[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 37, Number 20 (Monday, May 21, 2001)]
[Pages 761-764]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at the Iowa Energy Center in Nevada, Iowa

May 17, 2001

    The President. Please be seated. Senator, thank you very much. It's 
great to see you again, and thank you so much for introducing me. It's 
nice to be here in Nevada. [Laughter] Mr. Mayor, I bet you were a little 
nervous about how I was going to pronounce that, weren't you? [Laughter] 
But thank you so much, Andy, for being here. And I thank you for being 
here, as well, Ms. Murphy. It's an honor to see you.
    I'm pleased to be here with the Governor. Mr. Governor, thank you 
for taking time. I am impressed that your State has got the imagination 
and the foresight to be on the cutting edge of research and development 
necessary to help our Nation become energy-independent.
    I'm so honored the two fabulous State senators are here. How are you 
all doing? I hope you're behaving--[laughter]--better than you were the 
last time I saw you. [Laughter] Thanks for coming. And finally, Ganske, 
Congressman Ganske, thank you for being here, friend. It's good to see 
you.
    I'm thrilled to be traveling today with two members of my Cabinet, 
who the Senator just introduced. I'm going to ask them to say a few 
remarks about our vision for America. I want to thank Floyd for his 
hospitality. I want to thank the president of Iowa State for being here. 
I told him I didn't appreciate how the Iowa State people treated those 
Texas basketball teams this year. [Laughter] He said he didn't really 
care what I thought about how--[laughter].
    I'm really glad to be back in Iowa. This is not a time to talk 
politics, but I do want to tell the citizens of Iowa I appreciated so 
very much the hospitality of this great State. I told people that this 
is a unique State, because every time I came, people treated me with 
respect and were very kind. I think it may be one of the kindest States 
in the United States, which is a great tribute to the people of this 
State.
    Frankly, we need a little more kindness in America, and we 
definitely need a new tone in Washington, DC. We need to be able to have 
a discussion of public policy that's important for the country without 
name-calling and finger-pointing, without the attitude of zero-sum 
politics. If the President proposed it, it's got to automatically be 
bad, because he said so. And if an opponent said it, it's automatically 
got to be bad, because he or she said it. That's not right for America. 
And it's particularly not right when it comes to addressing huge issues 
and important issues, like energy security and energy independence.
    Today I had the honor of talking--laying out a comprehensive energy 
plan for the country. I had asked the Vice President and members of my 
Cabinet to take a look at the situation, analyze the problem, and to 
come up with solutions. And today I outlined over 100 solutions, 
proposals as a solution to the problems we face.
    We face a shortage of energy. I was reading in the newspaper today 
where there is a shortage of energy in one of the major cities in Iowa. 
It is real. It is not an imagination of anybody in my administration. 
It's not out of our imagination. It's a real problem. And

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we believe that this administration was elected to address those 
problems--forget politics--to put policies out for the Nation to debate, 
and then to act on those policies.
    So today I've laid out an initiative that said, first and foremost, 
we better be better conservationists in the country. We need to 
conserve. We need to be wise about how we use energy. We need to figure 
out how to drive new kinds of cars that don't overconsume hydrocarbons. 
We need to figure out how to have smart technologies in our homes. 
Citizens need to figure out how to be more conservation-oriented. We 
need to be mindful of turning off lights. And we've got regulations that 
Christie Todd may talk about, that talks about more fuel-efficient 
appliances. And we're making progress in America. We're better 
conservationists than we've been in the past, but there's still more 
work to do.
    And secondly, no matter how well we conserve, we're still going to 
need more energy. As I noted today, the State of California is the 
second best State in the Union for conservation measures. And yet 
they've got a problem. They have run out of energy at times. That's 
called rolling blackouts. It just goes to show that we can conserve, but 
we also need to come up with additional supplies.
    And I talked about those supplies. And one of the keys to energy 
security in America, and national security, is to have a diversified 
energy base. That means oil; that means gas; that means safe nuclear 
energy; that means clean coal technologies to make sure the abundance of 
coal that we use is done in a friendly--environmentally friendly way.
    But it also means interesting new opportunities, such as biomass, 
and that's why we've come here. I can't think of anything better for 
national security than to replace barrels of oil that come into the 
country from nations that can't stand America--some of them don't--with 
products that we grow here in America. I can't think of--I would much 
rather replace oil from Iraq with corn products from Iowa, and it's 
getting within our reach.
    I was talking to Floyd about how real are the products that are 
being looked at here; how close are we to reality. And he said, ``Pretty 
darn close.'' Biodiesel is what he talked about. We're pretty darn 
close, and we're more than close when it comes to ethanol. It's real. 
And I said during the campaign here that I support ethanol. You've just 
got to know, I support it not only as a candidate, but I support it as 
the President. It makes sense for America.
    You know, much of the debate on energy seems to polarize the 
country. It doesn't have to be that way. You're either for exploration 
and, therefore, against the environment, or for the environment and, 
therefore, against exploration. And that's not the way the discourse 
ought to go.
    The discourse ought to go: How can we explore without hurting the 
environment? And I strongly believe, and I know that technologies have 
developed over the last 30 years, so that I can say with certainty to 
the American people, we can explore for precious fuels like natural gas 
in a way that does not harm our environment. It doesn't harm our--we can 
go to the Arctic, for example, and build ice roads and bring the 
equipment on an ice road and build a pad made out of ice and then for 
those few periods of time when the ice melts, withdraw the equipment. 
And then when the ice comes back, come back, so we don't damage the 
tundra. We can drill from one location to a reservoir miles away. The 
technology has changed.
    So instead of having a debate that says, well, we can't drill 
because of the environment, or we can't--and we're not for energy 
independence if you're for the environment, we need to have a discourse 
that says, let's work together in America. Let's make sure we can have 
both. Otherwise, our folks are going to hurt.
    We don't want the blackouts of California, which affects a lot of 
hard-working people's lives in a negative way, to extend its reach 
across the country. We don't want that to happen. Nobody likes it when 
gas prices are high. I know there are farmers out there working to make 
a living on a thin margin, and when the price of refined product goes 
up, it affects the livelihood of hard-working people in Iowa. Nobody 
likes that.
    So instead of polarizing, we need to come together with solutions. 
We need more refining capacity in America, folks. We need to

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make sure we protect the environment, but have incentives and 
regulations that encourage the development of additional supply.
    And finally, in my speech today, I'm going--I talked about 
conservation, and I talked about additional supplies in a diversified 
supply base. I also talked about making sure that we get the product 
from point A to the consumers. And our infrastructure is aging. It's 
old. Our electricity grid needs to be modernized, so we can move product 
from point A to point B. There are places in southern California where 
there's ample energy, but they can't get it to northern California, 
where there's been blackouts, because the transmission system is not 
modern.
    Natural gas is clean. It burns clean. It's--a lot of plants now that 
are coming on line to meet the electricity needs of America are going to 
be fueled by natural gas. And that's good news. But we need pipelines to 
get the gas from reservoir to user. And we need to understand that. We 
need to understand we need to move more product expeditiously around 
America.
    So this is an energy plan that says to America, let's work together 
to get after this problem. Let's work together to bring commonsense 
solutions. And let's think about how best to deploy and employ our 
resources here in America, starting with what's happening here. We're 
really--I am very excited about what I heard. It's such a vast 
potential, and it's a great opportunity. And that's why we support 
research and development of such activities that take place here.
    You know, I've got such great faith in America. I do, because one 
thing we're not in short supply of is an entrepreneurial spirit and 
brains and problem-solvers. That's really the greatness of America. And 
it's such an honor to be the President of such a great land.
    And it is also my honor--and it's my honor to welcome to the podium 
the Secretary of Energy, former United States Senator
Spencer Abraham.

[At this point, Energy Secretary Abraham made brief remarks.]

    The President. Again Governor, thank you very much for taking time--
and Mr. Mayor. Ganske, are you on the airplane with me? Oh, you're not 
on the airplane with me. Well, great to see you. [Laughter]
    I must say something about your--about Senator Grassley. First of 
all, I got a kick out of campaigning with him throughout Iowa. He's got 
a remarkable sense of humor and a great love for Iowa. But he is making 
a good deal of progress on getting a tax relief package out of the 
United States Congress. Iowans need to be proud of his leadership.
    I saw a lot of folks during the campaign here, and they talked a lot 
about me getting rid of the death tax, and we're making good progress. 
And Senator Grassley is really one of the leaders. He has assumed an 
incredibly important position in the Senate, and he is bringing a lot of 
honor to your State.
    He's heard the call, and that is this: We need to get tax relief 
done as quickly as possible. I need to be signing a bill before Memorial 
Day so we can get money. We need to start getting some of that surplus 
in the hands of the hard-working American people, to help provide a 
second wind to our economy, and to help with some of the high energy 
bills that people are now facing.
    And you need to be proud of your Senator. He's working hard, and I'm 
sure proud to call him friend. And I want to thank you all for coming 
and giving us a chance to talk--to close an important day in my 
administration here in a State that has got an incredible potential and 
can play a major role in value-added processing that will help this 
great Nation of ours realize its vast potential as we head into the 21st 
century.
    Thanks for coming, and God bless.

Note: The President spoke at 4:55 p.m. at the Biomass Energy Conversion 
Facility. In his remarks, he referred to Senator Thomas Grassley, who 
introduced the President; Mayor Andrew Murphy of Nevada and his wife, 
Shelly; Gov. Thomas J. Vilsack of Iowa; Floyd Barwig, director, Iowa 
Energy Center; Richard Seagrave, interim president, Iowa State 
University; and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine 
Todd Whitman.

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