[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 12369-12370]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             ENERGY CRISIS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, I don't think I'll take the whole 
5 minutes tonight because I'm going to join Mr. Westmoreland of Georgia 
in a special 1 hour order on energy in just a few minutes. But I would 
like to say, during the 5 minutes that I have, that another week has 
gone by in the Congress of the United States and we have taken no 
action in dealing with the energy crisis that faces America today.
  The price of gasoline is well over $4 in most areas, and in some 
areas it's up closer to $4.50. Diesel fuel is over $4.50 a gallon, and 
the truckers across this country are suffering, and they've even 
demonstrated here in Washington, D.C.
  And it's not just the energy problem that we have to deal with, it's 
the effect that the energy problem has on other commodities, such as 
food and other equipment that we need to keep this economy moving 
forward.
  The price of food is going to go up. It's going to have tremendous 
inflationary pressure on every family in this country if we don't 
address this problem and address it quickly. I know some of my 
colleagues say, well, you know, if we started drilling for oil in the 
ANWR today, it would take 10 years before we would get that oil to 
market. Well, I disagree; I think it would be a lot sooner than that. 
But the sooner we start, the quicker we will have that oil at our 
refineries.
  We also could drill off the Continental Shelf and get another couple 
million barrels of oil a day. And that may take a little bit of time, 
but the sooner we start, the better.
  The other thing we have to consider is we need more refineries to 
refine

[[Page 12370]]

that oil. We haven't built a refinery, I think, in this country for the 
past, what, 30 years? And we need that capacity in order to get this 
oil transitioned into gasoline and diesel fuel for the people to use in 
this country.

                              {time}  1800

  To sit back like we have and not do anything over the past weeks and 
months, watching the gas prices go up and watching people suffering, in 
my opinion, is just unconscionable. Yet, my colleagues, we really 
haven't done a thing.
  I reach out to my colleagues on the Democrats' side of the aisle. 
You're in the majority and we're in the minority, but we all understand 
we have a crisis facing this country. We need to work together to 
explore, to get the oil that we have in our country to market as 
quickly as possible. We also have as much as a 500-year supply of 
natural gas, a clean-burning fuel that we could get to market if we 
could get it out of the ground, and we can do it in an environmentally 
safe way, and we can extract the oil in an environmentally safe way.
  If we were talking to Americans all across the country tonight and if 
we said, ``do you think gas prices are too high?'' they would all say, 
``Yes.'' If we said, ``would you mind if we drilled in this country and 
in an environmentally safe way to get oil out of the ground to lower 
your gas prices?'' you'd get 80-90 percent to say, ``Yes.'' If you 
asked them ``what about the ANWR?'' they'd say, ``Where's the ANWR?'' 
Most people aren't aware that it's a very small part of Alaska which is 
three times the size of Texas.
  We need to move toward energy independence. We have the ability to be 
completely energy-independent from Saudi Arabia, from Venezuela, from 
Mexico, from Canada, from any country in the world. We can be 
independent if we work together, but we haven't done that.
  Many of my colleagues are saying, ``Well, we're concerned about the 
environment.'' We all want to transition to new technologies, to new 
ways of getting energy so that people can have clean-burning fuel, but 
in the meantime, while we're doing that, we must realize that we're 
having a terrible, devastating impact on our economy by not taking 
action.
  So I would just like to say to my colleagues, before I get together 
with Mr. Westmoreland for this 1-hour special order, let's work 
together. The American people are begging us. If you don't believe it, 
go to any gas pump in the morning or tonight and ask them. They're 
begging us to do something about the exorbitant fuel prices which are 
not only affecting their getting to and from work but that are also 
affecting their ability to buy groceries at the supermarket and that 
are affecting every other commodity. It's going to severely hamper and 
hurt this economy if we don't work together very quickly to get the job 
done.
  Now, I believe that if we listen to the American people that 
Democrats and Republicans can work together, and we can come up with a 
plan to extract these vital, essential minerals so that we can lower 
our gas prices and can lower the energy prices in this country, but if 
we don't and if we continue to fight with each other and if we're 
recalcitrant and if we don't do something, then the problem is going to 
get worse and worse and worse.
  So I would just like to say to my colleagues and to plead with them 
one more time tonight: Let's not let another week, month or year go by 
of our not having done anything to explore or to drill for our own 
natural resources that can give us energy independence. We've been 
talking about it since the Carter years back in the 1970s. It is time 
we did something. Americans are suffering, and we're not doing 
anything. Democrats and Republicans must work together to solve this 
problem.
  With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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