Department of Defense Approporations Act, 2006--Conference Report--Resumed

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2006--CONFERENCE REPORT--Resumed

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. CANTWELL. Madam President, if I could be notified when I have used 5 minutes.

I rise today to ask my colleagues to reject this cynical ploy that has brought us to this point today. Just a few days before the holidays, we are presented with this Defense bill that has become a Christmas tree. It is a Christmas tree decorated with giveaways and back-door exemptions, and special rules for the oil industry.

We have been debating the topic of ANWR for 25 years. No one should condone such a blatant maneuver as taking the bill that provides funding for our men and women in uniform, and stuffing into it a provision that was in neither the House nor Senate bills; a provision that gives away to the oil industry the ability to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; a provision that hasn't gone through the normal rules and processes that any other business in the Senate would have to go through.

This Senator strongly objects to these provisions for Arctic drilling on the merits of the issue. I welcome a debate on the merits of the issue. But regardless of those issues, my colleagues should understand that every Member of this institution should object to the way this provision has been added to this legislation. These measures were slipped into the Defense spending bill, and they are a violation of the Senate rules. What is more, these provisions were changed after the bill was voted out of conference. After my colleagues had signed the conference report, the language related to ANWR was changed. So not only was it not in the House or Senate conference bills, it was changed after members had signed their names to the conference report.

Madam President, this is a frontal assault, as my colleague, the Senator from West Virginia said, on the institution, on the Senate, and I ask my colleagues to consider, what is next? If we are to allow legislation like this to move forward, what do we have to look forward to in the future? Will we be drilling off the coast of Florida? Will we be drilling in the Great Lakes? Will we be drilling anywhere, just because it can be put in a defense measure?

I ask my colleagues to make sure that we send a message that is loud and clear, that we are not for breaking Senate rules.

Over the last week or so there have been more than 20 different editorials from papers across the country, from New Hampshire to Oregon, from Minnesota to Florida and elsewhere around the country, talking about these issues and why we should not be in this situation.

From the Oregon newspaper--basically it said this is a shortsighted plan, and it is ``disgusting that lawmakers would try to equate oil profits with our Nation's true defense needs.''

Another newspaper in New York said it was an eleventh hour ploy in Congress by Republican leadership, lowering the bar and slapping Alaskan oil drilling onto a must-pass bill to pay for the Iraq war.

Another criticism from the Oregonian:

A vote for the Arctic is not a vote against our Nation's military.

We are not going to be blackmailed into passing this legislation, just because someone at the eleventh hour sticks this language in.

I saw in a news commentary, the Scarborough Report--this from somebody who supports drilling in Alaska--who basically said that this provision is a ``politically toxic rider to funding our troops in Badhdad, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and across the world. It is unforgivable,'' this tactic.

And the military, retired leaders sent a letter saying:

..... any effort to attach this controversial legislative language authorizing drilling to the Defense appropriations conference report will jeopardize Congress' ability to provide our troops and their families with the resources they need in a timely fashion.

We did not have to get to this point. We did not have to get to this point today, where Members are being forced to vote on drilling in the Arctic just because we have to pass a Defense appropriations bill.

I ask my colleagues to consider this. I do believe in a different view than this legislation when it comes to energy independence. I do believe that being dependent on foreign oil at more than 50 percent today is too much. There is no way we are going to drill our way to energy independence in the United States. God only gave the United States 3 percent of the world's oil reserves, so we should move off of that and on to other supply.

Today we are here as Senators to say whether we are going to allow the Senate rules to be broken; whether we are going to try to pass some language that never appeared in any Senate bill, but mysteriously appeared in this conference report at the eleventh hour.

I do not think we should give a green light to oil companies in this fashion, giving them the ability to circumvent seven Federal laws and countless regulations, regulations with which every other business in America has to comply.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has consumed 5 minutes.

Ms. CANTWELL. I thank the Chair. I will consume another minute.

I hope the Senate will turn down this language, that we will make sure we do not give an exemption to oil companies from all these laws, and that we certainly do not do so on the backs of our military men and women.

I yield the floor and yield 3 minutes to the Senator from Connecticut.

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