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Floor Statement: Gas Prices & Domestic Energy Production
Friday, July 25, 2008
Mr. President, I know Senate procedure can be confusing, but by this vote that we've just held we've said that we are not leaving, we are not giving up, and we intend to fight to help bring down the price of gasoline at the pump. And people may ask, well, how in the world can Congress do that?
The reality is Congress has been the problem when it comes to accessing American sources of oil we have right here at home. And the consequence has been that we spend $700 billion a year that we send to foreign countries for the oil that we consume right here in America, because we are so unwise and so stubborn and so opposed for some reason to developing those natural resources right here in America.
And so that's what this vote meant, is that we're not going to quit. We're going to stay on this issue until we can convince the people responsible for setting the agenda here in the United States Senate that we have to have an opportunity to vote on additional supply as we consider a comprehensive approach which includes conservation, renewable fuels, clean energy alternatives. But the fact of the matter is we know that we are not going to be able to deal with this high price of gasoline at the pump until we increase more American supply. We find more and we use less right here at home.
And it's important to talk about responsibility. None of us here in the United States Senate can control what the Majority Leader, the Democratic leader of his caucus does. Only he has the power to allow a full debate and an amendment process that will allow Democrats and Republicans to vote on additional supply. I know Congress is held in low esteem by -- all you have to do is look at a public opinion poll. But it's important for the American people to say, well, it's not Congress necessarily as a whole. It is the leadership that actually has the power and the authority to allow something to happen. And we're here imploring the Majority Leader, the leader of the Democratic Caucus to allow us to vote on provisions on this bill which we believe will have a dramatic impact on the price of gasoline at the pump.
Right now we have, in effect, not just a moratorium on 85% of the domestic natural resources we have here in America, whether it's in the submerged lands in the outer continental shelf along the coastline or the oil shale out west or up in the Arctic, we not only have a moratorium or a ban passed by Congress for the last 30 years prohibiting the production of those natural resources, we have a political blockade. And the people who have imposed that political blockade are the Democratic Majority Leader, Harry Reid, Speaker Nancy and the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party for President, Barack Obama. They have the power to allow an opportunity for the people to get some relief at the pump, but they are the ones who are blockading it through this political blockade.
We know that there are at least 44 Republicans who agreed to a bill we call the Gas Price Reduction Act. We're looking for about 10 or 11 or 12 Democrats to join us in saying, yes, we can, because all we hear on the other side of the aisle is, no, we can't. Yes, we can. We can tear down these walls that prohibit domestic energy production here in America. And I would hope that Barack Obama, if he thinks it's important enough to go to Berlin yesterday and talk about tearing down walls, that he will come back here to the United States Senate and say let's tear down this wall. Because if he does so and the Democratic leadership follows suit, we can open up America's vast natural resources to production. We can acknowledge the existence of the laws of supply and demand and the American people will get the kind of relief that they want and so desperately need.
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