Stop Excessive Energy Speculation Act of 2008--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

STOP EXCESSIVE ENERGY SPECULATION ACT OF 2008--MOTION TO PROCEED -- (Senate - July 22, 2008)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, who is very knowledgable on this subject. I do say to him that I do believe that I and others on this side of the aisle will vote to invoke cloture on the speculation provision. But I do have some questions about it.

First of all, I asked the majority leader how much of the problem of the high price of oil was caused by speculation. He said some people say 20 percent. I cited to him Warren Buffett, a multibillionaire, somebody who knows a lot about financing, and he said he thought it was supply and demand. T. Boone Pickens, one of my constituents, who has made a lot of waves here recently, talking about the importance of wind energy and talking about the importance of natural gas, said that focusing on speculation is a waste of time.

Now, I do not know whether it is a waste of time or whether it is 20 percent. But I would ask the majority leader, why are we only going to focus--assuming you are right and speculation is 20 percent of the problem--why are we only going to focus on a 20-percent solution? Why not focus on the 80 percent he is leaving on the table by not talking about supply and demand?

Of course, while Congress continues to not do things that might have an impact, we have seen, since January 4, 2007--since the Democratic majority took power--the price of gasoline, which was $2.33 a gallon, today has dropped just a little bit, dropped a nickel, to $4.06 a gallon.

Here is what Warren Buffet, the chairman and CEO of Berkshire-Hathaway, told us:

It's not speculation, it is supply and demand.

I am not saying this, but let's say somebody would say he is wrong and Senator Reid is right, it is 20 percent. How come we are not talking about that remaining 80 percent? That, frankly, is what our side of the aisle would like to talk about. We would like to talk about a 100-percent solution, assuming that is humanly possible.

I was in Texas this weekend. Yesterday I hosted a press conference at the Flying J truckstop on I-35 in Waco, TX. I must tell you, all I hear from my constituents back home is how the high price of gasoline is not only pinching their budget but making it harder for them to get by.

I also went to the North Texas Food Bank in Dallas. Of course I talked to a lot of the volunteers and other staff there who are doing great work providing food for people who are hungry. What they are telling me is that the high price of fuel is increasing the cost of food. Using ethanol, using corn for fuel, is causing additional pressure on food prices. We are finding that not only are people suffering more at the pump when they go to fill up their tank, actually they are finding it harder to put food on the table, putting more and more pressure on charitable organizations such as the North Texas Food Bank.

Try as we might, there is one law that we simply can no longer refuse to acknowledge, and that is the law of supply and demand. We know world demand is going up because rising economies such as China and India, countries of more than 1 billion people each, want more of what we have. They want to be able to buy cars, they want to be able to drive those cars, they want the prosperity that comes with access to energy that we in America have had pretty much to ourselves for a long time.

It is important for Congress to realize the one power we do have, frankly, is the power to lift the moratorium on the 85 percent of the Outer Continental Shelf where we know there are vast supplies of oil and natural gas. For every barrel of oil that we produce in America, that is one barrel less we have to buy from the Middle East, including OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which includes countries such as Iran, or from countries such as Venezuela, from Hugo Chavez, someone who obviously does not wish us well.

We know there are ways to come up with new sources. Unfortunately, every time we bring up new energy sources to try to bring down the price of oil by producing more supply at home we are told we cannot do that; that is, offshore exploration was blocked, oil shale was blocked, which reportedly accounts for about 2 million additional barrels of oil that we can produce in America, in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. ANWR, a 2,000-acre postage stamp in a huge expanse of land in the Arctic that could produce as many as 1 million barrels of oil a day, that is blocked.

It does not just stop there. We say we need to do something about rising electricity costs as well, so why can't we build some nuclear powerplants? We have been told we cannot do that either; that is blocked.

Why can't we figure a way to use the coal we have in America? We have been called the Saudi Arabia of coal. The problem is, coal is dirty. But we have the technology, we have the know-how, I believe, using good old-fashioned American ingenuity and our world class institutions of higher education to do the research, to learn how to use it cleanly. Clean coal research and technology--that has been blocked as well.

Increasingly, it sounds as though either we are engaged in a nonsolution, if you believe Mr. Buffet--and the majority leader is going to confine us simply to a speculation provision--or, at best, according to the majority leader's own words, we are only going to be dealing with 20 percent of the problem. I think we ought to deal with 100 percent of the problem. Unfortunately, it seems as though every time we bring up the issue of more domestic supply, our friends on the other side of the aisle, who control the floor and control the agenda by virtue of their being in the majority, have simply said: No. No.

Unfortunately, no new energy continues to mean higher prices for the American consumer.

On this side of the aisle we have introduced a bill that has the support of 46 Republicans. We skinnied it down to try to eliminate controversial issues, and we said: Let's look at the speculation component. Let's look at greater transparency. Let's look at putting more cops on the beat, more human resources to make sure we supervise and we analyze and we make sure we police the commodity futures market for abuses. But we don't just stop there. We don't stop with a 20-percent solution. We provide a comprehensive solution by saying yes to domestic oil supply, using what God has given us in this country in a way that will allow us to be less dependent on imported oil from the Middle East.

As we continue to do that--and this is the other component of the gas price reduction bill I am referring to, that has 46 cosponsors--we say let's continue to do the research on renewable and alternative fuels because one day it may well be that we are all driving battery-powered cars that we literally plug into the wall socket at night to charge those batteries. That is what the major car companies are going to be introducing into the marketplace in 2010.

As we continue to do research in wind energy or solar to generate electricity, we continue to do research into how to use coal to transform it into liquid so we can turn it into aviation fuel. Believe it or not, that is what the U.S. Air Force is doing right now. It is flying some of its most sophisticated airplanes using synthetic fuel made from coal, coal to liquid. The challenge we have, of course, is to try to make sure we can sequester the carbon dioxide produced from that.

I don't know why every time we try to find more and we try to talk about the importance of conservation that our Democratic friends, including the majority leader, just simply say no. Why they would offer either a nonsolution or a 20-percent solution, depending on whether you want to believe T. Boone Pickens or you want to believe the majority leader--T. Boone Pickens, who said just addressing speculation is a waste of time; Warren Buffet, who said it is not speculation but supply and demand that is the problem. But let's say the majority leader is right, and both of them are wrong. At best we have a 20-percent solution. I think America needs better than that.

The strange thing about it is I don't know why we would resist going onto this bill and offering amendments that would provide a 100-percent solution to America's energy problems. Find more and use less is the formula we would like to see enacted in this legislation.

I yield the floor.

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