[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 3]
[House]
[Pages 3553-3555]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           ENERGY FOR AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Huizenga of Michigan). Under the 
Speaker's announced policy of January 5, 2011, the gentleman from 
Indiana (Mr. Burton) is recognized for 30 minutes.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, one of the things that the 
American people are really upset about right now is gasoline is $3.50, 
and in some parts of the country it is close to $4 a gallon. And the 
President of the United States and his administration, for whatever 
reason, is obstructing our ability to become energy independent.
  On February 17, U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman, who gave the 
Department of the Interior information on the deepwater drilling in the 
Gulf of Mexico earlier, he gave the administration 30 days to rule 
seven deepwater drilling permits okay, to approve them. He overturned 
the ban put in place in June of 2010 that allowed the government to 
arbitrarily impose a moratorium that would cause irreparable harm to 
businesses along the gulf coast. In fact, it will cost as many as 
24,000 jobs. But the thing about it that really concerns me is that we 
have the ability to become energy independent within a relatively short 
period of time.
  Everybody would like to see us move towards alternative sources of 
energy and clean-burning fuels to help the environment. I don't think 
anybody opposes that. The problem is in the process. Do we want to 
become more energy dependent on the rest of the world?
  Now we get between 25 and 30 percent of our energy from the Middle 
East. Anybody who has been watching the news at all knows that there is 
a war going on in Libya, Egypt is in turmoil, and Bahrain is having 
problems. There are potential problems in Jordan and in Saudi Arabia. 
Now if something goes wrong over there--and Iran is trying to undermine 
us by, under the covers, doing everything that they can to stop us from 
getting energy and to put us in a trick bag--if the Suez Canal is 
bottled up, if the Strait of Hormuz is closed or the Persian Gulf is 
closed, we are going to lose or have substantially delayed as much as 
30 percent of our energy. You can imagine what that would do to this 
place.
  The prohibition against drilling in the Gulf of Mexico takes away 
about 11 percent of our energy, and the President won't allow us to 
have permits in that area.
  Now, he says that he is concerned about it because of the 
environmental damage that was done by the oil spill down there when the 
derrick blew up. What isn't said is that the tankers that come from the 
Middle East and from South America spill more oil, spill more oil than 
that environmental tragedy that took place in the gulf spill. People 
don't realize that.
  Now, we can drill in an environmentally safe way and we can do it in 
a number of places in this country and move rapidly toward energy 
independence. We can drill up in Alaska in the ANWR, and people in the 
environmental community say: Well, we're worried about the bears up 
there and the small animals and so forth.
  I've been up there. Does anybody have any idea how big Alaska is? It 
is three-and-a-half times the size of Texas, and there's only 500,000 
to 600,000 people who live in Alaska, and all the rest of that is 
wilderness except where we are drilling. If we drill in the ANWR, we 
could produce a great amount of oil and energy that would make us less 
dependent on Saudi Arabia, the Middle East, and on the communist 
dictator in Venezuela, Mr. President Chavez.

[[Page 3554]]

  So we are not doing what we should do to make sure that we provide 
energy for this country and make sure that the cost of energy is low so 
people can afford it, so employers can afford to hire more people and 
produce more goods that could be sold here and around the world.

                              {time}  1650

  The President, for whatever reason, is blocking this, and I just 
can't understand why; but I think the American people need to know that 
and that they need to be talking to the President, to the 
administration and to other Congressmen and Senators about this 
because, if everything goes south over in the Middle East or if the 
President of Venezuela decides to cut us off, we're going to see oil 
prices go up, up, up and the cost of gasoline go to $3, $4, $5, $6 a 
gallon. It's already over $3.50. If it gets to $6 a gallon, it's going 
to have a devastating impact on this economy. In fact, it already is 
having a devastating impact.
  If you talk to 18-wheeler truckers, the people who haul goods and 
services all across this country, they'll tell you that they can't 
afford to keep their prices low for trucking our goods and services if 
the price of diesel fuel goes above $4 by very much a gallon. Yet it is 
above $4 a gallon right now, and it's trending higher.
  If we have a problem in the Middle East or in the Gulf or in South 
America, wherever we get oil, it's going to have a tremendous impact, 
not only on our ability to buy gasoline at the pump or to provide oil 
for heating and for our electrical companies to provide electricity to 
keep our lights on, but it's going to cost us more when we go to 
Walmart, when we go to the grocery store, wherever we go to buy goods, 
food and services, because the truckers who truck those goods across 
the country are going to have to pay more for their fuel, and they'll 
pass that along to the consumer in higher prices. So this has a 
devastating impact on our economy because we depend too much on foreign 
oil.
  Another thing I think everybody in this country ought to know, Mr. 
Speaker, is that we have the largest reserves of coal in the world, 
which could be converted into oil if we were to use coal-to-liquid 
technology. We could get as many as 5 million barrels of oil a day in 
the not-too-distant future, and the amount of oil we could get out of 
coal/shale is up to 8 trillion barrels of oil. In North and South 
Dakota, they just found one of the biggest oil reserves in the whole 
world that we could use to bring down the price of energy in this 
country, but we can't drill there because the President and the 
administration and the Environmental Protection Agency and the 
Department of Energy are blocking that.
  Now, I know a lot of people around the country say, well, we've got 
to be concerned about the environment--and we do have to be--and we 
ought to be transitioning into these other technologies, but that's 
going to take 10, 15, 20 years. To get a nuclear plant up takes forever 
because you have to go through all the permits and all the governmental 
regulations. Sure, we could get there, but it's going to take time. In 
that interim period, we're dependent on fossil fuels, and we're getting 
those from the Middle East, from South America and from the Gulf of 
Mexico when we can drill there.
  So it's extremely important, Mr. Speaker, that we pay attention to 
this and send a very strong signal to the administration that it's time 
for us to get on with drilling here in the United States in order to 
become energy independent.
  I want to talk about one more thing, Mr. Speaker, which I think is 
extremely important. It deals with our southern border, between us and 
Mexico. The President of Mexico told President Obama that he did not 
want any government agents from the United States--the FBI or our DEA--
to be able to carry weapons when they're in Mexico.
  We just had one of our agents shot to death in Mexico about 2 weeks 
ago. It was one of our special drug agents that we had in Mexico. These 
agents have no ability to defend themselves. One of them was killed, 
and the other was severely wounded. Along the Texas American border, 
we've had all kinds of problems. We had a Border Patrol agent just shot 
recently and killed. We have farmers all over the place and ranchers 
down there who are scared to death to go out of their houses because 
these people are coming across the border--drug dealers and people who 
are bringing illegal aliens in.
  Some of the farmers are even selling their ranches. We have one 
fellow down there who has had a 6,000-acre ranch in his family for over 
100 years, but he sold his farm. Joe Aguilar sold his ranch because he 
said he's had enough. They're going across his ranch every day. We have 
another rancher down there who found a cache of narcotics on his land. 
He turned it over to the Drug Enforcement Agency. Days later, thugs 
came into his house and beat him and his wife half to death. The thugs 
said, If you do this again, we'll kill you.
  Now, how would you like to live in that kind of an environment? Well, 
you say, That's right on the border. That can't happen here. It's 80 
miles north of the Mexican-American border. It's 80 miles into the 
United States right now. We have signs posted, saying it's not safe for 
you as an American citizen to go south of here between that 80-mile 
marker and Mexico. Can you imagine that? Americans are afraid to even 
walk on American soil because of drug dealers, thugs, illegal aliens, 
and people who are transporting them into the country who might kill 
them.
  We had one Border Patrol agent who was shot and killed about a week 
ago. When he was shot and killed, we found out that he had told these 
drug dealers or illegal aliens or people who were bringing illegals in 
to stop. Since they wouldn't stop, our Border Patrol agents were told 
they had to use beanbags. Get this. They had to use beanbags to fire at 
these people who were across the border illegally who may have been 
drug dealers or whatever. The fellows they were pursuing turned around 
with AK-47s--automatic weapons with high-velocity bullets--and shot and 
killed this one Border Patrol agent. The President of the United States 
told them the first thing they should use if they suspect people of 
bringing illegal drugs in and they can't get them to stop are these 
beanbags.
  I can't imagine anything like that. These people are risking their 
lives day in and day out. Some are being killed, and some are being 
taunted day in and day out. They can't even defend themselves down 
there. President Obama, along with the President of Mexico, agreed that 
our DEA agents, when they go across the border into Mexico, can't even 
carry weapons.
  How many people do you think who are trying to enforce our drug laws 
and who are sent down into foreign countries to defend this country 
against drug dealers and drug cartels are going to want to go down into 
those areas when they can't even protect themselves? Would you want to 
do it? I wouldn't want to do it. I'd want to have a weapon so I could 
at least try to survive in the event they tried to kill me.
  Unfortunately, the President of the United States just said in the 
last few days that he will not allow any of our agents--FBI, CIA, DEA 
or any of them--to carry weapons when they go into Mexico because the 
President of Mexico, Mr. Calderon, said that he doesn't think we 
should.
  Well, we're in a war down there on that border. If you talk to the 
people in Texas, they'll tell you there is a war between us and the 
drug dealers and the thugs who are coming across that line into our 
country; and there is a high suspicion that we're seeing al Qaeda- and 
Taliban-type terrorists coming across the border into the United States 
as well.
  There was an article that was written just recently. I'd like to read 
part of it, Mr. Speaker.
  It reads: ``In Texas, nearly 8,200 farms and ranches back up to the 
Mexican border. The men and women who live and work on those properties 
say they're under attack from the same drug cartels blamed for 
thousands of murders in Mexico. `It's a war, make no mistake about it,' 
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples said, `and it's happening 
on American soil,' in this country.

[[Page 3555]]

  ``Texas farmers and ranchers produce more cotton and more cattle than 
any other State, so Staples is concerned this war could eventually 
impact our food supply, and calls it a threat to our national security.
  ``To raise awareness, Commissioner Staples launched the Web site 
ProtectYourTexasBorder.com. It's a place where frustrated and scared 
farmers can share their stories.
  ``One Texas farmer, who asked not to be identified, said it's common 
for him to see undocumented immigrants'' and drug dealers ``walking 
through his property. `I see something and I just drive away,' he said. 
`It's a problem. I've learned to live with it, and pretty much I've 
become numb to it.'''
  Isn't that a sad commentary on this country? We can't even defend 
Americans in Texas and Arizona.
  Another farmer, Joe Aguilar, who I talked about earlier, said, ``You 
either have to beat 'em or join 'em, and I decided not to do either,'' 
so he sold his farm of 6,000 acres that his family had had for 100 
years.
  Our farmers and ranchers can't afford their own security detail, 
Staples said. We're going to become more dependent on food and 
commodities from other countries if we don't do something about it.
  The President sent 14,000 National Guard people or 17,000 National 
Guard people down to the Gulf of Mexico when that oil spill took place 
off that derrick, but we've only sent 1,400 National Guard troops down 
to the Texas American border, which is 1,980 miles long.
  We are never going to solve that border problem unless we really 
realize that it is an area that we have to focus on, that it's a war, 
that our citizens are in danger down there, and that we can't any 
longer allow drug dealers to have sites in the United States where they 
have binoculars and weapons so they can watch for the Border Patrol 
agents and so they can tell their counterparts to bring drugs across 
the border or to bring terrorists across the border because they know 
that the coast is clear.

                              {time}  1700

  This is something that we can't tolerate. We need to protect our 
border agents. They ought to have guns that they can use to stop these 
people. They shouldn't be shooting beanbags at them. And we certainly 
shouldn't be asking our CIA, DIA, DEA agents to go into Mexico to fight 
the drug dealers and find out what's going on and tell them they can't 
even have a weapon to protect themselves. This is insane.
  The other thing I talked about earlier was the oil situation. It's 
insane for us to become more dependent on foreign energy at a time when 
our economy is floundering, we've still got unemployment at around 9 
percent, business people can't make plans because they don't know what 
their energy costs are, and the people who go to work are paying $3.50 
to $4 for a gallon of gas.
  We can do better, and the President ought to do better. And I hope, 
Mr. Speaker, that the message will get to the White House loud and 
clear before it's just too late and our economy is hurt further.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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