Motion To Go To Conference on H.R. 3121, Flood Insurance Reform and Modernization Act of 2008

Floor Speech

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I was in my office, as I have been over the days recently, where I see the distinguished minority leader rise, I see other Members on that side of the aisle rise, beat their chests about drilling. My side of the aisle is for drilling. We just had a press conference on drilling. But as I sit there, I think to myself, you know, the American people gave the opportunity to the Republican Party, the minority party now in the House of Representatives, to lead this country; and they gave them all of the power in Washington. They gave them the Presidency, the House of Representatives, and the United States Senate. They did that in the year 2000. They had already given them the House, and two oil men were elected President and Vice President.

In January, the Vice President decided to have, and he had over the coming months in 2001, he convened a meeting, a secret meeting of those involved in the energy industry to adopt energy policies.

Now that meeting--the minority leader is now leaving, but we will see him later--that meeting perhaps resulted in success, I don't know. I don't know what the meeting was about.

But during the course of the Presidency of Bill Clinton, oil went from $1.06 to $1.46. A nickel a year, 5 cents per year was the increase in the cost of gasoline at the pump for Americans.

And then, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, the Republicans came to town, all of town, and gas went from $1.46 in January 20, 2001, to over $4.10 on average throughout this country. Pretty stark. It now goes up from time to time 5 cents a day, where under Bill Clinton 5 cents a year.

And then the Republicans, 5 years later, adopted a bill, 2005, their energy policy. They were in control of the House, control of the Senate, and they had the Presidency. They passed that bill. Gas was then about $2.20. And they said we've adopted an energy policy--said it on the floor, said it when they signed the bill--we have done a bill now that's going to stabilize prices, going to make sure that Americans have energy supply. That's what they said. That's not what we said.

Now, ladies and gentlemen who are listening to this debate on this floor, I tell you that there are 68 million acres right now, right now available for leasing. You wring your hands and say, well, open up places for drilling. We've done that, friends. Look at the statistics, 68 million acres in the lower 48 and another 20 million acres, give or take a million, in Alaska.

They talk about a wildlife refuge that they want to drill in, but they don't talk about the 20 million acres in the National Petroleum Reserve area in Alaska currently available. The administration could be pursuing leases on it. We may well have legislation to say, Administration, start moving, start drilling, start bringing product to the market so we'll bring prices down.

Now, of course, one of the aspects of bringing prices down, my friends, will be that the oil companies will make less profits. I know everybody in America believes that the oil companies want to get more products so they can bring prices down and make less profit. I know all Americans believe that's the way the system works.

The Republicans keep harping on drilling. We want to drill. We want to produce more American product. And by the way, we're going to bring legislation to the floor that's going to say when you drill, sell it here in the United States of America, keep our resources here in the United States of America.

I want to tell my friends, there are 88 million acres. And now, let me tell you something, 88 million acre, that's Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Delaware, and most of Maryland. Now, I know my friend from Texas thinks that's not much of an area of space, but I will bet everybody listening to this debate thinks that is a pretty large piece of property on which you can drill in America today. Why? Because we want to produce energy.

But I will tell you, one of the reasons we're in this pickle is because for a quarter of a century, for a quarter of a century that I've served in the Congress, a little more than that, the Republican Party has taken the position, no, we don't want to invest in alternatives, we don't want to see alternative energy sources developed.

And you can say it's not true as much as you want, I tell my friend, but the record reflects that has not been the priority. The priority has been, let's get more oil. We want to get more oil.

But I will tell you a country, as Boone Pickens said--I don't know whether you read Boone Pickens. He's one of the people who thinks that some of the policies you have been pursuing aren't too bad. He's not a Democrat. Here is what Boone Pickens said. The problem, of course, is our growing dependence on foreign oil. It's extreme, it's dangerous, and threatens future generations. And he says in this article in The Wall Street Journal, you are not going to drill yourself out of this hole that we've dug. He says, rightfully, that we need to see investments in alternatives.

Now, happily, last year when we took office, took control of the House and the Senate, we adopted a bill, the President signed that bill, which looks to alternatives to complement the relatively small supply. America demands 25 percent of the energy resources in this world, and we have 3 percent of the petroleum supply. My friend the minority leader said he wasn't much of a mathematician, but you don't have to be much of a mathematician to know that if you're relying on that 3 percent, it's not going to be there very long.

So, yes, my friends, we need to find more domestic product. We need to drill where we now have authorized drilling to occur, and if that doesn't produce the resources that experts tell us are on that property, then I tell you this. Then we ought to look at other alternatives, and perhaps we ought to look at other alternatives now.

But for you to have a blind eye and pretend to the American people that somehow we're not allowing people to pursue drilling on our soil here in America and on the Outer Continental Shelf, I want you to know, that is currently authorized where drilling is not occurring, then you are misleading the American people. The American people ought to know: The Democrats want to make sure that we have more domestic product.

The Speaker has written a letter to the President just the other day saying, Mr. President, we have 773 million barrels of oil that are in our Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Mr. President, use some of those, as your father did, as Bill Clinton did, at a time of economic crisis to help our people, help our people get to work, help them get their kids to school, help them afford their other expenses.

So I tell my friends that we need to deal with this issue. We're going to deal with this issue. We're concerned about this issue, all 435 of us, but to hear day after day after day that somehow we, who came to office just 18 months ago, after an energy policy was conjured up by the Vice President and the White House and an energy bill was passed in 2005, that somehow, somehow what's happening now is our fault, the American public aren't buying that. Polls show that.

But I will tell you, that we can work together because we need to be energy independent. It's a national security objective, an economic security objective, and we also need to keep our environment from choking our children and generations to come.

We're committed to both of those objectives, and we will join with all those who want to do the same.

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