[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 12265-12271]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       30-SOMETHING WORKING GROUP

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Murphy) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues for 
giving us the indulgence of once again allowing the Speaker's 30-
Something Working Group to come down to the House floor. We are hopeful 
tonight that we're going to have a full House here on the House floor, 
that we will be joined tonight by our master of ceremonies, on most 
nights Representative Meek and his original partner in crime, Mr. Ryan, 
as well as Ms. Wasserman Schultz, and Mr. Altmire.
  It's appropriate that we're going to have hopefully four or five of 
us here by the time the hour is up because we have a lot to talk about. 
Because as our Republican colleagues have noted over the last hour, the 
one thing that they are probably right on the mark about is that people 
are hurting out there. People have a level of anger and anxiety over 
what is happening in this economy that many of us haven't seen in a 
very, very long time.
  I don't know technically whether we're in a recession, whether we're 
on our way into one. All I know is that people are having to do more 
with much less; that that salary increase that people thought they were 
getting isn't happening; that those overtime hours that my constituents 
in New Britain relied upon aren't there this year. And yet on the other 
side of their family's ledger, the prices to heat their home are going 
up, obviously the prices to fuel their car are going up, the college 
expenses, the health care expenses are going in only one direction and 
by and large far outpacing the rate of wage inflation that they're 
seeing as well.

                              {time}  2130

  And the New Direction Congress is trying to do something about it. 
There's no secret as to why we've gotten into this situation that we're 
in today, why our people are making money at the very upper echelon of 
the income scale, why do we have GDP continuing to expand, while we 
have wages remaining relatively stagnant.
  It's because for a very long time on the floor of this House of 
Representatives before the New Direction Congress was installed last 
January, the voices that really mattered down here were the folks that 
were doing pretty well off in this economy: the drug industry, the 
health insurers, and at the top of the list, the oil industry.
  The dichotomy right now that exists today between the success of the 
oil industry and the distress of the people who buy their product is 
absolutely unconscionable. And it is hard for us to understand, with 
our slim majority that we hold on the Democratic side, why we can't get 
more consensus here between Republicans and Democrats to take on those 
gross and unjustifiable profits that are being made by the oil 
industry.
  Last quarter's profits from American and multinational oil companies 
set records, not for the history of the American oil industry, but for 
the history of American capitalism, and it's no secret where they're 
making those profits. They're making it off of all of us.
  Now, we heard a couple of days ago that the average price across this 
country hit $4 a gallon. Well, that was old news to us in Connecticut. 
We hit $4 weeks, if not a month, ago. We are well on our way in 
Connecticut to $5 a gallon, and in Connecticut it hurts us a little bit 
more because we have more congested highways. We don't have mass 
transit alternatives like other parts of the country. People are 
driving.
  In my district, we still have some jobs growing in Danbury, 
Connecticut, but nobody can live there because we don't have enough 
affordable housing. So people live in Waterbury, Connecticut, and they 
drive 30 miles to work every day. They'd live in Danbury if they could. 
They can't afford to do it. They'd live in Stamford if they could, but 
they can't. They live where they have to. They work where they have to. 
And it necessitates a commute which puts them out now record amounts, 
all the while, while the oil industry are making profits, they are 
setting records in the history of American capitalism.
  So, to us, it seems pretty obvious where we should lay the blame, on 
an oil industry which has continued to take profits out of American 
consumers and at the feet of an administration run by two oil men. I 
mean, it doesn't get much more simple than that.
  I mean, I understand people's frustrations. I understand the 
frustrations of the folks on the Republican side and the Democratic 
side, but it doesn't take too much imagination to figure out why we got 
where we got. We elected to the White House a President and a Vice 
President who made their fortunes in the oil industry, and they have 
created a legacy that they will leave behind in the White House of 
doing even more favors for that industry, of setting an energy policy 
that guarantees massive profits for the friends that they left behind 
in that industry.
  And so, to us, the solution seemed pretty simple. The Senate tried 
just a few days ago to pass a windfall profits tax to suggest that 
maybe they're making a little bit too much in the oil industry; we 
should turn a little bit of that back around to hardworking consumers. 
Couldn't get the votes it needed to without Republican support.
  Here in the House, we looked at the $18 billion in tax breaks and 
giveaways that have been given to the oil industry. We watched a recent 
report come out from GAO, the nonpartisan Government Accountability 
Office, about a week ago which told us that we have given away over $50 
billion in annual unclaimed royalties that we should be collecting 
against the oil industry for their drilling across this country and off 
our shores. And we see an opportunity, we see an opportunity to take 
those unclaimed royalties that are making the oil industry rich, we see 
an opportunity to take those tax breaks, $16- and $18-billion, however 
you want to estimate it that the 2005 energy bill passed before the New 
Direction Congress got here and gave to the oil industry, and we see a 
chance to take that money out of the pockets of the oil industry and 
turn it around to hardworking consumers, hardworking commuters that 
need a break right now.
  It's not like the money isn't out there. It's out there. It's lying 
in the hands of oil industry and gas industry CEOs and their top 
executives, their shareholders who are reaping the benefit of the 
misery that people in this country are witnessing at the pump. Four 
dollars may be the national number, but in Connecticut that's history. 
We're on our way to $5.
  So, to us on the Democratic side, on the majority side, we don't want 
this to be a partisan issue. I appreciate the comments of our 
Republican friends who spoke before the 30 Something Working Group here 
tonight, but this, to us, isn't about Republicans or Democrats, because 
you're paying $4.50 at the pump in Connecticut whether you're a 
registered R or you're a registered D. And those oil company executives 
are making record profits, whether they are a registered Republican or 
whether they are a registered Democrat. Affiliation ideology does not 
mean anything here. The stats are the stats and the numbers are the 
numbers, and it shows us that there are people making a lot of money 
who don't deserve to make it, and there are people enduring a lot of 
misery who don't have to.
  And one of the most respected Members of the other side of the aisle 
sat at the well just a few moments ago and told us that words are one 
thing, but votes matter. I don't think that there would be a voice of 
disagreement in this House. Absolutely, you can go out there and say 
one thing about how you're trying to take on the oil industry, but what 
you do here matters.
  And so I would encourage people out there, my friends in the Fifth 
District of Connecticut, and all those in other parts of the country 
that are struggling to understand what's happening with energy prices 
out there to check the record, to go back and look at what Congress has 
done and has attempted

[[Page 12266]]

to do to fix this problem and see where the votes are and where the 
votes aren't.
  You see, we've tried to pass legislation to punish price gougers, to 
give the Federal Trade Commission the authority to press Federal 
charges against those individuals, retailers and wholesalers, who have 
tried to take advantage of this situation to unjustifiably run up the 
price, and we've been alone over here on the Democratic side of the 
aisle. We've passed legislation to repeal the antitrust exemption that 
the big, multinational oil companies have so that we can go after folks 
that are price colluding against American consumers, and we haven't had 
much cooperation on this side of the aisle.
  And we have put actions behind words when it comes to conservation. I 
hope that Representative Wamp is right. I hope that we are on the verge 
of a new era in transportation technology. I hope that we are going to 
see electric cars be the predominant force in our automotive world. I 
hope that we are near that moment, and I think he's also right, 
frankly, that if we are going to get to that moment we're going to have 
to be honest about the electricity capacity that we do not have in this 
country.
  I hope that we can set, Republicans and Democrats, a strategy to get 
there, to both encourage the development of electric car technology, of 
the recharging stations that we will need to make that a robust 
technology and a commercialized opportunity, an alternative for 
commuters, and that we will also do the right things in terms of 
electricity production and grid capacity to make it a realistic option.
  But until we get there, until we get to a moment where we can plug in 
our car and go, we have an opportunity today to stand behind an effort 
to make the cars that we buy right now more fuel efficient. Thirty 
years went by until this House of Representatives stood up under a 
Democratic leadership and passed a new law requiring that every car in 
this country, the average fuel efficiency of a fleet, be 35 miles a 
gallon. Thirty years went by, 12 years of Republican rule, and not a 
single bill passed in this Congress to promote conservation with real 
policy directives behind it.
  Now, we did get a lot of Republican sponsors on that legislation, the 
energy bill passed at the end of last year, but we needed more. We 
needed more, and on that case, votes did matter. On that case, votes 
did matter. We have had bipartisan cooperation, but led by a new 
Democratic majority, this House stood up and passed legislation 
requiring cars in this country to hit 35 miles a gallon, which will 
save the average consumer $1,000 over the course of the year at the 
pump. That's real dollars. That's real dollars for the average 
consumer. In fact, that number was from the end of last year. It's 
probably much more than $1,000 now that the price at the pump has gone 
up.
  And the alternatives that the Republicans offer, as we try to say, 
listen, the solution here is to make the cars we drive now more fuel 
efficient, the solution is to go after those that would collude to set 
prices, those who would take advantage of this moment to price gouge at 
the pumps, when we sit here and say that we can also look at 
legislation promoted by Representative Stupak and Representative 
Larson, legislation being worked on now by the Energy and Commerce 
Committee to start to regulate the energy commodity trading markets 
that are skimming millions, if not billions, of dollars off of the 
product that people are paying for at the pump, we can do something to 
take money out of the hands of speculators who have done far too well 
off of the rising price of oil and put that money back in the hands of 
those hardworking, middle class Americans who are paying the bills for 
those speculators on Wall Street.
  We're going to move forward legislation to do that as well. We're 
going to set a long-term strategy while we're at it because we can do 
things in the short-term with price colluding, with price gougers. We 
can take pride in legislation that Mr. Welch and Mr. Courtney and 
others moved through the House to stop the President from putting more 
oil into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and, instead, put that oil on 
the market. That's another 10, 15, 20 cents on the gallon. We can do 
all those short-term things necessary to get the price of oil down.
  We can take a long-term view to try to get to a moment in 5 or 10 
years where we're no longer relying on a foreign-produced and foreign-
priced product that oil is. We can have that long-term view to have a 
renewable domestically produced energy source here.
  We can do all those things, and we can do them together. It's not 
mutually exclusive to try to take some steps right now, going against 
the speculators, going against the price gougers, stopping putting oil 
in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. That's not mutually exclusive from 
doing the long-term things necessary to wean ourselves off of this 
product that we do not price, that for the most part we do not produce.
  The solution, though, is not to just say that we're going to get a 
little bit more from here in the United States. We have a chart here 
that maybe we can take a look at with regard to some of the claims of 
our friends on the other side of the aisle with regard to the great 
salvation of the American energy crisis which is going to be the 
drilling for oil in Alaska.
  We are talking about a project that, first of all, is going to take 
20 years to get to peak oil production. It's going to take 10 years, 
Mr. Speaker, just to get to a point where anything is coming out of the 
ground. Even in a moment right now, where big oil companies have 
license to drill right here onshore, on about 42 million acres, 42 
million acres that they could take oil from onshore. You know how much 
that they're taking oil off of right now? Twelve million. There's 30 
million acres with permitted potential here domestically that isn't 
being used today.

                              {time}  2145

  So this talk of drilling more, these oil companies have the ability 
to drill for more oil right now, 30 million acres permitted and not 
drilled for.
  Let's talk about offshore as well. And I want to talk about what 
happens in ANWR, in the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge, but let's talk about 
offshore. Thirty-eight million acres ready to go, permitted for 
drilling by the big domestic and multinational oil companies. You know 
how much of that 38 million is being used today? Eight million acres. 
30.6--let's be exact here--30.6 million acres of offshore territory 
permitted for use not being drilled upon today.
  This effort to take a small parcel of land, admittedly no bigger than 
Dulles National Airport, and use this crisis moment in American energy 
history to open up a sensitive wildlife refuge for drilling is nothing 
more than a power and money grab by an industry that already today, by 
facts and figures that don't come from me, but come from the industry 
themselves, suggests that there are 60 million acres of onshore and 
offshore territory today that are not being drilled upon that could be 
used right now if they wanted to. Record numbers of new permits being 
handed out for drilling on available lands and available offshore 
territory today.
  It is not that we don't have the capacity for new drilling. We have 
it, it's ready to go; the oil industry has decided not to use it. The 
oil industry has decided, for whatever reason--I can't get into their 
heads to try to figure out exactly what their motivation is, but you 
can certainly impute a motivation which would suggest that a holdback 
on supply isn't such a bad thing, that by keeping supply, by holding 
back on drilling, by keeping that 60 million acres that they could 
drill on right now tomorrow from going into production, they're going 
to make some profit off of that.
  Our focus has to be on how on Earth we have allowed for more tax 
breaks, for more royalty breaks to an oil industry making record 
profits in the history of capitalism that sits today on 60 million 
acres that they're not drilling on.
  But let's talk about what would happen if we did get beyond that, if 
we did sort of forgive the fact that they just

[[Page 12267]]

simply aren't using the territory that's available to them today and we 
gave them the ability to drill in ANWR. You're not going to be even 
able to really see this chart. In fact, Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, 
it looks like a blank chart. It's titled, ``How Much Would We Save by 
Drilling in ANWR?'' And the statistics used to make this chart don't 
come from congressional Democrats or congressional Republicans, they 
come from the administration, they come from the administration's own 
energy agency.
  And you can't see anything on this chart. It looks blank to you 
because it is blank. How much would you save by drilling in ANWR? By 
2030, Mr. Speaker--I'm going to have my first child this summer, and my 
child will be on his way to college by the time 2030 rolls around. So 
by 2030, my child will be driving a car. And in 2030, he's going to 
have saved 1.8 cents per gallon if we drilled in ANWR.
  So even if you got over the fact that there are millions of acres out 
there permitted today, ready to go for exploration today that the oil 
industry has not used, even if you get over the very legitimate 
environmental concerns that confront ANWR, you're getting 1.8 cents in 
savings per gallon in 2030. Why 2030? Because it takes 20 years to get 
to peak production. It takes 10 years to get one drop out of the 
ground.
  And while we sit here and argue over whether we drill in ANWR or not, 
we're wasting valuable time that could go into making changes today, 
like the success we had just weeks ago in stopping the deposit of new 
petroleum into the Strategic Reserve. That's not 1.8 cents per gallon, 
that is potentially 15 or 20 cents per gallon. Stopping putting oil in 
the Strategic Petroleum Reserve isn't 2030, Mr. Speaker, it's today, 
it's next week--maybe not next week, maybe it's next month, maybe it's 
next year. It's not 2030, it's immediate.
  And more to the point, by spending our time this year and next year 
talking about how we take this country back from this oil industry, how 
we create sources of energy that are produced here in the United States 
that we control and we price, we're doing something not just for energy 
prices, but we're doing something for national security. Because every 
day that we continue to go on, every day that we fight about what 
little bit more we can get out of the ground, we're empowering a global 
energy industry that is a threat to this Nation in the end.
  Every day that we continue to fill up our gas tanks with a product 
that sends money overseas to countries that use that money to fuel the 
educational and recruitment initiatives of those who would do harm to 
us--because that's what's happening here, we're sending oil overseas, 
Ms. Wasserman Schultz, to countries that maybe aren't directly using 
that money to send straight to terrorists, but they're using that money 
to fund the schools that train the kids that eventually turn into those 
terrorists. They're using that money to create societies that 
marginalize individuals in Saudi Arabia and other places so that they 
have no choice but to flee to those extremist movements.
  Every day that we sit here and argue over whether we drill in ANWR, 
whether we drill offshore, whether we give more power to the 
international oil industry that already is making these record profits 
in the history of capitalism, we are endangering the safety of this 
country.
  I want to do the right short-term and long-term things because I go 
home every weekend and I feel the hurt, as you do, Ms. Wasserman 
Schultz, as you do, Mr. Speaker, of all of our constituents that don't 
deserve to pay $4, $5 at the pump while the oil industry is making 
record profits. But I also want to make the right decisions now on the 
future of our energy policy because it's how my future kids and grand 
kids live in a safe country and in a safe world.
  And so I'm proud to be part of a ``new direction'' Congress that is 
finally, for the first time in a decade, taking on this oil industry. 
I'm proud to be part of a Congress that is both doing things in the 
short run--even if we don't get Republican votes to do it--and trying 
to set a long-term strategy. It's a lot to ask. It's a lot to ask, but 
this is a big moment right now. This is a big moment. Four or five 
dollar prices at the pumps cannot sustain. Families cannot pay that. 
And the question is, are we going to allow the oil industry to co-opt 
this moment, to take advantage of it, to get a little bit bigger piece 
of the pie in order to make even bigger profits? Or are we going to use 
this money, the $4 and $5 prices at the pump, to finally stand up to 
these guys, to finally say enough it enough, and to set a long-term 
plan to get this country off of this product that we can't control, Ms. 
Wasserman Schultz?
  I think I know the answer to that. I think I know where this Congress 
wants to go. I think I know that the American public are ready to 
follow. But it frustrates me--you just joined us here--it frustrates me 
to listen to some of our colleagues standing on the floor and basically 
asking for the same old, same old that we've seen for the late 8 years, 
Ms. Wasserman Schultz.
  Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Yes, they seem to believe that the President's 
drill more and veto policy is the right way to go when it comes to our 
energy policy. And I'll tell you, as I often call myself, Mr. Murphy 
and Mr. Ryan, a minivan mom because I have three young kids, I spend 
most of my time, when I'm home, driving them from diving practice to 
baseball games to gymnastics, and it consumes quite a bit of gas. So 
when I'm home and have to go and fill up that gas tank, which I did 
just last week before I came back to Washington, it cost me $76, Mr. 
Ryan.
  And we've done 30-something in the last few weeks, and I think the 
last time I was here it cost me $62 to fill up my gas tank, the last 
time we talked about this. And we've gone from $62, I'm at $76. The 
week before last I was at $72. The week before that, I was at $68 to 
fill up the tank. I mean, so now we're talking about real money. 
Seventy-six dollars is what a very small amount of groceries cost. And 
that's money that is the difference between someone being able to buy 
the groceries in the supermarket or put gasoline in the tank or make 
sure that they can take their kids to the doctor and make that 
copayment for the doctor's appointment. I mean, we have record gas 
prices now that are hurting, cutting people to the quick. And the 
Republicans, our good friends on the other side of the aisle, what is 
their solution?
  First of all, before we became the majority and began to even put 
this issue on the front burner, it wasn't an issue for them. The last 
action that they took, when they were in charge, was to give $14 
billion in subsidies to the oil industry, which is the most profitable 
industry in America. Now, what does that mean? We've heard a lot of us 
talk about those $14 billion in subsidies. What it means is that the 
Federal Government gives the oil industry permission, they are allowed 
to drill for oil on Federal lands and in exchange they are supposed pay 
royalties to the Federal Government to do that. We forgive those 
royalties, that's what the $14 billion is. And what we have proposed 
is, because we want to truly wean ourselves off of our addiction to 
oil--and not just foreign oil, we need to wean ourselves off of our 
addiction to oil period because oil is a finite resource. We need to 
really invest in renewable energy sources, in biofuels.
  And what we would like to do is repeal that $14 billion in subsidies, 
require the oil industry to pay the royalties--because they're pulling 
oil out of the ground on land that they don't own, on land that is 
owned by the Federal Government, they're profiting from that and paying 
nothing for the privilege--we want to take that $14 billion in 
subsidies and invest it in alternative energy research. Because, you 
know, growing up, Mr. Murphy and Mr. Ryan, I remember during the Carter 
administration, I remember the energy crisis. I remember sitting in the 
back seat of my parents' car on gas lines. And I remember in elementary 
school seeing all the conservation efforts that they started doing all 
the way down to, you know, to the public school and elementary school 
level. We had signs next to the light switches that suddenly were put 
on there that said, you

[[Page 12268]]

know, ``turn the lights off.'' There was a big national energy 
conservation effort that just fizzled once Ronald Reagan became 
President. And we never invested in alternative research like we should 
have. The conservation efforts went by the wayside, and we went back to 
the same old story, oil, oil, oil.
  And look, right now, the Republicans are talking about needing to 
drill for more oil in ANWR, pulling oil out of shale, this 68 million 
acres available now that they are not drilling on, 68 million; I mean, 
it's absolutely ridiculous. They need to be utilizing the turf that 
they've got now, and they're not.
  So we need to make sure that it's clear to the American people--and 
that's why we come out here every night--who's for solving this energy 
crisis and who's all talk. And I think the Republicans have clearly 
proven that through their actions and their lack of stewardship when 
they were in charge. And I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. What's funny here, Mr. Speaker, is that this is 
another pattern, as these issues continue to come up, where the 
Republicans continue to offer solutions that have absolutely nothing to 
do with the problem that we're trying to deal with. You know, they lack 
ideas. They are a party that's void of ideas.
  We cannot drill our way out of this problem. That's the issue here. 
Drilling has increased in the last 7 years by 66 percent, and there has 
been no decrease in the price of gas, there has been a tremendous 
increase. And on Friday, there was an increase in the per barrel cost 
of oil that was larger than a barrel cost 10 years ago. So the increase 
this year was more than a whole barrel cost 10 years ago. We've been 
drilling more than we've ever been drilling, 66 percent more in the 
last 10 years, and it's still not reducing the price.
  The key here is we need to move off of our dependency on foreign oil. 
So if you look at what the policies have been up to this point--and 
everyone says, you know, they come down to the floor, ``if we could 
only drill in ANWR,'' if you started drilling in ANWR today, you 
wouldn't get a drop of oil for 10 years. And in 20 years, you would 
only reduce the cost of a gallon of gas by one penny. That is the 
energy plan of the Republican minority in Congress and President George 
Bush: Go drill, and in 20 years we'll save you one penny per gallon of 
gas.

                              {time}  2200

  What we're trying to do is to make a very mature decision, which is 
unusual for Washington, that if we take the $15 billion or $18 billion 
in subsidies that we're giving to the oil companies under the Bush 
administration, we can move that into alternative energy research and 
development and have a long-term plan to solve this problem. We do not 
want to be here. Hopefully, God willing, our constituents will continue 
to elect us.
  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Will the gentleman yield for just 1 minute 
for a correction?
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I would be happy to yield.
  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I just want to point out that it's not 
actually a penny, Mr. Ryan. We have a chart here. It's 1.8 cents.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I'm sorry.
  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. It's actually 1.8 cents.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I reserve the right to revise and extend my 
remarks. So I'd like to take this opportunity to say 1.8 cents per 
gallon of gas 20 years from now.
  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Right.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. What we're trying to say is we don't want to be in 
the same position 20 years from now or 10 years from now that we're in 
today, so that means that we need to make some long-term decisions. 
It's easy to come down to the floor: Drill, drill, drill. Drilling will 
not solve this problem.
  If you look at what President Bush's policies have been, if you look 
at what the Republican Congress' policies have been--drill, increase by 
66 percent--gas still goes up through the roof. The war in Iraq has 
totally destabilized the region that has more oil than anywhere else, 
and it has totally helped to drive up costs.
  What we're trying to do is to have these mature discussions, not 
drill and veto, drill and veto, drill and veto. Let's stop the 
manipulation of the commodities market. Let's stop the manipulation of 
the futures and everything else where it's just continuing to drive up 
the cost of gasoline for average people. That is basically what is 
going on.
  I think Ms. Wasserman Schultz made a great point. There are 68 
million acres of land, Federal land, that the oil companies could tap 
into if they wanted. They have not. As for the refining capacity in the 
United States, everyone says, ``Build more refineries. Build more 
refineries.'' The refineries we have now are only working at 85 
percent. So there are a lot of smoke and mirrors coming from the other 
side.
  What we are trying to say is we need long-term, responsible policies 
that are going to stop providing corporate welfare for the oil 
companies, and we need to invest that money into long-term biodiesel, 
nuclear, wind, solar, and all of these other issues.
  With that, I'd like to yield to our good friend from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. ALTMIRE. I appreciate the gentleman from Ohio.
  I do hope those who are interested in this topic--and everybody in 
this country, I think, is interested in the issue of gas prices and is 
certainly interested in alternative sources of energy--have heard what 
the gentleman has just said.
  There was a poll taken which somebody talked to me about today. 
Fifty-four percent of the American people think that we should drill 
for more oil domestically. Well, I don't think there is anybody in this 
Congress who disagrees with that statement. What does that mean?
  As the gentleman said, there are 68 million acres. That is not a 
typographical error. I'm not misspeaking. The gentleman was not 
misspeaking. There are 68 million acres of Federal lands that are 
currently available and permitted to drill for oil. Well, why aren't 
the oil companies drilling for oil there? There are a variety of 
reasons.
  Some of it is the construction. The permitting, the geological, the 
surveying work that needs to be done takes a long time. That's the 
issue with ANWR, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. If we said today 
we were going to allow the oil companies to drill for oil in ANWR, it 
would be 10 years before the first drop of oil came, and it would be 20 
years before ANWR was at peak capacity. I'll return to that 
momentarily.
  Part of that 68 million acres that isn't being utilized is going to 
be developed at some point, but they're not there yet. Part of it is 
that the oil companies buy up these leases and stockpile them because 
that looks good on their assets, and they file their financial reports, 
and it helps their bottom line because they hold the futures on 
stockpiled assets that are leased acreage for oil drilling. But we have 
in the Outer Continental Shelf already identified where 80 percent of 
the known oil is. It is within the area where the oil companies are 
already permitted to drill and where 8,000 leases already exist. So 80 
percent of the known oil in the Outer Continental Shelf is already 
within an area in which we're able to drill for more oil.
  So those watching tonight might say, ``Well, how much of that 80 
percent are we drilling on?'' Well, we're drilling on about a quarter 
of it. About 75 percent of the leases that are held in that area where 
we know that there is oil is not being used for oil drilling right now. 
It's the same situation. Some of it is being surveyed, and the 
geological work is being done, and they're going to do some 
construction, and they'll get there. Some of it is just being held by 
the oil companies.
  Then you have the coast of Florida, where the gentlewoman is from, 
and you have the coast of California, and you're getting into those 
issues. It's the same thing. We have identified places in this country 
where it's already available to drill for oil.
  You might say, ``All right. What are we talking about? How much oil 
are we talking about?'' How about 4.2 million

[[Page 12269]]

barrels of oil per day that we could get from those 68 million acres if 
we were drilling right now where the leases are already held. 4.2 
million barrels.
  By comparison is ANWR, which we're talking about. The first drop of 
oil arrives in the pipeline in ANWR 10 years from the time that we say 
you're allowed to drill there. 40,000 barrels of oil per day that first 
year from ANWR. 40,000 barrels per day. Currently, the worldwide oil 
market is about 80 million barrels per day. So we're talking 
infinitesimal on the worldwide market.
  When ANWR is at peak capacity, according to the experts, it's going 
to be approximately 800,000 barrels a day. It's going to be 800,000 
barrels of oil a day in a market that's 80 million barrels a day, a 
worldwide market. Let's think about that 4.2 million barrels that we 
could get from the 68 million acres, and I know we're talking about a 
lot of numbers right now.
  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. We're standing here, and we're incredibly 
impressed, Mr. Altmire.
  Mr. ALTMIRE. The point is this: We already know where there is oil to 
drill in this country. The oil companies already own the leases where 
they could drill for that oil. They're making a conscious decision, for 
a variety of reasons, not to drill for oil in places where they're 
already permitted to do so.
  Lastly, on refineries, people will say, ``Well, let's build more 
refineries.'' Well, we have half the number of refineries today that we 
had 30 years ago because the companies have shut them down, and the 
refineries that we do still have are operating, as the gentleman said, 
at 85 percent capacity.
  So what is the point of spending the time and the effort to build 
more refineries, and what is the point of spending the money if the 
refineries that we have aren't even operating at near full capacity? 
There are other ways we could spend our time. There are other ways we 
could spend our resources. There are other ways we could spend our 
money.
  So what, I think, every Member of our side of the aisle agrees on is 
we have a crisis regarding gas prices in this country right now. I 
don't think anybody would disagree with that. We're paying over $4 a 
gallon. It's going to continue to go up in the foreseeable future. We 
have to make a decision. We've arrived at a crisis point. We have a 
decision to make. There are no short-term solutions.
  Now, we can put a Band-Aid on it and do the Strategic Petroleum 
Reserve, which we did, which is going to have some impact. It's not a 
long-term solution. We're going to talk about manipulation in the 
market and about the speculation that goes on, and that drives the 
price per barrel up. We can do some short-term things there, but in the 
long term, we have to make a decision.
  There are one of two ways we can go. We could either continue our 
dependence on oil--and yes, we're talking about domestic sources of oil 
when we talk about ANWR and the Outer Continental Shelf and the coasts 
of Florida and California. That's domestic oil. But there is not nearly 
enough oil there to produce that would bring down the percentage that 
we get from foreign nations. So, even if we were done and if we were 
pumping all of the oil from those 68 million acres and from the new 
land in ANWR and from the other locations, we still would get more oil 
from foreign nations than we would produce in this country. There's no 
way to get around that.
  So the question is: If it's a 20-year process until we get to peak 
capacity at ANWR and in the Outer Continental Shelf, isn't there a 
better way that we could spend the next 20 years if we're going to pour 
money into it and have a national commitment to say we're going to find 
an alternative source of energy?
  What I advocate and what I'm sure my colleagues would agree with is 
we need to put our best and brightest on the job and give them all of 
the resources that they need. We need to take everybody from our eighth 
grade science students on up to our Nobel Prize winners and say, 
figuratively, ``You go in the same room. We're going to give you all of 
the money that you need, all of the resources and all of the support 
this Nation can provide. This is our number 1 priority. Figure out a 
way to make a car run affordably on something other than gasoline.''
  We can do that, but we can't do both because every dollar we spend 
drilling for more oil or that we spend building more refineries is a 
dollar we could have spent getting us off oil and getting us off our 
dependence on foreign oil.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. If the gentleman would yield.
  Mr. ALTMIRE. I would.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. When most of us here are back home, I know that 
people say, ``Just stop the politics. Solve the problem.'' That entails 
our making some tough decisions long term, and this is kind of the 
general theme of what we're talking about here.
  It is that we're trying to provide, yes, some short-term relief but 
also some long-term planning and long-term investments so that we're 
not here 10 years from now. If you're running a corporation or a 
business, you have a long-term business plan. This is our long-term 
business plan for the United States of America.
  Do you want billions of dollars going to the oil companies that are, 
supposedly, supposed to help them increase refining capacity and help 
make it easier to drill but where they're not doing it for whatever 
reason? Public tax dollars. So the average taxpayer is getting hit at 
the pump, and their tax dollars are going to the oil companies, and 
still the price is not going down.
  What we're trying to say is this money can be better spent. We are 
making a decision here to invest this into the long-term alternative 
energies which will prevent us, as a country, from being in the same 
position that we're in today 10 years from now.
  I yield to my friend.
  Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Thank you.
  By the way, to the gentleman from Pennsylvania, that was a very 
impressive top-of-mind overview, and your command of the facts is truly 
incredible. So thank you very much for that very articulate overview.
  We also want to stress that, in addition to laying out the problem 
and the shock that we have in reaction to the solution of our good 
friends on the other side of the aisle to drill and veto, we have not 
stood idly by and just said, ``Well, unless we repeal these $14 billion 
in subsidies, then we're not going to be able to do anything.'' We have 
a series of bills that we have passed, and I think it would be helpful 
for us to go through those and to tell people the efforts that we're 
making--some short-term, some long-term.
  This is a difficult problem to solve in the short term. It is very 
difficult to dramatically bring down gas prices through legislation in 
a short-term way, but one of the things that we did was to pass the 
Strategic Petroleum Reserve Fill Suspension and Consumer Protection 
Act.
  What that does is it says to the President that he is not to fill the 
Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and that was something that the President 
had previously opposed. He was threatening to veto it until he realized 
that the increase in gas prices was so politically painful for both his 
administration and for his Members of Congress that he had no other 
choice but to finally relent and agree to sign it. There were still 25 
Republicans who voted against that bill.
  What the Strategic Petroleum Reserve Act is designed to do is to 
bring gas prices down in the short term. During the rest of this year, 
we expect that bill to affect gas prices in the short term.
  We have the Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act. That is a bill 
that will extend and expand tax incentives for renewable energy, the 
type of energy that we would like to go in the direction of, instead of 
the finite sources that the Republicans always talk about.
  What that bill would do is generate hundreds of thousands of green 
jobs, spur American innovation and business investment, and cut taxes 
for millions of Americans. What the provisions of that bill will do is 
preserve hundreds of thousands of good-paying, green-collar American 
jobs.

[[Page 12270]]

  A recent study showed that allowing the renewable energy incentives 
to expire would lead to about 116,000 jobs being lost in the wind and 
solar industries alone through the end of next year. Yet 159 
Republicans voted against that legislation. That's how latched to the 
oil industry they are.
  How about the OPEC and Big Oil companies accountability bill? We 
passed a bill that would combat record gas prices by authorizing 
lawsuits against oil cartel members for oil price-fixing as well as 
created an antitrust task force to crack down on oil companies that are 
engaged in anticompetitive behavior and market manipulation.

                              {time}  2215

  You still had 84 Republicans vote against that bill.
  We also passed legislation, historic legislation, Mr. Murphy, for the 
first time in 35 years we have passed legislation that will require the 
automobile manufacturing industry to increase fuel efficiency standards 
to 35 miles per gallon by 2020. That is the first congressional 
increase in more than three decades. Ninety-six Republicans voted 
against that legislation. It was signed into law on December 19, 2007, 
so we will over the long term see fuel efficiency standards improve, 
which, of course the automobile industry could have done years and 
years ago on their own. But, unfortunately, we had to cajole them along 
a little bit.
  There are two more bills I want to highlight, simply because of the 
shockingly large number of Republicans that voted against those as 
well.
  You have the Renewable Energy and Conservation Tax Act. That is the 
bill that included the repeal of this $14 billion in subsidies. It also 
would invest in clean and renewable energy and energy efficiency and 
also address a reduction in global warming. It included provisions that 
would generate, again, hundreds of thousands of green jobs by investing 
in solar energy and biodiesel jobs and protect an additional 75,000 
wind industry jobs. And 174 Republicans voted against that bill.
  Lastly, one of the things that we wanted to make sure we protected 
against when it came to our energy policy was price gouging, so we 
passed the Energy Price Gouging Prevention Act, because it is a little 
bit suspect that all of these retail establishments and all of the 
entire oil industry suddenly and dramatically all increase prices at 
the same time. What a coincidence.
  So we thought it was important in order to provide immediate relief 
to consumers to give the Federal Trade Commission the authority to 
investigate and punish people and entities that artificially inflate 
the price of energy, and we wanted to ensure that the Federal 
Government had the tools it needed to adequately respond to energy 
emergencies and prohibit price gouging, particularly like, for example, 
when you have natural disasters like my State faces which we often 
struggle with. And 140 Republicans voted against that bill.
  So it is just really important that we highlight these stark 
differences in our policy versus the Republicans, what we support and 
the actions that we have taken and what the other side supports. The 
other side is married to the oil industry, and we would like to move, 
again, in a new direction, so we can invest in renewable energy.
  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Ms. Wasserman Schultz, just to put it in 
real stark terms here, 2002 to 2008, the oil industry we are talking 
about here, goes from $6.5 billion in profit, that is pretty good, you 
are going to take that, that is a good year, to 2008, $36.9 billion in 
profit.
  We still haven't figured out why that is. Why is it that the oil 
industry and the drug industry are two of the most profitable 
industries in the world? Because they cornered the market, right? You 
have got to take that drug. You have got nowhere else to go. If that 
drug keeps you alive and nobody else makes that drug, you have got to 
buy that drug. If the only thing that gets you from point A to point B 
is the product that Exxon and Chevron and BP make, then they can charge 
whatever they want.
  So we can talk about the margins here. We can talk about producing a 
little more. But, in the end, the reason why they get to just basically 
decide whatever they want, they can make $6.5 billion one year and 
$36.9 billion the next year, it is up to them, because they know 
whatever they charge, we will pay, because we have no alternative. That 
minivan mom, that soccer mom, guess what? Nothing else fuels that car 
right now, except for the products that these guys produce.
  If I made a really good apple pie and I went out and everybody else 
that tried to grow some apple trees in their backyard, I whacked them 
down, I could charge whatever I wanted for that because nobody else 
could make that pie. That is what the Republicans are basically doing. 
Everybody else that tries to go out and plant some apple trees in their 
backyard to give an alternative to the big oil companies, they whack 
those trees down. Guess what? That apple pie is now about $5 a gallon, 
Ms. Wasserman Schultz.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. If you look on every issue, right, it is like we 
get hit on 9/11, the Taliban is housing them in Afghanistan, somehow we 
end up in Iraq. We have an energy problem. Drilling is up 67 percent. 
We have all this land and everything else, all these other areas. We 
got to keep drilling. That is the answer, when we know that it is these 
other things going on in the commodities market.
  We look at trying to reduce the cost of college education. It is like 
we will put the banks in charge of loaning the money to the kids. Or if 
we want to provide prescription drugs, I got an idea. We will have the 
taxpayer pay for it, and we won't do any negotiations with the drug 
companies at all.
  It is like they have a solution that doesn't address the current 
problem that we have at hand, Mr. Speaker. And what we are trying to 
say is we have solutions that will last more than a decade or two, and 
if they are wrong, we will switch them. But to come down and say drill, 
drill, drill, drill, drill. In ANWR, for example, it will reduce the 
cost of a gallon of gas by 1.8 cents per gallon of gas 20 years from 
now if we start drilling today. Totally off the mark.
  Mr. ALTMIRE. I think it is instructive, the gentleman talks about 
mistakes having been made on other issues. It is instructive when you 
think about the people who are making the arguments for how to solve 
the problems that we face today, let's take a look at what the track 
record is and how we got to where we are today. Who made the decisions 
that have led us to where we are today?
  I know I don't want to be partisan about this, but the facts are the 
facts. There are three reasons that gas prices have gone up, two of 
which we can control and one we can't. We can't control the increased 
demand in China and India and other countries in the world. It is a 
huge driving force. It is going to continue to get worse over time. It 
is going to continue to drive an increase.
  The other two factors, increased speculation in the market and 
manipulation of the price in the worldwide oil market. The gentlewoman 
from Florida talks about what this Congress is doing on that issue in 
regulating that market and moving towards a more fair system that is 
going to decrease the price per barrel upwards of $30. We are taking 
action. That is a second cause.
  But perhaps the biggest cause is the weak U.S. dollar. So let's take 
a look at why the dollar is so weak. Oil is traded in the worldwide 
market based on the dollar. We are paying more in this country. 
Obviously our currency is the U.S. dollar and we are paying more 
because of the weakness of the dollar which is at an all-time low, an 
historic low.
  Well, it is because of the economic policies of the past 8 years that 
have driven our economy and driven the price of the dollar nearly to 
the ground. And I would invite anyone to compare where the dollar was 
based on other worldwide currencies 8 years ago versus today.
  We have an enormous trade deficit which the gentleman and I deal with 
every day in our districts with the jobs that have been lost, and the 
trade deficit is at almost historic proportions.

[[Page 12271]]

That has led to a decrease in the dollar.
  But mostly the runaway spending of this Congress and the $3.5 
trillion in debt that this administration and the previous three 
Congresses rolled up on the American people have led to the economic 
conditions that drove the price of the dollar down, that have resulted 
in sky-high gas prices.
  So the exact same people who made the decisions that led to the 
crisis that we are in today now have their own recommended solutions. 
And I don't dispute their motives. I think they are in it for the same 
reason we are. They want to do the right thing. I just think they are 
wrong. I think that their course of action that they propose is not 
going to solve the problem, and in fact is going to lead to a worsening 
of the problem by furthering our dependence on oil, as we talked about.
  Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Murphy, I might need a little help with 
this so I can be bipartisan. Let's spread this out here. It is always 
better in the 30-Something Working Group when we give visual examples 
of what we are talking about.
  We walked through the agenda of the New Democratic Congress on our 
initiatives to try to affect the cost of energy in the short-term and 
the long-term.
  Here is a visible example. Next to here are the names of the entire 
Republican leadership, and here are the four major pieces of 
legislation that we have moved through the Congress. Not allowing OPEC 
to price fix, making sure that our constituents are not gouged by 
prices, ensuring that we invest in renewable energy and repealing those 
$14 billion in subsidies, and ensuring that we have energy security 
going into the future.
  There are no yeses on this entire grid, the entire Republican 
leadership. What is objectionable about making sure that we don't have 
price gouging when it comes to gasoline? Should we allow OPEC to fix 
prices? Is that okay? I am just not sure which of these bills was 
objectionable.
  It is one thing for them to say that we should do some other things 
as well, but if we are going to try work in a bipartisan spirit and 
approach this problem and find a solution together, voting no on 
anything that doesn't prop up the oil industry is just insensitive and 
callous and doesn't recognize that this is a real problem that is 
affecting Americans in a significant way.
  Thank you, Mr. Murphy. I would be happy to yield back to Mr. Murphy.
  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. You know, before I was joined by my 
illustrious colleagues here this evening, one of actually our more 
helpful colleagues on the other side was talking about words are one 
thing and actions are another. Words are one thing and votes are 
something else.
  Ms. Wasserman Schultz, you are pointing out when this comes down to 
it, when we had the chance to gather together and link arms and be one 
as Republicans and Democrats, our friends on the other side of the 
aisle didn't join us. There have been plenty of opportunities for that 
to happen, for us, as Mr. Ryan says, to do what our constituents want 
and put politics aside.
  As I said at the outset, the pumps don't care if you are a Republican 
or a Democrat. The pumps don't care if you voted for Chris Murphy or 
not. They are going to charge you the same thing one way or another.
  I think Mr. Altmire is right. Maybe they have the best intentions at 
heart. But it is a pretty simplistic solution to a pretty complex 
problem: Drill more, drill more. Again, you are just feeding the beast. 
You are continuing to perpetuate a monopoly on energy that offers no 
real competition.
  What you need is not competition between Exxon and Mobil. You need 
competition between oil and electric, between biodiesel and gasoline. 
That is what you need competition among. That is how you are going to 
solve this thing in the end.
  But so long as the solution to high oil prices is just more oil and 
nothing else, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, Mr. Ryan, you are not getting 
anywhere.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I think it is important, the American people are 
onto this. They have been dealing with this problem now for like 35 
years.
  Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Pretty much our whole lives.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Before we were even born. But they have been 
dealing with this issue of oil and gas and the Middle East and 
dictators and how do we do this and prop up this one and try to figure 
it out.
  In this whole scheme, I was watching a thing on Darfur last night. 
The only reason we couldn't get things done in Darfur is because China 
has oil in Sudan and we couldn't go in there because they were blocking 
things at the UN. Oil has become a major, major geopolitical and 
domestic problem in the United States of America. It has come to a 
head, and it is Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and the Democrats who are 
trying to move us off the dime and say long-term alternative energy is 
the investment. If we drilled in ANWR today, in 20 years you would save 
1.8 pennies per gallon of gas. We can't drill our way out of this 
thing.
  So if we don't start getting innovative and having a NASA-shoot-the-
moon project for alternative energy, we are going to be in the same 
spot a decade from now, two decades from now. Our constituents did not 
elect us to come down here and play politics with this.
  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Ryan, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, Mr. 
Altmire, I thank the Speaker again for allowing the 30-Something 
Working Group to come down to the floor again and share with our 
colleagues the ``New Direction'' mentality that we continue to preach, 
talk about, and vote for here on the floor of the House of 
Representatives.

                          ____________________