Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008

Floor Speech

HOUSING AND ECONOMIC RECOVERY ACT OF 2008 -- (Senate - July 25, 2008)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I know Senate procedure can be confusing, but by the vote that was just held, we have said we are not leaving, we are not giving up, and we intend to fight to help bring down the price of gasoline at the pump.

People may ask: How in the world can Congress do that? Well, the reality is, Congress has been the problem when it comes to accessing the American sources of oil we have right here at home. The consequence has been that we send $700 billion a year to foreign countries for the oil we consume here in America because we are so unwise and so stubborn and so opposed, for some reason, to developing those natural resources right here in America.

That is what this vote meant, that we are not going to quit and we are going to stay on this issue until we can convince the people responsible for setting the agenda here in the Senate to provide us an opportunity to vote on additional supply as we consider a comprehensive approach which includes conservation, renewable fuels, and clean energy alternatives. The fact is, we know we are not going to be able to deal with the high price of gasoline at the pump until we increase American supply--until we find more and we use less right here at home.

It is important to talk about responsibility. None of us here in the Senate can control what the majority leader, the Democratic leader of his caucus, does. Only he has the power to allow a full debate and an amendment process that will allow Democrats and Republicans a vote on additional supply.

I know Congress is held in low esteem. All you have to do is look at a public opinion poll. But it is important for the American people to know that
it is not necessarily Congress as a whole. It is the leadership that actually has the power and the authority to allow something to happen.

We are here imploring the majority leader, the leader of the Democratic caucus, to allow us a vote on provisions in this bill which we believe will have a dramatic impact on the price of gasoline at the pump.

Right now, we have, in effect, a moratorium on 85 percent of the domestic natural resources here in America, whether it is the submerged lands in the Outer Continental Shelf along the coastlines or the oil shale out West or the oil up in the Arctic. We not only have a moratorium, or a ban passed by Congress for the last 30 years prohibiting the production of those natural resources, but we have a political blockade. And the people who have imposed that political blockade are the Democratic majority leader, HARRY REID, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party for President, BARACK OBAMA. They have the power to allow an opportunity for the American people to get some relief at the pump, but they are the ones who are blocking it through this political blockade.

We know there are at least 44 Republicans who agreed to a bill we call the Gas Price Reduction Act. We are looking for about 10 or 11 or 12 Democrats to join us in saying: Yes, we can,

Because all we hear on the other side of the aisle is no, we can't.

Yes, we can. We can tear down these walls that prohibit domestic energy production here in America and I hope BARACK OBAMA, if he thinks it is important enough to go to Berlin yesterday and talk about tearing down walls, will come back here to the Senate and say let's tear down this wall. If he does so, and the Democratic leadership follows suit, we can open up America's vast national resources to production. We can acknowledge the existence of the laws of supply and demand, and the American people will get the relief they want and so desperately need.

I yield the floor.

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