Consumer-First Energy Act of 2008 - Motion to Proceed
Floor Speech
CONSUMER-FIRST ENERGY ACT OF 2008--MOTION TO PROCEED -- (Senate - June 11, 2008)
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Mr. DURBIN. Before speaking on the issue of energy, I wish to commend my colleague from New Jersey. I hope those who were following the debate of the Senate were listening closely to what he had to say. I wish I could remember the exact quote--perhaps he can--but someone once said:
You can really measure the morality of a people by watching how they treat their prisoners and those under detention.
I think what he has brought to our attention today is nothing short of a critically important issue about the conduct of our Government in the treatment of people in detention, many of whom are not guilty of crimes, many of whom may be suspected and are being treated as if they have already been convicted, and treated extremely poorly.
I thank the Senator for bringing up this issue. It is one I hope the entire Senate will reflect on, and again I thank him for bringing it to our attention.
Madam President, if you go back to your home State of Missouri or my home State of Illinois--or you pick a State, pick a town, pick a street--and grab the first person who walks by and say: Is there anything on your mind that Washington is dealing with, do you know what the answer is going to be? Gasoline prices, Senator. Where have you been? Have you noticed what is going on here? Go to fill up the gas tank and pull out the credit card or the cash and you are paying twice as much as you did not that long ago. What are you going to do about it, Senator? A lot of talk about all the issues you are concerned about, but what is happening in Washington? Well, if you follow what happened this week on the floor of the Senate, you will understand that precious little--in fact, nothing--has happened this week in Washington when it comes to the issue of gasoline prices, diesel prices, and home heating oil. And it isn't for lack of effort.
The Democratic majority brought a bill to the floor asking the Senate if we could move forward and start to debate this bill. The bill had specific elements in it to try to address the increased cost of gasoline, to stop what we considered to be an abuse to the American economy. And how bad is it? Well, take a look at this chart, which shows in graphic terms what has happened since President Bush was sworn into office in January 2001 until just a few days ago here in 2008. The average price of gasoline, when the President was sworn in, was $1.47 a gallon. It is now $4.04 a gallon. This dramatic increase has caused hardship to families, to businesses, to farmers, to airlines, and to truckers. You name it, the American economy is suffering because of it.
It isn't just something that happened over a long period of time. We can see just this year what has happened with gas prices. Just since January of 2008, gasoline prices have gone up 93 cents, almost $1 a gallon. People are feeling that. I find it when I get back to Illinois, particularly in my part of the State, in downstate Illinois, where they live in smaller towns, in affordable housing, and commute to their jobs. They now find the price of gasoline to be beyond their budgets week after week and month after month.
So we said: Let's bring a bill to the floor, and let's have a bill that deals with the reality. And here are the harsh realities. Not only has the price of gasoline gone up, but the profit-taking by the American oil companies has gone up dramatically. Since President Bush has taken office, the profit-taking by these companies has increased by over 400 percent, in the same period of time the cost of gasoline has gone up over 250 percent. It is no coincidence. These companies aren't making the biggest profits in the history of the oil industry, they are making the biggest profits in the history of American business. No other company has ever done this.
We also understand what it means to businesses, passing along the expenses of energy costs on products. Whether they are food products or whatever it might be, it raises the cost of living for everybody.
We know what is happening with airlines. Just this last week, the airlines--those that are still in business, because so many have gone bankrupt--those that are still in business announced dramatic cutbacks in their scheduling. Most of the major airlines took out of their fleets the less fuel-efficient planes and cut back on their scheduled aircraft by 20 percent. Well, welcome to our summer vacations as we try to move back and forth across America with fewer airplanes, stuffed to the gills with passengers. That is the reality of this energy crisis.
We know what it means to truckers. They are facing diesel costs near $5 a gallon, and they are trying to fill up those big rigs and keep them on the highway, and it is hard to do. It is difficult to even consider that they can do this without passing along the cost of that added energy cost to those who are buying the products in the back of the truck.
So what we have already done so far in the Senate is to pass fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks that will reach 35 miles a gallon by 2020. That is a good thing. American consumers will have a choice to buy more fuel-efficient vehicles. We have committed to the production of 36 million gallons of renewable transportation fuels, such as ethanol and biodiesel, by the year 2022. We have expanded research for plug-in hybrids. What is needed now, though, is not the long-term fix but something that can bring some relief. So we brought this bill to the floor, and here is what it did:
First, we rolled back the $17 billion Federal subsidy we are currently giving oil companies. How can you justify a subsidy to a company making recordbreaking profits? Why would you take taxes away from families, who are hard pressed with their own budget needs, and give them to the wealthiest, most profitable companies in America? That was No. 1 in our bill.
No. 2 was a 25-percent windfall profits tax. We say to these oil companies: Enough is enough. You are entitled to a profit--you are in business for your shareholders--but when you have gone beyond a reasonable profit and it has gone into the area of greed, the Government is going to take it. And maybe the notion of a windfall profits tax would discourage the oil companies from continuing to raise those gasoline prices at the pump.
We also protected consumers from price gouging. The bill gave the President the authority to declare an energy emergency and set a limit on unconscionably excessive prices, if necessary. Are we in an energy emergency at this point? I argue that we are, and I think the President should have this authority.
Next, we would go after speculation in oil--the trading that goes on at the highest levels by some of the biggest investors--to make sure there is transparency and accountability, and that is something which is long overdue.
We would send a clear message to OPEC--that cartel of nations in the Middle East that supplies us with oil--that we will allow enforcement actions against any company or country that is colluding to set the price of oil, natural gas, and other petroleum products.
What was the Republican response to this bill? We needed 60 votes. We called for a vote yesterday. I took a look at it and I see that we had--it looks like 6, maybe 7 Republicans who joined us, 7 out of 49, one of whom was the Senator from Iowa, here on the floor now, who voted with us yesterday on moving forward on this bill. And I salute him. I wish some of his colleagues on the other side would have joined him. We needed 60 votes, and it failed. So the filibuster on the Republican side worked. They stopped the bill. They stopped the debate. We can't move forward on the bill because we couldn't bring over 60 Members. Unlike the Senator from Iowa, the vast majority of Republican Senators voted against even debating this bill, voted against amending it.
That is not the first time that has happened in this Congress. The filibuster, which many people are familiar with, allows any Senator to stand up and object to any amendment, any bill, any nomination, and if anyone wants to say to that Senator that he or she doesn't have the right to do that anymore, we need 60 Senators who will stand up and say it is time to move on, it is time to debate the amendment, it is time to bring it before us. In the history of the Senate, the total number of filibusters in any 2-year period of time, the max, has been 57. So far in this Congress, which still has about 6 or 8 months to go, there have been 75 Republican filibusters.
This most recent filibuster, on the Energy bill, stopped us from debating ways to bring down the price of gasoline in America, to send a message to oil companies that they have gone too far. We couldn't bring over, on a bipartisan basis, enough Republican Senators to reach the 60 votes. So the 74th and the 75th Republican filibusters prevailed. They stopped us from moving forward. That is a sad reality and one that is hard to explain back home.
This week in the Senate--with the exception of the Senator from Iowa, who is on the floor and whom I have saluted twice but I will salute a third time for joining us on this vote--the overwhelming majority of Republicans are blocking a bill to debate lowering energy costs across America. How can that be in the best interest of the American economy? How can it be in the best interest of the Senate? Aren't we elected to come here and address the issues that really count, the ones that families and businesses feel every single day? Well, because of the strategy on the Republican side, we were unable to do it.
Now, I will tell you that the answer by most Republicans to the debate I have just talked about is that we should drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. I am opposed to that. And for years, whenever I would get up and say I am opposed to it, one of the Senators from Alaska would say: You have no business opposing it, you don't know what it looks like, you don't know what you are talking about. So I took it upon myself several years ago to go to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and to camp out two straight evenings there, with my son, two overnights, but I use that term loosely because the sun was up 24 hours a day by the time we went there to see what it was like. You understand, once you have flown over, landed, and walked through it, a large part of it, why President Eisenhower set this piece of real estate aside and said: Protect it. There is something special about this. Don't develop it unless it is an absolute emergency in America and there is no place to turn.
From the Republican side, they believe that is the answer: Let's go drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. But the Department of Energy's own Energy Information Agency has made clear that it wouldn't make any difference if we drilled for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge because by the time the oil would be in peak production--which wouldn't be until the year 2030--Refuge oil would make up only .6 percent of the world's oil. It would literally be a drop in the oil bucket. That drop in the bucket is hardly a solution to today's high gasoline prices. In fact, the effect at the gas pump wouldn't be felt for two decades.
This Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is one of America's last pristine, untouched wilderness areas. It is home to over 200 wildlife species, including polar bears, musk ox, which I spotted while I was there, and caribou. Can we trust that a rush of oil development will protect this wilderness that we hold stewardship over? Is this really the last answer America can come up with? I think not. I think we are smart enough, we are determined enough, and with the right leadership we can reduce energy costs in America, give consumers an option to buy more fuel-efficient cars and trucks, find more fuel efficiency, more homegrown fuels, such as ethanol and the biofuels and biodiesel, and make certain we hold true to the values that we are not going to compromise the water we drink, the air we breathe, or wildernesses and refuges that have been set aside for decades. That is what is critically important in this national debate.
We know that despite even their best efforts, some of the major oil companies have pipeline problems. Just a couple of years ago, one of the major oil companies was responsible for the largest oil spill in North Slope history. That, unfortunately, is an indication that you can never be too careful.
History is clear: We need to do the right things to meet this energy crisis, and the first thing we need to do is to act as a Senate and debate an issue that really counts in America.
I yield the floor.
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