Making Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for the Fiscal Year Ending Septmenber 30, 2006 Part I

MAKING EMERGENCY SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS FOR THE FISCAL YEAR ENDING SEPTEMBER 30, 2006 --
Part I

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

AMENDMENT NO. 3665

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, the pending amendment which I offered last night and discussed briefly with the distinguished chairman of the committee, Senator Cochran, is before the Senate at this time. It deals with the most expensive and the most needless giveaway that taxpayers ladle out to the oil industry. It is something called royalty relief. I will take a few minutes to explain to the Senate how this works.

The oil companies are supposed to pay royalties to the Federal Government when they extract oil from Federal lands. In order to stimulate production when the price of oil was cheap, the Federal Government reduced the amount of royalty payments the companies had to make, certainly a logical argument for doing something such as that when we are not getting the production we need. When prices are cheap and we do not have incentives, then there is an argument for some kind of royalty relief. But now that the price of oil has soared to over $70 a barrel, the discounted royalty payments amount to a needless subsidy of billions and billions of dollars.

Now, to his credit, the President has essentially said, look, we do not need this huge array of incentives for the oil industry when the price is over $50 a barrel. Now we are looking at $70 a barrel. So a program that one could argue on behalf of when the price of oil was cheap has lost all its rationale at this critical time when we, of course, are seeing record prices, record profits, and now record royalty subsidies to the companies, as well.

What we have before the Senate is truly a bizarre situation. The Senate is working on a supplemental spending program that is designated as emergency spending because our Government does not have the money to pay for it. Yet the Senate is still willing to distribute, needlessly, billions of dollars of taxpayer money.

This program, by the General Accounting Office, is designed to lose at a minimum $20 billion. There is litigation underway with the oil companies surrounding this program. If that litigation is successful, it is possible this program will cost our Government $80 billion; $80 billion then becomes twice the amount that the distinguished Senator from Mississippi has in the legislation that is considered emergency spending.

Experts in and out of Government have said recently this subsidy makes absolutely no sense. For example, from the other body of the Congress, Congressman RICHARD POMBO, the chairman of the natural resources committee, is not a person that anyone would call anti-oil in his views about Government. This is what Congressman Pombo, the chairman of the natural resources committee, had to say a little bit ago about royalty relief: There is no need for an incentive. They have a market incentive to produce at $70 a barrel.

Michael Coney, a lawyer for Shell Oil--again, not a place one would normally look to hear anti-oil rhetoric espoused, said that under the current environment, we don't need royalty relief.

Even the original author of this program, the very respected former colleague Senator Bennett Johnston of Louisiana, essentially the person who put this whole thing together, thinks this program is out of whack.

Senator Johnston said:

The one thing I can tell you is this is not what we intended.

So I come to the Senate today with a simple proposition. My proposition is, royalty relief can only be obtained if it is needed to avert a supply disruption or prices drop and there is no incentive for people to produce in the United States.

The distinguished Senator in the chair, Senator Coburn, knows a great deal about the oil business. I want to make sure there are incentives for production. But the President of the United States, to his credit, has said you don't need incentives when oil is over $50 a barrel. It is at $70 today.

(Mr. McCain assumed the Chair.)

Mr. WYDEN. Not long ago when the oil company executives came before the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, I went down the line and asked them if they needed the various tax breaks. To a person, they all said no. So now we are seeing a bit of discussion about whether all of these tax breaks are needed by people in the oil business.

It is one thing to talk about new initiatives--and we will be debating a variety of additional approaches, windfall profits taxes and the like--and it is quite another to be spending billions and billions of dollars out the door when those subsidy payments defy common sense, defy essentially what the President of the United States said, that we ought to get out of the subsidy business when oil is over $50 a barrel. That is what I am proposing in this particular amendment.

What it comes down to is the U.S. Government ought to stop adding sweetener to the Royalty Relief Program. At every opportunity over the last few years--and I see the distinguished Senator in the chair has zeroed in on wasteful programs, to his credit, for a long time--at every opportunity we have seen this program sweetened and sweetened and sweetened, all at the taxpayers' expense. To give the Senate an idea of how out of control this particular program is, as I understand it, the previous Secretary of the Interior, Secretary Norton, actually went out and sweetened up the old contracts to provide even more royalty relief at a time when prices, again, were way above the threshold that the President of the United States has indicated we should not be offering subsidies to.

This is an important debate in this whole question of tax breaks and windfall profits tax and the like. It is clearly going to spark a lot of debate and differences of opinion among colleagues.

This, in my view, is not even a close call. When Congressman Pombo from the other body, the chair of the natural resources committee, says we did not need this incentive, when we have people from Shell Oil saying we do not need the Royalty Relief Program, when we have the original author of the program, our former colleague Senator Bennett Johnston, saying this is not what he intended, I sure hope that is a wakeup call to the Senate. This is not a close call.

We are going to see, according to the General Accounting Office, a minimum of $20 billion head out the door as a result of this program.

By the way, it was sweetened up also in the energy conference last year. In fact, it was done almost in the dead of night because nobody could make a case for sweetening up this program anymore in broad daylight. So essentially, with virtually no debate, even last year, in the Energy bill, after the previous Secretary of the Interior, Secretary Norton, had kept adding to the program, the Congress continued to enrich this program and needlessly offered these subsidies.

Mr. President, I think a little bit of history is in order. Certainly, back in the middle 1990s--this program is, essentially, one that is a decade old--you could make an argument for the Government being involved in an incentives effort. Certainly, when the price of energy was low and we needed opportunities to incentivize production, so be it. That was a case where some targeted efforts on the part of Government to stimulate production could make some sense.

The Government is now out of the targeting business. For example, there are no limits on who gets royalty relief. The President of the United States did not say: Oh, we ought to draw distinctions between people who get these various subsidies. The President of the United States said: We don't need Government subsidies when the price of oil is over $50 a barrel.

So what happened, essentially, after the program got off the ground in the early 1990s is folks who were supposed to be watchdogging the program did not do their job. They did not pay attention to it. So there was an original threshold for this program of about $34. The price of oil today is $70-plus a barrel. They were talking, in the middle 1990s, about $34 being the threshold level for the subsidy.

But what happened is, during the Clinton administration, some folks in the Government agency, the minerals program, who were supposed to be watchdogging this program just missed it. Some have described it as a bureaucratic blunder. However you want to call it, the reality is, Government, in the middle 1990s, was not doing right by the taxpayers. The Government should have been watchdogging this program. They should have seen there would be an effort by some in the oil industry to enrich themselves and use the taxpayer to essentially create an incentive that was unjustifiable and inexplicable, if you looked at what we are seeing today. Yet the money just kept pouring out the doors.

So what we have is a brandnew subsidy--new because it was added during the energy legislation, at a time when the price of oil was already above $55 per barrel. Certainly, the industry cannot make a claim they need this kind of incentive, as they have said in the past.

They have been drilling, and drilling without this particular incentive. In fact, we have seen, fortunately, some increase in drilling and production over the past 2 years without this particular incentive. There is no doubt in my mind, if you look at the record prices and if you look at the record profits, the drilling is going to continue if and when the amendment I have before the Senate is adopted.

I wish to emphasize, this legislation does give the Bush administration a significant amount of discretion in terms of operating the Royalty Relief Program. If the President, if the Secretary of the Interior, for example, determines that an absence of royalty relief would cause a disruption in oil supply, they set it aside, go back to the Royalty Relief Program. If the price of oil were to drop precipitously again, once more, you can provide oil royalty relief. But when the companies make record profits, when they charge record prices, it seems to me they do not need these record amounts of subsidies.

So the supplemental we are on the floor debating now involves $35 billion. The amendment I hope to have adopted today would pick up a significant portion of the costs of the supplemental that have been designated as emergency spending.

If the litigation that is now taking place surrounding this program is successful--and I do not think anyone can divine the results of that litigation--it is possible the Government will be out $80 billion for this particular program. That is twice the amount--twice the amount--of the money this legislation involves.

Now, colleagues--and I see a number of Senators on the floor--this is the granddaddy of all the oil subsidies. This is the biggest and this is the most unjustifiable of all the breaks.

By the way, we have had good ideas coming from colleagues. And probably the best single idea--and the distinguished Senator from Arizona has had an interest in these issues for some time--the Senator from Wyoming has said, to his credit, he wants to target the tax incentives for oil drilling to get more out of existing wells. There is a lot of evidence that perhaps a third of the oil that is in these existing wells is being left behind because we have never retooled the tax laws to get more from existing wells.

So there are good ideas, Mr. President and colleagues, and Senator Thomas from Wyoming deserves credit for one of the best. But I will tell you, there are some real turkeys out there. And one of them is this existing program which provides royalty relief where there is no case to do so. This is an out-of-control program. This is a program which has lost its historical moorings. It made sense in 1995, when the price of oil was cheap, but it sure does not make any sense today.

When I asked the executives who came before the Energy Committee recently--the CEOs of ExxonMobil, Chevron, Texaco, ConocoPhillips, BP, and Shell--I asked them specifically if they needed these new incentives. All of them said they did not.

So I am offering this amendment today that prohibits the Department of Energy from providing any additional royalty relief so long as the price of oil is above $55 per barrel. That is the price at which the President said oil companies do not need incentives to explore.

The amendment, as I have indicated, provides an exception in cases where royalty relief is needed to avoid supply disruptions because of hurricanes or other natural disasters or if the price of oil were to fall. But with oil selling for more than $70 a barrel--way above the price for which the President said incentives were not needed--Congress ought to stop giving away more taxpayer money for unnecessary subsidies. We ought to prohibit further royalty relief, use this money to pay down the deficit, as the distinguished Senator from Arizona has suggested on this floor on more than one occasion, and save our citizens' hard-earned tax dollars for more worthy uses.

Consumers of this country are already paying more at work. They are paying more at home and as they drive everywhere in between. It seems to me we certainly ought to give them a break in their personal energy bills before we continue the operation of a program that the General Accounting Office has said will cost taxpayers a minimum of $20 billion and could end up costing taxpayers $80 billion, if the litigation over this program is successful.

Mr. President, I see other colleagues on the floor. I have not had anybody come to the floor and say they are going to oppose my amendment. If no one does--and I am not going to yield quite at this point--I am anxious--and the chairman of the committee, Senator Cochran, has been very gracious in his discussions with me. I am anxious to go to a vote. I know the Senator from Mississippi treats all Members fairly, and I have told him I am ready to go to an up-or-down vote on my amendment and get the Senate on record as making sure we save this money which is being needlessly frittered away.

No one has come to the floor of the Senate to say they object to the amendment. The amendment is very straightforward. It says we are not going to have royalty relief unless the President says we have to have it to avoid a disruption or the price of oil falls. This is a program which does not make sense. We ought to save the money.

I, at this point, would like to propound a request to the distinguished chair of the committee. I would be prepared to allow the Senate to move on to other business if we could agree upon a time when there could be an up-or-down vote on my amendment. Would the distinguished chairman of the committee, the Senator from Mississippi, give me his thoughts? And can we enter into an agreement so you can move ahead with the important work you are doing and we can lock in a time for a vote on my amendment?

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, if the Senator will yield, I will be happy to respond.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator from Oregon yield?

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I am willing to yield so that the chairman of the committee can respond to my question.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. It requires unanimous consent. The Senator from Oregon should request unanimous consent.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the distinguished chairman of the committee, Senator Cochran, be allowed to respond to my request, and that after he has completed his response I reclaim my time.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?

Without objection, it is so ordered.

The Senator from Mississippi.

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I will be happy to respond to the Senator's inquiry. Responding to the Senator's inquiry, I am not, as manager of the bill, deciding who offers an amendment or what the content of the amendment is or how long the amendment can be discussed, whether or not there will be a tabling motion offered to any amendment or reaching an agreement with each Senator as to when a vote would occur on the amendment. The Senate rules control all of those issues. As manager of the bill, I am not going to inject myself in trying to manage to the extreme minutiae of the procedures of the Senate the way this bill is considered. I think we have rules that are here for a purpose. We ought to follow the rules.

We have other Senators who have offered amendments already which are pending and were pending before the amendment of the Senator from Oregon. They have a right, and I am not going to do anything that would abridge or infringe upon that right, to call for the regular order at any time. And the Senate would go back to the consideration of those earlier amendments.

So I cannot give the Senator any assurance, except you should be treated like any other Senator; no different whatsoever. You have the right to talk about your amendment, and eventually it will be disposed of in some way. But I am not going to put it ahead, reach an agreement that it should go ahead of any other issue before the Senate.

This an emergency, urgent supplemental appropriations bill to fund the war in Iraq, the global war on terror, provide the Department of Defense and Department of State with funds that are needed now to protect the national security interests of our country, and to assist in the recovery from Hurricane Katrina and other such events.

That is the business of the Senate. I wish to see it handled in an expeditious way, under the rules of the Senate, and then we wind up the business of the Senate on this bill and any amendments thereto in a workmanlike way, with fairness to all, Republicans and Democrats.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. COBURN). Under the unanimous consent agreement, the Senator from Oregon has the floor.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I think it is going to be a long day because I intend to stay here and make the case for this outrageous rip-off being eliminated. This is an extraordinary waste of taxpayer money. Colleagues know I always try to work in a bipartisan way. I always want to expedite the business of the Senate.

The last time the Senate looked at energy, after midnight, in the middle of the night, there was an effort to sweeten this program and add more cost to taxpayers that cannot be justified. As I understand it, I may have misspoken on this point; the total amount of the supplemental bill is $100 billion. The cost of litigation over this program, if successful, could be $80 billion. The General Accounting Office estimates that at a minimum, the Government is going to be out $20 billion. My amendment alone could pay a significant portion of what is needed to cover this emergency spending legislation.

The Government is here talking about an emergency spending bill because there isn't the money in order to pay for these essential programs. Yet at a time when we have an emergency spending bill and we don't have the money in order to take care of needs, the Government keeps ladling out billions of dollars. All I want to do is prevent what we saw last year in the Energy bill. We are now going to do it differently. We are going to stay here, and we are going to stay at this discussion until the Senate votes up or down as to whether we want to keep sweetening a program with billions and billions of dollars at a time when there is no commonsense reason for this particular program.

I have come to admire the Senator from Arizona. We serve together on the Commerce Committee. I particularly appreciate his tenaciousness. He has taught me an awful lot about it. Frankly, that is what is needed. Somebody has to stay here and stay at this until we drain this swamp. To continually shovel out billions and billions of dollars, when the President of the United States has said we don't need these incentives when oil is over $50 a barrel, I don't see how anybody can argue for the continuation of this program in its current form.

I said I am not going to chuck the program in the trash can. All I am going to say is, you get royalty relief if the price of oil goes down or we need royalty relief to avoid disruptions. That is a straightforward proposition. It certainly ensures that we go back to what was originally contemplated. Even the authors of this program, people such as our former colleague Senator Bennett Johnston, are scratching their heads and saying: This program is completely out of control. It makes no sense in its current form.

I don't see how you can argue something that at its outset was designed to promote production when prices were cheap. By the way, a lot of the sponsors of this legislation always said this program was cost free. I was amazed to hear that.

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

Mr. WYDEN. Through the Chair, I ask unanimous consent to have Senator McCain propound his question, and when I have responded, I would be able to reclaim the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, if the Senator yields for a question, then he maintains the right to the floor. I by no means want to deprive him of that.

Is the Senator from Oregon concerned that he is not going to get a vote on this amendment? Because it seems to me if the amendment is proposed and it is in order, at some point, after disposing of the pending amendments, unless there is something I don't understand, the amendment of the Senator from Oregon would then be subject to a vote. As the Senator from Oregon knows, there are several other pending amendments that we think are important as well, particularly having to do with earmarks.

I note this morning in a Wall Street Journal-NBC poll, the No. 1 concern of Americans is earmarks. I find it very interesting that they are sick and tired of the absolutely incredible stuff we have loaded into this bill. The Senator from Oklahoma and I have an amendment about seafood marketing. The Senator from Oregon, I am sure, probably remembers that last year they spent some half a million to paint a giant salmon on a 737. The same money would go to that same outfit in this bill that is supposed to be for the war in Iraq.

I am sorry for the long question. I apologize to my friend from Oregon. Is it his concern that he will not get a vote on this amendment or that he needs a vote now? Perhaps for the rest of us who are waiting to offer amendments, he could clarify. I thank the Senator from Oregon for his courtesy.

Mr. WYDEN. I thank my friend. Before we got into seafood marketing and the question of earmarks, it seemed to me that your point was a very logical one, sometimes too logical for the Senate. That is, how do you get a vote around here? What I was asking the distinguished chairman of the committee is if we could get agreement to have a vote at a time certain or conceivably to have my proposal included in the next group of amendments to be voted on. But, yes, I say to the distinguished Senator from Arizona, without that commitment, I am very much convinced that we won't get an up-or-down vote on this outrageous boondoggle, a huge expenditure of many billions of dollars that as recently as the energy conference, there were no votes. It was done in the middle of the night. It was snuck in after midnight.

The reason why: Because nobody was able to do what I am trying do right here on the floor of the Senate, which is to say, we are going to do this in broad daylight. If Senators want to vote in favor of a program that subsidizes, when we are over $70 a barrel and the President of the United States says we don't need those subsidies, then Senators can so vote.

Mr. McCAIN. If I may, if the Senator will yield for an additional question.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator does not require unanimous consent. He retains his time.

Mr. WYDEN. Very good.

Mr. McCAIN. My understanding from talking to the floor staff, I say to the Senator from Oregon--and the distinguished chairman can probably help out on this--is we have a number of amendments in order which are going to be voted on, I think by an agreement between the two leaders, which is the general procedure around here.

Nothing is more outrageous, as the Senator from Oregon pointed out, than these things that are stuffed into conference reports. But this isn't a conference report. This is an initial bite at an appropriations bill. I hope that perhaps we could work out something so we can continue with the amendment process and set a time for votes on all amendments, with the amendment of the Senator from Oregon in order following the others, as is the normal procedure. Maybe the Senator from Oregon could ask for that again, we could move forward. We all know that everybody's time is limited.

I thank the Senator for responding to my question.

Mr. WYDEN. To respond to my friend from Arizona, he is very good at working out arrangements to get votes on these matters that are so important to the public interest. Perhaps it is possible, through his good offices, to persuade Senator Cochran and others that we can make arrangements. I am not anxious to hold up the time of the Senate. By the way, I was here late last night, and I would have been prepared to vote last night. So this Member was prepared to vote last night. I am prepared to vote now. I am prepared to give up the floor as long as there is a commitment that we get a vote. But the handling of this program is a disgrace.

You cannot make an argument for having no accountability whatsoever at a time when billions and billions of taxpayer dollars are used. That is what happened during the energy legislation where in the dead of night, not only was the program preserved, the program was sweetened at a time when the President says you cannot make the case for these kinds of subsidies.

We will continue with this discussion. My door, as always, remains open to colleagues. I would like to think I was bipartisan before it became fashionable to be bipartisan. I note that Senator Kyl is a cosponsor of the legislation. Senator Lieberman has joined on as a cosponsor of the legislation. I remain anxious to work with Senators to get this worked out.

We have been talking a lot about lobbyists. We have had a lobbying reform bill and the Senate has acted. It was not all I wished it were, but at least it was a beginning. Talk about special interests and about the clout of lobbyists, this program is a textbook case of how a handful of savvy lobbyists can hotwire the political process and end up costing taxpayers billions and billions of dollars. The law itself, through the handiwork of all these lobbyists, is full of confusing language, language that has lent itself to a wide variety of interpretations. We are almost running a lawyers full employment program with this particular initiative. It will be in court endlessly, as far as I can tell. It was a program that was sweetened by the administration, even at a time when the President said you didn't need added incentives when oil was over $50 a barrel.

I have mentioned some of the problems we saw in the previous administration. I guess nobody was home watchdogging the particular program there in the minerals department because they were supposed to have a threshold in terms of when subsidies would be dispensed. But what you have seen with this particular program is how a handful of insiders, very clever lobbyists, have been able to get the Government to give away billions and billions of dollars. I don't understand how any Member of the Senate could go home, face a town meeting in their particular community, and make the case for having this program in its current form at this crucial time. Do Senators want to go home, meet with folks in grange halls and senior centers and the like--I just got clobbered on the way to a meeting about these prices--and say, gosh, we have to continue this royalty relief program? Essentially what you have is a multiyear fiasco.

It began in 1995. At that time, with the price of energy low, you could make a case for this particular program. But over the years, and particularly in the last few years with high prices, what you have is a situation where you have a program mushrooming in cost, mushrooming in terms of the toll it takes on taxpayers. The Bush administration has even confirmed that the Government will lose billions of dollars in royalties.

So this argument some have made that this program costs nothing--we heard that in the energy debate last year. It is an argument that the Royalty Relief Program costs nothing. Now that is contradicted by the Bush administration itself, which has indicated that it is going to have to waive billions and billions of dollars in royalties.

There is a lawsuit underway, as I have noted. The lawsuit challenges what amounts to one of the few restrictions on the cash drawer the oil companies look to, and I gather that the oil companies have a pretty good chance of prevailing there. So we would see even more money shoveled out the door in the days ahead. Some have called this program one that was noncontroversial. I will tell you that I don't think you can explain this to anybody in broad daylight. That is why the actions with respect to sweetening the program were taken in the middle of the night. After the CEOs of all of the major oil companies have come before a joint hearing of the Senate Energy and Commerce Committees, saying, in response to my question, that they agreed with the President's position that when the price of oil is more than $55 per barrel, they don't need incentives to explore for oil and gas, I wish one Senator would come to the floor today and say here is why we need the Royalty Relief Program.

I note that I have been trying to get a vote on this particular amendment since last night. Not one Senator has come to the floor and said that they oppose my amendment. I cannot get a commitment for a vote up or down. And given what has happened with these oil interests and this program, that is not acceptable to me, and I cannot imagine that it is acceptable to the American people.

We have a supplemental that is going to cost $100 billion. If the litigation is successful, we will see the Government out of up to $80 billion. The General Accounting Office estimates the minimum cost of this program will be $20 billion. So at some point, it seems to me, the Senate has to step in and say we are going to have some accountability here for taxpayer money; we are not going to sit on our hands when the money pours out the door.

In terms of the timeline, there are a couple of dates that I think are particularly important. In January of 2004, the Department of the Interior apparently expanded the royalty incentives--the incentives the companies would be getting under this particular program. About a year after that, the President of the United States made his statement with respect to what kind of incentives there should be for people in the oil business. He said, as I have noted today, with oil at $70 a barrel, the Government ought to get out of the business. That is the President of the United States. The President said we don't need these incentives. By the way, he made no distinction in terms of the kind of companies involved. He just said the Government doesn't need to be pouring out subsidies when the price of oil is $70 a barrel.

The next key date was in the summer of 2005----

Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. WYDEN. I am happy to yield to my colleague for a question and then continue discussing my amendment.

Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, I thank my friend from Oregon for yielding for this question. I appreciate what my friend brings to this issue in trying to make sure we are dealing with the budgetary situation that faces our Nation in a straightforward manner. I appreciate his advocacy here this morning.

My question to my friend from Oregon is whether he would be willing to yield time for me to simply offer an amendment that I could do at this point in time.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I am under the impression that I cannot yield to my friend--I certainly would like to--without in essence losing my right to stay on the floor. As I said earlier when we had questions from the Senator from Arizona and others, I would very much like to get a time commitment, because I know the Senator has important legislation he would like to have considered, and I also see my friend from Texas, Senator Cornyn. This is not my favorite way of getting the business of the Senate done. But my understanding is I cannot give up the floor to another Senator for purposes of their having consideration of their amendments.

Reluctantly, I tell my good friend, a wonderful addition to the Senate, that I cannot do that at this time. I also see our friend from Arizona here. He may be working his magic with the leadership and the Chair so as to be able to at some point lock in a vote. I would be happy if I could get a commitment that the Senate would vote on this amendment. I would be happy to let colleagues proceed for several hours and have a chance to do their important work.

I note once again that not one Senator of either political party has come to the floor and said they want to defend this multibillion dollar program in its current form. That is an astounding thing. I was very pleased to get Senator Kyl this morning as a cosponsor of the legislation, and Senator Lieberman and others. But what is stunning is in this place you can hardly get everybody to agree to go out and get a soda pop. Yet in discussing this legislation, nobody has stood up and said they are going to defend the Royalty Relief Program in its current form.

Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, I ask my friend if he would yield for another question.

Mr. WYDEN. Once again, as part of the unanimous consent agreement, I do yield for a question.

Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, to my friend from Oregon, I ask if he would object to a unanimous consent request on my part to offer an amendment concerning a fire emergency disaster we are facing across our Nation in the West--something that also affects the State of Oregon--and to agree not to object to my unanimous consent request to offer this amendment and to speak to this amendment for a period of no more than 3 minutes.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, let me propound this to the Chair. My understanding is if I yield to the distinguished Senator from Colorado for purposes of these unanimous consent requests, I would lose the opportunity to be considered, after he discussed this, automatically. My understanding is I cannot yield to the Senator from Colorado without losing my place. Is that correct?

The PRESIDING OFFICER. It requires unanimous consent to yield for anything but a question. So it could be propounded as a unanimous consent request that the Senator from Colorado would be recognized, followed by the recognition of the Senator from Oregon, as long as no other Senator objected.

Mr. WYDEN. Again, I tell my friend from Colorado that this is not my preferred choice of doing business in the Senate. I was ready to vote last night. I am ready to vote now. I am ready to vote as part of a package of amendments. My understanding is I cannot yield the floor at this time without losing my place. I reluctantly have to decline.

Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, I ask another question of my friend. All I am attempting to do, as many colleagues here are attempting to do, is put an amendment on file so we can make them part of the pending business. We can have a unanimous consent for you to yield to me for 2 minutes so I can offer my amendment. Part of that unanimous consent would be that we then go back to the Senator's amendment. I think we can get down to at least offering one more amendment.

I ask the Chair whether I am correct in my assumption that if there is no objection to my unanimous consent request, then I can offer my amendment and then return the floor to the Senator from Oregon.

Mr. WYDEN. Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. President: However much I would like to do what the Senator from Colorado has suggested, I cannot do that without losing my place on the floor, is that correct?

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator could do what the Senator from Colorado is talking about by unanimous consent, as long as no other Senator objected to what he was asking.

Mr. WYDEN. So if the Senator from Colorado propounds a unanimous consent request asking that he be allowed to speak for a couple of minutes so as to be able to offer his amendment, at the end of those 2 minutes, what he has offered is set aside and the business of the Senate would once again be my amendment, the Chair is advising that that could be done?

The PRESIDING OFFICER. It first takes unanimous consent for the Senator from Colorado to even ask for unanimous consent while the Senator from Oregon has the floor.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, let me say I am going to have staff work with the Parliamentarian for a bit--my staff and Senator Salazar's staff, and others--to see if we can address the concern of the Senator from Colorado. Maybe we can get a number of Senators involved in this so we can lock in some actual votes.

I would be very pleased to get a commitment from the distinguished chairman of the committee, Senator Cochran, to have my amendment included in the next group of votes. That is a pretty simple request--something that goes on here very often. It seems to me if we cannot do that, and I am not included, then I guess I have to stay at my post here and say that I think the taxpayers ought to get some protection and we ought to stop the ripping off, the persistent plundering of tax revenue, at a time when the President and everybody else says you cannot justify these kinds of incentives. If I can get a commitment from the distinguished chairman from Mississippi to have my amendment included in the next group of votes, and we will get an up-or-down vote, I would certainly like to save my larynx and let the Senate get about its business.

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, if the Senator will yield for a question, without his losing the floor.

Mr. WYDEN. Yes.

Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, the Senator asked if I would agree that he could have an up-or-down vote at a specific time or in a certain order. That in itself treats the Senator in a way that is different from the way every other Senator would be treated under the rules of the Senate.

We have opportunities for making points of order against an amendment that every Senator has under the rules. Any Senator could move to table the Senator's amendment and get the yeas and nays. But he is insisting that his amendment be treated different from that required under the rules in that he wants an up-or-down vote and he wants it in a certain order.

His amendment was not in the first order of business when the Senate started its work today. There were other amendments pending. But the Senator, by unanimous consent, proceeded with his offering of an amendment.

All I am suggesting is, I cannot be the referee for the duration of the handling of this bill and decide whose amendments get up-or-down votes, whose amendment can be tabled or a motion to table can be made, whether parliamentary objections can be made to proceeding on an amendment. Any person can be recognized to debate the amendment and talk without interruption until 60 Senators vote to cut off debate of that Senator who is talking.

So I am not going to make, I can't make, it is not appropriate for me to make rules that, in effect, limit all of the other Senators in the rights they have under the rules of the Senate.

This is just plain and simple. He is asking for special treatment of his amendment, and I don't have the power to do that and be fair at the same time to every other Senator. So that is why I am not agreeing to the unanimous consent request. I don't think it is appropriate that I do that.

His amendment ought to be treated just like anybody else's amendment. But he comes out here after amendments are being set aside at his request and offers his amendment and asks that we agree to vote up or down at a particular time. I have heard from some Senators who have concerns about the amendment.

The Energy Committee has jurisdiction of this legislation. I am chairman of the Appropriations Committee, not the Energy Committee. The Energy Committee has the right to review any suggested change in current law on matters coming within the jurisdiction of their committee, and that is being denied by offering this amendment to an appropriations bill and then asking the chairman of the Appropriations Committee to guarantee that there be an up-or-down vote at a particular time. So I can't agree.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, by way of responding to the distinguished Chair, the Senator is not asking for special treatment. What we do in the Senate again and again--it is the common practice, something that goes on every week--is we have debates on amendments and then Senators have those amendments put into a group, and when there has been a group of amendments put together and all Senators on both sides of the aisle have been notified that there will be votes, then there are votes.

That is all that I have asked for. There is no request for a specific time. Do it at 1, 2, 3. Do it whenever we have a block of amendments so we can get on and hear from Senator Cornyn and Senator Salazar, and I now see the Senator from North Carolina and the Senator from Pennsylvania here as well.

I don't understand why we can't get a commitment that at some point--what goes on here regularly, that Senators get votes as a group of amendments is considered--that be done.

I come back to the point, having had now considerable amount of discussion, that not one Senator has said they want to defend the oil royalty relief in its current form. I think that is incredible. I certainly expected some opposition. I was pleased when Senator Kyl and Senator Lieberman said they wanted to be cosponsors. I expected people to come on over here and oppose it. And I think the reason there is no vocal opposition to this program is exactly what we saw in the energy conference committee last year. You can't defend this program in broad daylight. That is why it was sweetened in the middle of the night. A program that made no sense, was already a boondoggle, got even sweeter with additional sums now going out the door.

I have noted that if the litigation of this program is successful, it is possible that the Government will be out a sum close to the entire cost of the supplemental program.

So I repeat to the distinguished Senator from Mississippi, nothing would please me more than to enter into an agreement to allow others to go forward, and my amendment could be voted on in exactly the way the Senate customarily does business; that is, when we have a block of amendments, a group of amendments that Senators have had a chance to discuss and consider, we would then take a vote. But for some reason, we are not going to do that with respect to this multibillion-dollar subsidy program, a program that has the Government subsidizing these companies through royalties when oil is $70 a barrel, and the President of the United States says we ought to be out of the subsidy business when oil is over $50 a barrel.

I have a unanimous consent request ready to go so I can satisfy colleagues. I now see the distinguished Senator from New Jersey is here, the Senator from Florida is here, and the Senator from Pennsylvania is here. There are a lot of folks who would like to have a chance to speak, and nothing would please me more than to let them get about that business.

I have not been here as long as the distinguished Senator from Mississippi, but I have not had an instance such as this ever happen to me in the Senate when I ask: Can I get a chance, as part of a group of amendments, or at some point, an up-or-down vote, and no efforts are being made to work something like that out. I think it is unfortunate. I am going to have to remain at my post, and colleagues who want to ask questions--does the Senator from Florida seek to ask a question?--I will be able to respond and reclaim my time.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I ask the Senator to yield for purposes of a question and that he retain the floor.

Mr. President, to the Senator from Oregon, I certainly commend him. Something is out of whack where we have a system of payments, royalty or otherwise, or tax credits, otherwise can be characterized in the vernacular of the street as giveaways, to an industry that at this point is reporting their first quarter profits. It is expected today or tomorrow that ExxonMobile will report a profit in excess of $9 billion for 3 months. That is profit for 3 months. That doesn't include the other major oil companies.

So I ask the Senator from Oregon, he has made a proposal--I don't know if it is the one that is on the floor right now--to eliminate the $1.5 billion giveaway. Will the Senator flesh out that particular proposal?

Mr. WYDEN. That is not the amendment that I offer. I will tell the Senator that I am trying to roll back the subsidy program that is the granddaddy of all of them. This is the one that is going to fleece taxpayers the worst. This is the one that the General Accounting Office says at a minimum will cost taxpayers $20 billion.

So the Senator from Florida, who has had a great interest in energy policy and serves on the committee, is talking about something else, but he has made the point again that there are a host of these subsidies. But the billion-dollar program that the Senator from Florida is talking about is peanuts compared to what we are talking about here.

What we are talking about here--I see the distinguished Senator from Alaska, Mr. Stevens, is here. He was, I know, a close friend of Senator Johnston, who was the original author of this program. Senator Johnston has said that he didn't intend anything like what this program has turned out to be. Congressman Pombo, the chair in the other body of the natural resources committee, said: You don't need this incentive. Nobody has ever called Congressman Pombo anti-oil. Even the people at Shell Oil say you don't need this kind of incentive in this climate.

The Senator from Florida makes a good point that there are a variety of subsidies that go out to oil companies, but the one that the Senator from Florida is talking about is really small potatoes compared to what we are talking about here. I appreciate the question.

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

Mr. WYDEN. Once again, under our unanimous consent agreement.

Mr. STEVENS. I wonder if the Senator from Oregon would agree, I have heard the comment that the normal process is for a Senator to offer an amendment and to have an opportunity to get a guarantee of a vote. I am sure, would the Senator agree, that the Senator's amendment is subject to an amendment?

Mr. WYDEN. Of course. I will tell my good friend from Alaska, I have been surprised that somebody hasn't come to the floor to speak against my amendment or to second-degree it, or anything of the sort. I have been here since last night, I will say--reclaiming my time--I have been here since last night discussing this, and no Senator, Democrat or Republican, has come and opposed the amendment that I am offering. No one has tried to second-degree it.

I think at this time what I would like to do----

Mr. STEVENS. Will the Senator yield for another question?

Mr. WYDEN. I will be happy to.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I have been trying for 25 years to get a vote on ANWR. I fully intend to offer ANWR as an amendment in the second degree to the Senator's amendment, and then I want to help him get a vote. I want to help him get a vote right now. That is exactly what I have been waiting to do for 25 years.

So I serve notice, I will offer an amendment in the second degree, the ANWR bill. I do hope we will vote on it today.

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