It's Time to Stop Relying on Foreign Oil

Mr. Speaker, with gas prices skyrocketing to over $4 and $5 a gallon, threatening our fragile economic recovery, let me retrace the history of U.S. economic recessions and unemployment since the 1970s and their relation to global oil markets and oil prices. Both in 1973, during the Nixon administration, and then during 1978, during the Presidency of Jimmy Carter, America's economy was subjected to serious harm by global oil kingdoms on whom our Nation already had become too dependent. When gas prices eventually doubled, with the unemployment that followed, President Carter described that major oil price squeeze as the ``moral equivalent of war.''

This chart very vividly shows, how rising unemployment, which is the blue line, follows every major oil price increase since the 1970s. Yes, every spike of gas price increase creates a path to high unemployment that follows. That certainly was true back in 2008, when in fact the oil prices spiked over $4 dollars per gallon and unemployment shot up, triggering our current recession as well. President Carter lost his reelection to Ronald Reagan, who won on a campaign of blaming Carter for a ``misery index.'' Back in those days the misery index was explained as the sum of unemployment and inflation rates but that sum actually was due to gas price sticker shock. When gas prices rise above $4 a gallon, that very fact triggers major unemployment here at home. How many times does our American economy have to be hit over the head with a baseball bat before we recognize our conundrum? We should be working full steam ahead to become energy independent here at home rather than coveting our neighbor's goods.

If we look at the continuing use of petroleum inside our economy--other than the recession we're now in, where we've had a little bit of a dip in imports due to decreased demand--all the way going back to the 1970s, every year, we've consumed more imported petroleum. The red lines show how much more is imported each year. Rather, why don't we invest those trillions and trillions of dollars we are spending in the Middle East and around the world to import that oil right here in our own country?

We literally could rebuild energy production capacity, and much more, from one end of our country to the other and create millions of jobs doing it.

America's chief strategic vulnerability is our dependence on imported energy. How many more Americans have to die to keep those oil lanes open? It is no coincidence we have sent our soldiers to fight where the greatest global oil deposits are located.

My oath is to protect our Nation against all enemies, foreign and domestic. America's petrol dependence is an enemy on both fronts: foreign and domestic. It is no secret that there are some big business interests, including many global oil companies, oil speculators, and financiers trading in those petrodollars, that are making a killing, in many ways, off of America's dependency.

In 2008, rising oil prices tripwired the Great Recession we are currently enduring. And we know recent price hikes threaten our recovery just as our Nation and our people are struggling to get back on their feet. Look at the profits that the major oil companies are ringing in from gas prices at over $4 a gallon. Just in the last quarter, Exxon raked in $10.7 billion, BP brought in $7.2 billion, Chevron earned over $6 billion, and the list goes on and on--in one quarter. One quarter. These huge profits at the expense of our people and nation.

The American people suffer great hardship every time this petroleum addiction rears its ugly head, and it has done so every decade, consistently. The situation keeps getting worse, if anyone is paying attention. In effect, our American Republic becomes a gasoline hostage and a sticker cash cow anytime the global oil markets need an infusion of oil cash or raise prices due to supply aberrations. We simply can't leave America and our people this vulnerable. And we can't keep killing our soldiers to keep those oil lanes open.

The biggest force in the world is inertia. People don't want to change, or don't know how to change our predicament, or don't want to change this losing strategy for our Nation. It's no secret that some interests are making a whole lot of money off the present equation: ``I win, you lose.''

Mr. Speaker, if these economic interests aren't tamed and aren't enemies of our Republic, I don't know what is. Bill Greider wrote a book, it's time to ``Come Home, America.'' Let's do that by restoring energy independence here at home and, indeed, our very liberty.

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