SENATOR HUTCHISON DISCUSSES THE FARM, NUTRITION, AND BIOENERGY ACT OF 2007

The Energy bill before us today for a cloture vote will not increase the supply of energy. There are some good parts of this bill. The House and Senate could pass a bill that would do major things for renewable energy sources, for clean energy sources, and for an increase in the supply of energy sources, but the bill that is being brought up today--and I hope it will not get cloture--is a bill that will not increase supply.

We have two problems we need to address in an energy policy. One is the cost of energy. We need to provide more supply in order to bring the cost down. The second is, we are 60 percent dependent on foreign sources for our energy needs, which is an economic and security risk for America.

I cannot imagine the Congress trying to continue to pass a bill that will decrease supply and increase our dependence on foreign sources for our energy needs. We are the greatest nation on Earth. We should be addressing this aggressively to increase supply.

The good part of this bill is the CAFE standards which have been agreed to in a bipartisan way. That will go a long way toward conservation and beginning to make our automobiles more efficient and environmentally friendly. But the $20 billion in taxes on oil supply takes away the increase in supply that is so important to bring down prices.

We are a country that ought to be the model for the world in stability in oil and tax policy. Instead, our country has the reputation for not being stable in tax policy, for changing tax policy every 2 years or every 4 years, so businesses sometimes would rather do their exploration, their production, their refining, their manufacturing overseas because they know they can count on stability in tax policy and regulatory policy. That is absolutely the opposite of what people should be saying about America. America should be the one that our businesses say they can rely on for stable policy. Yet the bill before us will change the incentives we gave for refineries to increase just 2 years after we gave them.

It was beginning to work. Big oil companies that had not invested in refinery capacity for 20 years, because of the regulatory hurdles, were willing to go in and have already announced expansions. I know a big expansion would be going on in Mississippi, a big one in Texas that would add to our refinery capacity so that we would have more supply more cheaply. We would have more dependence on ourselves for our energy needs, and we would bring prices down. This takes away those incentives for refinery capacity to increase. It also will drive overseas the production of oil because we are penalizing our oil companies with this $20 billion in taxes.

What this will do is decrease supply and increase price. I cannot think of a worse message to send and a worse tax policy that would say to the world and to any business that wants to do business in our country that you can count on tax policy for a year or two, but you cannot make long-term plans in America because we may change policy if we change Congress.

We have changed Congress, all right. What we are seeing is a tax-and-spend Congress that we haven't seen in 15 years. Once again, we are going to increase spending and we are going to increase taxes. That is not what we should be doing in an environment in which our economy is fragile. Raising taxes in this economy is going to increase the price of energy, which has a ripple effect throughout our economy. It means every farmer is going to have to pay more for fuel. It means every businessperson, especially small businesspeople, is going to have to pay more for fuel.

I urge my colleagues to vote no on this piece of legislation that the President has said he will veto. Let's stop the games in Congress. Let's do something that will help our energy supply, that will bring prices down. Let's take the good parts of this bill, such as the CAFE standards and the incentives for renewable energy and clean energy. All of those things are very good.

I want clean energy. I want solar power. I want wind power. I want biofuels. I want cellulosic ethanol and corn-based ethanol. But to take one segment of our energy, which happens to be the biggest source today, and increase the price on that, decrease the incentives for the refinery capacity which we must have--these companies do not have to invest and go through all of the regulatory procedures and millions of dollars off their bottom line to go into refinery expansions. They don't have to do it. They had tax incentives to do it 2 years ago. Taking that away pulls the rug out from under those who have already made those investments. It is counterproductive for the economy.

I hope we will provide adult leadership in the Congress. Let's not pass cloture on this bill. Let's do an energy bill that the President will sign, that will have bipartisan support, that will make CAFE standards much more environmentally friendly, and that will increase our supply of renewable and environmentally friendly energy needs. Let's keep the bread-and-butter energy supply we have by increasing refinery capacity so that we bring the cost down to consumers and keep our economy on a more even keel.

I hope my colleagues will vote no today so we can pass an energy bill that will have the support of a bipartisan majority in Congress and get the President's signature. That should be the goal, not political game-playing, which we are seeing this week at the very last minute in Congress. It is not going to do what is right for the country.

I yield the floor.

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