President Obama's Proposed 2012-2017 Offshore Drilling Lease Sale Plan Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. MARKEY. Thank you, Madam Speaker, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, yesterday, the majority brought to the floor a bill that would replace the Interior Department's 5-year offshore drilling plan. Today, the majority is bringing a bill to the floor that would require the Interior Department to conduct the offshore drilling plan it is already doing.

Now why would we be taking up a bill to replace the plan yesterday and a bill to implement the plan today? Is it because the majority is having buyer's remorse about their own bill that would put drilling rigs off of the beaches of California, the beaches of Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia? Are they having remorse putting all those rigs out there off the beaches with no new safety procedures adopted post the BP spill? Overnight, have they had some regret, conscience stricken, perhaps that's not a good idea?

That would be a very hopeful sign, I think, for all of us who care about the environment, care about safety and care about protecting the beaches and the fishing industries of our country.

Or is it because they were so compelled by arguments that the Democrats made during the debate on the floor yesterday that they now intend to reverse their position and actually support President Obama's offshore drilling plan that makes 75 percent of all of our oil and gas resources available for drilling while protecting the east and west coasts?

I don't think so, because I am quite certain that the chairman of the committee intends to vote against his own bill here today and that the only reason the majority is bringing this bill up is to defeat it. It appears that the majority's dislike of President Obama is so great and so overwhelming that they are about to actually vote against more oil and gas drilling offshore even in an era where President Obama has already demonstrated his commitment to drilling. There are more rigs out drilling now in the United States than all the rest of the world combined. We're at an 18-year high in production of oil in the United States. You have to go all the way back to 1993 to find a day where there was more oil being produced on a daily basis than today. We have reduced our oil dependence--that is, how much we have to import from overseas--from 57 percent when George Bush was President just 4 years ago down to only 45 percent during the Obama administration.

Thank you, President Obama. Thank you for the fantastic job you're doing in reducing our dependency upon imported oil. That is something that did not happen during President Bush's years in office. And that's quite a record, isn't it, that we're at an 18-year high for oil development? We're at a point where we've reduced our dependence on imported oil from 57 percent down to 45 percent just in 3 1/2 years since President Obama was sworn in. We have more rigs than the whole rest of the world combined drilling for oil here in the United States. That is quite a record, and we thank you, President Obama, for your excellent job.

But we know what the Republican majority is trying to do here today. They're trying to re-message here that somehow or other President Obama hasn't done a historically good job. The majority is about to make their own history here--rewrite history. They are so bent on voting against President Obama that they are going to actually oppose policy they hold most dear--more drilling. We appear to have found the one thing that can stop the majority from voting for drilling over and over again. This would be like Red Sox fans rooting against the Red Sox just because they signed Derek Jeter.

All of a sudden, they would want to not support them any longer. And the majority is putting this bill on the suspension calendar today even though we know they have no intention of supporting it.

So why are we here? Why are we wasting the time of this House when there are so many other pressing issues facing the Nation? We should be focusing on creating jobs for our constituents, on passing a farm bill that helps farmers who are being harmed by drought and taking action on a spending and tax plan to avert going off the fiscal cliff of sequestration. But are we doing any of those things? No, we are not.

The majority is not only asking us to suspend the rules to pass this bill, they are asking us to suspend reality. They are asking us to suspend the reality that President Obama has reduced our dependence on oil from 57 percent down to 45 percent, that we are at an 18-year high in oil production in our country, and that we have 50 percent more floating drilling rigs operating in the Gulf of Mexico than we did before the BP spill.

Let me say that again: There are 50 percent more floating drilling rigs operating in the Gulf of Mexico than before the BP spill, and we have more drilling going on than the whole rest of the world combined. The reality is that President Obama is about ``all of the above.'' That's his energy plan.

What the Republicans do is they just keep bringing out things that really make the oil industry happy but towards the goal of killing the wind industry and killing the solar industry, because they're doing nothing for those industries. And that agenda is, oh, so clear. It's transparently clear what this agenda is.

We actually support an ``aye'' vote on the President's plan and a ``no'' vote on the Republican plan. We should not be drilling off of the beaches of our country when 75 percent of all the oil and gas resources have been made available and the oil industry hasn't even begun in a significant way to capture all those opportunities.

At this point, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. MARKEY. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

All you have to know about the political nature of this bill--and the next bill that we're going to be voting on that allows for drilling off of the beaches of Massachusetts and southern California and Maine and Maryland, New Jersey, without new safety safeguards being put in place--is that they kind of pick a whole bunch of States that are on the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, but they leave out one State.

Now, why did they leave out that State? I wonder why they left out Florida. Why isn't Florida on the list? Why did they exclude that one State out of their systematic goal of increasing energy independence and compromising, if necessary, the beaches of all of these other States in the advancement of that goal to help Exxon Mobile and BP and Shell drill off of our coastline? Why don't they want to drill off of Miami Beach? Why don't they want to drill off of Jacksonville's beaches? Why don't they include Florida? Hmm. Ah, Gore v. Bush. Florida could decide the Presidential race. Ah. Oh, the Republican convention is in Florida this year? Oh. They don't want 1 million people coming to protest the drilling off of the beaches of Florida? Oh. That makes a lot of sense. That's a good justification for excluding Florida, but not Massachusetts, not Maine, not Maryland, not Virginia. But Florida, they're out.

So all you have to know about the blatant political nature of these bills is that they're intended to embarrass President Obama, just as he has proven he is a historically successful President in increasing oil production in America. He has reduced oil dependence on overseas sources from 57 percent down to 45 percent--something George Bush never did. In fact, it spiked to 57 percent under his watch over 8 years. That's a long time to get something done on that front--and he now has 50 percent more rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. So this is really all about politics: 131 votes out here to help the oil and gas industry, no votes out here to help the wind and solar industry.

And the story line continues, even up to the point where they exclude Florida. I mean, it's so nakedly obvious what is happening here in terms of the political nature of what the Republicans are doing on this subject. But please, for the sake of the country, can we get to an all-of-the-above strategy? Can we get to something that actually has you saying positively what you're going to do about the renewable energy that we have in our country that can make it possible for us to say to OPEC, totally, that we don't need your oil any more than we need your sand? Can we actually say that? Can we agree upon that, that it's a common goal and we can find a way of giving the incentives to the wind and solar industry in the same way you do, over and over again, want to give to the oil and gas industry?

Please, let's work together, as a common goal, as a country, to accomplish that goal. Let's not just favor oil and gas. Let's have an agenda that includes all of the above. Because today is just another repetition of the same syndrome that has an ancestor worship at the altar of oil and gas that plagued us in the 20th century but can be alleviated, if we put together a plan to exploit all of our domestic resources, in the 21st century. The agenda of the majority is sadly lacking in that area.

I urge an ``aye'' vote on this suspension vote.

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