Energy Policy Act of 2005--Conference Report

ENERGY POLICY ACT OF 2005--CONFERENCE REPORT

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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, sometimes the test of legislation in the Senate is did we do less harm than good. Some might say, by that test, this Energy bill is worth voting for. I will tell you that test is not good enough when America is at war and our dependence upon foreign oil is putting our citizens at risk each and every day.

The test in the Senate that, well, maybe this legislation has some good is unacceptable when there is a rare opportunity and a rare obligation to avoid the terrifying human costs of future wars. In those rare instances, the test in the Senate should be did Congress meet its obligations. I have concluded that in this energy bill we have not.

Our dependence on foreign oil will not be reduced as a result of this legislation. As a result, we have not reduced the prospect of going to war once again in the Persian Gulf in the next decade. I do not understand how we will explain to every man and woman who fights so courageously in Iraq and Afghanistan, or how to explain to every veteran who fought in the Persian Gulf in the last decade, how we failed to meet our obligation to avoid future wars.

For this reason, I want to express a deep regret to those soldiers and veterans because your children are now no less likely to be asked to fight a very similar war. I want to express a deep regret to the families of those soldiers and veterans because their children may someday face the very same burdens. I want to express a deep regret to the American public, which is spending hundreds of billions of dollars to prosecute the war in Iraq and may someday be asked to spend far more on the next war because the Senate is about to pass a pre-9/11 energy policy. After 9/11, it became clear that energy policy was a national security issue and that reducing our dependence on foreign oil had to be a national security priority. That hasn't been done.

So today Americans continue to pay what I call a terror tax--the price we pay in insecurity for our dependence on foreign oil. I call it a terror tax because when each of us pulls up to the corner gasoline station and pays $2.40 a gallon, or so, for gasoline, a portion of that money goes to foreign governments that in turn send it out the back door to Islamist extremists who use the money to perpetuate hate and terrorist acts. But in this bill Congress has squandered a golden opportunity to dam that river of terrorist funding.

It is not good enough to accept business as usual when our citizens pay record prices at the gas pump, only to see foreign governments wink and nod while terrorists make off with substantial amounts of the money and use the funds to target America. The recent bombings we have seen have been a sober reminder of just how vulnerable America, our allies, and our strategic partners remain to terrorism. In my view, there is an indisputable link, not only between the American dependence on foreign oil and the price our citizens pay at the pump but between our oil addiction and our vulnerability to attack here at home.

What I have come to learn as a member of the Energy Committee, and as the one member of the conference who was unwilling to sign the report, is that any energy policy proposed in the future should have to contain a statement of how that bill will reduce the terror attacks. There ought to be a statement in the future with respect to energy legislation on how that legislation would actually reduce our dependence on foreign oil in the short term and in the long term.

If that had been required for this legislation, there is no way this bill would get a passing grade. This legislation does virtually nothing to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. You look at what was said in 2003, not by partisans on one side or the other but by the Bush administration's Energy Information Agency. They said that bill would have increased our imports of foreign oil by 2025 by about 85 percent. This legislation, with respect to oil imports, would produce virtually the same result.

Now, to give the country a sense of just what we were up against--those of us who wanted to break our dependence on foreign oil--I would like to discuss an amendment I tried to offer in the conference. In the conference, I proposed that the automobile industry be required to increase auto efficiency by 1 mile per gallon for each of the next 5 years. The reason I did that is a basic fact of energy policy. You cannot transform this country's energy sector if you give the automobile industry a free pass. So when I made that proposal, I said to myself, what a modest step, just 1 mile per gallon for just 5 years. Yet it would have had a huge impact in terms of reducing our dependence on foreign oil. Unlike this legislation, which doesn't reduce our dependence on foreign oil, that would have made a difference.

In the 2001 report, the national academy found that the technology exists today to raise the average fuel economy nearly 40 miles per gallon by 2012 without sacrificing safety. My proposal was much more modest than what the leading scientific experts in this country found was both technologically feasible and affordable to consumers. Yet the conference rejected even this modest proposal out of hand.

I particularly thank Senator Bingaman, who supported it and said we ought to at least, at the very minimum, not go to the American people and say, gosh, 5 miles a gallon over 5 years is too much. But even that modest advance could not make it into this legislation. So, as a result, Americans will get no relief from this terror tax brought about by our addiction to foreign oil. And at the same time, their hard-earned dollars will flow out the back door straight to the entrenched energy interests.

Now, even the President has said that when oil is trading at upwards of $55 a barrel, the oil companies are not in need of any more incentives. When the President says the oil companies don't need a deal from the Government, that ought to tell you something--you are going too far. But even so--even with the remarks of the President, who was dead right--this bill is now stuffed with a smorgasbord of subsidies for a whole host of energy special interests. The buffet of subsidies is so generously larded that, in many cases, it will allow second and even third helpings from the energy subsidy buffet table. Loan guarantees are letting these special interests double dip and even triple dip on some energy projects. Projects that would already be subsidized in other provisions of the Energy bill will also receive loan guarantees under the incentives title.

They are also going to get tax credits in the finance title. That is dip 1. Then they are going to get loans under the incentives title. That is dip 2. Then there will be loan guarantees on top of that. That is dip 3. These guarantees are some of the largest subsidies in the Senate Energy bill, and they are risky ones.

Mr. President, the subsidy title of this legislation, in my view, is a blank check for boondoggles that simply doesn't decrease our foreign oil dependence.

In closing, the most patriotic thing this Congress could have done in the summer of 2005 was to write an energy bill that did three specific things: reduce our dependence on foreign oil, lower gasoline prices for working families and businesses, and end the energy subsidy smorgasbord that has offered these heaping helpings of taxpayer dollars to the energy industry for decades.

I am sad to say, as one who was involved in this from the outset as a member of the committee and the conference committee, that the final product does not accomplish any of those three things. It doesn't reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Nobody has to take my word for it. That has been on the front pages of the papers all this week. It doesn't lower gasoline prices. And, again, you don't have to take my word for it. The President has already stated that. It doesn't end the subsidy buffet for the big energy interests, and you won't have to take my word for that either. You are going to hear those special interests breaking out the champagne bottles all over town in the next few days.

My constituents have been hit especially hard by high energy costs, and they and millions of Americans had hoped that the Congress would step up and take bold action, truly bold action, to shake us free of our dependence on foreign oil and these other concerns that I have addressed tonight.

What I hope is that, as the country sees how little is actually accomplished here, there will be an opportunity--and an opportunity soon--to come back and address some of the shortcomings that have been discussed on the floor of the Senate tonight.

I hope there will be a transformational policy put in place with respect to the automobile sector. That is the ball game in terms of energy conservation and reducing oil consumption. This legislation took a pass on it.

With respect to reducing carbons, again, there was a marketplace approach--a bipartisan marketplace approach--that the Congress could have moved ahead on.

The bottom line, the Congress could have done much better. I think our colleagues in the Senate know this bill is literally a series of missed opportunities. It is right to vote no on this legislation.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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