Energy
ENERGY -- (House of Representatives - September 08, 2008)
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Ms. FOXX. Well, thank you, Mr. Gingrey. Thank you, Congressman Gingrey, for your leadership on this hour tonight as well as for your help earlier this year in August for what we were doing in calling to the attention of the American people those who are creating this problem with the high gas prices. I want to add some comments to my colleague from Florida's comments about drilling in ANWR.
I had the great opportunity to go to Alaska in 2005. I'd been there once before just purely as a tourist, but I went as a Member of Congress in 2005. I also saw Prudhoe Bay. I also saw Valdez. I also flew over ANWR. I want to add my comments and support to the things that he has said.
When the ANWR was set aside, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge--I think it was in the early 70s--it was specific in the bill that some of that land would be set aside for oil drilling because people knew then that there was oil there and that it should be drilled for, but since that time, the Democrats have time and time and time again stopped us from drilling there. A bill passed in 1995--it passed both Houses--to allow drilling in ANWR, and President Clinton vetoed it. Since then, many, many times we have brought up votes, and the Democrats have consistently voted against drilling there.
He is absolutely right. The ANWR area is nothing but a frozen desert. Where we would be drilling is a frozen desert. It looks gray like that picture he showed. We saw it from the air. It looks exactly like that. It is akin to the deserts of Saudi Arabia, but it happens to be a frozen desert.
You know, the Lord gave us all of the resources, I believe, in this world that we need, but they just don't always look like they're the resources that we need, and sometimes they're tied up in unusual places, but the way I've described it to my colleagues and to my constituents is the way that I have heard it described as to the area that we would drill in ANWR, the 2000 acres: A postage stamp is to a football field as those 2000 acres are to the State of Alaska. It's a minuscule part of the State of Alaska, and it would do no harm.
Also, there is one thing that my colleague Mr. Keller didn't mention. He did show a wonderful map of how close the pipeline is now to that area. We're told that, in 18 months, we could have oil flowing from ANWR into the Alaska pipeline. In fact, it's going to be necessary to keep oil flowing into that pipeline or the pipeline is going to have to be shut down. So the Democrats continue to say it's going to take 10 years. It will only take 10 years if they and their trial lawyer friends and their radical environmentalist friends continue to bring lawsuits. What takes so long for us to create the energy that we need in this country are the lawsuits that keep getting filed. We could do this. We could be getting gas from the Outer Continental Shelf, I understand, in 3 years if we don't have to continually fight lawsuits to get this energy.
During the period of time when we were debating this in August--when the cameras were turned off, when the lights were turned off, when the mikes were turned off--I said that we have a choice to make here in the Congress. We are either going to be pro-American energy or anti-American energy. The Republicans in this Congress are pro-American energy. There is no reason why this country cannot be completely energy independent. Now, today, we've emphasized drilling.
By the way, let me make one other comment about the drilling in Alaska that nobody has made. I saw this again when I was there. You know, when you see the pictures of ANWR again, you see caribou grazing in a meadow with daisies blooming. That's, again, not the area that we would be drilling in. There are no caribou. There are living things there, I'm sure, in that frozen wasteland but not anything that you can see.
The other things that you see are these oil rigs like you see in Texas, these things that go up and down, and they're not very attractive armaments or implements, but when we saw the oil wells in Alaska, for the life of me, you couldn't have known that those were oil wells. They are simple boxes, maybe a little bit taller than I am, and they have valves on them. They look sort of like oxygen tanks with some valves on them, but they're not unattractive at all. They're in little boxes that sort of look like cabanas. We saw a whole row of about, I'd say, 100 or 150 of them. You would have no idea. They might be refrigerators for all one knows, but they're not unattractive at all.
Again, the radical environmentalists want us to think that we're going to be assaulted visually and that the environment is going to be assaulted by our drilling in ANWR. They want us to do nothing. I think the comment by the gentleman from the Sierra Club is very typical of what they feel. They don't want us to have cheap gas because they don't want us to use the good resources that the Lord gave us.
Mr. GINGREY. Would the gentlelady yield for just one comment on that before you continue?
Ms. FOXX. Sure.
Mr. GINGREY. Representative Foxx, you requoted what the gentleman from the Sierra Club said. Again, he said, ``We're better off without cheap gas.''
Also, I want to point out, Mr. Speaker, that the leader of the Senate, the Senate majority leader, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, said fossil fuel is poison, that fossil fuel is poison and that we need to completely rid ourselves of that by, I think, the year 2012. So I just wanted to point that out.
I yield back to the gentlewoman.
Ms. FOXX. Well, I thank my colleague from Georgia for mentioning that because I wanted to also mention that Republicans have consistently said we're for all of the above. We're not just for drilling in ANWR, just for drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf. We want all of the alternatives. We want to be energy independent. We certainly believe in advancing solar, wind, hydro, and whatever other sources there are out there. Most of us believe that, in a short period of time, we'll be completely independent of many fossil fuels. We have coal that we could be using, clean-burning coal. We're the Saudi Arabia of coal.
The interesting thing about the fact that the Democrats don't want us to drill is that they say they want alternatives, but they don't fund alternatives. Our bill that would allow for drilling would take the money that the Federal Government would get from those leases, and it would use that money to develop alternatives. While they've authorized programs for alternatives, they haven't funded them. So they're being very disingenuous when they say they want alternatives, because they are not allowing us to have alternatives because they're not funding them. It's a program that, I think, deserves the emperor's new clothes' award.
Mr. GINGREY. In reclaiming my time just for a second before yielding back to the gentlewoman from North Carolina, what she is talking about, Mr. Speaker, is an energy trust fund that could be, as she pointed out, obtained from royalties that the Federal Government gets from the oil companies--Big Oil, the Democrats use that pejorative constantly--but they would have to pay significant royalties to the Federal Government, which, as Ms. Foxx pointed out, would be put in a trust fund to have grants for research and development for alternative sources such as wind and solar and other things.
I'll continue to yield to the gentlewoman.
Ms. FOXX. Well, again, I appreciate that help with what I was saying because it reminds me of another point that I want to make, and that is, by not allowing this new exploration, we are ensuring that Big Oil will stay in control of the issues. When new areas are opened up, it opens up the opportunities for smaller oil companies and for new entrepreneurs to get involved in the business.
So the best thing that could happen to the ``big oil companies,'' those people who the Democrats demonize constantly, is for us not to open up new areas for drilling, because they have such a lock on the existing areas, and so they are helping, unwittingly perhaps, the existing oil companies to stay big by decreasing the competition for them.
Now let's talk a little bit about what is the Democrats' plan. They say no, no, no, no, no to all of the things which we have proposed which we believe the American people want. We know that from the surveys. Our hope in coming back here for this session is that the American people will have put a lot of pressure on our Democratic colleagues in saying to them: ``You must tell the Speaker that she needs to bring up a bill for a vote, and that's all we're asking for. We want a clean up or down vote.''
Now, I had said this many of the times that I was here during August. One day in July, before we went on recess and when the Republicans were talking about this--we'd been talking about this all of this year that we needed to do something to increase the supply and bring down the price of gasoline--somebody asked one of Speaker Pelosi's aides: ``Well, what is your plan for bringing down the price of gasoline?'' The answer was: ``Drive small cars and wait for the wind.''
Well, this is how somebody has characterized this. This is the Democrats' energy plan: drive small cars and wait for the wind. Well, most people in this country can't trade their big cars for small cars. They need their big cars. They have families, and they need to transport them or they have so much invested in those cars already, and they're not wealthy people like our Speaker is. They are people who are working hard for a living, and they can't do that.
Well, I have likened this to when the French people told the Queen of France that the people had no bread. She said, ``Let them eat cake.'' Well, that's, I think, what the Democrats are saying to the American people. Let them eat cake. Whereas, the Republicans are saying we have alternatives. Let's vote on those alternatives. Yes, I think this deals with some of the quotes that Mr. Gingrey was talking about, that Congressman Gingrey from Georgia was talking about a few minutes ago.
We did get promises. In fact, the Speaker promised in 2006 that the Democrats had a commonsense plan for bringing down the price of gasoline. That was when the price of gasoline was around $2. Now it's almost $4. They've done nothing about it. This is what one of their Members said: ``We sort of stretched the truth, and people ate it up.'' This was stated by Representative Paul Kanjorski, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, on the Democrats' campaign promises. They made those promises.
Now, what have Republicans done? Thirty-five times the Democrats have voted down Rules Committee Republican-offered solutions to lower your gas prices and to address America's urgent energy needs. The Speaker said we'll have to use our imagination for ways that we can get a vote. Well, ladies and gentlemen, we have used every opportunity presented to us in this Congress to force a vote on providing American-made energy.
And every time the Democrats have stifled that.
We're not asking for a lot. We are asking for an up-or-down vote. Now, we have it broken down. We are not asking you to take our word for it. We have it broken down. Eleven times they voted ``no'' to consider amendments that would lower the average price of regular unleaded gasoline; four times to lower the price of gasoline and diesel by increasing our domestic fuel supply; six times they voted ``no'' to address alternative fuels; and fourteen times to address additional energy solutions provided by the American Energy Act, No More Excuses Energy Act, Coal-Liquid Fuel Act, Deep Ocean Resources Energy Act, Boutique Fuel Reduction Act, and the American Energy Independence and Price Reduction Act.
Republicans continue to try, and we are going to continue to bring up these issues every day that the Congress is in session and when we go out of session. But we do need the American people to help on this. We're going to bring it up. But if you live in the district of a Democrat who has not yet said he or she will vote ``yes'' for additional energy, then you need to be calling the House of Representatives and you need to be calling the Speaker's office to let them know. But it's better to call your Member of Congress and ask that Member to tell them.
Now, here's the other energy plan presented by their nominee for President. Our nominee for President, Senator McCain, has said he wants to increase American-made energy. Senator Obama's plan is check your tires and get them inflated properly and that's the solution to the American energy needs. That's just not going to cut it, Senator Obama. I'm sorry. We have got to increase supply.
Americans have been doing a wonderful job of conserving. And, again, I want to make it very clear Republicans believe in all of the above. We support conservation, but we support alternatives such as solar, wind, hydro, every other alternative that there is out there. We are willing to do that. But we know we cannot do this without increasing supply. And I simply think that we need to ask the Democrats are you pro-American energy or are you anti-American energy? If you're not interested in increasing the supply that we have within our borders, then you're anti-American energy. That is being anti-American people because it's the average working person, the retired people, young people who are being hurt by the high price of gasoline. And I think that that approach is the approach of people who are totally out of touch with the real world, and I am very disappointed in that.
I am going to yield back to my colleague now, Mr. Gingrey, from the great State of Georgia.
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