Free Flow of Information Act of 2007--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION ACT OF 2007--MOTION TO PROCEED -- (Senate - July 30, 2008)

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I appreciate the comments of the Senator from New York on the so-called media shield bill. Let me address those briefly before I talk for a moment about the extenders, and then what I wish to spend most of my time on is the subject we have been talking about but, frankly, not doing enough about during the last 2 weeks; that is, bringing down the price of gasoline at the pump for the American people.

The problem that I continue to have, as the distinguished Presiding Officer knows as a member of the Judiciary Committee, we discussed in the Judiciary Committee whether it is appropriate for the Congress to designate members of the media who would be the beneficiaries of a media shield while saying that there are other people who are engaged in the free flow of public information, such as bloggers, who would not.

I remember when William Safire, the distinguished journalist, testified before the Judiciary Committee and someone asked him about bloggers. He said he considers them the new pamphleteers, modern-day pamphleteers. In other words, they could be writing things just as importantly as Thomas Payne might have written at the time of the country's founding, and yet the legislation the Senator from New York talked about would do nothing to provide them the benefits of a media shield, and there would be--in effect, Congress would be deciding who is a legitimate journalist and who is not. I, for one, am not comfortable with the Federal Government in essence licensing journalists and ignoring the new media, which is the source of a lot of information, and treating them in a discriminatory manner.

TAX EXTENDERS

With regard to the extenders package, there are many, if not most, of us here in this Senate who would love to see the extenders package, or some form of it, passed. Renewable sources of energy such as solar and wind are very important in my State. We are No. 1 in the production of wind energy in Texas. Of course, T. Boone Pickens, one of my constituents, has been up here talking rather visibly about his advocacy of generating more electricity from wind and using natural gas to power vehicles and thus reducing our dependency on imported oil from the Middle East.

However, the fact is that I believe we will probably vote against moving off of the energy issue generally because, frankly, we shouldn't be changing the subject at a time when we are very close to being able to have a vote on producing more American energy and relying less on imported energy and oil from the Middle East and abroad. Why it is that our colleagues in the majority are trying so hard--putting up cloture vote after cloture vote--to try to change the subject rather than allowing us to stay focused on and actually do something on bringing down the price of gasoline is, frankly, beyond me.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, would my colleague from Texas be willing to answer a couple of questions I would like to pose to him?

Mr. CORNYN. I would, Mr. President.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, the first question I have for my colleague is this: The Senator from Texas and I both serve on the Judiciary Committee, which considered this so-called media shield legislation some months back.

Does my colleague recall that when the bill was brought to the committee, it was brought with the suggestion that it was pretty perfect as written and that we shouldn't change a comma of it or we would be roundly criticized by editorial boards around the country? In point of fact, I was.

Does my colleague recall--and maybe you can refresh my recollection. My recollection is that we adopted 10 or 12 pretty serious amendments to that legislation in an effort to try to improve it and that most of the amendments that were adopted were overwhelmingly in their support. Is my recollection correct on that?

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I believe the Senator from Arizona is correct. There was a lot of activity at the Judiciary Committee level to try to improve this bill on a bipartisan basis. I believe his recollection is correct.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, the second question: When we passed that bill out of the committee, there were explicit assurances that we would continue to work on it because of the recognition that it was not, in my words, ready for prime time, but it was clearly in need of additional work. It is complicated. We would continue to work on it, A; and B, is it also correct that the Senator from Texas, as well as others, including my staff and myself, have been engaged in a lot of discussions since then, including, as the Senator from Texas noted, trying to figure out how to define who is a journalist and who would be protected?

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, the Senator is correct again. This has been a challenging issue because, frankly, the very nature of communications has changed dramatically. I mentioned the bloggers, which are sort of a new innovation. There is nothing in this bill that would prevent someone--let's say a jihadist or someone let's say from al-Jazeera or those who pretend to promote some of the activities that are directed against our own citizens or against our allies--from posing as a journalist and thus gaining the protection against testifying or cooperating with a grand jury that any average citizen in the country would have to do. So there remain problems we have not been able to work through.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, if I could just pose two other quick questions.

So would my colleague from Texas agree that at such point in time as this legislation is brought to the Senate floor, we are going to need to continue to make improvements on it that will, first, necessitate debate and amendments? Also, would my colleague agree that it would be a huge mistake to try to bring this bill to the floor under a scenario in which we are pushed up against the recess, we are trying to do an energy bill, we are trying to do a tax extender bill, and that it would take far too much time in terms of amendments; that presumably, if cloture were invoked and this bill were to be brought up, the parliamentary procedure would be such that we wouldn't be able to offer any amendments, and that would be a mistake in the way this bill would be considered? Would my colleague agree with that?

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I agree with the Senator from Arizona. My understanding is that because of the delays, because the majority leader has basically refused to allow us to go to the energy package we proposed which we believe will actually bring down the price of gasoline at the pump, we find ourselves up against an adjournment on Friday, which I believe the majority leader has addressed, with two very important issues we need to address: lowering gas prices at the pump and then the tax extenders bill. The tax extenders would provide tax credits and support for things such as renewable energy and the like, which I support and which I hope we will pass as well. So I don't know how we can do justice to the media shield bill and give it the kind of debate and the amendment process it deserves in this compressed timetable.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, just one final quick question. Is my colleague from Texas also aware of an editorial in the USA Today magazine on Monday, July 28, by the DNI--the Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell--who joined with the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Energy, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Secretary of the Treasury, and, as he put it, every senior intelligence community leader in expressing his strong belief that this bill will greatly damage our ability to protect national security information?

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I did read that op-ed piece with great interest myself when it was published in USA Today, and I hope we can make that part of the Record following my remarks.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, if my colleague will indulge me for another 10 seconds, I hope that on the basis of this information, our colleagues would agree that whatever the view on the energy legislation, we should not be turning to the media shield legislation, and, in point of fact, if we are going to do something about gas prices, we need to keep our eye on that ball and get that work done before we leave here on Friday.

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, there is a lot about the tax extenders package that I support. The State and local sales tax deduction--Texas doesn't have an income tax, thank goodness. I don't believe we ever will. We do have a sales tax, and we would hope to be treated in a nondiscriminatory way by the Federal Government in providing a deduction for sales tax. We have had the ability to do that, which has expired, but it saves over $1 billion for Texans in tax relief each year. Of course, I support the research and development tax incentives, the temporary AMT, or alternative minimum tax, relief, as well as the other renewable energy tax incentives, including those for solar and wind.

However, I do not understand the insistence of the majority leader of filing repetitive motions to proceed to something other than an energy bill that would actually generate more American production of oil and gas here at home and cause us to rely less on imported sources. Why there is this repeated insistence time and time again with these repetitive votes to take us off of the only bill that has been offered--the only legislation that has been offered that would actually increase American energy resources and require us to rely less on imported oil is beyond me.

As I said, I support the renewable energy provisions that would continue to encourage the production of solar and wind power. I believe that conservation is a very important part of what we need to do as well.

My colleagues have seen this chart before. We have said that what we need to do is find more and use less. Yet the majority leader has consistently, so far, refused to allow us the opportunity to introduce amendments and to have debate and votes on something that would actually have an impact on the price of gasoline at the pump.

We think we need a balanced and comprehensive approach to deal with this problem. Since the majority leader became the majority leader--on January 4, 2007, the price of gas was $2.33 a gallon. It has been as high as $4.11 a gallon. Now, thank goodness, the average price is $3.93 a gallon.

The fact is, we have a supply problem and we have a demand problem. The supply problem is that for some reason, for the last 30 years or so, Congress has placed 85 percent of our domestic oil and gas reserves out of bounds. We passed annual bans in the form of a moratorium on appropriations riders that prevent the production of oil and gas that we know is there in the Outer Continental Shelf or the submerged lands along the coastlines of the United States, as well as up in Alaska where we know there are huge volumes of gas and oil.

And there is a pipeline conveniently close by that could actually deliver that for use in the lower 48 States.

We know there are as much as 2 million additional barrels of oil a day out in Idaho, Wyoming, and Colorado in the form of oil shale, which now the technology exists to be able to produce that. Can you imagine how much different things would be if, instead of importing those 3 million barrels of oil a day from countries such as Saudi Arabia and organizations like OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, and people such as Hugo Chavez in Venezuela--can you imagine what it would be like if we actually produced 3 million more barrels of oil in the United States so we didn't have to import that from abroad?

I don't know anybody who has done a better job of capturing the public's imagination on that than my constituent, T. Boone Pickens. He has been an oilman all his life, but now he is perhaps the most visible and forceful advocate for wind energy and for natural gas to use to power cars. His main focus is because he wants to reduce the $700 billion of American money we send each year abroad to pay for oil and import that into this country. He has a plan that he thinks can bring that down by about 38 percent.

We all know that, at best, additional supply is a partial answer. That is why we say we need to find more and use less. Conservation is an important part of this, as are things such as biofuels. We know we have challenges dealing with corn ethanol because, frankly, using food for fuel has backfired on us somewhat, causing food prices to go up, and feed for livestock, which has caused grave hardship in my State, which is a huge cattle producer, as well as a poultry producer. It has caused the price of food to go up, so we need to continue to research the use of cellulosic ethanol, which doesn't compete with the food supply for our energy sources.

So far, we have been met with a brick wall from the majority leader when it comes to our attempt to try to find more American oil, as we transition to a clean energy future. What I mean by that is one where we are going to be less and less reliant on oil for our transportation needs, our aviation needs.

Let me mention a couple of examples on the horizon that are very exciting. In 2010, most of the major car manufacturers are going to be producing plug-in hybrid cars, which actually will be running on batteries. You can plug it into the wall socket at night and charge the battery, and it will go 40 or more miles a day before plugging it back in at night. Obviously, that will displace the internal combustion engine and avoid the need to provide oil and gasoline for transportation needs. It is going to take some time to transition as we research things such as hydrogen fuel cells and other alternatives for our basic transportation needs.

I think that holds great promise in the future, as does additional research in things such as coal-to-liquids technology. We have in this country about a 300-year supply of coal. We know that coal has a problem because of pollution. But we have the ingenuity and expertise to be able to use coal--to find a way to use it in a way that will not only provide things such as aviation fuel and transportation fuel, but I believe we can come up with a way to sequester the carbon dioxide byproduct of coal-to-liquids technology in a way that will allow us to displace oil, gas, diesel, and regular aviation fuel from our demand side.

As a matter of fact, the coal-to-liquids technology has existed a long time. Adolf Hitler, back in World War II, when he was worried about getting cut off his supply of oil and gas that was necessary to fuel the Third Reich, developed a coal-to-liquids technology. Today, the Air Force is using coal to liquids to power B-1 bombers and B-52 bombers for aviation fuel. So we know we can rely on good, old-fashioned American research and technology and ingenuity to come up with a way to deal with this problem.

We are not going to get it done until the majority leader allows us the opportunity to debate and vote on this important imperative to develop more American energy here at home. It is not enough to rely on solar and wind. Those are important, but it is not a complete answer. We need--I believe we should insist, and we are--a right to vote on some production in the Outer Continental Shelf, in the oil shale out West, and up in the Arctic.

Frankly, I don't understand the reluctance on the part of the majority leader to allow that vote to go forward. I am encouraged by some indications that there are some negotiations. I hope they are successful. I don't think we should leave here this week for a month-long recess until we have dealt with the single most important problem facing the American people today and our economy, which is high gasoline and high diesel prices. We can have an immediate impact on the futures markets where those contracts for the future delivery of oil and gas are sold if we will act and say that Congress will be part of the solution and not continue to be part of the problem.

Mr. President, may I inquire how much time remains on this side?

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. There is 1 minute 15 seconds.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, reserving right to object, this side of the aisle believes we need to dispose of the pending Energy bill to help bring down the price of gas at the pump first, before turning to other matters, so for that reason I object.

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