The Standing Rules of the Senate are drafted to encourage vigorous public debate on our nation’s most important issues. Indeed, the U.S. Senate is often referred to as “the world’s greatest deliberative body.” The Rules allow any Senator to seek recognition from the Chair at any time and, absent a temporary agreement to the contrary, to speak without interruption so long as he or she wishes. Debating important questions before the Senate is one way a Senator can highlight an issue, advocate for a change in policy, or voice his or her opinion on pending legislation.
Senate debate occurs in public, and is televised on CSPAN and transcribed in the Congressional Record. For your convenience, I post transcripts of my Senate floor speeches on this site for your review. I hope you find them informative and useful. My web site also makes available information on my voting record and legislation that I have sponsored in the Senate.
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Sessions Speaks on Foreign Dependence on Oil
Mr. SESSIONS . Mr. President, I appreciate many of Senator Durbin's remarks. I don't see why in the world we can't reach some sort of bipartisan consensus on how to go forward with the national crisis that is hitting us today.
He and others have hinted that they are willing to produce more energy in America rather than spend $700 billion a year of our wealth exporting it to countries such as Venezuela or Saudi Arabia to purchase the 60 percent of oil we use. But they don't propose that. The only legislation they have proposed is the speculation bill. I suspect there are a lot of things we can do to deal with speculators who are acting improperly. I support that and don't have any problem with them, although I think we want to be careful and not only repeal the futures market, apparently, as some would suggest we should do. I think we should move on it, and we have a lot to do in that area.
But I have been asking myself, why is it that we are not seeing any substantive effort on the majority side to deal with the clear crisis we have? And the crisis is that the entire world is using more oil and gas; Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and other countries are reducing their production, even Russia, I understand, and Mexico. As a result, we have shortages. That is how speculators manipulate. They are able to manipulate when there is a shortage. We need to fundamentally--do something about the shortage. When we have a choice--and we clearly do--we should produce our energy from America, keeping all that wealth here and not sending it abroad to countries, many of which are not our friends. That is so basic, it goes beyond logic.
I had a little idea, maybe, as to what is going on here. It came to me when former Vice President, former Democratic President Al Gore, in his speech this week, renounced all fossil fuels and declared that this Nation ought to have as its policy to eliminate fossil fuels totally from making electricity in 10 years. That is one of the most breathtaking statements I have ever heard. Fifty percent of our electricity today is coal; 20 percent is natural gas. What he is saying is, we don't produce any more, and we are going to make all of our electricity in 10 years from renewables--wind, solar, and biofuels. We have already hit 5 percent of our fuel for gasoline from corn ethanol. Most people--I think everybody agrees--agree we are at about the max we can possibly get from corn. So I think there is some real potential with cellulose wood products. Senator Isakson and I have talked about that. Our States have a good bit of waste wood in the forest that could be a nice improvement, and perhaps produce a good bit more, even than corn ethanol.
But I want to go back to the situation. Are our colleagues on the other side who claim to be interested in helping America get through this terrible economic time not going to discuss with us how to produce more energy at home? I can't believe that. The only thing that is consistent with that policy, which we have seen for some time now, is the consistency of former Vice President Gore's statement this week that he wants to take all of our electricity and produce it from nonfossil fuel sources, which is unthinkable. Unless there is some monumental breakthrough, it is not possible. It is not going to happen. It cannot be the basis of a sound energy policy by any responsible official in America, it seems to me. Maybe I am wrong, but I don't think so.
After the price of gasoline spiked, we ended up with our majority colleagues offering a cap-and-trade bill that they wanted to pass that, in effect, would be a major tax on energy, which the EPA said would raise the price of gasoline by $1.50 a gallon and could double the price of electricity. This is what we are seeing here. I don't think that is reasonable.
Our goal should be to change the extent to which we have to use fossil fuels. I am for limiting them. I am for better efficiency. I am for geothermal. I am for solar, if we can make it work. I am for wind, if we can make it work. The whole Southeast is generally recognized as not a place where any wind energy can be efficiently produced.
What we have to do is be realistic about the multiplicity of steps it takes to be independent and to reduce our CO 2 emissions, our global warming gases, and to make our environment cleaner.
I will take a moment and ask the desk how much time I have used. I would like to be notified when I have used 10 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has used 6 1/2 minutes, and the Chair will be pleased to notify the Senator when 3 1/2 minutes is up.
Mr. SESSIONS . I thank the Chair.
I ask unanimous consent that the time allocated to the Republican side be limited to 10 minutes per speaker.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. SESSIONS . Senator Durbin did say we need to have an opportunity to offer amendments and vote on amendments and let's talk about how to develop a national energy policy. I take that as a good statement. The only thing I am worried about is that will be one of these deals in which we on both sides say: Your amendment has to have 60 votes to pass and our amendments have to have 60 votes to pass. We do that a lot of times because we know neither side will get 60 votes. What we need is some bipartisan participation, and we need to do some things.
Eighty-five percent of our offshore oil and gas is under a moratorium. We have blocked the Air Force's ability to use synthetic fuels produced from coal. We--I say ``we,'' I mean the Democratic majority, in truth--slipped that through in the last Energy bill that passed.
Our colleague, Senator Obama, a Member of this Senate, the nominee of the Democratic Party for President, praised Vice President Gore's speech and has not made, to my knowledge, one specific criticism of it. In the former Vice President's speech, he did not in any way suggest nuclear power as one of the solutions to the difficulty we are in, which is pretty much unthinkable, if one gets my drift. It has to be done.
Nuclear power is making a comeback around the world. According to the World Nuclear Association, 129 plants are currently on order or under construction in 41 countries and 218 more have been proposed. We have 104 in America. It makes 20 percent of our electricity. Fifty percent is coal, 20 percent is natural gas, 20 percent is nuclear, 10 percent is all the rest, with less than 1 percent coming from wind at the present time. These European countries, advanced countries, have come to clearly recognize that nuclear power is the best way to produce clean base load power without it emitting pollutants. England, the United Kingdom, has recently commissioned eight new reactors, reversing its recent policy to abandon nuclear power. Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel has also recognized the importance of nuclear power in meeting their challenges, calling for a halt to the odd plan they had to close down their existing reactors. The American people also support the expansion of nuclear power. Of course, France has 80 percent of its power coming from nuclear, and Japan is soon to pass the 50-percent mark. According to an MSNBC poll, 67 percent of the American people support building more nuclear powerplants.
I see the Chair is calling my time, and other Members are here to speak. I do believe that in any component to move to clean, nongreenhouse-gas-emitting energy, nuclear power has to be a part of it. I have not seen that in my colleagues' plan, zero from the Democratic side on this issue. It is something we must do.
I yield the floor.
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