[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 12588-12589]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      LOWER GAS AND ENERGY PRICES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Georgia (Mr. Westmoreland) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. Mr. Speaker, I want to take just a moment, before I 
start with any of my energy remarks, to welcome President Chen, Joy and 
Sean Chen here with General Protecht that is opening up a business in 
my district in Barnesville, Georgia. It's great to have them visiting 
Washington, D.C.
  What I really want to talk to the people about today, Mr. Speaker, is 
the fact that it is time that the American people understand where 
Congress is on providing them with our own resources to bring about 
lower gas prices and lower energy prices.
  I have had several constituents and people e-mailing me and calling 
me, asking me about a number of petitions that were on the Web or that 
were in service stations or in Wal-Marts or in Home Depots, and they 
were wanting to know how I felt about drilling onshore, about drilling 
in deep water and about bringing more refineries on line.

[[Page 12589]]

  So, as I looked at some of these petitions--and some of them I saw--
one was on American solutions, and there were others, but the one on 
American solutions had about 600,000 signatories. Six hundred thousand 
Americans had taken the time to go to that Web site to sign the 
petition that said, ``Drill now. Drill here. Less price.'' Less 
gasoline price.
  So I thought, you know, that's interesting because we know how these 
constituents feel, but do our constituents really know, Mr. Speaker, 
how Members of Congress feel? Because we do things up here to keep the 
American people from knowing exactly what we do think because we make 
these issues as to so many different subject matters that we can find 
excuses to vote for or against most any proposal that is brought to 
this floor. So what I want to do is simplify it, simplify it for the 
American people--for our constituents--and, Mr. Speaker, for the 
Members of Congress.
  So I came up with a petition for this House of Representatives, and 
the petition is simple. The petition says: ``American energy solutions 
for lower gas prices. Bring onshore oil on line. Bring deep water oil 
on line, and bring new refineries on line.''
  I've got a petition here. Don't worry. This is one board. We've got 
five boards. We've got every district, all 435 Members who can vote in 
this House. We've got a petition, and it says, ``I will vote to 
increase U.S. oil production to lower gas prices for Americans.'' How 
simple is that? That's pretty simple.
  So what we've done is we've got this. Congressman Price and myself 
didn't bring it out until, really, after everybody had kind of gone 
home up here last Thursday, and we've already gotten 20 signatories. 
I've got two pens that I'm going to attach to these petitions. Mr. 
Speaker, I'm going to put them over here by the back door here on the 
minority side, and I'm going to invite every Member of Congress who 
believes that they would vote to reduce these prices to come by and 
sign them.
  Just to give the American people, Mr. Speaker, a way to look at this, 
we are going to post, and are going to try to post in as real a time as 
we can, on different Web pages who has signed it. So, if you want to 
know who has signed so far, you can go to House.gov/Westmoreland, and 
you can also go to GOP.gov/energy. Now, these are two Web sites that 
are going to have posted by the end of the day who all has signed. If 
you, Mr. Speaker, or if anybody out there might want to know if your 
Congressman has signed, then you can go to that Web site.
  We have had all different types of arguments in this House about 
energy, and the Democrats had an energy bill that they proposed and 
actually passed that President Bush signed into law in December of 
2007. The Democratic majority passed this as one of their big issues in 
January of 2007.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. With that, I'll leave it up to Mr. Price, but for 
every Member in this House, the pens are here; the petition is here. 
Let the American people know how you feel.

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