[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 11]
[House]
[Page 15078]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         THE ECONOMY AND ENERGY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Daniel E. Lungren) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DANIEL E. LUNGREN of California. Madam Speaker, among the most 
important issues facing us today are the twin issues of the economy and 
energy. And unfortunately, in this body and across the other Chamber, 
we often discuss those two issues separately, as if they had no 
connection with one another; and yet they have a very, very important 
link with one another.
  When the economy is down, it has an impact on the energy, and when 
energy prices go up or when energy prices go down, it has an immediate 
impact on the economy. The strange thing is that as we look at an 
energy policy that's going to be presented to us by way of a bill from 
the majority shortly, there appears to be a lack of appreciation for 
changes in energy policy and their impact on our economy. There seems 
to be some sort of question as to whether or not we ought to exercise 
our responsibilities to utilize those energy sources that are most 
abundant in these United States.
  Coal appears to be one of those things that we're going to wrap up, 
close up, put on the shelf, not allow ourselves to use it. Rather than 
a real effort for clean coal energy, there appears to be an effort to 
try and demonize coal and not allow it to be utilized. That makes about 
as much sense as Saudi Arabia making an announcement tomorrow that 
they're going to close off all of their production of petroleum. Why do 
I say it makes about as much sense? Because we are the Saudi Arabia of 
coal.
  Similarly, with tar sands, shale oil, those sorts of things that we 
have in abundance in North America, we appear to be saying we ought not 
to take a look at those.
  Similarly, we have abundant sources of petroleum offshore: offshore 
my State of California, offshore some of our other States in this 
Union. And yet we have a policy which basically says we ought not to 
utilize American technology, which has been utilized around the world, 
to safely extract petroleum.
  If you look at my State in California, you go to Santa Barbara, you 
will see historically there have been leaks from the bottom of the 
ocean there because of the pressure, because of the petroleum that lies 
under the ocean floor. We can actually take some of that pressure off 
by drilling and producing there.
  Lastly, I would say someone would have to be a hermit somewhere, 
stuck in a cave, not to understand that we have a terrible economic 
problem in California, a terrible problem with our budget, terrible 
deficits. And one of the ways that we could achieve some sort of 
stability with our budget in California, our State budget, would be to 
allow offshore drilling and take those royalties that would come to the 
State as a result of having that offshore drilling, bringing those 
moneys into the State Treasury.
  We would do two things. We would help increase the security of this 
Nation with respect to energy on the one hand because this would be 
U.S. energy production; and secondly, we would have royalties going to 
the State of California in the billions of dollars, helping take off 
some of the pressure that we have currently as to which services we're 
going to cut. Classroom size is going up in the State of California. 
There are the suggestions that a lot of services will be cut, some 
severely, and yet we continue to turn a blind eye to the possibility of 
environmentally safe extraction of petroleum products offshore.
  As one who basically was born just a stone's throw from the ocean, 
who lived the first half of my life--actually, more than that--the 
first 42 years as a resident of Long Beach, California, as someone who 
enjoys the beauty of my home State and the beauty of the coastline, I 
also understand that American technology, American ingenuity, American 
creativity that's applied elsewhere in the world can be applied here in 
the United States to produce energy.
  Why will we have an energy policy brought forward on this floor that 
ignores some of the most abundant sources of energy for this Nation 
makes no sense to me. Surely I support the alternative sources of 
energy, wind and solar; the traditional ones of hydroelectric, thermal 
power. But we cannot forget the abundance of natural resources we have 
in this country.

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