw an imaginary line between our two countries and said 
Cuba had control of the submerged lands on the other side of that line 
leading up to Cuba and the United States had control of the 45 miles or 
so that represented American territory. But do you know who is 
developing the oil and gas that is 50 miles off our southern shore of 
Florida? Well, Cuba has production agreements with Brazil, Venezuela, 
Spain, China, Vietnam, India, Malaysia, Canada, and Norway. That is 
right. While we refuse, as a result of a Federal moratorium on 
development on the Outer Continental Shelf, to allow Americans to 
produce American energy, the Chinese and others are drilling and 
producing oil 50 miles off our shore in the area owned by Cuba. It is 
ironic indeed that we would prohibit Americans from producing American 
energy on American land so that we could remain increasingly dependent 
on foreign oil. I think it is a terrible mistake.
  Congress, looking around for a scapegoat as to who has caused these 
high prices, I would suggest needs to look in the mirror. We need to 
reassess and correct that mistake by making this natural resource 
available for production.
  Some have come up with what I consider to be misguided solutions that 
do nothing to produce additional supply of oil and gas. As a matter of 
fact, they try something we tried back in the 1980s, for example; that 
is, raise taxes on oil producers here in America. We found out in the 
1980s, according to the Congressional Research Service, that it 
actually reduced domestic oil production by 6 percent.
  Some may ask: Well, how is that possible? The fact is that 80 percent 
of the world's oil reserves are owned by national oil companies of 
foreign governments. Let me say that again. Eighty percent of the oil 
reserves in the world are owned by oil companies that are owned by 
foreign governments, and only 6 percent, 6 percent of the world's oil 
reserves are owned by stockholder-owned companies; in other words, the 
private sector--the ExxonMobils, the Chevrons, the Conoco-Phillips, and 
the like. Six percent owned by those privately owned or stockholder-
owned companies, 80 percent owned by nations such as Saudi Arabia, 
Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, and others, just to name a few.
  So the irony of ironies again would be not only to not allow us to 
develop our own natural resources but actually to tax the privately 
owned or shareholder-owned oil companies that control 6 percent of the 
world's resources while not touching the 80 percent owned by foreign 
countries because, of course, we can't impose a tax on their production 
here in America. We can only impose a tax on our own companies here in 
the United States. When we did that before, we decreased domestic 
production. We should have learned from that mistake, but sadly, as a 
philosopher once said, ``Those who refuse to learn from history are 
condemned to repeat it.''
  This is almost like Groundhog Day here in the Senate where we 
continue to encounter the same failed solutions--or I should say 
``nonsolutions''--to the same problems and refuse to look at the most 
obvious solution staring us in the face; that is, to open more of 
America's natural resources.
  Now, earlier on the floor, the distinguished Democratic whip, Senator 
Durbin, talked about emergency situations and talked about price caps 
in an emergency and said we are in an emergency, implying that we 
should somehow--Congress should dictate price controls on gas. But I 
would suggest to the distinguished Senator that if we have an emergency 
situation--and I agree, we have something that profoundly affects our 
national security and our economic security and has a dramatic impact 
on food prices and on the average American family. We do have an 
emergency, and we ought to reassess our decision to block exploration 
and production in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, in the Outer 
Continental Shelf, in the shale oil in the western Federal lands and 
elsewhere which, by some estimates, could produce as many as 3 million 
additional barrels of oil each day. Now, that is not a panacea, but it 
is a lot of help in the near term.
  As we develop those natural resources, of course, that means we 
depend that much less on imported oil. It creates jobs here in America 
at a time when our economy is softening and unemployment rates are 
going up, and it would help us be less dependent on some of the folks 
who wish us harm in this world. To me, it constitutes the kind of 
emergency Senator Durbin was

[[Page 12142]]

talking about earlier, that we ought to--if you won't do it when 
gasoline is $2.33 a gallon, will you do it when gasoline is $4.05 as it 
is today? If you won't do it when gasoline is $4.05 a gallon, will you 
do it when it is $5 a gallon or $8 or how about $10 a gallon? At some 
point, there has to be a tipping point at which the Congress--and 
especially the Senate--will wake up and look in the mirror and say: You 
know what, we need to reassess this. We need to take action on behalf 
of the hard-working American family to make sure they don't continue to 
find themselves pinched not only by a rising tax burden, the cost of 
housing, the cost of health care, but rising food costs and rising 
transportation costs.
  I have to say I was shocked when I saw an interview recently of 
Senator Obama, our colleague from Illinois. He was interviewed by 
CNBC's John Harwood, who asked him the question: Could these high 
prices help us? Senator Obama said: I think I would have preferred a 
gradual adjustment.
  Well, I am not sure exactly what he means by that. Certainly, we 
haven't had a gradual adjustment; we have had a radical adjustment 
upward.
  All we have had, frankly, from our friends on the other side of the 
aisle is a refusal to act in a responsible way to open America's energy 
resources while they offer what I have to say are misguided 
nonsolutions which produce no additional energy, things such as raising 
taxes on oil companies, which we know will only be put on America's 
privately owned companies and can't be placed on nationally owned oil 
companies in places such as Venezuela and Iran but also have had the 
demonstrated experience of actually reducing domestic production rather 
than increasing it. Hasn't our experience always been that when you 
increase the cost--especially increase taxes--on the producer, 
eventually that is going to be passed down to the ultimate consumer? So 
what it would do is have the effect of decreasing production, 
increasing dependence on imported oil, and raising the price of 
gasoline ultimately for the consumer at a time when we ought to be 
giving the consumer relief from these high prices if we can, and I 
believe we can by increasing supply.
  So I hope our colleagues will reconsider their position because, 
frankly, I think the only thing standing between lower gasoline prices 
and the American people is the Congress.
  On our side of the aisle, we have offered what we believe to be a 
commonsense solution that would increase supply, so we can hopefully 
add to the supply, with rising demand by countries around the world, in 
a way that will allow us to at least provide some relief to the 
American consumer as we transition ourselves to new alternative sources 
of energy that are not going to be immediately able to fill that role 
currently played by oil.
  We know we are going to have to continue to depend on oil and gas for 
the near term, but as we transition ourselves into a clean energy 
future by increasing the use of nuclear power to generate electricity; 
as good, old-fashioned American ingenuity creates things such as plug-
in hybrid cars that operate on batteries we can charge overnight and 
drive in many parts of the country in a way that will provide an 
alternative to internal combustion engines but which will also help us 
deal with environmental concerns as well; as we are on this bridge to a 
clean energy independence, we need to take advantage of the natural 
resources God has given us.
  This is one of the things that has made our country so prosperous--
the vast natural resources we have. But only the Congress is so 
mistaken as to impose a moratorium on the development and production of 
those natural resources, and it is hurting hard-working American 
families and the American consumer. We need to do something about it. I 
hope we do on a bipartisan basis soon.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah is recognized.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I wish to make a few remarks regarding the 
recent actions by the Democratic leadership in Congress with regard to 
oil prices.
  I have no problem with Democrats calling in the oil company 
executives to make sure they aren't violating antitrust laws. I am 
convinced oil speculation contributes too much to the price of oil and 
we need to take a serious look at that, but focusing on those concerns 
alone is no substitute for a realistic energy policy.
  There are a number of environmental groups who just plain oppose oil 
production. What is worrisome is that it seems Democrats controlling 
Congress have adopted the anti-oil agenda of the environmental movement 
as an outlet of their own energy policy.
  So far, I have heard proposals to tax successful energy production, 
to investigate the oil futures markets, to ban Canadian oil imports in 
favor of oil from Venezuela, Russia, and the Middle East, and to call 
for delay after delay in the commercial production of oil shale. At 
times, it almost appears that the anti-oil agenda is the only element 
of the Democratic energy policy. Their policies would not produce one 
drop of oil. This so-called Energy bill they have will not produce one 
drop of oil. In fact, they would definitely have the opposite effect--
their bills.
  Is it so hard to see that less oil means higher prices and economic 
harm and more oil means lower prices and economic benefits? I am not 
sure the Democratic leadership in Congress really understands this. 
They seem to be completely immune to the facts when it comes to energy 
policy.
  They especially don't seem to understand that the price of oil is set 
by a global market. Unlike electricity, which is handled regionally in 
the United States, oil prices are set globally. About 75 percent of the 
price of gasoline is set by the global price for crude oil before it is 
even refined. U.S. taxes make up another 13 percent of the cost of a 
gallon of gas. So that explains 88 percent of the cost of the gasoline. 
All the refining, distribution, and marketing of the oil has to be made 
up in the remaining 12 percent of the cost of gasoline.
  Some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would be 
surprised to learn that the Federal Government already makes more on 
gasoline taxes than the oil companies do in profits. That is fine with 
me, except I think people would be astounded to find that actually 
happened. That is right. I hope our taxpayers remember that when we 
point to oil company profits. The Government is already raking in more 
money from oil than the oil companies are getting.
  Yet our Government does not explore for oil. It does not produce one 
drop of oil. It does not refine one drop of oil. It does not build 1 
foot of oil pipeline. Yet some of my colleagues want even more money 
from the oil company portfolio and profits.
  This is where the taxpayers should be paying very close attention. If 
our taxpayers are smart--and I believe they are, although they are not 
getting the facts--their hands will be reaching to protect their 
wallets because guess who is paying all this money to the Government in 
the form of taxes on oil companies. That is right; it is our taxpayers. 
It is our consumers. It is Joe Smith going to the gas station. It is a 
pretty nasty game to tell our citizens we are taking profits from big, 
bad rich oil companies and then forget to tell the taxpayers they will 
be the ones who ultimately will bear just about every cent of any new 
taxes.
  Let's talk about these big, bad American oil companies for a minute. 
I wonder if the Democratic leadership in Congress is aware that 80 
percent of the world's oil reserves are owned and controlled by foreign 
government-run corporations. If you put all the big, bad American oil 
companies together, they only control about 6 percent of the world's 
oil. That is a fact. They cannot rebut that fact.
  We send more than $600 billion--now approaching $700 billion--each 
year to countries that are a lot smarter about energy than we are 
because they are willing to explore and develop their own resources, 
and we are not.
  We have the Chinese coming within a few miles of our shore and taking 
our oil because they are willing to explore for it and reap the 
benefits of it--and right off our shores. We are not permitted to do 
that. What kind of energy

[[Page 12143]]

policy is that? Think about it. That is $600 billion to $700 billion 
each year that we will never get back. But my friends on the other side 
of the aisle don't seem to have a problem with that.
  Here we are, one of the biggest energy consumers on Earth, and we 
send out our small-fry oil companies--with only 6 percent of the 
world's oil--into the world to compete with these giant national 
corporations and conglomerates in other countries in a global market 
controlled by nations that aren't necessarily our friends.
  Then we want to stop U.S. companies from developing all the good oil 
resources available in this country. We try to take away their profits, 
drag them in front of congressional hearings, and blame them whenever 
the global price goes up.
  I hate to tell you, but Government is one of the biggest reasons why 
the price of oil is so high right now--our Government.
  So far, we don't have actual oil shortages in the world, but we have 
a very low level of spare capacity. That has done a lot to raise 
speculation on the futures market. A lack of spare capacity means any 
serious disruption in the world can lead to real shortages, and the 
futures markets reflect that fear. Holding hearings on the futures 
market isn't going to make those fears go away, and it is not going to 
produce one drop of oil to help us or bring down the price for our 
consumers or help Joe Smith or Joe Jones to be able to afford gas for 
their cars.
  Investors need to know we are finding a new barrel of oil for every 
barrel we sell. But that is not what they are seeing. At the same time, 
they are seeing that ethanol has major limits as a replacement fuel. 
Ninety-seven percent of transportation fuel is oil. Ethanol is the only 
real alternative, and it makes up less than 3 percent, as far as liquid 
fuel goes. I am opposed to mandates for ethanol, but I have been one of 
the Senate's leading supporters of incentives for ethanol and other 
alternative transportation fuels. I am the author of the CLEAR Act, 
which provides economic stimulation to develop hybrid cars, and the 
author of the Freedom Act, which also leads to economic incentives for 
plug-in hybrids and other forms of high-mileage vehicles.
  I am one of the Senate's leading supporters for ethanol and other 
transportation fuels. While other folks are just blowing off about it, 
we have actually put language in law that increased the ability to do 
these fuels. But even at that, it is only 3 percent of what we need in 
this country.
  I am also a realist about the fact that there is no way ethanol can 
put a major dent in our need for fossil fuels. So far, it is the only 
major alternative fuel on which we can currently count.
  That may be a fact that liberals and environmentalists wish to 
ignore, but it is a fact. They can talk all they want about wind, 
solar, and geothermal, but last time I checked, planes, trucks, and 
ships don't run on electricity; they run on fossil fuels and so do our 
cars.
  We should be grateful that Canada has now become our largest supplier 
of energy. They are a friendly, stable partner on whom we can rely. 
They are our friends, and they are producing more and more oil from oil 
sands every day. Canada now holds more oil reserves than every country 
in the world, except Saudi Arabia. They are pumping 1.3 million barrels 
a day down to us, and what do the liberals in Congress want to do? They 
pass a law barring the Federal Government from purchasing from the oil 
sands in Canada. They say it is because oil sands have a big greenhouse 
gas footprint, but what they forget to say is, shipping fuel all the 
way from the Middle East also has a big greenhouse gas footprint--and 
probably more. But liberals would rather be dependent on the Saudis and 
the Russians and Venezuela than offend environmental groups.
  Here in the States, we have as much oil in oil shale in Utah, 
Colorado, and Wyoming than the rest of the world combined. We have a 
Federal law that layers on every available environmental protection but 
also would allow companies to develop this resource that is 10 times 
richer in oil than a normal oil well.
  So what do the liberals do? They put a 1-year moratorium on the 
release of commercial leasing regulations. Some on the other side say 
they don't want it to happen too fast. I do. I sure would like to be 
able to bring these prices down. This would bring them down.
  I congratulate the liberals because the existing law, which I 
sponsored, makes it abundantly clear that each Governor gets to decide 
how quickly development should move forward in their respective States, 
and they know that. The Democrats know that. If a Governor doesn't want 
to move forward on oil shale, that Governor can say no.
  What they are doing is making sure the Governor of Utah or Wyoming 
never gets a chance to make that decision. So now we have companies 
that have spent tens of millions of dollars in good faith, and they are 
just plain getting shut down by what I consider a neanderthal approach 
to energy in the Senate--and in the House of Representatives; let's not 
leave them out. They are even worse than we are, in some ways. I am 
talking about the liberals.
  How are they supposed to go out--these companies--and attract 
investors, when Congress is acting to stop regulations for commercial 
leases so they can do some of these things?
  Environmental elitists tend to point to concerns about water usage, 
land usage, wildlife habitat, and air quality--all very valid concerns. 
So let's have a look at them.
  Corn needs about 780 barrels of water for a barrel of ethanol, and 
more than 1,000 barrels for the equivalent of a barrel of oil. Then it 
needs another three barrels to turn the corn into liquid fuel. That is 
a crazy amount of water, but it works out all right so far because it 
is grown in rainy areas. But if we want to increase the amount of 
ethanol available, we are going to have to move toward irrigation, and 
then there will be major limits to how much we can afford to grow.
  On the other hand, to mine, process, upgrade, and do land 
restoration, DOE estimates that oil shale will require a total of three 
barrels of water for every barrel of oil. In terms of water, oil shale 
is hundreds of times better for the environment.
  Let's talk about land use and wildlife habitat.
  One acre of corn produces 7 to 10 barrels of ethanol, or the 
equivalent of 5 to 7 barrels of oil.
  One acre of oil shale produces 100,000 barrels to 1 million barrels 
of oil. Nobody disputes that, that I know. I will repeat that. I hope 
those concerned about land use and wildlife habitat are listening 
carefully. One acre of corn produces 7 to 10 barrels of ethanol, or the 
equivalent of 5 to 7 barrels of oil. One acre of oil shale produces 
100,000 barrels to 1 million barrels of oil. In terms of land use, oil 
shale is at least 20,000 times better for the environment than ethanol. 
I am for ethanol, don't get me wrong, but think of those facts.
  A couple months ago, an article came out how the city of Aspen in 
Colorado has been besieged with building applications, equating to 
about $2 million worth of development a day. If we could stem the 
growth a little in Aspen and save, let's say, a hundred acres of those 
beautiful forests from all that development, and instead allow 
development of 100 acres of much less desirable land where the oil 
shale in Colorado is, we could produce up to 100 million barrels of oil 
with no net loss of habitat. Ironically, the local governments in 
Colorado's oil shale areas support oil shale development, but the 
liberals in the State are stopping the regulations that would allow it.
  Some critics of oil shale and tar sands production have raised air 
quality concerns. Let's be clear; there is no aspect of oil shale 
development that would exempt industry from any Federal or State air 
quality laws or regulations. In fact, these industry members plan to 
comply and even exceed air quality requirements. These companies also 
express a readiness to address climate change questions on the same 
schedule that other industries may be required to control carbon 
emissions.
  One Utah company is now building a pilot plant to demonstrate their 
ability to produce upgraded syncrude from oil shale with little or no 
carbon emissions.

[[Page 12144]]

  The poorest Americans spend about 50 percent of their income on 
energy, and not enough is being said about that. The sad thing is that 
the poor look to the liberals to make national policies for them, but 
in this case, they are being sold out.
  It is clear the environmentalists have an anti-oil agenda. The 
question for this Congress is whether we can afford to adopt that 
agenda as part of a national energy policy. We should be promoting all 
forms of alternative fuels, and I am for that. But the fact is that 
when it comes to transportation fuel, which is where our crisis is, we 
are dependent on oil, and there is no combination of alternatives that 
can change that right now. It would be nice to pretend we are not 
dependent on oil, that we can skip immediately to some yet-to-be 
identified alternative, 30 years down the line. But we can't. Truckers 
and farmers need diesel today. Moms need to get to soccer and ballet 
practice tonight. Americans want to visit national parks this summer. 
The sooner we understand this, the sooner we can address the energy 
crisis we are facing today.
  This is pathetic. We have it within our means to develop our own oil 
to solve our own problems, to bring these prices down, to be 
independent, to do the things that keep America strong, to keep our 
environment and economy strong, and to do it in an environmentally 
friendly way that is already on the books. Yet when you look at the 
energy program the Democrats brought up on the floor, it doesn't 
produce one drop of this oil that is so critical to all these needs. 
Yet we have it within our power to solve these problems. I hope we wake 
up around here and get rid of the doggone partisanship and do what we 
have to do to provide for the energy needs of this country. We can no 
longer afford to let the whacko, extreme environmentalists--who are in 
the game for politics, rather than to help the American people--control 
this country the way they do. I think it is time for our friends on 
both sides of the aisle to stand and say enough is enough. Let's become 
energy independent and energy secure.
  I thank my colleague from Rhode Island for allowing me this extra 
time. I did not have anything to do with what happened this morning, 
nor did I know it was going to happen. Let me say that my colleague has 
always been gracious and kind to me. I have a great admiration for him. 
I am sorry I took the extra 2 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island is recognized.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I have no objection whatsoever to 
standing on the Senate floor listening to the Senator from Utah speak. 
He is an enormously distinguished attorney and has been a great leader 
of his State and the Senate for a long time.
  I understand very well the unfortunate circumstance this morning was 
not expected by him, was not participated in by him. I think it has put 
him in an embarrassing position. I regret that, but I know he had 
nothing to do with it. I have highest regard for him.
  I think it also put the very distinguished Senator from Pennsylvania, 
the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, in an even more 
difficult and embarrassing situation because the individual witnesses 
who were before us when our hearing was interrupted and cut off were 
Pennsylvanians, people from the ranking member's home State. I am sure 
if Ranking Member Specter had any idea this was going to happen, he 
would have taken energetic measures to make sure individual witnesses 
who suffered grievous injury and had come a long way to Washington to 
testify would not have had their hearing cut off by parliamentary 
maneuvers by his leadership.
  I have the highest regard for both those Senators.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Of course.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I am grateful to the Senator for his 
remarks. I felt particularly bad because I went 4 or 5 minutes over on 
my questioning, with his agreement, and then he got cut off on his 
questions. I wanted the Senator to know that. I appreciate his remarks.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, the goodwill of the Senator from Utah 
is appreciated.


                                Medicare

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I wish to speak about the Medicare 
bill before us. One of the strongest obligations we have in this body 
is to uphold America's promise to care for those who have worked hard 
throughout their lives, who have raised their families, and who have 
helped make this Nation great: our seniors.
  President Johnson created Medicare as part of that promise to give 
seniors all across this country the peace of mind they would have the 
health care they need as they grow older. Today, we take up legislation 
that would make this critically important program stronger by ensuring 
doctors in Rhode Island and across this country are compensated, as 
they should be, for the care they provide.
  The approaching June 30 deadline for resolving this issue certainly 
makes this legislation particularly urgent. But we all know that there 
is a far more ominous deadline looming over us in health care, and that 
is when the Medicare trust fund will become insolvent in 2019. As 
Chairman Conrad of the Budget Committee so often says, there is a 
tsunami of costs bearing down on us. We are now facing a 75-year 
shortfall in Medicare of $33.9 trillion. It is my belief that we as 
Senators have a fundamental obligation to begin to take steps now that 
will lower these looming overwhelming costs. If we fail to act now, we 
will be left with only the cold, harmful, and, frankly, cruel fiscal 
options of raising taxes, reducing benefits and eligibility, or cutting 
further provider payments. What a sad day that would be, especially 
since it is completely avoidable.
  This afternoon, I commend Senators Baucus, Rockefeller, Snowe, and 
Smith for offering a bill that not only addresses the looming cut in 
Medicare reimbursements to physicians, but takes a broader look at the 
problems in our Medicare system and in the health care system 
generally.
  This bill includes a number of reforms that begin to address the 
flaws in our broken health care system and lead us down a path of more 
efficient, effective care for seniors today and into the future.
  As my colleagues know, I am an enthusiastic supporter of the 
limitless potential of health information technology to support a 
transformation of our health care system. For many providers, e-
prescribing, electronic prescribing of pharmaceuticals, is the gateway 
technology to larger health information technology adoption because the 
startup investment is relatively low and the benefits are quite high. 
E-prescribing is expected to eliminate over 2 million adverse drug 
events on Americans per year, to avoid 190,000 hospital admissions, and 
1.3 million outpatient visits annually, and to produce an estimated 
yearly savings of $44 billion.
  To quote Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Leavitt:

       The benefits [of electronic prescribing] are 
     unchallengeable. E-prescribing is not only more efficient and 
     convenient for consumers, but widespread use would eliminate 
     thousands of medication errors every year. . . . E-
     prescribing needs faster implementation. We have been through 
     all the public processes necessary to develop standards. The 
     technology is readily available and widely distributed. 
     Electronic prescribing will enhance the safety and 
     convenience for patients.

  This bill provides important incentives for practitioners who choose 
to e-prescribe, and it eventually requires all doctors to e-prescribe. 
This is a vital step forward for health care in this country and a 
farsighted component of this legislation. I thank Senator Kerry for 
crafting this important language, but also all the Senators on the 
other side of the aisle who have supported e-prescribing in Medicare, 
including Senators Alexander, Coleman, Corker, Cornyn, Ensign, 
Grassley, Martinez, Snowe, and Sununu. The need to promote health 
information technology is a truly bipartisan issue, and I am delighted 
to see it included in this important bill.
  The measure before us also makes important reforms for private fee-
for-

[[Page 12145]]

service Medicare. In light of this fiscal health care tsunami coming 
down on us, I am deeply concerned that private fee-for-service Medicare 
Advantage plans cost roughly 119 percent of the cost of covering the 
same individual in traditional fee-for-service Medicare. This is a 
program that was sold to Congress as more efficient, a cost-cutting 
alternative to traditional Medicare.
  History has proven those assertions to have been false, and now we 
should learn from that mistake. It has added about $1,000 in costs for 
each beneficiary in a private plan. Medicare Advantage will cost the 
Federal Government $54 billion over the next 5 years and $149 billion 
over the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. 
These excess costs have caused a rise in Part B premiums for those 
seniors enrolled in traditional Medicare of $2 per month. These excess 
costs will cause the Medicare hospital insurance trust fund to become 
insolvent 2 years earlier than otherwise expected.
  I understand some Medicare Advantage plans offer benefits that are 
not covered in fee-for-service Medicare. Unlike traditional Medicare, 
Medicare Advantage plans can strategically attract healthier seniors by 
offering better coverage for low-cost care and worse coverage for 
intensive services. Groups, including the Medicare Rights Center, the 
Commonwealth Fund, the Kaiser Family Foundation, and MedPAC, have 
determined that private plan beneficiaries either pay more or receive 
fewer services for hospital and home care than do seniors in 
traditional Medicare.
  Medicare Advantage, and particularly fee-for-service Medicare 
Advantage, costs this system money it simply does not have. Seniors 
deserve better, and this bill does better for them.
  Seniors also deserve better when it comes to their Medicare Part D 
plans. Some of the very saddest stories that Rhode Islanders share with 
me as I host community dinners around my State concern their 
experiences with the Part D prescription drug program.
  An example is a young man named Travis who came to one of my 
community dinners in Woonsocket, RI. Travis told me of his 90-year-old 
great-grandmother who is living independently in a walkup apartment 
building in Woonsocket. She signed up for her Part D plan and was 
taking a number of prescription medications. One day she arrived at her 
pharmacy, went to the pharmacy window, only to be told that she had no 
coverage. She had fallen in what we preposterously call the doughnut 
hole, a massive gap in the coverage, a trap for seniors. She was turned 
away from the window because she had not brought the money to pay for 
her prescriptions. She didn't have it. She went home and called her 
great-grandson Travis in tears. She would no longer be able to afford 
her apartment or the independence she had maintained for 90 years.
  No American should be forced to choose between their dignity and 
their health, and it is a tragedy when this is an unnecessary choice.
  The Congressional Budget Office concludes that privatizing that drug 
benefit instead of simply adding the drug program to the established 
Medicare benefit costs almost $5 billion a year. The Center for 
Economic and Policy Research reveals that the combined cost of 
privatization and failure to negotiate prices is more than $30 million 
a year.
  Mr. President, I cannot look Travis in the eye and tell him the 
reason his great-grandmother cannot afford her independence any longer 
is because the Government needed to take the side of the pharmaceutical 
industry in this contest. In 2004, the pharmaceutical industry was 
three times more profitable than the median for all Fortune 500 
companies, and from 1995 to 2002, it was the most profitable industry 
in the entire country.
  Since the passage of the Medicare Modernization Act, companies have 
engaged in outrageous, egregious marketing practices. This legislation 
prohibits door-to-door sales, cold calling, and free meals. It puts 
limits on cobranding, gifts and commissions and other hard-sell 
practices of both Part D and Medicare Advantage plans.
  Our Nation's elderly have given much to this country as parents, as 
grandparents, as teachers, as soldiers, as mentors, and as patriotic 
American citizens. They deserve respect, they deserve protection, and 
this bill affords them both.
  I close by saying the bill also recognizes that mental health 
coverage should be on par with any other illness seniors face, reducing 
the copayment from the current staggering rate of 50 percent to a 20-
percent copay by 2014. Senior citizens commit suicide at a higher rate 
than any other age group. Mental health services are critically 
important for our elderly population. I am proud to support changes to 
mental health coverage in Medicare. I particularly wish to acknowledge 
the leadership of my colleague in the Rhode Island delegation, 
Representative Patrick Kennedy, who has been such a leader on mental 
health parity. He is the chief sponsor of that legislation in the 
House, and I look forward to larger reforms in the area of mental 
health parity with Congressman Kennedy at the helm.
  In closing, I thank Senator Baucus and particularly his staff for 
their tireless work in putting this measure together. I look forward to 
working with him and this entire body to pass this bill and then to 
work to enact future health care reforms to bring our system under 
control.
  I appreciate the courtesy of Senator Roberts. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas.
  Mr. ROBERTS. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about energy 
prices, as have many of my colleagues, and their impact on my 
constituents and, for that matter, the constituents of all of us 
nationwide.
  Over the last 2 weeks, the leadership of this body has decided to 
bring two bills to the floor that would have tremendous effects on the 
pocketbooks of the American people. Unfortunately, after you take a 
hard look at these bills, you find out that neither bill would really 
reduce the price of energy. In fact, both would increase prices. But I 
want to take time to highlight the impacts of the climate change 
legislation, albeit somewhat late in the debate, and to make a few 
commonsense points or observations.
  At a time when Americans are suffering from high fuel prices and high 
energy costs, and when fertilizer prices have increased by their 
largest amount in the history of fertilizer prices, it is not in 
America's best interest for the Senate to compound the problem. But 
that is precisely what the climate change bill would do. By capping the 
amounts of carbon emitted by coal-fired plants and natural gas 
processing facilities and energy-intensive manufacturing facilities, 
this legislation is flawed. It passes the costs of meeting these 
requirements down to the consumer.
  Kansans will be particularly hard hit. Experts at the American 
Council for Capital Formation--again, the American Council for Capital 
Formation, and I urge all of my colleagues to pay attention to this 
organization--State by State they can tell you what will happen. They 
predict that Kansas will lose 36,900 jobs over about a decade or two, 
and that is equal to 2.5 percent of the total workforce, if we enact 
this bill.
  Kansans would also lose $7,283 in disposable income each year because 
of this legislation. You say how? Certainly higher utility rates, 
higher gas prices, and all manufacturing and farm equipment costs due 
to the increase of the cost of inputs. A combine now out in western 
Kansas, if you go to the dealer, will cost you, if you have the top 
rate combine, $350,000. Goodness knows what it would cost after this 
bill was passed and on down the road.
  Anyone filling up with gasoline in the State of Kansas can expect to 
pay 140 percent more for each gallon of gas. Yesterday the lowest rate 
in the State was Emporia, KS, home of William Allen White and the 
Emporia Gazette, very famous in Kansas history. In Emporia it was $3.70 
per gallon. This bill would raise that to $5.18. This doesn't make any 
sense. Let me repeat that. It would raise the cost of gas for Kansans 
by 140 percent.

[[Page 12146]]

  We have had a $1.71 increase in the average price of gas since the 
majority took over in the Congress. My goodness, we don't need to be 
going over $5. I know there was a lot of rhetoric at that time that we 
were going to fix that, hopefully in a bipartisan way, but obviously 
that has not occurred.
  Heating and cooling an apartment, a home, or an office building will 
cost 153 percent more in Kansas. Lawrence, KS, has some of the lowest 
electricity rates in America. However, the average household spending 
$200 on electric bills for the month will now pay $306--$306.
  This proposed legislation will have a particularly unfair impact on 
America's heartland. Under this legislation, the Great Plains, the 
Midwest, and southern States pay more compared to those living on the 
west coast or in the Northeast. I am sure that is true in Arkansas, the 
State the distinguished Presiding Officer represents so well in this 
body.
  It should also be noted that the Great Plains, the Midwest, and the 
South are home to some of the most fertile and highest producing areas 
of cash crops in the world.
  Now, why would I mention that? This is the land that grows the crops 
necessary to feed not only the United States and the American consumer 
but a troubled and hungry world. As a matter of fact, our producers 
back in Kansas are servicing their combines now, as I speak, and 
getting ready to begin wheat harvest, to fertilize their corn crop and 
meet with their bankers to discuss how on Earth they can pay for it, 
and how much money is needed to purchase fertilizer and seed for next 
year's crop.
  Our Nation enjoys but unfortunately does not appreciate--if you pay 
much attention to the national media--the modern-day miracle known as 
U.S. agriculture, or maybe we should call it production agriculture. 
This modern miracle provides the cheapest and the highest quality food 
supply in the world, and the most inexpensive, even with the rise in 
food prices and farm prices we have seen. This miracle is possible 
because of better breeding techniques combined with the availability of 
manmade fertilizers. These fertilizers increase the yields per acre and 
help keep the world from going hungry.
  Rather than thanking our producers, this bill tells them basically 
they are not important. Rather than increasing domestic natural gas 
production, which is roughly 90 percent of the cost to produce 
synthetic nitrogen, this bill forces natural gas facilities to regulate 
the amount of emissions they emit.
  A recent Doane agriculture study shows this legislation will add $6 
billion to $12 billion to total crop production costs. If it is 
enacted, it is likely to cost a Kansas wheat farmer an additional 
$31.87 per acre. That same producer would see his sorghum cost increase 
$43.56 per acre, corn $78.80 per acre, and soybeans $20.41 per acre.
  (Ms. CANTWELL assumed the Chair.)
  I want to be clear. Throughout the climate change debate, I have 
supported the role agriculture can play in a voluntary system or, for 
that matter, any manufacturer that does business in Kansas wishes to 
play to certainly decrease the amount of CO2 emissions we 
emit into the atmosphere.
  In fact, I introduced legislation some years ago and was able to 
secure funding for a carbon sequestration research program at Kansas 
State University. What is that? That is carbon in the ground, good; 
carbon in the air, bad. If you can sequester carbon in your normal 
cropping practices, you are being very helpful in regard to 
CO2 emissions and carbon in the air. This legislation was 
reauthorized in the 2008 farm bill, which is now the law, or will be 
the law when we finally finish voting on it.
  Unfortunately, the legislation before us now, the climate change 
bill, provides little incentive for agriculture to play a role in any 
climate change debate. This legislation leaves the decision as to which 
agricultural practices are eligible for the offset market to the 
Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA is also designated to prepare 
the operation and qualification methodology for agricultural offsets. 
All right, that is fine. But the USDA already has the expertise, the 
background, and the ability to assist our producers, our farmers, and 
ranchers with best management practices. That should reside with the 
USDA, but it is not. In this bill, it is with the EPA.
  I might add that the partnership between the USDA and the farmers and 
ranchers measures quite a bit higher in regard to acceptability in farm 
country than the EPA, which sometimes--sometimes--and they have a role 
to play--tends to think of regulations as their fondest responsibility.
  The legislation requires agricultural projects to be completed and 
reduction verified before the EPA decides whether to approve the offset 
allowance. This gives no assurance to which, if any, agricultural 
projects will be accepted. So you have a climate change bill that 
basically rules out agriculture, and that makes no sense at all.
  The Wall Street Journal calls this legislation, the climate change 
legislation, the largest income redistribution scheme since the income 
tax. That is quite a statement. This bill will hit Kansans where it 
matters most, in their pocketbooks. I cannot support legislation that 
will exponentially increase the cost of their food, their electric, and 
their fuel bills, so I urge my colleagues to oppose this ill-conceived 
idea.
  I want to indicate to the Presiding Officer that I received letters 
of concern in opposition from the following: the Kansas Farm Bureau, 
the Frontier Farm Credit folks, the National Sorghum Producers, the 
Kansas Soybean Association, the Kansas Independent Oil and Gas 
Association, the Air Transport Association, the National Business 
Aviation Association, the Kansas City Power and Light, Weststar Energy, 
and Kansas Electric Cooperatives.
  I commend the Fertilizer Institute and the Doane Advisory Services 
for the analysis they completed on the relationship between energy 
prices and crop reduction costs.
  I also thank Troy Dumler, an agricultural economist at Kansas State 
University, for analysis on Kansas crop production costs.
  I yield back the remainder of my time.


                  Unanimous-Consent Agreement--S. 3101

  Mr. REID. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the cloture 
vote on the motion to proceed to S. 3101 occur at 3 p.m. tomorrow, 
Thursday, June 12; that following the opening of the Senate on 
Thursday, the Senate resume the motion to proceed to S. 3101, with the 
time until 3 p.m. equally divided and controlled between the leaders or 
their designees, with the final 40 minutes prior to the vote controlled 
as follows: 10 minutes each, Senators Grassley, Baucus, McConnell, and 
Reid of Nevada, or their designees, in that order.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Michigan.


                      Medicare Physician Payments

  Ms. STABENOW. Madam President, I rise today in support of S. 3101, 
the bipartisan effort introduced by our Senate Finance chairman, 
Senator Baucus, and the distinguished Senator from Maine, Senator 
Snowe, that will strengthen Medicare. This is a critically important 
bill that I hope we will have the support of the Senate on tomorrow to 
be able to proceed to and to pass.
  This important legislation not only prevents harmful cuts from 
jeopardizing patient care, but it also sets the stage for modernizing 
our health care system through information technology. This is a very 
exciting part of this bill for me, with Senator Snowe having worked on 
this issue, with many other colleagues now for some time, and it is a 
very important step forward.
  First and foremost, though, this legislation protects patients' 
access to their trusted physicians. If Congress does not act soon, 
Medicare payments to physicians and health care professionals will be 
cut by 10 percent--10 percent--as a result of the fatally flawed 
sustainable growth rate formula or, as we call it, the SGR. It is sad 
that we are once again going through this exercise. If I could, I would 
reform the

[[Page 12147]]

flawed SGR formula once and for all. Personally, I wish to stop this 
process and create a new one that makes much more sense for physicians 
and for patients and the Medicare system. It makes no sense for us to 
go through this ordeal every 6 months or so and risk jeopardizing 
seniors' access to care when we know the kind of cuts facing physicians 
under Medicare would be devastating and would, in fact, directly impact 
access to care for those who rely on Medicare.
  Physicians are the foundation of the Medicare system and our Nation's 
health care system, and patients of all ages depend upon our physicians 
for their health care services, which they provide in an outstanding 
way every single day. Every aspect of our health care system, from 
hospitals to rural health clinics, relies upon the skills and services 
of physicians.
  When I introduced my bill, S. 2785, earlier this year on stopping the 
SGR cuts, I heard from countless seniors and physicians, medical group 
practices, and hospitals in my State, all expressing support for the 
effort to stop these cuts. For example, one orthopedic practice in 
southwest Michigan wrote me and said:

       Every year we have to wait until the last minute to see if 
     the rates will be cut or fixed. It makes it impossible to 
     budget and project for the next year. Especially for a 
     practice like ours, with nearly 50 percent of our patients 
     receiving Medicare. With the uncertainty and the increases 
     that we do get not keeping up with the cost of living, we 
     have to err on the side of caution, which leads to job cuts.

  That is certainly an ongoing issue all across my State. We certainly 
don't want to be seeing cuts as they relate to jobs or access under 
health care, compounding what is already happening in the health care 
system.
  A radiologist in southwest Michigan reported having to close three 
outpatient x-ray offices over the past 5 years, and they are looking to 
close another one this year. A surgery center told me it had to put off 
investing in an EMR and was forced to freeze any wage increases and 
possibly lay off staff. A medical group in mid-Michigan that staffs two 
emergency room departments determined that the scheduled reduction 
would reduce its Medicare payments by nearly $175,000 a year--$175,000 
a year.
  If the reduction were to go into effect and this legislation is not 
passed, or similar legislation is not passed, the group wrote me it 
would be forced to reduce the workforce by either one full-time 
physician or two full-time physician assistants--cutting back on the 
availability of health care services for seniors and the disabled in my 
community. That is truly frightening when our emergency rooms are 
losing staff.
  I have, for too many years, heard from hospitals and others across 
Michigan about the difficulty in finding physicians who are able to 
take Medicaid patients because the rates are so low. This is the first 
year I have been hearing such great concern from hospitals, from 
hospital emergency rooms, about Medicare, the Medicare rates being so 
low--without these cuts--and the inability to find physicians who are 
able to take those patients.
  I am hopeful we can add language to S. 3101 similar to a bill I have 
introduced with Senator Specter to begin to address the crises facing 
our emergency rooms because we have a much broader issue we need to 
address there as well.
  I am very proud of the work that over 20,000 MDs and DOs do in 
Michigan every single day, providing more than 1.4 million seniors and 
people with disabilities, and over 90,000 TRICARE beneficiaries in 
Michigan with high quality medical services under the Medicare Program.
  If Senator Baucus's bipartisan legislation does not pass, physicians 
in Michigan will lose some $540 million for the care of seniors and 
people with disabilities over the next 18 months due to the 10-percent 
cut in payments for 2008 and the additional 5-percent cut for 2009. 
Madam President, $540 million of services, Medicare services, health 
care services that will not be rendered to the people in Michigan is 
not acceptable.
  Michigan physicians are looking at cuts of more than $10 billion by 
2016; $10 billion in the next 8 years as a result of this flawed 
formula, and 9 years of cuts. We certainly can't expect that physicians 
can continue to provide the same level of care if their payments are 
cut $540 million over the next 18 months alone. These cuts will be 
devastating to our seniors and access to care.
  Second, the lack of a predictable and equitable Medicare payment 
system hinders our investment in information technology, which we all 
know we need to be investing in. We need physicians in hospitals and 
other providers to be investing in technology that not only allows 
people to communicate with one another--electronic medical records and 
e-prescribing--but allows the very latest technology so that we have 
the very highest quality, the ability to provide the most efficient 
processes of providing health care that is possibly available.
  Health IT is very important to that. This bipartisan legislation 
recognizes the need for investing in information technology, something, 
as I indicated before, that I am pleased to have worked on for the last 
several years with Senator Snowe. This bipartisan legislation would 
increase the list of those sites under telehealth that would include 
skilled nursing facilities and dialysis centers and community mental 
health centers that would be able to receive reimbursement for 
telehealth, which is so important. I thank Senator Conrad for his 
leadership. I am pleased to be joining with him and others on the whole 
question of expanding this part of the technology of telemedicine, 
telehealth. In addition to improving access to care and facilities, we 
will see significant cost savings achieved by avoiding transporting 
medically fragile patients from one place to another. I am so proud, 
among many other advances in Michigan around health IT, telehealth is 
something that we have been using in rural parts of northern Michigan 
and the upper peninsula now for years. We have great leadership that 
has been developed. I am pleased to have had an opportunity to 
participate and see what is done that allows people in remote parts of 
Michigan to be able to communicate directly with physicians, with 
nursing staff, and so on, to receive care they need without traveling 
long distances. There are wonderful ways this can happen. This 
legislation expands the ability for people to receive telehealth 
services. This is important.
  Additionally, this bipartisan bill moves us toward e-prescribing, a 
basic building block for greater adoption of health information 
technology. There are incentives for doctors who write prescriptions 
electronically, that improve both quality and efficiency. I thank 
Senator John Kerry and Senator John Ensign for working with me on the 
whole question of e-prescribing and being in a position to put this 
forward, and I thank Senator Baucus again for his leadership in strong 
support of this effort.
  Again, we in Michigan have been recognized as one of the top five 
States in e-prescribing. We have had huge success in a regional 
collaborative in southeastern Michigan called SEMI, the Southeastern 
Michigan ePrescribing Initiative that has brought together General 
Motors, Ford, Chrysler, the UAW, insurers, and providers to work with 
consumers to be able to electronically create e-prescribing so the 
physician can in fact communicate directly with the pharmacy in the 
most accurate way with the most accurate information. We have some 
2,500 physicians in southeastern Michigan who are engaged in this.
  Last October, a patient safety analysis found that SEMI alerted 
doctors of potentially incorrect drug prescriptions that resulted in 
nearly 423,000 prescriptions being changed or canceled because of the 
information the doctor was able to receive. Possibly the physician was 
looking at a particular medication that had an adverse drug 
relationship with something else the patient was on, or maybe there 
were concerns about allergic reactions or other information that was 
helpful and gained through this process in the program through e-
prescribing. SEMI also sent out more than 100,000 medication

[[Page 12148]]

allergy alerts. When a formulary alert was presented, so physicians 
were alerted as to a problem with a particular drug they were thinking 
of prescribing, 39 percent of the time the physician changed the 
prescription.
  Madam President, I ask unanimous consent for an additional 3 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. STABENOW. Madam President, 39 percent of the time when the 
physician had more information they changed the prescription and 
therefore addressed safety concerns or saving the patient or the 
employer dollars.
  In February, a physician satisfaction survey found that 9 out of 10 
physicians believed that e-prescribing met or exceeded expectations. 
This is only one region of Michigan where it has been extremely 
successful. We have incentives in this bill to be able to support 
physicians using e-prescribing and being able to have some assistance 
to be able to purchase the equipment they need. I believe there are a 
thousand reasons why that is a great idea and one of the reasons I 
enthusiastically support this bill.
  Third, this bill reauthorizes important rural provisions to ensure 
that all Americans, regardless of where they live, have access to 
health care. We have, in Michigan, again, many small- and mid-sized 
providers serving vast rural areas around our State. This is very 
important, to approve the payments for community health centers and 
ambulances and other providers who are hit by declining Medicare 
reimbursement--as well as high gas prices, I might add.
  Finally, let me say I am very pleased that an area of the bill 
addresses gathering more information on health disparities regarding 
gender or regarding race. It is taken from language in my HEART for 
Women Act, to be able to gather more information for providers as to 
gaps where we need to be focusing more on particular kinds of services.
  Many organizations such as the American Medical Association and the 
AARP have endorsed this bill and endorsed it strongly. I again thank 
Senator Baucus, as Finance chairman, for his leadership. I support 
fully his goal of providing this 18-month fix for physician payments as 
well as providing other very important incentives for the future.
  This bill is very much about the future with e-prescribing and with 
telehealth and other information gathering. I very much hope that we, 
on behalf of the 44 million people who rely on Medicare, will have a 
very strong vote to proceed to this bill and have a strong bipartisan 
vote to adopt it. I am very hopeful that with a strong vote the 
President will decide to support this bill and sign this initiative.
  It is critically important that we get this done. The physician cut 
is going to take place very shortly if we do not act. This bill does 
the right thing and moves us in the right direction as it relates to 
health care reform.
  Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, I am disappointed that those across the 
aisle would not join with us to move to consider and debate the 
Consumer-First Energy Act of 2008.
  This legislation is designed to protect consumers from artificially 
high fuel prices, to curtail the massive giveaway of taxpayer resources 
through the continuing tax breaks to oil companies, and to recapture a 
portion of the windfall profits they are making at the expense of hard-
working Americans. While the presumptive Republican Presidential 
nominee today recognized that gas prices can be expected to continue to 
climb, I continue to wonder why so many Republican Senators voted along 
party lines to ignore one of the biggest problems facing families 
across the country.
  Did they not want to debate why oil and gas companies should not 
continue to benefit from tax breaks while raking in record profits? Did 
they not want to debate why members of the OPEC cartel, such as Iran 
and Saudi Arabia, when acting anticompetitively and fixing output so as 
to artificially raise oil prices, should be held accountable through 
laws intended to protect competition, market forces, and consumers? The 
NOPEC provisions of the bill are drawn from the bill I cosponsored and 
the Judiciary Committee has reported repeatedly over the last several 
years, including in May 2007. Or did Republicans not want to debate why 
the administration has failed to crack down on excessive speculation 
and manipulation of the oil commodities markets?
  I guess none of us should be surprised that so many Senate 
Republicans voted to prevent debate over these concerns and this 
legislation. The Bush-Cheney administration opposes it and has already 
threatened a veto. Senate Republicans are simply doing what they have 
been doing for the last 7 years--falling in line.
  We need a President who will stand with the American people, not with 
the oil companies and market speculators. I know that both President 
Bush and Vice President Cheney have longstanding ties to the oil 
industry, but over the last 7\1/2\ years, American consumers have 
suffered enough. This administration has stood by and watched as the 
price of a gallon of gasoline has gone from $1.45 to over $4.00. I 
would have thought that an oil man who claims to be from West Texas 
would recognize that when top executives of the oil industry come 
before the Senate Judiciary Committee and testify under oath that they 
would make profits if oil were sold anywhere from $55 to $65 a barrel 
but that it is, in fact, selling for over $130 a barrel, action needs 
to be taken. I would have hoped that the President who promised the 
American people when he ran for office that his family's close ties 
with the Saudi ruling family would help him successfully persuade them 
to increase oil production and cooperation would recognize that his two 
recent, unsuccessful trips to the Middle East to beg the Saudis to 
increase oil production should lead to effective government action by 
the United States, not a threat to veto legislation. Most of all, I 
would have hoped that Senators would join together to debate this 
matter and take action to help the American people.
  President Bush's ballyhooed statement in his State of the Union a 
couple of years ago that we must end the oil addiction was nothing more 
than empty words. They rank with his space travel initiative that went 
nowhere and more tragically with his hollow promise to rebuild New 
Orleans.
  Their votes against debating the Consumer-First Energy Act ranks with 
their votes against debating the bill to correct the Supreme Court's 
Ledbetter decision that locked American workers out of the courts, 
their votes against debating the restoration of habeas corpus, their 
votes against debating comprehensive bipartisan legislation to begin to 
confront global climate change, their vote against debating 
congressional voting rights for the District of Columbia, and their 
votes on so many matters that Republican Senators have acted to block. 
I hope that when the majority leader moves for reconsideration of the 
vote on the Consumer-First Energy Act, Senators will search their 
consciences and do the right thing by voting to allow Senate 
consideration of that legislation in the best interest of the American 
people.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Madam President, I rise to speak in support of the 
Consumer-First Energy Act, and in particular title V, which would 
increase oil market transparency and accountability.
  Oil prices continue to set records. Last week the price of oil hit 
$138 per barrel. Not too long ago $38 seemed like an unheard of price, 
not $138.
  Gasoline prices now average above $4 per gallon nationwide. Some gas 
stations have to charge by the half gallon. Their pumps cannot 
calculate in prices this high.
  And there seems to be no relief in sight for consumers as we enter 
the summer travel season.
  Energy markets are not working--and speculation is adding an extra 
$20-$25 per barrel to the price of oil. We must protect these markets 
from manipulation, excessive speculation and fraud.
  In the farm bill Congress finally closed the ``Enron loophole,'' and 
placed all major electronic trades that could drive energy prices under 
the watchful eye of the CFTC.

[[Page 12149]]

  However, I remain concerned that there are no comparable protections 
in place when U.S. energy futures are traded on international markets--
presenting yet another regulatory loophole for energy traders to 
exploit. So title V of this bill would close that loophole and ensure 
that the trading of all U.S. energy futures--whether on foreign or 
domestic markets--is done with transparency and with an audit trail.
  Title V is based upon the Oil Trading Transparency Act, which I 
introduced recently with Senator Carl Levin.
  The Oil Trading Transparency Act would close the London loophole, 
whereby traders of West Texas Intermediate Crude Oil execute trades on 
an electronic exchange ``located in'' London, England, outside the 
jurisdiction of American regulators.
  Specifically: the bill directs the Commodity Futures Trading 
Commission, CFTC, to ensure that any foreign exchange operating a 
trading terminal in the United States for the trading of a U.S. energy 
commodity meets two regulatory requirements that currently apply to 
U.S. exchanges: (1) It must impose speculative trading limits to 
prevent price manipulation and excessive speculation, and (2) It must 
publish daily trading information to ensure market transparency.
  The bill would also require the CFTC to obtain information from the 
foreign exchange to enable it to establish an audit trail and determine 
how much trading in U.S. energy commodities is due to speculation.
  Today the CFTC's weekly publication of speculation data for U.S. 
markets lacks any information about the oil trading conducted in London 
which makes up approximately 30 percent of the trading volume in West 
Texas Intermediate Crude Oil.
  Let me explain why this provision is necessary. The United States 
places limits on speculative energy trades that contribute to high 
prices.
  But traders of U.S. crude oil know that they can avoid U.S. limits 
and transparency requirements by trading crude oil futures on the 
London's ICE Futures Europe instead of the NYMEX exchange in New York.
  CFTC acknowledged in a June 2 letter to me that traders can even use 
London as a refuge from U.S. speculation limits. CFTC's acting chairman 
wrote:

       If CFTC instructed an oil trader to reduce the size of his 
     NYMEX West Texas Intermediate crude oil position, the trader 
     would not be prohibited, under either the [Commodity Exchange 
     Act] or the Commission's regulations, from establishing a 
     similar position in the ICE Futures Europe WTI crude oil 
     contract.

  That regulatory disparity means U.S. traders trading U.S. oil on the 
London exchange can engage in excessive speculation that affects U.S. 
prices and not report their trades.
  The traders can do it by using computer terminals in the United 
States with direct access to the London exchange. The contracts in 
London settle on the price in New York, so they are functionally 
equivalent ``look alike'' contracts.
  According to CFTC, every single week since 2006 at least one trader 
has held positions in London above the NYMEX spot month speculative 
limit of 3 million barrels of oil.
  Most weeks, five to eight traders have been above these limits, and 
at one point 22 traders were above the NYMEX limit.
  And its not only contracts in the spot month. Sixty-four percent of 
the time since 2006, at least one trader in London has exceeded out 
month position accountability levels that are set at 20 million barrels 
of oil in New York. CFTC reports that 48 different traders have been 
above these limits at one time or another since 2006.
  This legislation is necessary in order to close this loophole and 
require that foreign boards of trade that operate trading terminals in 
our country comply with the same speculation trading limits and 
reporting requirements that apply to U.S. trades.
  What is Traded in London? Trading in London is regulated by the 
British, so some might wonder why we would ask our friends in London to 
impose American regulatory standards.
  I believe some of London's contracts matter more to America than 
England, and we need to make sure they are subject to our position 
limit system.
  For example, ICE Futures Europe lists U.S. crude oil--West Texas 
Intermediate--New England heating oil, and U.S. gasoline contracts.
  West Texas Intermediate crude oil is produced here, used here, and 
never leaves the United States.
  Heating oil and gasoline are refined and used within our borders.
  ICE Futures Europe is a wholly owned subsidiary of an American 
company, Atlanta based Intercontinental Exchange, or ICE.
  Since buying ICE Futures Europe, ICE has shut down the trading floor 
in London and replaced it with a virtual, electronic floor.
  Their American and British systems are so integrated that trading 
``in London'' recently shut down because an ICE data center in Chicago, 
IL, lost power.
  And most importantly, British regulators are accountable to the 
British people who would naturally prefer that their government use its 
resources to prevent manipulation in markets that affect British 
people, not Americans.
  The British only have 80 people monitoring market abuses, 
investigating, and enforcing rules in all of their financial markets--
including stocks, bonds, futures, swaps, and currency. Not one of these 
80 people is specifically assigned to monitor trading of West Texas 
Intermediate, American Gasoline, or New England heating oil.
  This may explain why the CFTC tells me that British regulators are 
yet to bring a single manipulation case against traders in any of the 
contracts for U.S. delivery.
  That is why the audit trail established by this legislation is so 
important.
  If CFTC gets trading data from London, it can pursue manipulation and 
fraud cases under their existing authority. But CFTC needs the records. 
It needs the data to monitor markets that impact the price of energy in 
the United States.
  Bottom Line: CFTC needs this legislation in order to protect American 
oil markets from manipulation and excessive speculation.
  In the farm bill we took a major step in closing the Enron loophole. 
It took us 7 years to close it, and millions of consumers paid the 
price.
  This legislation is needed to close a new loophole that opened in 
2006 when ICE Futures Europe began listing a U.S. based energy 
commodity on its exchange in London. If we vote to pass the Oil Trading 
Transparency Act, we will close the London loophole in only 2 years.
  Today's markets evolve quickly, and we need to make sure our market 
oversight responds just as quickly. Let us not wait 6 years to close a 
loophole so large you could drive an oil tanker through it.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma is recognized.
  Ms. STABENOW. Excuse me, Madam President, if I might ask my friend, 
who has already been patient, to suspend for a moment. I have been 
asked to read a unanimous consent request.
  Mr. COBURN. I am happy to yield to the Senator.
  Ms. STABENOW. Thank you ever so much. I am here talking about 
physicians and ``the physician'' is on the floor. Certainly I would not 
presume to know more about medicine than my colleague from Oklahoma. I 
appreciate very much his allowing me to do this.

                          ____________________