Senate Inaction

Floor Speech

SENATE INACTION -- (Senate - May 14, 2008)

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I want to turn to an important vote that we had yesterday in the Senate. Unfortunately, yesterday morning, we saw only 42 Senators voted to do anything significant about the high price of gasoline at the pump. This is just the latest example, I am afraid, of congressional intransigence and turning a deaf ear to the cries of the American people for Congress to do something to help bring relief at the gas pump. Unfortunately, it is just the latest example.

I know most of us came to Washington to serve in the Congress to try to solve problems. Unfortunately, the mentality inside the beltway seems to be that we ought to spend more time shooting at each other on a partisan political basis and not working together to solve problems. Unfortunately, there are more examples than just high gas prices to demonstrate this mentality.

I will just point to four areas where we have seen significant delays in congressional action that have had tremendous consequences on the American people. First and foremost is on our national security. It was 89 days ago that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act basically expired. The most recent authorization would have allowed us to continue to listen in to foreign terrorists communicating with each other on the telephone in a way that would allow us to detect and deter terrorist activity and defeat terrorist activity.

Why the House of Representatives and Speaker Pelosi would refuse to allow this important piece of legislation to come to the floor after it passed the Senate on a strong bipartisan vote is, frankly, beyond me. But it has been 89 days now since we have had the ability to detect new terrorist threats, when the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act basically went dark and expired.

Secondly, it has been 540 days since we have failed to act on the Colombia Free Trade Agreement. Free-trade agreements should not be partisan affairs. It is good, in fact, for us to have free-trade agreements because it opens markets to American farmers and American manufacturers and producers for their goods in other countries. In fact, Colombia does about $2.3 billion in trade with the State of Texas each year, which is very important to my State. Unfortunately, when Texas sells goods and produce to Colombia, they carry large tariffs, which disadvantages my manufacturers, my producers, and my farmers in Texas, while Colombian goods that are sold in the United States, because of other agreements, basically come in duty free.

Why Speaker Pelosi would fail to allow this important free-trade agreement to be taken up and voted on in the House of Representatives, again, escapes me. This is in the best interest of the United States. It is in the best interest of my State and the people who work there. At a time when we are dealing with stimulus packages because we are concerned about the softening of our economy, what better stimulus could we enact than to pass this free-trade agreement, which would strengthen the robust markets in Colombia for American goods and produce? But here we are 540 days later, and it is bogged down in partisan disagreements.

The next number is another important number. I think one of the most important jobs the Senate has is to take up and consider the nominations of individuals who have been proposed for service on the Federal bench and to serve in that important branch of Government. But we have seen that because of inaction in the Judiciary Committee, on some nominees such as Peter Keisler--nominated more than 685 days ago--and we have seen nominees out of North Carolina pass the 300-day mark without even so much as a hearing in the Judiciary Committee.

This is another example of partisan delays that, frankly, I think frustrates the American people. It certainly frustrates me. It is an example of where we ought to act and find an opportunity to come together to solve a problem, and the problem is particularly in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, where many litigants simply cannot find access to the courts because there are not enough judges sitting on those benches to listen to cases. Whether you are a crime victim or a small business man or woman or whether you are just a regular citizen in that Fourth District, we have a judicial emergency with about one-third of the seats vacant. Frankly, that creates a lack of access to justice. So, again, it has been 685 days without a vote on some of the nominees in the Judiciary Committee. We need to do better.

Of course, it was 751 days ago when Speaker Pelosi,--then running for election, and before the 2006 election, where Democrats were given the majority status in both the House and Senate, said: Elect us and we will produce a commonsense plan to help bring down the price of gasoline at the pump. Unfortunately, the price of gasoline at about the time that she took office as Speaker of the House was about $2.33 a gallon, I believe. And now, of course, it is about $3.75 a gallon.

Yesterday, as I mentioned, we had an opportunity to help provide relief for American families, to help them deal with their family budgets when it comes to the cost of gasoline. But I think we took a half step that did not do very much. What I mean by that is we did vote to quit filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, but if you look at how much oil that represents that would then be available in the open market, it is roughly 70,000 barrels of oil a day. Now, 70,000 barrels of oil a day sounds like a lot of oil, unless you consider the amount of oil consumed globally by all the countries on the planet. That is 85 million barrels of oil a day. How much of an impact do you think it will have on gasoline at the pump to provide an additional 70,000 barrels of oil, when worldwide consumption is 85 million? You don't have to be a Ph.D. in mathematics to figure that out. It will not be big. As a matter of fact, it will be minuscule--not completely insignificant but not very much.

On the other hand, we had an opportunity to vote to reduce our dependence upon imported oil and gas from dangerous enemies of the United States, countries such as Iran and Venezuela, both of whom are members of OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Unfortunately, the Senate turned down that opportunity to produce as much as 3 million barrels of oil a day from the U.S. reserve because we would not allow or authorize Alaskans to produce oil in Alaska. We would not authorize the States along the Outer Continental Shelf to be able to develop their oil reserves in the Outer Continental Shelf, and we would not allow States in the West to develop the oil shale that could produce massive amounts of oil right here in America, reducing our dependency on imported oil from dangerous countries such as Iran and Venezuela.

What I don't understand is, if our friends across the Senate--and I believe there was only one vote against the decision to stop putting oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. But if everybody in the Senate virtually agrees that adding 70,000 barrels of oil to the worldwide supply of oil would help bring down the price of gas at the pump--however minuscule that figure may be--how much more would it be likely to bring down the price of gas at the pump to add 3 million additional barrels to worldwide supply? Of course, this would not be from Saudi Arabia or Iran or Venezuela. It would be from the good old USA.

Again, how many new jobs would that create at home, when our economy has turned soft? It would create a lot of jobs in Texas. I know it would create jobs in Louisiana and, frankly, all over the country.

Instead of taking an opportunity to take a bold move on a bipartisan basis to increase the supply of American oil and gas, we find ourselves with half steps and relatively insignificant votes to increase production. I am glad that, finally, the Congress has recognized that the laws of supply and demand are not inapplicable in the District of Columbia. As a matter of fact, for a long time, it seemed that we outright refused to recognize the economic laws that apply across the planet right here in Washington, DC.

So I ask my friends and colleagues, if you are unwilling to allow us to open
American oil reserves when the price of gasoline is $3.75 a gallon and the price of a barrel of oil is $125, will you allow us to do it when gasoline hits $4 a gallon? How about when it hits $4.50 a gallon or $5 a gallon or $10 a gallon? How about when the price of oil hits $150 a barrel or $200 or $250?

We know because of the geopolitical situation with countries such as Iran, which are no friend to the United States and are major oil producers and are part of OPEC, that causes speculation on the spot market to push the price of oil higher. I believe it would have a dramatic impact on those prices and, ultimately, because oil represents 70 percent of the price of a gallon of gasoline, I believe it would ultimately bring down the price of gasoline and provide some much needed relief to the average American family.

Congress's failure to act on a strong bipartisan basis to do it is, frankly, inexplicable to me, just as it is inexplicable to me why we would not allow our intelligence officials to listen to the conversations of new targets of foreign terror surveillance, and why we would continue to let American businesses and farmers be disadvantaged by tariffs on goods and produce sold to the nation of Colombia, and why we would wait more than 685 days to consider the nominations of judicial nominees and allow crime victims and small businesses and others to go without their day in court.

Just for the same reasons those delays are inexplicable, why are we still waiting 751 days after Speaker Pelosi made the statement that she would produce a commonsense plan to bring down the price at the pump?

It is inexplicable to me why we have to wait with no real solutions in sight.

I yield the floor.

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