Farm, Nutrition, and Bioenergy Act of 2007--Continued --

Floor Speech

FARM, NUTRITION, AND BIOENERGY ACT OF 2007--Continued -- (Senate - December 13, 2007)

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, aren't prices of gasoline high enough? Why would we want to raise the price of gasoline for the American consumer by raising taxes and the costs of doing business on the people who produce oil and gasoline for the American consumer? That is exactly the argument I think we heard from the distinguished assistant majority leader: Taxes are not high enough on domestic producers of oil and gasoline.

I think this vote we had was a very important vote because what we said is we think prices are too high and should not be any higher. We do not believe we ought to depend more and more on imported sources of oil and gas. We believe we ought to produce more domestically, here in the United States.

The kind of arguments we hear from the other side of the aisle so often demonstrate a kind of schizophrenia when it comes to a national energy policy, further burdening those who produce oil and gasoline here domestically and then at the same time railing about the high prices.

Congress can pass laws, Congress can repeal laws, but the one law Congress cannot repeal is the law of supply and demand. One of the ways we are going to find our way to a more reasonably priced gasoline at the pump is if we increase the supply. We know we are in a global competition for oil and gas. That is one of the reasons why the prices continue to go up, because supply is not keeping pace. One of the things we need to do is to take reasonable steps to open areas that are now out of bounds to domestic exploration for these precious natural resources--in an environmentally responsible way, as the modern oil and gas industry is capable of doing. It doesn't do any good to rail against big oil or to try to use any sector of the economy as a political football when it hurts the American consumer and the American people.

I agree with the distinguished Senator from New Mexico that it was important that we defeat this tax increase that would raise the price of gasoline at the pump for the American consumer. Now we can come together and work on another important element of our national energy policy and that is conservation. We need to conserve and to use our natural resources more efficiently. That is what the CAFE provisions of this bill will do. Yes, we need to explore and put money into research and development of renewable fuels to try to find new and more efficient ways to limit our reliance on oil and gasoline.

But in the near term, we know that is going to be part of the puzzle. We need to explore clean nuclear energy as a source of electricity. France produces more than 80 percent of its electricity using nuclear power; for America, it is around 20 percent. We need to get away from the scare tactics and using the energy companies that we are going to have to, in part, rely upon to find our way out of where we are and come up with a comprehensive energy strategy which says, yes, we need to tap into all sources of energy in an environmentally responsible way and a way that will limit carbon production and will help with the issue of climate change at the same time. But we are not going to do it by raising taxes on the domestic oil and gas industry.

I would just point out that the competitors, for most of the people whom the majority wants to add taxes to, are competing with people like Hugo Chavez and Ahmadinejad in Iran, state-owned oil companies that would not be subject to this increase in taxes. So they are literally targeting the domestic producers in a way that will further harm our ability to become less dependent on imported oil and gas.

I am proud of the vote the Senate had today. I hope we will go forward and come up with a commonsense, bipartisan resolution on the CAFE and renewable standards portion of this bill, that we will pass the bill and send it to the President for a quick signature. It would be one of the very few areas where this Congress will have actually done something positive here in the last year, and I think we ought to not give up that opportunity but take advantage of it.

I yield the floor.

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