[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 12271-12276]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  2230
                  DEVELOP ENERGY IN THE UNITED STATES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hare). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is 
recognized for half the time before midnight.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate greatly the privilege to 
address you tonight on floor of the United States Congress, and as I 
listen to my colleagues talk about the energy situation that we have 
here in America, it's quite interesting to me that my colleagues would 
say well, we can't drill in ANWR because in 10 years we are going to 
still have some other energy issue.
  Are they looking for the silver bullet, I wonder? Do they insist that 
we can't do anything with regard to energy? We can sit here and deal 
with $4 gas? Unless we can fix $4 gas and make it $1 gas, we shouldn't 
do anything? I wonder what is the problem with the realistic approach 
to this that seems to be a barrier for my colleagues from the other 
side of the aisle?
  We know this, that there is a little over 10 billion barrels of oil 
in U.S. reserves, and we know that the United States Department of 
Energy produced a number about three days ago that showed there is 
about 10.4 billion barrels of oil in ANWR. If we open up ANWR, we will 
essentially and virtually double the oil reserve supplies for the 
United States of America if we tap into ANWR.
  Now, what kind of thinking person would say I would rather pay $4 for 
gas, or $5 for gas, or $6 or more dollars for gas before I would tap 
into 10.4 billion barrels of oil in a neighborhood up there that I 
would remind you, and I would remind the body, that in 1970, we were 
scheduled to go up to Alaska and drill for oil in the North Slope. I 
remember that very clearly, 1970.
  The idea was, we will build a pipeline from the North Slope, Mile 
Post Zero up there at Dead Horse access on the Arctic Ocean, and that 
pipeline will run from there all the way down there through the Port of 
Valdez in Alaska where they will then tanker that oil down to 
refineries along the coast of California and other points. That was 
1970.
  The same philosophical environmentalists that are blocking drilling 
in ANWR today, the ones that took the floor just a few moments ago that

[[Page 12272]]

said--where we shared--we dare not drill in ANWR because it's not going 
to solve all our problems are the ones that brought the lawsuit that 
brought the drilling that blocked the North Slope of Alaska in 1970.
  In those days, there was a long and intense court battle that finally 
got the environmental extremists out of the way. In 1972, they said, 
all right, there isn't any logical or rational or legal reason why you 
can't drill the North Slope of Alaska.
  So we went up and we started to punch holes in the North Slope of 
Alaska in 1972. In 1972 we started building a pipeline from the Arctic 
Ocean all the way down to the Port of Valdez. I don't actually know how 
far that is, but I know that there was a right-of-way for alongside the 
pipeline that went from Fairbanks 600 miles north. It's more miles than 
that from Dead Horse access on the Arctic Ocean on down to the Port of 
Valdez.
  Even though the environmentalists in court blocked drilling in ANWR 
for that period of time for 2 years, even though we look back on that--
well first, at the time, I thought how can the environmentalists be so 
effective as to shut down access to the American energy supply for two 
full years without a logical, rational or legal argument?
  Well they did so, and now I look back on that, and I think how in the 
world did we resolve issue in two short years by going to court between 
1970 and will 1972 to clear the environmental extremists out of the way 
and go in and drill in ANWR where all these extremists ideas were that 
if we punch our drill in the North Slope, if we punch holes in the 
North Slope, there will be oil flooding all over the permafrost, the 
tundra will be destroyed. They will be driving bulldozers through the 
tundra, and you can never put that environment back again.
  It's a careful balance that Mother Nature has, and the caribou will 
all drown in crude oil. There won't be any wolves left, and it will 
just be a terrible economic or terrible environmental catastrophe. That 
was what they predicted in 1970.
  In 1972 we started building the pipeline and building the right-of-
way and drilling the wells on the North Slope of Alaska, identical in 
the environmental component that's there, to ANWR today. In 3 years we 
built the pipeline, we built the right-of-way road along the pipeline. 
We punched the wells in. We got the wells up and got them running. We 
hooked them in and began to transfer that crude oil down through that 
long pipeline down to Valdez and into other parts of the United States 
where it was refined. That got accomplished in 3 years.
  And now, Mr. Speaker, the very people that sit over on this side of 
the aisle tonight that have blocked the drilling on the North Slope 
back 30-some years ago, and are blocking the drilling in ANWR today 
say, well, gee in 10 years, we still will have a problem with enough 
oil for the United States of America, and you will not solve this 
problem, the whole problem. You will not solve it in perpetuity so, 
therefore, you ought not do anything in Alaska to fix it.
  What kind of a Nation would be foolish enough to set aside half of 
its crude oil reserves when gas is 4 bucks because of some myopic idea 
that you should not punch a hole down through the permafrost when you 
have proven 38 years ago--I should actually say 36 years ago--that we 
could drill wells through the permafrost, we could drill them on the 
North Slope of Alaska.
  We could transfer that oil out of there into the terminal, start it 
in at Mile Post Zero in the Alaska pipeline, that 51-inch diameter line 
that runs from there on down to Valdez and pump all that crude oil, and 
we have done since 1972, 36 years.
  If there was an environmental problem, I guarantee you that people on 
this side of the aisle lament anything that will lower the price of 
energy, would have told us that somebody spilled a gallon of crude oil 
someplace up there near the Arctic Circle. But have we heard them say 
anything about a single gallon? No, we have not.
  I know it does happen. Occasionally, there will be a leak in the 
pipeline, a little rust hole, leak or something. They will go in and 
swab up the oil off the ice, weld the hole shut, patch the pipeline in 
and everything goes on.
  But if there was a serious environmental problem, these would be the 
first people that would let us know. I am telling you, they don't have 
an argument. If you have one, stand up. I will recognize you. But, of 
course you won't, because you don't have an argument.
  But you say to the American people, it's people like Louie Gohmert 
that wants to see $4 gas--no--Louie wants to punch a hole down there 
and suck this oil up out of the ground and lower the price of energy.
  I would be real proud to recognize Mr. Louie Gohmert for as much time 
as he would consume.
  Mr. GOHMERT. I thank my friend from Iowa for yielding.
  Of course, Iowa is going through some tough times right now and our 
hearts and prayers go out to the folks there.
  Energy is a huge problem around the country. My friend from Iowa was 
talking about the production of oil in Alaska, and it's amazing, but so 
many people were saying back in the days when there was talk of 
building a pipeline up to Prudhoe Bay, that if that pipeline is built, 
it will destroy completely the last 2,700 head of caribou that exist in 
the area, that they just would not be able to exist in that area any 
longer.
  Well, the pipeline got built, and, as it turns out, those 2,700 head 
of caribou found that when the oil, warm, comes out of the ground and 
goes through the pipeline, the pipeline is warm.
  We have subsequently found that now, when the caribou want to go on a 
date with each other, they will invite each other to come to the 
pipeline. Apparently the pipeline actually makes them a little bit 
amorous. Now, all these years later, we are up to 30,000 head of 
caribou.
  Now, I grew up in Texas, and we used to hear, a few decades ago, 
that, my goodness, if they start building these deep-water rigs off the 
coast of Texas, it will destroy fishing in the Gulf of Mexico from now 
on. That's what we heard.
  Now, if you want to go fishing, deep-water fishing in the gulf, your 
best bet is to go out to one of those drilling rigs, the platforms, 
because they have acted as an artificial reef. We have got all this 
additional fish and aqua particular life around those platforms. It's 
just further evidence that man and animal, fish, the environment, can 
work together to each other's good.
  Now, I know the rules are you are not allowed to recognize people in 
the gallery, and I won't do that, but I can tell you that the students 
in Henderson Middle School know that people and oil and gas drilling 
rigs can actually survive together.
  People in Nacogdoches, people like the Reynolds family, they know. 
You can survive in areas where there are drilling rigs. Not only that, 
you can proliferate and do well. So in my district there in east Texas, 
as someone said here yesterday from east Texas, we kept the military 
afloat in gasoline in World War II from east Texas, the east Texas oil 
and gas field.
  Many don't realize the Germans potentially could have driven us to 
the sea if they had not run out of gasoline during the Battle of the 
Bulge, but they did run out. That is something that we have got to 
constantly keep a weather eye on, and I am proud to represent a 
district that understands the seriousness of having the energy we need 
and that $4 a gallon gasoline headed to $5 a gallon gasoline is a 
travesty for people.
  I have got hardworking union people in east Texas. I have got 
hardworking folks in all kinds of jobs who are struggling to get by. 
This Congress, for the last 18 months, has done nothing to help produce 
more of our own energy.
  I am so grateful to have a friend like my friend, Mr. King, from 
Iowa, who understands that. I am proud to represent people like the 
students from Henderson Middle School who understand these concepts and 
understand we can work together for the greater good of mankind of the 
United States of America, of aquatic life, plant life, and all be 
better for it.

[[Page 12273]]

  I appreciate my friend from Iowa yielding, and I appreciate the 
effort you are making to educate America on exactly what we can do to 
help ourselves if the majority party in this Congress will allow us to 
help ourselves.
  With that, I yield back to my friend, Mr. King.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Texas, and I appreciate 
his perspective.
  I will point out that there are three branches of government, there 
is the executive, the legislative and the judicial branch of 
government.
  I really only know of one person in the history of this country that 
has felt a compulsion to legislate, found himself on the bench as a 
judge, and decided that the constitutionally appropriate thing to do 
was to walk away from that judgeship and run for the United States 
Congress and come here to legislate. That's Congressman Louie Gohmert 
from east Texas.
  I am proud to call him a friend and serve on the Judiciary Committee 
with him. I appreciate something that he brings to the table, a unique 
personality that's never been matched in the United States Congress and 
also the judgment of a judge that makes him a good listener and an 
analyst of the law and one who thinks deeply into the long-term 
ramifications of the decisions that we make. I look often to the 
prudence of the gentleman from Texas, and I appreciate him coming to 
the floor and offering his remarks for the energy situation here in the 
United States.
  I said some year or 2 or 3 years ago that what is the solution for $2 
gas? That's $3 gas. What's the solution for $3 gas? That's $4 gas.
  Well, we are truly here at $4 gas, and that sounded like an 
outrageous kind of a number to put out back at that time. The reason I 
said that was as gas gets higher, we are willing to do more things to 
provide energy for the people in this country.
  But when I sit here, and I think of the votes we have put up here on 
this floor, and I think of the decisions that have been made--and about 
3 years ago, there was a bill on floor of the House of Representatives 
that said let's drill ANWR. I can remember there was a letter that was 
produced by Republicans that had 10 or 12 signatures on it that said we 
will join with all the Democrats, and we are going to block all 
drilling in ANWR.
  We are not going to let that happen because of some idea about when 
the North Slope was opened up for drilling, there was some kind of an 
implicit promise that we wouldn't tap into the rest of the oil up there 
in that part of the world. That doesn't make any sense to me, I cannot 
rationalize that.
  But I remember that letter that had 10 or 12 signatures on it, and 
the 10 or 12 Republicans that said ``no'' was enough to join with all 
the Democrats that said ``no.'' Had we done that, we would have more 
than a million barrels of oil a day coming down here into the United 
States to be poured into this marketplace, which would make a 
significant difference in the cost of energy in the United States of 
America.

                              {time}  2245

  But the 10 or 12 Republicans that were on the wrong side joined with 
all of the Democrats on the wrong side, and we didn't drill ANWR. And 
the rationale was pretty weak. I have had people say you want to tap 
into 2,000 acres in ANWR, what does that mean.
  Well, there are 19.6 million acres in ANWR. And 2,000 acres out of 
that would be the equivalent of a little postage stamp stuck in the 
corner of a football field. That is 2,000 acres in 19.6 million acres 
of ANWR.
  And so if that is the part that is going to be a footprint to develop 
half of the oil reserves in the United States of America, and they are 
asking me this question, how much is an acre, Mr. King? So I say well, 
it is 208 feet by 208 feet, that is 43,580 square feet. That is, let me 
see, oh, about a football field. So it is about 2,000 football fields 
on 19.6 million acres. That is the equivalent of a postage stamp in the 
corner of a football field. That is all it is.
  On top of that, we get access to these oil fields by ice roads on top 
of the frozen tundra, and then sinking wells on a work-over pad by 
which we do directional drilling. We pull a lot of that oil out into 
one single collection, and collect it in the collection tubes that go 
into the terminal at milepost zero, Dead Horse Access. That is what it 
is all about.
  Can you imagine, Mr. Speaker, if you flew over that at 5,000 feet, a 
football field, you are looking for a postage stamp that is the same 
color as the grass, could you see that from 5,000 feet? Could you see 
that postage stamp from a thousand feet or 500 feet? Could you see it 
if you walked around on the football field looking for that postage 
stamp? I will submit not.
  I will submit further that I can take the most extreme 
environmentalist on this side of the aisle, and I could put him in a 
Black Hawk helicopter and fly him around the North Slope today where we 
have developed oil fields, and I could ask them, tell me when we are 
over the oil field. Tell me what you see that violates your sense of 
intrusion upon this pristine environment that nobody goes to see. I 
challenge that not one of you environmentalists could point down out of 
the window of that Black Hawk and say, There is an oil well, there is a 
oil rig, there is a oil field. Oh, it violates my sense of what Mother 
Nature is all about. Not one, Mr. Speaker, because when you look over 
the oil fields of the North Slope, there is not a single derrick down 
there. Not one structure sticking up in the air 230 or 240 feet that is 
set to drill for oil.
  There is not, as I could find, not a single pump jack pumping that 
oil out of the ground looking like an oil field, which doesn't offend 
my sensibilities, by the way, but maybe offends some of you over there. 
And let me know why that is the case, and I will yield to you. But no, 
you don't see any of that. And the reason why is because the wells are 
underground. The wells are drilled. They don't have pump jacks sitting 
above the ground, they have submersible pumps way down in the casing at 
the level of the oil.
  The collector tubes don't even show where they are, and I don't know 
if they lay on the ground or if they are slightly subterranean, but 
they collect the oil that goes into the tanks at the terminal at Dead 
Horse Access, milepost zero, on the Alaska pipeline. And there it 
gathers it together and it sends it down that 51-inch pipeline down to 
the Port Valdez.
  Now I cannot understand why a people that is dependent upon energy, a 
people whose economy is run by energy, a people who sit on billions of 
barrels of oil, would somehow draw some kind of a moral position that 
even though no one goes up to the North Slope, and if they went up 
there they wouldn't know what they are looking at, and if they saw it 
they wouldn't be offended by it, and it would be environmentally 
friendly, all of those things, but somehow we have some kind of a 
Mother Nature religious aversion into tapping into American energy. Why 
is that, Mr. Speaker?
  When the 110th Congress convened, I did not know, I really thought 
there was a sense of conscious and goodwill and a way that we could 
move forward with the American economy and the American people. I could 
not at that time have believed that the core of the Democrat Caucus in 
this Congress sincerely believed that energy costs should go up no 
matter what it takes, shut down the drilling in ANWR, shut down the 
drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf, don't let any drilling happen 
in the non-national park public lands in America, don't do any of that 
because by blocking all of that, we are blocking the delivery of energy 
to the economy of this dynamic, robust free country that we have. Why? 
What rationale, can there be.
  Well, first of all they hate capitalism. They don't want to see 
prosperity, and they want to see energy cost more. I am convinced that 
this regal Pelosi Congress wants to see energy cost more.
  What is it that the regal Pelosi Congress likes better than $2 gas, 
$3 gas. What do they like better than $3 gas, $4 gas. You've got it. 
You should be happier now, and I know you will

[[Page 12274]]

happier yet when it is $5 gas. This is the drill-nothing Congress. This 
is the develop no energy Congress. This is a drive the energy prices up 
Congress. This is the Congress that is punishing the American economy. 
They know that an economy requires energy, and the more expensive it is 
the less economic activity that we will have and the more it will slow 
down. When it slows down, we will burn less energy. When we burn less 
energy, there will be less greenhouse gases that go into the 
atmosphere.
  And then, and this requires an article of faith, the leap is if we 
assume less energy, there will be less greenhouse gases and then there 
will be less global warming.
  Now there are two reasons why that is a bad idea. First of all, 95 
percent of the greenhouse gases are created by nature. The other part 
is the 5 percent of the greenhouse gases that are created by man cannot 
be 100 percent controlled by man. Reasons for that are the Chinese and 
the Indian economies are growing. They are going to burn more coal and 
release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and they are going to 
create more greenhouse gases, and they don't care. They don't care 
because their people are hungry and they need economic development. 
They are not dying because the planet is 1 degree too hot, they are 
dying because the planet is short of calories and protein for them that 
keeps them alive, and it is short of health care. So they know what 
their priorities are.
  Here we are running this myopic agenda that we are going to make 
energy more expensive and we are going to see $5 gasoline and $6 gas, 
and people will park their cars and grandmothers in Iowa are going to 
ride their bicycles 10 miles to town through a blizzard. I mean, they 
are not going to do that. We know they are not. But the people in San 
Francisco and New York and Boston don't know that. But I'm here to tell 
you all, that's the case. They are not going to park their cars and 
ride their bicycles to town in January in Iowa. It is not going to save 
the planet. It will keep grandmother home. She will not be living this 
life to the fullest that she could. Millions of Americans will not be 
living this life to the fullest that they could.
  And when you bring your myopic, Goddess of Gaia faith-based approach, 
and I mean this from a nature environmentalist extremist perspective to 
this economy, you drive up the cost of energy and you slow down the 
activity of our economy and impoverish the people of America and you 
think you are going to save the planet and it is all worth it.
  Here is what it is. It is not worth it in the first place. And the 
second place is you are not going to save the planet. And you are not 
going to do that because the science doesn't support you in that. And 
if it did support you in the idea that if we shut down America's 
emissions of greenhouse gases, we don't affect the Indian and the 
Chinese and the other growing economies' emissions of greenhouse gases, 
and so we are here in the United States shouting out into a 
thunderstorm trying to solve a problem.
  It won't work, it can't work, it is not rational. There is no 
scientific base that upholds it. And on top of that, there is not the 
sociology that says human nature will support the kind of approach that 
you bring to this. Drive up the cost of energy and slow the emissions 
of greenhouse gases, and if you do that, the planet will what, is it 
going to cool? No, it isn't going to cool. It might not increase in its 
temperature quite so much, but we can't prove it and we don't have a 
model that says so. In fact, our models say we can only affect 5 
percent of the greenhouse gases if all humanity joins together, and we 
are a small percentage of the emissions of the entire planet. And even 
if we controlled them all, the Indians and Chinese are going to 
increase their emissions of CO2 and greenhouse gases.
  So why go through this exercise to unilaterally disarm the economy of 
the United States so we can't compete around the globe economically 
with free trade, militarily, culturally, and politically. What is it 
about America that you don't like over on this side of the aisle? Why 
is it the blame-America-first crowd is carrying the agenda in this 
United States Congress?
  Why is it that the constituents of Iowa and Nebraska and Kansas and 
all of the way out to the left coast and all of the way to the right 
coast, why are they paying $4 for gas with this driven-up price of 
energy, and why have you blocked the drilling in our non-national park 
public lands, and why have you blocked the drilling on the Outer 
Continental Shelf where we know there are 406 trillion cubic feet of 
natural gas out there, coupled with the oil that naturally goes with it 
that we can't tap into to drive down the cost of fertilizer, to drive 
down the cost of energy, to lower the cost of BTUs, to add to the 
overall supply of energy in the United States of America? Why can't we 
do that?
  It is because you have a religious belief and it is kind of like the 
laws of your nature and the laws of your God say that we should cut 
down on greenhouse gases because of this belief that, and say religious 
belief, and I have strong religious beliefs. But sometimes that 
religious belief is defined as something that you say you believe in 
that you have no scientific basis for.
  If you believe in this global warming God, and you cannot stand up 
and defend a scientific basis for a belief in a global warming God, 
then it is a religious belief. It is a religious belief that is 
unfounded. It is one that is unfounded on science and one that can't be 
proven.
  We have watched this planet. Yes, it is a little warmer than it was 
20 years ago. But if you look at the data, it might be cooler than it 
was 2 years ago. We had a long winter, we had a late spring. Most of my 
constituents thought global warming would be a good thing.
  And by the way, the beginnings of this global warming debate began 
here in Washington in August years ago when not many of the office 
buildings and the ones they had the hearings in were not air 
conditioned and we had a Ph.D. come out here from Iowa who testified 
that global warming was an impending disaster, and the Members of 
Congress were sitting in a hearing room with temperatures approaching 
100 degrees and humidity approaching 100 degrees, and as the sweat 
dripped off them, it was not hard to convince them global warming was a 
problem. We have one of those scientists who advocated it was an 
impending ice age in 1970.
  He cited his scientific ability to predict to us that we should 
figure out a way to gird our loins and get ready for the next ice age. 
That was 1970. So some of us girded our loins, and some of us just went 
to work, and we went on and realized that God runs this planet, not 
man. In his time he will let us know and we will do what we need to 
adapt. And in 1970 the impending ice age didn't come. The idea that it 
was going to be here went.
  And so here we are in 2008. And guess what, Mr. Speaker, that 
scientist that was a part of the Time magazine prediction that we had 
an impending ice age is today a scientist that says you can't avoid it, 
we have an impending global warming period of time, and it is going to 
happen and here is what you need to do, shut down your economy and 
greenhouse gas emissions, don't produce energy, and somehow or another 
we will help avoid, dodge this bullet which is the idea that the Earth 
could be a couple of degrees warmer. Some of the ice could melt and the 
sea level could go up a couple of a tenths of a foot or so.
  Mr. Speaker, when I asked the USGS people what is sea level, well, 
they have an elevation that they pegged by satellite, but they couldn't 
really peg sea level because it goes up and down. It is awful hard to 
catch. The tides go in and out. Wind stacks water. And if you go to New 
Orleans, and I asked them what is going up and what is going down here, 
and what is settling and what is swelling up, they don't know. They 
don't know what the elevations are in New Orleans, Mr. Speaker, and yet 
we have scientists telling us that sea level is going to rise by a 
certain amount and that is going to start to swamp the coast land 
areas, but we don't know what sea level is.

[[Page 12275]]

  So we do have an energy situation in America, and the energy 
situation is this: $4 gas; $4 gas. And the people in my district are 
buying gas. And they are paying the price, and they are paying 18.4 
cents a gallon Federal, and they are paying more than that for State 
gas tax. They look and they expect that all of that money is going to 
go to road construction and road maintenance to make sure that they 
have a good transportation route. That's why they pay that gas tax.
  So you are at 42-point-something cents a gallon in my State, but I 
can tell you for sure 18.4 cents of that is Federal gas tax dollars, my 
constituents believe, Mr. Speaker, that we are converting all of those 
dollars in that gas tax into road construction and road maintenance, 
making sure that they have a good transportation route.

                              {time}  2300

  Users fees, drive on the road, pay the tax. All right. We're good 
with that. We're user people, and we like user fees, and we know it 
takes money to run the government. There's nothing more appropriate 
than a user fee, a per gallon gas tax.
  The problem, Mr. Speaker, is that most of the money that my 
constituents, and, in fact, all constituents in America, the Americans 
that buy the gas and pay the gas tax, most of the money that they spend 
does not go towards road construction or road maintenance. No, Mr. 
Speaker, it gets diverted off on these other things, like, for example, 
3 percent of that 18.4 cents goes to trails, to build bike trails. So 
apparently we don't have bicycles riding down the highway.
  Now I kind of like it that the bikes are out there riding doing their 
thing. But I'm not so sure that's that a good idea to tax the people 
that drive cars so the folks that ride bikes have a place to ride them.
  Second thing is, it takes 28 percent of that 18.4 cents of gas tax, 
28 percent to meet the environmental and the archaeological 
requirements in order to build new roads and maintain the ones we have: 
28 percent.
  And, Mr. Speaker, it takes another 17 percent to subsidize the mass 
transit in the United States. And so, right there, Mr. Speaker, is the 
answer to the question that I've asked many times, and that is, how is 
it that the constituents of Speaker Pelosi, of the chairman of the Ways 
and Means Committee, Charlie Rangel, of the chairman of the Finance 
Committee, Mr. Barney Frank, how is it that their constituents let them 
off the hook? Aren't they angry that they're driving up the cost of 
gas? Don't they get mad when they have to pay $4 for gas?
  How is it that somebody in San Francisco or New York or Boston or 
Washington, DC, for that matter, can have the patience to spend $4 for 
gas and not hold their Congressman or their Congresswoman accountable 
if they're the ones that are pushing up the price?
  Well, now, here's a piece of the answer, Mr. Speaker, and that's 
this. Of the 18.4 cents of Federal gas tax dollars, 17 percent of that 
goes into mass transit funding. Seventeen percent. That means that if 
you pull into the gas station in Iowa, and you squeeze the nozzle and 
you pump a gallon of gas into your car, and that's all you can afford, 
you only have 4 bucks. You're going to pay 18.4 cents in tax for 
Federal, 20 some percent State. Of the 18.4 cents in gas tax that you 
pay, 17 percent of that money goes to fund the mass transit.
  So, if you're riding the cable car in San Francisco, you get a cheap 
ticket because it's funded by the folks in my district and across 
America that are buying gas.
  And if you jump on the El in Chicago you get a cheap ticket because 
it's funded by the folks in my district and across America that are 
buying gas.
  If you jump on the subway in Charlie Rangel's district in New York 
and you ride it, you get a cheap ticket because that's subsidized by 
the people all across America that are buying gas.
  And if you go into Barney Frank's district and you jump on, I don't 
know what they call it, the subway, the Big Dig, the major 
multibillion-dollar boondoggle and you buy a ticket to ride along on 
that thing, you get a cheap ticket because it's subsidized by the folks 
all across America that are paying 4 bucks for gas.
  And, Mr. Speaker, if you go out here outside this Capitol building 
and you walk a little block over and a block down and you get into the 
Metro on South Capitol, and you ride over to Falls Church, Virginia, 
that's going to cost you about a buck and a quarter, and that buck and 
a quarter is a cheap ticket that's subsidized by all the folks across 
America that are paying 4 bucks for gas.
  The constituents of those Members of Congress that are driving up the 
cost of energy, the regal Speaker Pelosi, the Chairman of the Ways and 
Means Committee, Mr. Rangel, the Chairman of the Finance Committee, Mr. 
Frank, all of them, their constituents are riding to work, going into 
town, riding around on mass transit that is 17 percent of the Federal 
gas tax dollar, that's subsidized by the people that are buying gas.
  Why aren't they angry? They don't care, Mr. Speaker. They don't care 
because they got a buck and a quarter from South Capitol to Falls 
Church. They've got a cheap ticket, a cheap ticket that's subsidized by 
the people that are paying for expensive gas. And that's why they're 
not feeling the pressure.
  But I can tell you, even though my constituents are utterly polite 
and respectful about all this, I can feel the pressure because I'm one 
of them. It cost me $41.42 to fill up my tank the other day at $3.85 a 
gallon.
  So here, Mr. Speaker, is the solution. This, Mr. Speaker, is the 
energy pie chart. Now, this might seem like it's very simple, and 
actually it is, although, to approach this concept seems to be a little 
complicated.
  Energy production in the United States of America, for 2007, well, 
I'll take the position, Mr. Speaker, that it's about all the energy. 
It's all interrelated, whether it's nuclear or hydroelectric, 
geothermal, biomass, motor gasoline, diesel, other petroleum, natural 
gas, coal, whatever it might be, if all of the energy in the United 
States is interrelated, and if you raise the cost of one form of 
energy, it's going to affect the cost of the other kinds of energy. And 
consequently, and correspondingly, if you drive the price down of one 
kind of energy, you'll lower the price of all kinds of energy because 
it's all interrelated.
  So I've taken the trouble to build this chart. And I can't tell you 
how difficult it actually was. It should have been a simple no-brainer. 
It's not. But here's the energy pie chart. We produced 72.1 quadrillion 
Btus of energy in the United States last year. That's 72 followed by, I 
think, 15 zeros. Three, six, 9, 12, 15. 72 quadrillion Btus. It's more 
important, I think, to think of it in terms of the proportionality of 
it.
  This is all the energy that we produced in America. Now, the 
percentages are on here. 27 percent was natural gas, 32\1/2\ percent 
was coal, nuclear was almost 12 percent, hydroelectric 3.4, other 
versions, geothermal, wind, solar, fuel ethanol is a little smaller, a 
lot smaller than you would think. It's three-quarters of a percent of 
the overall production in America. Biodiesel, one one-hundredth of a 
percent. Biomass, 4 percent. That could be the people burning wood and 
the methane, et cetera, that comes out of there. Gas was only 8.29 
percent of our overall production.
  The list goes on. You can see it here, Mr. Speaker. Now, that's 
energy production.
  What I've done is, Mr. Speaker, taken this pie chart of the energy 
pie, I'll call it, and I cut this out so that I could put it on top of 
the energy production, or the energy consumption in America, so you can 
see how this works in just a moment.
  All right. This, Mr. Speaker, is the energy consumption chart in 
America. And the outside circle, and I'll kind of line them up here a 
little bit; the outside circle is the energy that we consumed. 
Actually, I think I might be able to do it this way.
  This is all, Mr. Speaker, the energy that we consumed in America last 
year. Energy consumption, United States, 2007, 101.4 quadrillion Btus.

[[Page 12276]]

Number down here, 101, comma and the equivalent of 15 zeros out.
  Now, we're dealing with 72 quadrillion there, 101 there. So let's 
just think, Mr. Speaker, in terms of we produced 72 percent of the 
energy that we consumed in 2007. And this is a picture of the 
consumption, this round spot here is a picture of the production. This 
circle is smaller than this circle. That's kind of like Energy 101, 
probably the first time that that idea has arrived on the floor the 
Congress, Mr. Speaker.
  And so you look at the percentages of the overall consumption, and 
you see natural gas is 23 percent, and we produce 27\1/2\ percent of 
all the natural gas that we consume, but it's 23 percent of the overall 
Btu picture here.
  Coal, 22 percent, nuclear, 8.29 percent, hydroelectric, 2.4, smaller 
pieces of energy here, including ethanol, biodiesel, wind, .31 percent. 
Not very much. We're working on this.
  By the way, I do represent the number 1 renewable energy producing 
congressional district in America, and so we're not without knowledge 
on this subject matter.
  Gas, 17.44 percent of the overall Btu consumption in America. And 
here in the red we have the diesel fuel and heating oil at 8.84 
percent, kerosene jet fuel here, 3.3 percent and other kinds of 
petroleum, asphalt and that kind of thing, almost 10 percent.
  So, what do we need to do, Mr. Speaker?
  Well, here's a way to approach this thing from my view. The small 
circle is energy production. The big circle is energy consumption. And 
so you don't have to be a Harvard M.B.A. or, let me say, a rocket 
surgeon, to be able to calculate this, Mr. Speaker. The inside circle, 
which is energy production, needs to grow to the size of the outside 
circle, which is energy consumption.
  Yes, we could maybe add another piece to this energy production pie 
called energy conservation that will help us grow the size of this 
inner circle to get it to be the size of the outer circle. But however 
we do this, we're producing about a little more than 72 percent of the 
energy that we're consuming. And so we can stand here on the floor of 
Congress, until all Hades freezes over and talk about this piece of 
energy and that piece of energy, and somebody's wrong because they want 
to drill ANWR and somebody else is wrong because they don't want to 
drill the Outer Continental Shelf; somebody else is wrong because they 
think ethanol is a good idea, or biodiesel's a good idea, or they could 
even make the ridiculous argument that somebody's wrong because they 
think that we ought to dramatically expand our nuclear.
  And, Mr. Speaker, we should dramatically expand our nuclear 
production of electricity. That is the single most effective thing we 
can do, cut down on the emissions of greenhouse gases, and replace the 
consumption of other energies and allow those other energies to be used 
for other purposes. We can produce a lot of energy with nuclear.
  But in the end, it's this. I'll go right around the circle. Natural 
gas, drill the Outer Continental Shelf, drill the non national park 
public lands, open up the natural gas production in America, the place 
where we have enough natural gas to heat every home in America for the 
next 150 years. Get the slice of the pie in production as big as the 
slice of the pie in consumption on natural gas.
  We go over here to coal. Why in the world can't we produce and burn 
more coal to add to the overall size of the energy pie? Yes, we can. 
And we should do that, and we should do that until it's no longer cost 
effective as competing against these other signs, other components of 
energy.
  Nuclear. I talked about the nuclear. Here's the overall percentage of 
our energy production in nuclear, which happens to be 11.66 percent. 
But it needs to be a bigger piece of our energy consumption, and we can 
broaden that out.
  You can see how these pieces of the pie come out to the edge of the 
circle and they get wider. We do that with ethanol, we do it with 
biodiesel, we do it with wind, we do it with biomass.
  We can produce more gasoline, Mr. Speaker, and we can produce more 
diesel fuel and more jet fuel and we can produce more natural gas. 
There is no component in this energy pie that we cannot produce more 
of. And if we grow the size of the energy production pie to meet or 
exceed the size of the energy consumption pie, we have then solved the 
problem of energy dependence on Middle Eastern oil, on foreign energy.
  Mr. Speaker, we can do this. We should do this. We must do this. And 
any idea that says that we should strike off of our list of options any 
component, and you will hear almost every source of energy vetoed and 
opposed by Members of the other side of the aisle. Some will stand up 
and say, no more nuclear. We will not do any more nuclear plants.
  Some will say, can't drill in ANWR because 36, 38 years ago, somebody 
said, well, we're not going to ever drill ANWR. That's our deal.
  And somebody else will say we can't drill the Outer Continental Shelf 
because people sit on the beach in Florida will figure out that there 
must be a drill rig out there 199 miles away.
  Mr. Speaker, I will tell you, I talked to three children in Lineville 
today. They're down on the border with Missouri and Iowa.

                              {time}  2315

  And if they stand with their back to Missouri and they look north, 
it's 200 miles to the Minnesota border. And for them to say, I can't 
have a drill rig up there on the Minnesota line because it offends my 
idea of sightseeing with my back to Missouri 200 miles from there is as 
ridiculous as the people on the beach in Florida saying you can't have 
a drill rig 200 miles offshore.
  No, Mr. Speaker. There is a reason, and more like an excuse. And my 
father taught me a little bit about that. He said there's a difference 
between reasons and excuses. There are all kinds of excuses for not 
developing energy. I can't find a single reason, Mr. Speaker.
  Unless you like $4 gas, unless you like $5 gas, and unless you like 
expensive energy, expensive energy shuts down our economy. You shut 
down our economy, it uses less energy; if it uses less energy, it emits 
less greenhouse gas; if you emits less greenhouse gas, somehow or 
another in this fantasyland world where you're out there in Pa-la-la-
losi land, you're going to save the planet if you shut down the economy 
is the only rationale that's there. It's weak and it's unfounded, Mr. 
Speaker; and we've got to open this energy for the American people.
  And with that, I thank you for your indulgence.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

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