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Floor Statement: Media Shield, Tax Extenders, Energy

Media Shield, Tax Extenders, Energy - Wednesday, July 30, 2008 View video | Can't view the video?

Senator Cornyn: Mr. President, I appreciate the comments of the Senator from New York on the so-called media shield bill, and let me just address those briefly before I talk a second about the extenders. And then what I want to return to spend most of my time on is the subject that we've been talking about but frankly not doing enough about the last few weeks and that is how to bring down the price of gasoline at the pump for the American people.

The problem that I continue to have, and as the distinguished presiding officer knows, we discussed in the Judiciary Committee whether it is appropriate for the United States Congress to designate members of the media that would be the beneficiaries of a media shield while saying that there are other people who are engaged in the free flow of public information, like bloggers, would not. I remember when William Safire, the distinguished journalist, testified before the Judiciary Committee. Someone asked him about bloggers, and he said he considers he them the new pamphleteers. Modern-day pamphleteers. In other words, they could be writing things just as important as Thomas Payne might have written at the time of the country's founding and yet the legislation that the Senator from New York talked about would do nothing to provide them the benefits of a media shield, and there would be, in effect -- Congress would be deciding who is a legitimate journalist and who is not. And I, for one, am not comfortable with the Federal government in essence licensing journalists and ignoring the new media, which is a source of a lot of information and treating them in a discriminatory manner.

With regard to the extenders package, there are many, if not most of us here in this Senate, who would love to see the extenders package, some form of it, passed. Renewable sources of energy like solar and wind are very important. In my state we are number-one in the production of wind energy in Texas, and of course T. Boone Pickens, one of my constituents, has been up here talking rather visibly about his advocacy of generating more electricity from wind and using natural gas to power vehicles and, thus, reducing our dependency on imported oil from the Middle East. But the fact of the matter is, I believe that we will probably vote against moving off of the energy issue generally because, frankly, we shouldn't be changing the subject at a time when we are very close, I think, to being able to have a vote on producing more American energy and relying less on imported energy and oil from the Middle East and abroad. And why it is that our colleagues in the Majority are trying so hard, putting up cloture vote after cloture vote to try to change the subject rather than to have us stay focused to do something to bring down the price of gasoline is frankly beyond me.

Senator Kyl: Would the Senator from Texas be willing to answer a couple of questions that I'd like to pose to him?

Senator Cornyn: I would, Mr. President.

Senator Kyl: Mr. President, the first question I have for my colleague is this: the Senator from Texas and I both serve on the Judiciary Committee which considered this so-called media shield legislation some months back. Does my colleague recall that when the bill was brought to the committee it was brought with the suggestion that it was pretty perfect as written and that we shouldn't change a comma of it or we would be roundly criticized by editorial boards around the country? In point of fact, I was. But does my colleague recall that -- and maybe you can refresh my recollection -- my recollection is that we ad adopted 10 or 12 pretty serious amendments in an effort to try to improve it and that most of the amendments that were adopted were overwhelming in their support. Is my recollection correct in that?

Senator Cornyn: Mr. President, I believe the Senator from Arizona is correct. There was a lot of activity at the Judiciary Committee level to try to improve this bill, and on a bipartisan basis -- and I believe his recollection is correct.

Senator Kyl: And, Mr. President, second question: when we passed that bill out of the committee, there were explicit assurances that we would continue to work on it because of the recognition that it was not, in my words, ready for prime time. But it was clearly in need of additional work. But it's complicated and that we would continue to work on it, A, and, B, is it also correct that the Senator from Texas as well as others, including my staff and myself, have been engaged in a lot of discussions since then, including, as the Senator from Texas noted, trying to figure out how to define exactly who's a journalist and who would be protected?

Senator Cornyn: Mr. President, the Senator is correct again. This has been a challenging issue because, frankly, the very nature of communications has changed dramatically, and I mentioned the bloggers, which are sort of a new innovation. But there is nothing in this bill that would prevent someone from, let's say, from a jihadist or someone, let's say, from Al Jazerra or who tend to promote the activities directed against our own citizens or allies, from posing as a journalist and, thus, gaining the protection against testifying or cooperating with a grand injury that any average citizen in the country would have to do. So there remain problems that we have not yet been able to work through.

Senator Kyl: Mr. President, if I could just pose two other quick questions. So would my colleague from Texas agree that at such point and time that this legislation is brought to the Senate floor we're going to need to continue to make improvements on it? That will of course necessitate debate and amendments and that it would be a huge mistake to try to bring this bill it the floor under a scenario in which we're pushed up against the recess, we're trying to do an energy bill, we're trying to do a tax extenders bill, and it would take far too much time in terms of amendments. And if cloture were brought up, the parliamentary procedure would be that we wouldn't be ail to offer any amendments and that would be a mistake in the way this bill would be considered?

Senator Cornyn: I agree with the Senator from Arizona. My understanding is that because of the delays, because the Majority Leader has basically refused to allow us to go to the energy package that we've proposed, that we believe will bring down the price of gasoline at the pump, we find ourselves up against an adjournment on Friday, which I believe the Majority Leader has addressed, with two very important issues that we need to address: lowering gas prices at the pump and then the tax extenders, which provide the tax credits and supports for renewable energy and the like which I support and which I hope we will pass as well. But I don't know how we can do justice to the media shield bill and give it the kind of debate and the amendment process is deserves in this compressed timetable.

Senator Kyl: Just one final quick question. Is my colleague from Texas also aware of an editorial in the "USA Today" magazine on July 28, Monday, by the DNI, Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell, who joined the Secretaries of Defense, Secretary of Energy, Secretary of Homeland Security, Treasury, and as he put it, every senior intelligence community leader in expressing his strong belief that this bill will gravely damage our ability to protect national security information?

Senator Cornyn: Mr. President, I did read that op-ed piece with great interest myself when it was published in "USA Today," and I hope we can make that part of the record following my remarks.

Senator Kyl: Mr. President, I would just -- if my colleague would indulge me for another 10 seconds here, I would hope on the basis of this information, our colleagues would agree that whatever their view on the energy legislation, we should not be turning to the media shield legislation and in point of fact if we are going to do something about gas prices, we need to keep our eye on the ba ball, get that work done before we leave here on Friday.

Senator Cornyn: Mr. President, there is a lot about the tax extenders package that I support. The state and local sales tax deduction -- Texas doesn't have an income tax. Thank goodness. I don't believe we ever will. But we do have a sales tax and we would hope to be treated in a non-discriminatory way by the Federal government in providing a deduction for sales tax. We have a had the ability to do that, which has expired. But it saves over $1 billion for Texans in tax relief each year. And of course I support the research and development tax incentives, temporary AMT. Or Alternative Minimum Tax relief as well as the other energy tax incentives including those for solar and wind.

But I do not understand the insistence of the Majority Leader by filing repetitive motions to proceed to something other than an energy bill that would actually generate more American production of oil and gas here at home and cause us to rely less on imported sources. Why there is this repeated insistence time and time again with these repetitive votes to take us off of the only bill that's been offered, the only legislation that's been offered that would actually increase American energy resources and require us to rely less on imported oil.

As I said, I support the renewable energy provisions that would continue to encourage the production of solar and wind power. I believe that conservation is a very important part of what we need to do as well. And you've seen this chart before. We've said that what we need to do is find more and use less. And yet the Majority Leader has consistently, so far, refused to allow us the opportunity to introduce amendments and to have debate and votes on something that would actually have an impact on the price of gasoline at the pump.

We think we need a balanced and comprehensive approach to deal with this problem, and that is, since the Majority Leader became the Majority Leader, January 4, 2007, when the price of gas was $2.33 a gallon, it's been as high as $4.11 a gallon -- thank goodness now the average price is $3.93 a gallon. But the fact of the matter is, we have a supply problem, and we have a demand problem. The supply problem is that for some reason for the last 30 years or so, Congress has placed 85% of our domestic oil and gas reserves out of bounds. We passed annual bans in the form of a moratorium on appropriation riders that prevent the production of oil and gas that we know is there in the outer continental shelf or the submerged lands along the coastlines of the United States as well as up in Alaska where we know there are huge volumes of gas and oil. And there are pipelines close by that could actually deliver that for use in the lower 48 states.

And we know there's as much as 2 million additional barrels of oil a day out in Idaho, Wyoming, and Colorado in the form of oil shale, which now the technology exists to be able to produce that, and can you imagine how much different things would be if instead of importing those 3 million barrels of oil a day from countries like Saudi Arabia and organizations like OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and people like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, can you imagine what it would be like if we actually produced 3 million more barrels of oil here in the United States every day so we didn't have to import that from abroad?

I don't know anybody who's done a better job of capturing the public's imagination on this than my constituent T. Boone Pickens. And I think, as he has said, he's been an oil man all his life but now he is perhaps the most visible and forceful advocate for wind energy and for natural gas, to use to power cars and his main focus is, because he wants to reduce the $700 billion of American money that we send each year abroad just to pay for oil and to import that oil into this country. He has a plan to bring that down by 38%. We all know, at best, additional supply is a partial answer. That's why we say we need to find more and use less. Conservation is an important part of this as are things like biofuels.

We know we've got challenges dealing with corn ethanol because, frankly, using food for fuel has backfired on us somewhat, causing food prices to go up and feed for livestock, which has caused grave hardship in my state which is a huge cattle producer as well as a poultry producer. But it has caused the price of food to go up so we need to continue research to use cellulosic ethanol that doesn't compete with the food supply for our energy sources.

But so far we have been met with a brick wall from the Majority Leader when it comes to our attempt to try to find more American oil as we transition to a clean energy future. What I mean by that, one where we are going to be less and less refient on oil for transportation and aviation needs. Let me give you a couple of examples that are kind of exciting, right on the horizon. In 2010, most major car manufacturers will be producing plug-in hybrid cars which actually will be running on batteries and you can plug it into your wall socket, charge the battery and go 40 or more miles a day before you plug it back in at night.

Obviously, that will displace the internal combustion engine and avoid the need to provide oil and gasoline for transportation needs. But it will take some time to transition as we continue to do research into things like hydrogen fuel cells and other alternatives for our basic transportation needs. That, I think, holds great promise in the future. As does additional research in things like coal-to-liquids technology. We have in this country about 300-year supply of coal and we know coal has a problem because of pollution but we, I believe, have the ingenuity and the expertise to be able to use coal in a way, to find a way to use it in a way that not only will provide aviation fuel and transportation fuel but, I believe we can come up with a way to sequester the carbon dioxide by-product of coal-to-liquids technology in a way that will allow us to displace oil and gas and diesel and regular aviation fuel from our demand side.

As a matter of fact, the coal-to-liquids technology has existed a long time. Adolph Hitler in World War II when he was worried about cutting off his supply of oil and gas that was necessary to fuel the Third Reich developed a coal-to-liquids technology. Today, the Air Force is using coal-to-liquids to power B1 bombers and B52 bombers for aviation fuel. We know we can rely on good old-fashioned American research and technology and ingenuity to come up with a way to deal with this problem.

But we're not going to get it done until the Majority Leader allows us an opportunity to debate and vote on this important imperative to develop more American energy here at home. It's not enough to rely on solar and wind. Those are important. But it's not a complete answer. And we need, and I believe we should insist and are insisting on a right to vote on some production in the outer continental shelf, in the oil shale out west and up in the Arctic.

Frankly, I don't understand the reluctance on the part of the Majority Leader to allow that vote to go forward. I am encouraged by some indications that there are some negotiations. I hope they're successful because, frankly, I don't think we should leave here this week for a month-long recess until we have dealt with the single most important problem facing American people today and our economy -- high diesel prices. We can have an immediate impact on it on the futures markets where those contracts for the future delivery of oil and gas are sold if we will act and say that Congress will be part of the solution and not continue to be part of the problem.