Energy Policy Act of 2005--Continued

ENERGY POLICY ACT OF 2005--Continued

Mr. DURBIN. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Ms. CANTWELL. I yield to the Senator from Illinois.

Mr. DURBIN. I thank the Senator for her leadership. The amendment she is proposing--and we hope will be embraced by both sides of the aisle--will set a goal to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. I can't think of a single person in America who wouldn't agree with that goal. We can all understand that as we wait every day for a press release from the OPEC nations to try to determine whether or not the price of gasoline is going to go up or down. This proud, strong, leading nation in the world goes hat in hand to the Saudi peninsula looking for oil. We wait for them to determine what the price will be. It affects every individual and family and business and airline, right down the line.

Is it not true that the bill before us, S. 10, has a goal of reducing dependence on foreign oil over the next 10 years by 1 million barrels a day, which is not as ambitious or as far reaching as the goal of reducing dependence on foreign oil by 40 percent over 20 years? Is it not also true that the President sent a letter to Congress yesterday and said if we include this provision--the weaker provision that is already in the bill--reducing the barrels of oil by 1 million a day over 10 years, the President will veto the bill? Is that the message that we have received from the Bush White House about our goal in reducing dependence on foreign oil?

Ms. CANTWELL. The Senator is correct. In the underlying bill, we have language that says we should reduce our dependence on foreign oil by 1 million barrels a day by 2015. The problem with that goal is, when you are currently importing 58 percent of your oil supply from foreign sources and you calculate in the growth of demand--obviously, our economy continues to grow--there is demand for more oil. Even with that amendment, in 10 years, in 2015, we will be importing 60 to 62 percent of what our Nation consumes in oil supply from foreign sources. So the underlying amendment does nothing to stop this trend. In fact, we will continue to be more dependent on foreign oil.

I know the White House has sent some communication to Senators saying they oppose even that milestone in the bill which does attempt to try to reduce oil consumption. But the provision in the bill doesn't take into effect the fact that the economy grows. I guess it is saying: We don't want to have any goal to actually try to decrease the amount of foreign oil coming into this country.

I want to have a goal for decreasing the amount of foreign oil coming into this country. I want to reverse the trend. I want to go from what we are expected to have, 68 percent in 2025, and say, let's switch that down towards 50. Let's get to 56 percent. Let's start doing as the Brazilians did, which is an amazing story, if you think about it. Here is a nation that basically went from 80 percent, now, today to 11 percent, and is on the verge of becoming an exporter. When you think about the economic opportunities our country has in actually being an exporter of new energy efficiency technology, it is a great opportunity.

The Senator is right that the administration opposes any goal setting in this bill. Why would somebody oppose goal setting? All the tools are here in this legislation. I am not saying which technology is going to win. Basically, our amendment is technology agnostic. It doesn't say: You are going to have CAFE; you are going to have nuclear power.

A lot of my colleagues are betting on nuclear power. There is new language in here for new nuclear technology. A lot of people think it will provide us hydrogen sources, and we will have hydrogen fuel cells. We will move to having a more fuel-efficient economy that way.

I am not being prescriptive because 2025 is a long time from now. But I know if we look at specifics, we can get there through these various means, but we won't get there without a goal.

Mr. DURBIN. If the Senator will yield for a further question, we can't pick up a news magazine or a newspaper in America without reading about the growth of the Chinese economy. They are expanding at the expense of many other countries, including the United States.

We have lost hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs over the last 4 years to China as their economy is exploding in size. Many of the companies in China that are growing are American companies. The fact is, China is expanding its economy dramatically. It is no longer a backward Communist nation. It is a full-fledged world competitor, and many believe that China and India will be our competitors in the next 50 years for jobs and economic growth.

Is it not also true that China has one problem it has to face, and that is the fact that within the borders, as huge as China is, they don't have a lot of energy resources. So to keep this economy moving forward, they need to import energy into China, which means in the years to come, we will see more and more competition for foreign oil, not just the United States versus the rest of the world, but the United States versus China and the rest of the world, which means oil for $50 per barrel, which has now raised our price at the pump, may go to $100 per barrel.

I ask the Senator from Washington, setting this goal of reducing our dependence on foreign oil through conservation techniques, through alternative fuels, through finding environmentally sensitive resources that we can use, is that not looking forward to the kind of global competition we are going to face and accepting the reality that if we don't do this as a nation, we will find ourselves losing out from a security viewpoint as well as global competition with nations such as China?

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