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Floor Statement: Gas Prices, Energy Policy And Democratic Inaction

Gas Prices, Energy Policy And Democratic Inaction - Thursday, July 17, 2008 View video | Can't view the video?

Madam President, after the last election in 2006, the Democrats gained control of both the House and the Senate and with that -- with that victory comes a responsibility and that is to manage the agenda of the United States Senate in a way that addresses America's most urgent priorities. Unfortunately we have seen a record that does not reflect well and perhaps one reason that the poll numbers for the United States Congress are at a historic low. The American people according to the Rasmussen poll and Gallup poll that I have seen have given Congress the lowest ratings, I believe, since that polling began. You might ask, why is that? It is something that we ought to all be concerned about.

First of all, it took 145 days to pass authorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Thanks to the good work of Senator Bond and Senator Rockefeller, on a bipartisan basis, they came up with a good bill. Unfortunately we dwadled 145 days while our ability to gather intelligence by listening to the communications between foreign terrorist subjects, we waited for 145 days to get that done finally. Thankfully, we finally did.

But the rest of the record is not as good as even that. 604 days the Colombia Free Trade Agreement has been left pending. In Texas we sell $2.3 billion worth of agricultural goods and manufactured goods to Colombia each year. It bears a tariff because Congress has refused to take up, principally because of the Speaker of the House, Speaker Pelosi, the Colombia Free Trade Agreement that would remove those barriers to American goods being sold in Colombia. And, unfortunately, it's not a two-way street because Columbian goods bear no tariff coming into the United States. So this is literally an example of the United States Congress's inaction shooting American agriculture and our manufacturing sector in the foot when it comes to our ability to compete in the global committee due to mismanagement of our agenda here in Congress.

749 days, judicial nominees have been waiting for an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor. And I have to disagree with the distinguished Majority Leader. Judges do matter. People need access to courts, and you might as well put a padlock on the front door of the courthouse if you're not going to confirm well-qualified judicial nominees to serve on these benches, whether it's victims of crime who need access to the courts or a small businessman or woman who's got a civil dispute they need resolved in a court of law; those are people being denied access to justice because we're not confirming enough judges that have been nominated by the President.

And then finally, it's been 815 days since Speaker Pelosi, before she ran for her current position as Speaker, she said Democrats if elected and given the responsibility and the privilege of serving as the leaders of Congress, they would come up with a commonsense plan to relieve the price of gasoline at the pump. That was back when she assumed control of the House and when Democrats assumed control of the Senate, gasoline was $2.33 a gallon. Today it's $4.11 a gallon, and we're still waiting for that commonsense plan to relieve the pain at the pump for the American people. And it's no secret that the price of energy is driving up the price of all sorts of commodities, including food.

I recently was at a food bank in Houston where they said the demand for their services to provide food to people who can't otherwise provide for themselves has gone through the roof because the cost of food has gone up along with the cost of gasoline and energy. We want to try to work with our colleagues on the other side, and I hope we can on this energy bill that the Majority Leader has brought to the floor. But it only addresses a narrow aspect of the problem, the speculation on the commodities futures market. We need a comprehensive bill to deal with the law of supply and demand and acknowledge that Congress has been part of the problem and not part of the solution by imposing moratoria on development of oil and gas reserves in the outer continental shelf for 27 years now.

And last year, when Congress put a ban on development of the oil shale out in Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah, it really -- Congress became part of the problem and not part of the solution when it comes to producing more oil here domestically and relying less on imported oil from the Middle East. You know, I've been fascinated, as I know we all have, by the Presidential campaigns and the slogans that the different parties have adopted. And I know -- I know we have seen Senator Obama, you know, say, "Yes we can," and talk about change. But, unfortunately, the answer from our friends on the other side of the aisle when it comes to a commonsense energy policy, when it comes to bringing down the price of oil by producing more American supply, seems to be, no, we can't. And we'd love to work with our friends on the other side of the aisle to say, yes, we can address the needs of the American people and help relieve some of the pain they're suffering at the pump.

But every time we bring up an energy proposal, whether it's on nuclear energy, clean coal, offshore exploration, oil shale, or ANWR it seems to be we get an answer of "no." The so-called energy bills that our friends on the other side of the aisle have proposed do not produce one drop of additional energy or one kilowatt of additional electricity. How can you call that an energy policy? And, so, the new energy that's been produced as a result of our friends on the other side saying "no" instead of "yes" to bipartisan efforts to solve these problems has been, no new energy produced.

Our friend, Senator Menendez, from New Jersey said we needed to talk less and act more. I would agree with that. I would agree with that. We need to talk less and act more. Unfortunately, what we've gotten so far is a lot of talk and no action. And we need action to help bring down the price of gasoline at the pump. So, our solution, Madam President, we believe we need a comprehensive policy that conserves energy, eliminates waste. Recently I was in Tyler, Texas -- I've said this before -- at Brookshire Groceries where they have modified their tractor-trailer rigs to use less diesel and modified the speed at which they drive their trucks and they're actually reducing their consumption of the skyrocketing prices of diesel.

So, we can conserve and use less. But we also need to find more. It makes no sense, as some have suggested, that we ought to sue OPEC to get them to open the spigot even wider so we can send more of our money overseas to the Middle East and to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. It makes no sense whatsoever to pass higher tax burden on those people who produce domestic energy. We tried that back in the 1980's during the Carter presidency, and all it did was drive down domestic production, drive up foreign imports. And eventually, as we all know, higher taxes get passed on down to the consumer. Not an answer.

So we need -- we believe that the answer to our energy problems is to find more and use less as we travel this bridge to a clean energy future. We know we need more of renewable fuels. We need wind energy. We need solar to develop electricity. Yes, we need biofuels. But we've got to work through this problem of using food for fuel that's contributed to higher fuel prices. But we need a balanced energy policy. And we would implore the distinguished Majority Leader not to try to just check the box to try to just say we've done something when in fact we've done nothing to address high prices at the pump, and to work with us to allow votes on the floor, to allow us to increase our supply of domestic energy.

We could produce as many as 3 million additional barrels of oil a day from American sources if Congress would simply get out of the way, lift the moratoria, and allow that exploration and production to begin. If we did that, it would send an important signal to the commodities futures markets that, yes, Congress is not going to stand in the way and that more supply will be available in the future. I believe it would have a dramatic impact and a dramatic reduction on the price of the futures contracts for oil. Much as we saw the President's announcement that he was lifting the executive moratorium on offshore exploration seemed to have a dramatic impact in one day lowering the price of oil by, I believe it was about $8.

So, we would ask as respectfully and as earnestly as we know how for the Majority Leader not to just make this another political exercise, but to work with us to try to create a real solution. I think it would reflect well on all of us, Republican and Democrats alike, and we would see our basement level popularity ratings, I think, go up.