Press Conference with Senator Mitch McConnell
Statement
Copyright ©2008 by Federal News Service, Inc., Ste. 500, 1000 Vermont Ave, Washington, DC 20005 USA. Federal News Service is a private firm not affiliated with the federal government. No portion of this transcript may be copied, sold or retransmitted without the written authority of Federal News Service, Inc. Copyright is not claimed as to any part of the original work prepared by a United States government officer or employee as a part of that person's official duties. For information on subscribing to the FNS Internet Service at www.fednews.com, please email Carina Nyberg at cnyberg@fednews.com or call 1-202-216-2706.
SEN. MCCONNELL: Senate Republicans last Thursday announced a plan to produce more American energy, lower gas prices and also create American jobs at the same time.
I just offered that proposal on behalf of Senator Domenici, who has been our leader on this subject, to the bill that's pending on the floor. And I'd like to call on Senator Domenici to describe how this proposal would begin to deal with the issue of high gas prices.
Senator Domenici.
SEN. PETE DOMENICI (R-NM): Thank you, Mr. Leader.
Well, first, as the lead Republican on the Energy Committee, I want to say, if you all haven't come to the same conclusion that I have, as of a week ago, I don't know what's happening to you.
The price of crude oil is skyrocketing. And it seems that there is no end to how high it can go. I think that it is going so high, that the people of the United States are going to suffer irreparable damage. As a matter of fact, I think it's probably a crisis already, and we don't know it.
The one thing we can do to lower prices is to produce more of our own energy.
Senator Schumer said if we could just get OPEC to raise -- to increase the production by 500,000 barrels a day, we would have a dramatic drop in the price of gasoline. Well, we have a bill there that is all production from -- American production of oil and natural gas. We do it in five ways and they're all things we could do.
One, we go ahead and say we can drill in Alaska. We did that before and we sent it to the president then. He vetoed it. The prices at the -- of crude oil were $19 a barrel when that was sent to the president. They're over a hundred (dollars) now. We think it's time that we take another look. Two thousand acres out of 19 million is all that we would affect. We think that's one million barrels a day minimum.
Secondly, we believe that we should say all of the moratoriums on offshore drilling are removed, the executive ones and the legislative ones, and we put a new one on that is removable by the governor of the states that abut on coastal plains. If they will remove the moratorium, you cannot drill closer -- you have to be 50 miles or more away from the shores to drill. And the states will receive an exceptional bonus if they would agree to do that. Seems to me, now is the time to take advantage of the most important reserves we have. What are they reserves for? We have the biggest crisis we'll ever have. We ought to use it.
In addition to that, it's obvious that we ought to build some refineries. We have some provision in here to cause -- to create incentives so we can do that. We haven't built a new refinery in something like 30 years. Now is the time.
In addition, the time is now to have a crash program to turn coal into liquid, which would be diesel, for airplanes both military and domestic. They could use that diesel fuel. We know how to do that. We borrow the technology from South Africa, and we produce. Every barrel of that we produce will take the place of crude oil that had to come into America. We believe this can be done. And there will be no harm to the environment because we'll be swapping barrels of one crude for another. They'll have the same negative effect or positive effect on the air. And we think that ought to be done and done quickly.
That could create over time a huge reservoir.
Now, there are a few more things here, and I want to say if America determined and declared we were going to do these things, it would be a signal to the world that we are once again going to try to use our ingenuity and our strength to help ourselves. Now is the time.
SEN. JON KYL (R-AZ): Let me just mention a different subject briefly, and that is the status of where we are on confirming circuit court nominees. As you know, the leaders agreed to use their best efforts to confirm three of these nominees before the Memorial Day recess.
The process in the Judiciary Committee, in an effort to achieve that result, has actually significantly altered the way in which the committee does its business in terms of considering judicial nominees. There is a process by which there is an FBI check, there is an American Bar Association investigation, there are questionnaires, there's time for members to review them, responses back from the nominee hearings and the process that unfolds.
Instead of taking nominees that were in the queue that were ready for consideration by the full committee and then to the Senate, Chairman Leahy, because he wanted a particular nominee, reached back and took two people who had been nominated on April 15th and who were not ready for this process and has tried to insert them into the system to be part of the judges to be considered before Memorial Day. That is creating a significant problem. There are significant questions in my mind about one of the nominees. We're not going to have adequate time, I think, to deal with this.
It does show two things. First of all, if you really want to consider these nominees and get them to the floor quickly, it can be done, and that's what's being demonstrated right now. But secondly, instead of just picking favorites and then saying, as the chairman suggested this morning, that there aren't going to be any more hearings -- this statement coming in May, when there are quality candidates just waiting for their hearings -- all the other work has been done -- and who could easily be confirmed or at least voted on by the Senate this year -- instead of doing that, the chairman has reached back to get a couple that he wanted considered and is significantly altering the procedures of the committee to try to get those considered before Memorial Day.
That's what's happening right now in the Judiciary Committee and with respect to this agreement to try to get three confirmations of circuit court nominees by the Memorial Day recess.
SEN. : Most Americans understand that high gas prices are the result of the laws of supply and demand. Republicans understand that. We support that law. We support more supply and lowering demand for oil so we can have lower gas prices. Last year, at the end of the year, most of us voted on the single most important act Congress could take to lower the price of gasoline when we voted for fuel efficiency standards. That's what the Oak Ridge National Laboratory said was the single most important act we could take. Now we need to take the single most important act we can take to increase supply.
Two examples. One is, as a former governor, if I were on the coast, such as Virginia has said, I would be delighted to allow oil and gas drilling 50 miles out, take 37-1/2 percent of it and put it in a trust fund to nourish my beaches, improve my higher education system, keep taxes down, and in the meantime increase the supply that would lower gas prices.
Second, if we move to a generation of plug-in electric vehicles, which we're likely to do, and which may be the most promising way to reduce our use of oil, we're going to need electricity, and we're going to have to burn coal and build nuclear power plants, and that means we need crash programs and carbon recapture and we need to learn how to burn coal cleanly and how to produce more nuclear power.
So, Republicans favor reducing demand, but we also favor supply, and we know we have to have that to lower the price of gas.
SEN. KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON (R-TX): Well, I think you're going to a stark difference between what the Republican plan is and what the Democratic plan is, because we're going to talk about the Republican plan today on the floor. It is a plan that would increase supply, create more refineries, make it easier to expand refineries, nuclear power, have more drilling where a state wants to do it, or a place like Alaska, where a very small part would be in the grassy plains area drilled and provide the same amount that we import from Saudi Arabia every day.
Ina addition to that, it is very important that we look at the Democratic plan, which is going to have more taxes and nothing on the supply side.
The last time we passed a windfall profits tax in this country, what happened? Production went down. Jobs went overseas; production went overseas. It did nothing to increase our supply. And in fact, it increased importing requirements by 10 percent.
That would be just a stupid thing to do at this point in time when, we know, what we need is more supply and more dependence on our own resources, rather than depending on foreign sources that may or not be there in the future.
So I think the Republican plan that we'll talk about today is going to be the responsible plan to really do something about gas prices. Whereas the Democratic plan will go nowhere.
MR. : The bottom line is, the American people are being hurt by gas prices. Our economy is; the family budget is. It's affecting prices at the grocery store. It's affecting the economy.
It's slowing things down. It's going to be obviously affecting airline prices, the tourist industry across the United States. So we need to do something about gas prices.
When was the last time, just ask yourselves, that you taxed something and you got more of it? That's exactly what the Democrats are proposing. They want to tax it more. Is that going to increase supply? The answer is obviously no. So we brought forward a proposal to increase supply.
People say, well, the things that we're talking about here are long term. Well, most experts, who look at gasoline prices today, know that there are a lot of speculators out there buying on the futures markets.
If they know that we were going to drill in ANWR, if they know we were going to open the Outer Continental Shelf, do some of the other things that are in the Domenici bill, gas prices go down overnight. Because so much of the gas price today is built on the futures market.
So it's critical. If we want to provide relief to the American consumer today, we need to have more supply of our natural resources, right here in America, and less dependence on foreign oil.
And the bottom line is, we can do this in a way that is environmentally sensible. We can do it in a way that balances our economic concerns with our environmental concerns. And that's the proposal that we have brought forward today.
SEN. MCCONNELL: Any questions, anyone.
Q (Off mike.)
SEN. MCCONNELL: Yeah.
Emily, I had a bit of a hard time hearing you. But I think you said something about the House supplemental. Has it now been revealed?
Q (Off mike.)
SEN. MCCONNELL: Yeah.
Well, that's my first point. This package is being put together without any Republican input in either the House or the Senate.
It's a fairly unusual process. We gather -- we're going to get three messages over from the House. We'll be dealing with three messages on the floor. And I'm told, unless there's a change of heart, there will be no opportunity on the floor to offer alternatives.
So we think the process is extraordinarily flawed in that it has a tendency to unify the minority in opposition simply over the procedure being employed to shut us out and not give us opportunities for alternatives. You know, maybe that will change between now and the end of the process. It is an extremely important bill. Much of it, I think, will be supported by my conference, but the process, I think, is quite flawed. And there is significant objection to that in my conference.
I'll take one more. Yeah.
Q Senator McConnell, the FEC nominees -- where do things stand there? (Off mike.) Are the Democrats still likely to vote for the Republicans?
SEN. MCCONNELL: Yeah, well, obviously however it unfolds, the Democrats will not be able to allow -- to determine who the Republican nominees are any more than we want to determine who theirs are. So they'll either all six go in rough proximity to each other or we will not have solved the problem. We have picked three that we're comfortable with. The president's nominated three that they're comfortable with. Now Senator Reid and I need to work out a process by which we can get all six of them confirmed.
Thanks.
Source