Energy

Floor Speech

ENERGY -- (Senate - July 15, 2008)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. CORNYN. I thank the Acting President pro tempore.

Mr. President, I wish to join my colleague from Alabama, my friend, Senator Sessions, in talking about the item that is at the top of everyone's agenda in America; that is, high gas prices.

But, first, I wish to say that in 2006, much to my chagrin, the Democratic Party won control of both Houses of Congress. I say that because it is more fun being in the majority than it is being in the minority. But with becoming the majority and Senator Reid having become the majority leader, he has the complete power to schedule legislative action on the floor of the Senate. With that power comes responsibility. I wish to point out a few areas where I do not think we are living up to the responsibility that the American people would have us live up to.

There is good news. The good news is, it took only 145 days for us to pass the reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The problem was, in those 145 days, our intelligence officials were hampered in their ability to listen in on conversations between terrorists. Thank goodness, at least so far as we know in the public domain, that has not resulted in other attacks against

Americans. But the fact remains, it took 145 days to get that done, and it should not have.

It has been 602 days since the Colombia Free Trade Agreement has been pending. Now, why is that important? Well, in my State, we sell about $2.3 billion worth of agricultural products and manufactured items to Colombia. Because we have not acted on the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, they bear a tariff which makes those more expensive than they should be. Correspondingly, when Colombian items are sold to American markets because of another agreement, they do not have any tariff at all. So this is a burden, a millstone around the neck of American manufacturers and farmers that is unnecessary and unfair. It has been 602 days since that matter has been pending without any action by the Democratic leadership in the House and the Senate.

Then, yesterday, we had a forum on judicial nominees. There have been 747 days during which some nominees, who have been nominated to the Federal bench by President Bush, have waited for a simple up-or-down vote on the Senate floor.

To the point of my main remarks: It has been 813 days since Speaker Pelosi, when she was running, hoping she would become speaker, in the 2006 election--that her party would have the majority in the House and she would be elected Speaker--it has been 813 days since she said Democrats, if elected, would have a commonsense plan to bring down the price of gasoline at the pump.

Well, what has happened since that time, in 813 days?

As to gasoline, which I am sure seemed too high then--on January 4, 2007, it was $2.33 a gallon. And there are some people today who are pining for the good old days when gasoline was $2.33 a gallon because the average price of a gallon of gas today is $4.11 a gallon. There is no indication at all it is going to go down. Every indication is it is going to go up.

I wonder how long it is going to take the distinguished majority leader, Senator Reid, to recognize the American people are hurting and the impact these high energy prices are having on not only the lifestyle, not only the daily routine but the ability of the American people to do the bare essentials they need to do in order to provide for their family and in order to get their children to school and in order for them to get to work. How long will this go on? Will it take $5-a-gallon gas? Will it take $10-a-gallon gas? How long will it take before the majority leader will allow us to vote on a balanced plan that will allow us to deal with this crisis?

Already, if you compound the price of energy, including gasoline, along with the other burdens Congress has imposed on the American working family, things such as Federal taxes--it takes 74 days of every year for people to pay their Federal taxes; another 39 days for them to pay their State and local taxes; another 60 days to pay for housing; health care, about 50 days; food, 35 days; and transportation, 29 days.

So even in things such as food, we have seen because of the price of energy--of course, there is the diesel and the gasoline our farmers use in order to bring their crops in and actually produce them--the price of food continues to go up. A large part of that is because of the price of energy, the price of diesel, the price of gasoline.

The squeeze continues on the American people.

So what is the solution? Well, I have seen the majority leader wants to bring a bill to the floor that deals with speculation. Of course, that deals with the way oil is bought on the futures trading platform, the commodity futures trading system, which allows people to guess basically what the price of oil will be in the future and to bid at that price. Of course, for every willing buyer, there is a willing seller willing to buy it.

Of course, we do need to police the commodity futures trading system to make sure there is not abuse, that there is complete transparency. We need to make sure we have more people, more analysts--more cops on the beat, so to speak--to make sure they have the personnel to be able to do their job. But it is shortsighted and, frankly, naive to think Congress can continue to suspend the laws of supply and demand. So just dealing with that narrow component of the problem is not enough. Is that part of an overall balanced energy package? Yes, it is. But it is not enough by itself.

We have to deal with this by finding more and using less. What do I mean by that? Well, using less means we need to be more efficient. We need to be less wasteful. We need to conserve energy. America consumes about 20 percent of the oil produced worldwide every day. We need to find ways to be more efficient. That is why I think our manufacturing sector, whether it is producing plug-in hybrid vehicles in 2010, which eventually, hopefully, will provide an alternative, or the CAFE standards, the corporate fuel efficiency standards Congress has passed--those help. But it is not enough because you cannot conserve your way into energy independence or energy self-sufficiency.

So how about ``the find more'' part? Well, the fact is, there is about 85 million barrels of oil consumed globally every day--85 million barrels globally every day. So even if America were to use less, that does not mean China and India are going to use less. In fact, they are not going to use less. They are going to use more because their economies are getting bigger, their people are becoming more prosperous. They want to buy cars. They want the same sort of things Americans have come to expect as commonplace.

They want more, and they are going to consume more, because they know energy drives their economy. In particular, in countries such as China, you are going to see they are growing at 10 percent gross domestic product a year, and it is because they are building two coal-powered plants every week and they are consuming more energy. So we are going to have to produce more energy while we use less in order to just allow us to transition to using renewable fuels and the research we need to do on things such as clean coal technology. We are going to need some time to transition into more energy independence and a clean energy future. That is only going to come by producing more oil here at home.

Of course, this is a national security issue because we buy a lot of our oil from dangerous regions of the world, such as the Middle East, or from our enemies, such as Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. So why does it not make sense for us to rely less on them--people who don't necessarily wish us well--and rely more on ourselves while at the same time create more jobs right here at home, here in America?

I know attitudes are changing. We look at things such as the Rasmussen poll, which shows now that 67 percent of all of the respondents say we ought to produce more American natural resources right here at home. I know there are folks on the other side of the aisle, such as our distinguished Presiding Officer, who are trying to work to find a bipartisan solution, and we need to do that. Frankly, we should not leave here in August without addressing this issue and doing it in a meaningful way. By that, I don't mean just trying to go after the speculation part. We need to deal with all of this in a balanced sort of way that will allow us to give the American people some relief at a time when they need some relief because of the squeeze that continues to be put upon the average working family when it comes to high energy costs, which, in turn, ripples into high food costs.

Hopefully, we will be successful in weathering this financial crisis we have seen because of the subprime mortgage market and the housing crisis, but unless we do something about high energy prices, we are going to end up in a technical recession. I have no doubt about that. So we can weather those--and I hope we do--and still find ourselves in the ditch from an economic standpoint if we don't do something about high energy costs. Frankly, now that the President has lifted his Executive order banning offshore exploration and development, the only thing that remains to be done now is for Congress to get out of the way and to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

I wish our side of the aisle could do it. We can't because we are not in the majority. Only the majority leader has the power to call this up and allow debate and a vote on a commonsense energy plan that will allow us to find more and use less. I am asking them again today, as a number of us have, to please, please listen to what the American people are telling us. They are telling us that they are hurting, that their costs are going through the roof, whether it is food prices or just the price of filling up their cars at the gas station. Really, it is the U.S. Congress that is part of the problem. We need to be part of the solution. We need to listen to them and do what we can to help make their lives just a little bit better.

I yield the floor.

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