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Floor Statement: Gas Prices & National Energy Policy

Gas Prices & National Energy Policy - Wednesday, June 11, 2008 View video | Can't view the video?

Mr. President, I want to read also a letter from one of my constituents, Jerry from Denton, Texas, that's just around Dallas.

He wrote to me: "I work full-time. I have two part-time jobs and I go to school full-time. And with living expenses, I'm having trouble keeping my head above water. My parents are both retired and drawing Social Security. My dad is also working as much as he can, but they're just barely able to get by. My health insurance expires next month, and I can't afford it because of what I'm spending on gas right now." Jerry adds, "We need a long-term plan that allows for new sources of energy but does not allow the complete doing away with gas -- or making gas prices go so high. Something needed to be done months ago."

I think Jerry is being overly generous. Something needed to be done far earlier than just a few months ago. We needed to do something about this ten years ago but, unfortunately, the birds have come home to roost, and now the American people are suffering high gas prices which affect every aspect of their lives. Two days ago I was in Houston, Texas, at the Houston Food Bank and heard from a senior citizen, a woman who was disabled and whose food prices have gone up by 50%. You may wonder, what's the connection between food prices and gasoline? Well, the fact of the matter is that the diesel or gasoline that the farmer needs in order to produce the crop to bring it in so it can be made available for us to buy and prepare for our tables, that's driven food pr prices even higher. And some of the choices we've made here in Congress -- for example, to use food for fuel, things like corn for ethanol. About 20% of our domestic corn crop now is used for bio-fuels. And we need to revisit that. But in the short-term we need to bring down the price of gasoline at the pump. And there are basically three ways that we can do that.

One is that we can increase supply, which is to me is the most obvious answer. I heard one of my colleagues this morning cite a new Gallop survey which points to the fact that American attitudes have changed dramatically with the facts, that is, and that is, as gas prices have gone higher -- from January 24, 2007, when they were $2.33 a gallon, today where they're $4.05, attitudes have changed about producing oil from domestic sources. We're talking about in Alaska, we're talking about the outer continental shelf, where now China, just off of our southern border, coastline is producing oil in basically an area where we could be producing it, but China is producing it for themselves. While we have put a moratorium on producing that for ourselves.

And then there's the vast oil shale out in the western states. It's estimated that in the Green River formation in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming, that there's as many as 6 trillion -- I'm sorry, 2 trillion barrels of oil potentially available just from that one location. But approximately 6 trillion barrels of oil available from producing oil shale, using new technology that has not always been available. So we can bring down the price of gasoline 70% of which is composed of the price of oil by increasing American supply which will in turn reduce our dependency on imported oil from the Middle East.

Our colleague and friend, Senator Schumer from New York, acknowledged this recently that supply can affect price, but he was talking about Saudi Arabia increasing their supply. I'm not for increasing our dependence on Saudi Arabia or any other country. I'm for greater independence by depending on our own domestic resources. But he said on this argument on the supply-demand issue on April 30, "if they produce half a million more barrels a day the price would come down a significant amount and at the same time it would stop the speculation that keeps driving the price of oil up."

I would say he's half right. More supply, more American supply would help dampen the speculation, help bring down the price and provide more oil which would be available to make it to gasoline which would help all of our consumers and all of our constituents at the pump. It would help people like Jerry trying to get by going to school and holding down two jobs in Denton, Texas.

57% at last count of the American people in a survey think we should take advantage of the natural resources That God has given this country. When I was in school we looked at why different countries were more prosperous than another and invariably it was the natural resources of the country were so vast that is one of the reasons for this tremendous prosperity. But America is the only country I know of that has this bounty known as oil and gas and we have consciously, Congress has consciously decided to put it out of bounds through various appropriation acts dating back to about 1982. We need to reconsider this. I believe we need to change our ways and help relieve some of this pressure that consumers are finding at the pump.

And that the woman I was referring to at the Houston Food Bank who sees her fad prices driven up require -- who sees her food prices driven up requiring her to be in need in the charity of others to help with food costs. This is something that I, frankly, do not understand why Congress continues to be the impediment and not part of the solution.

Now, our friend from New York and others say, "we have a solution." There was a bill introduced and voted on yesterday which, frankly, I agree with the Senator from Tennessee, was not an energy bill because it didn't contain one additional drop of new energy. What it said was, well, we're going to sue OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries including Venezuela, Iran, Saudi Arabia and others, presumably to get them to open the spigot so we can be more dependent on imported oil while continuing to put America's natural resources out of bounds. Now, that's not a solution.

Then they said, okay, we have a better idea. People are mad at oil companies so let's raise taxes on oil companies. That would be great, wouldn't it? Make everybody feel really good. The problem is, that happened back in the 1980's, the so-called windfall profits tax. Do you know what happened? The Congressional Research Service has documented the fact that domestic oil production went down by 6%. In other words, it made us more dependent on imported oil from the Middle East and elsewhere -- not less dependent. So we want to repeat our mistakes... It is true those who forget history are condemned to relive it. And I guess our friends on the other side of the aisle want us to relive that bad part of our history as far as our energy independence is concerned. So as good as it may feel to some people to raise taxes, to stick it to the oil companies, really, it's sticking it to yourself. In the end, everybody understands when you raise taxes eventually those taxes, those csts, are going to be passed down to -- guess who -- you got it, the consumer. Rather than bringing down the price of gasoline, it's going to continue to drive the price up.

Last week we saw kind of, I think it is fair to say a poorly timed presentation of the Boxer Climate Tax bill which, rather than bring down the price of oil and gasoline would have driven the price up. The National Association of Manufacturers estimated if we passed that bill it would have driven up electricity costs and gasoline costs by more than 145%. So there's a better way for us to do this but it is not by trying to force bad solutions, big government solutions with $6.7 trillion of cost associated with it, ones which will backfire on us and increase the cost of gasoline and electricity that is not a good solution.

I think that most people of good will and common sense would agree we need a solution that will bring down those costs as we work toward that clean energy future that Senator Alexander and others have talked about as we use more of our own natural resources. As we develop nuclear power to make electricity in larger percentage, like countries like France do where 80% of the electricity is made from nuclear power. So you have electricity to recharge the battery on that hybrid plug-in vehicle that are going to be produced by General Motors in 2010 and beyond.

We are going to have to change some of the way we operate by conservation, by paying more attention to the environment but also from a national security and economic perspective by trying to make sure we develop clean sources of energy. But as we are on that bridge to the future, to clean energy independence, we're going to have to continue to depend on oil and gas. Doesn't it make sense that we would rely more on ourselves and less on others to help us with this important element of a prosperous economy? Not to mention the thousands of additional jobs that would be created right here in the United States if we would develop more of our own resources rather than depend on our adversaries to sell it to us so they can use the money to buy weapons to, perhaps, use those weapons against us.