Strategic Production Response Act

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chair, I move to strike the last word.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chair, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Kamlager-Dove).

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time. Amendment No. 145 Offered by Mr. Grijalva

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chair, I move to strike the last word.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chair, I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Jackson).

Mr. JACKSON of North Carolina. Mr. Chair, the gentleman from South Carolina concluded his remarks by saying this amendment ``would affect that'' and provided no specification for ``that.''

Look, this was just about national security. We didn't get two words in response to the substance of this amendment. We got a bunch of platitudes that were completely unrelated.

I was under the assumption, given everything we had heard about national emergencies and national security, that making sure that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve could be used for national security used to be bipartisan.

If not, there would be a good reason as to why that exception should not exist. We didn't get a one. We got a speech about hurricanes. We got a speech about other uses for oil. I hear you. I am on board. This is national security.

The fact that you had no response whatsoever tells me your bill isn't serious. This bill is about messaging. You are looking to tie any future President's hands in a way that is fundamentally reckless. If this bill were serious, you would take national security more seriously.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chair, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chair, I listened to the gentlewoman from Georgia, and to me, this amendment is unbelievable. I mean, she says that you can't draw down or sell petroleum products under this amendment for political and nonemergency purposes.

Well, I mean, everything around here is political, so I don't know how you would define that.

What the President has been doing is using this Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help bring down the price of gasoline at the pump, or in other cases, to increase supply because of the supply shortage due to Russia's action in the invasion of Ukraine.

These are, in my opinion, totally legitimate emergency purposes to help the American people and help the supply chain.

What the bill does is to say: Well, if you want to do that--if you want to use the reserve--then you have to drill for more oil on public lands.

Well, isn't that political.

A decision is made to say that you can't use the reserve unless you help the oil companies and let the oil companies take more of our public lands. That is about the most political thing that I can think of.

In addition to that, was it not political when the Republican administrations in the past released and sold oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve?

What did they do it for.

Well, they did it for deficit reduction. They did it to pay for different items, like the 21st Century Cures bill that came out of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Were those emergencies?

Were those not political?

I would argue that using the reserve for those purposes was not an emergency at all and certainly was incredibly political.

This is just another example of what the Republicans are doing. They are politicizing the Strategic Petroleum Reserve because they want to make message points.

They know that this bill isn't going anywhere. The President already said that he will veto it, and the Senate won't take it up. They are being so political. They are talking about situations that have nothing to do with an emergency.

I really don't know what to say. The whole process here is very political, oriented toward messaging, oriented toward going on TV, I guess, to appeal to base voters. It is just incredible to me that this amendment is being offered.

Mr. Chair, I ask my colleagues to vote against this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chair, I insist on my point of order.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. PALLONE. The pending amendment violates the germaneness requirement of rule XVI, clause 7. That rule precludes amendments ``on a subject different from that under consideration.''

The subject matter of the underlying bill is a requirement that the Department of Energy issue a plan related to the leasing of Federal lands for oil and gas drilling before certain first drawdowns from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

However, the subject matter of the pending amendment is different. The pending amendment introduces a new subject matter to the bill by requiring a plan for drawdowns that have already occurred. Because the pending amendment is on a different subject than that of the underlying bill, I urge the Chair to hold this amendment as not germane.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, first of all, I think the gentlewoman's previous amendment was about the policies of the President being political. And I think this amendment is more political than anything.

First of all, as we know, what the underlying bill does is it says that if the President wants to release crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, then he has to put together a plan that would require more leases on public lands.

What the gentlewoman's amendment says now is that she makes this retroactive and goes back to the day of the President's inauguration-- again, a very political decision to use that date--and says that any releases from the reserve beginning on the day of the President's inauguration, we would also then have to go back and make sure that we sell or lease additional leases on public lands to cover those releases from the reserve back to the inauguration.

So, the bureaucracy of all this in itself I think is absurd.

But the point is that she is essentially saying that now we have to lease more public lands when, in fact, there are about 9,000 leases already on public lands, half of which are not being used. The oil companies do not want to pump more oil because that brings down the price. They don't want any releases from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve because that brings down the price.

So all that the Republican majority is doing here is trying to help the oil companies, trying to make sure that there are no tools on the part of the administration to increase the supply, to bring down the cost of gasoline at the pump. Whatever the oil companies, which are making huge profits, want to do, that is what they want to do, as well.

So I would just again say that this amendment may be germane but it is certainly detrimental to what the President and the Democrats are trying to do to help people deal with affordability.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source