Energy Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Act of 2013
Floor Speech
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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, before he leaves the floor let me say to the Senator from Louisiana, I want to talk a little bit about exactly this question of reality and how we can address the Senate's business and address the issue of the Senator from Louisiana as well--not in principle but with an actual vote, because the reality is there could have been already a vote on the amendment offered by the Senator from Louisiana. I will describe exactly why that has not taken place, but it could have and in my view should have already taken place. It should not have been about principles, it should have been about the reality of the vote the Senator from Louisiana is talking about.
Here we are. Of course it is hard for the public to figure out exactly how the Senate works. The new Senator from Hawaii is a student of this. We have a bipartisan energy efficiency bill on the floor of the Senate now.
As far as I am concerned, I describe it this way. This is a platonic ideal of what bipartisan consensus legislation ought to be all about. It is an extraordinary coalition built in favor of this--the Business Roundtable, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Chamber of Commerce--with some of the country's leading business organizations that favor energy efficiency, and they are doing it for a reason. This is going to increase American productivity. We are going to save money because we are not going to waste so much energy and this is going to create good-paying jobs in a variety of new fields and technologies that are going to be good for people in our country.
My view is we should have already finished this debate with relevant amendments--relevant amendments offered by both sides. In fact, when we started the debate, for the first 4 or 5 hours there was a good bipartisan amendment offered almost hourly. We have them all stacked up like planes hovering over an airport.
At that point conservatives indicated there were two areas they felt strongly about getting a vote on. Again, I am not talking about principles here. We are talking about the reality of a vote, a vote that could have already taken place. One of them was on the amendment offered by the Senator from Louisiana. I happen to disagree with the amendment strongly, but in all of the discussions I said it seems appropriate that there be a vote on that amendment and on another amendment which I disagree with, involving the Keystone Pipeline.
At that point a very clear statement was made by the leadership that if we are talking about the energy efficiency bill and these two votes--not principles, but realities of having those two votes, a vote on the Vitter amendment and a vote on the Keystone Pipeline--and then have relevant amendments that relate to energy efficiency, we would be able to complete this bill. Since we started it last week, I am of the view that we would already have been done by now.
After that message was communicated by the leadership on this side of the aisle, we saw the response to that. It was in response to a vote on the amendment offered by the Senator from Louisiana, a vote on the proposal offered by Senator Hoeven from North Dakota, and a procedural agreement to vote on other relevant amendments. We had scores and scores of other amendments offered to this bill that were clearly not related to energy efficiency. So I say to the Senator from Louisiana: That is the reality--not the rhetoric from the Senator or principles--of why there has not been a recorded up-or-down vote.
By the way, this is a vote that would have met the Senator's principles, that he wanted the vote before October 1. We would have already had that up-or-down vote on the amendment offered by the Senator from Louisiana. It would have been done in accordance with the wishes of the Senator from Louisiana before October 1. The sole hurdle in terms of securing that has been the scores of amendments that have been offered primarily--really exclusively--from colleagues on the other side of the aisle who want to deal with other energy issues.
I want to make one other comment with respect to this. Senator Murkowski and I--because we have worked in a bipartisan way since we were given the opportunity to lead the Energy and Natural Resources Committee at the beginning of this year, and we are honored to have the Senator from Hawaii on the committee--have said our sole focus is to try to find common ground on a host of energy issues that have been backed up, many of which colleagues on the other side of the aisle feel very strongly about.
I would highlight, for example, nuclear waste legislation, where there has been no progress for years and years. Senator Murkowski and I, with Senator Feinstein and Senator Alexander, have a bipartisan bill we think would allow us to finally get on top of a critical issue. I feel very strongly--and I know the Senator from Louisiana cares a great deal about this--that we need to look at ways to cap the potential of natural gas, which is 50 percent cleaner than the other fossil fuels. I have been working with industry and environmental leaders on what I call a win-win solution where we could build more pipelines--the Senator from Louisiana knows it is important for the infrastructure of the natural gas business--and in the future we are going to make them better pipelines. We would have pipelines that don't leak so much methane, which would be good for consumers, good for the planet, and it would be good for the industry.
We are interested in dealing with nuclear waste issues, natural gas issues, and offshore energy issues which, again, are important to the Senator from Louisiana. It is pretty hard to get Senators to focus on those kinds of issues if we cannot move a piece of legislation such as this energy efficiency bill which has an unprecedented coalition behind it. It has so many obvious benefits, without the mandates and without a one-size-fits-all strategy from Washington.
I wanted to set the record straight in particular on that point.
The Senator from Louisiana and I are going to continue our discussions, as we have been doing, but I especially want to emphasize--since my colleague from Louisiana has been talking about whether people say you can vote in principle but you don't vote in reality--that the reality is: We could have already had a vote on the amendment offered by the Senator from Louisiana before the October 1 date, that he said he felt strongly about, if colleagues on his side had not insisted on all of these other amendments not related to energy efficiency.
By the way, I made it clear to them--coming from a State that doesn't produce fossil fuels--that I was willing to work with them, particularly in areas I have just described, such as tapping into the potential of natural gas.
So the reality is there could have already been a recorded up-or-down vote on the amendment offered by the Senator from Louisiana before October 1, and I hope he and others will continue to work with the bipartisan leadership so we can quickly get a finite list of additional relevant amendments that would be offered after the Senator from Louisiana gets his vote and after there is a vote on the amendment offered by the Senator from North Dakota. Those are the realities of what has happened over the last week.
I yield the floor.
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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, there are four Senators on the floor who are each going to take about 5 minutes or so as we try--the leadership is now working to make it possible for us to have a unanimous consent request so that we can have a vote on the helium legislation after the respective caucus lunches.
So as of now we all will take, the four of us involved--Senator Murkowski, Senator Barrasso, Senator Cruz--about 5 minutes. We hope to be able to propound the unanimous consent request as we all talk. We want all Senators to know that we hope to be able to vote on the legislation shortly after lunch.
We know that in Washington, DC, it is almost as if there is an inexhaustible capacity to manufacture false crises. I am here to say that if Congress does not act immediately to pass the legislation we are discussing, scores of American manufacturing and technology companies employing millions of American workers are going to find it impossible to continue their current operations. That is because without this legislation, those workers and companies would no longer be able to get access to helium, which is a critical industrial gas without which these companies cannot operate.
Every week in our country there are 700,000 MRI scans performed. Without liquid helium, which is used to cool these superconducting magnets, without which you cannot run MRIs--if you did not have that capacity, millions of Americans would lose access to a critical diagnostic test. Helium is also used for welding in the aerospace industry, and it is essential for manufacturing optical fiber for the telecommunications industry and for chip manufacturing in the semiconductor sector.
Without going into all of the history, our government got involved with helium after World War I because the defense sector needed it.
Ever since that time--I have been discussing this with colleagues--President after President, Congress after Congress, has tried to come up with a policy that finally gets government out of the helium business while still ensuring the needs of the military business and our taxpayers were protected in the process.
Senator Murkowski and I have worked for many months on this legislation in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and we believe our bipartisan bill accomplishes this. That is because the bill requires the Federal Government to shift from selling helium at a government-set price to selling helium at a market-based price. The bill does this over a 5-year period, so there is no panic, no sudden changes in supply, and American businesses can stop worrying about whether the helium supply truck is going to actually show up in the next month.
The bill phases out commercial sales over the next 7 or 8 years and then gets the Federal Government out of the helium business entirely. With prices for helium now reflecting their real value in the marketplace, the private sector would have the incentives it needs to invest in new helium supplies to replace what is now a Federal reserve. I will wrap up by saying there have been loads of bad puns over the years about Congress floating various ideas for new helium legislation, but this is no joke. If Congress does not pass legislation to extend operation of the Federal Helium Reserve, 40 percent of the U.S. supply of this absolutely necessary industrial commodity will disappear at the end of the month.
We have been informed the Federal agency that handles this, the Bureau of Land Management, would actually start closing the valves on October 1 if Congress has not acted.
I note Senator Murkowski is here. I would ask my colleagues if Senator Murkowski could go next.
Senator Cruz has been very gracious in terms of how we are trying to handle this. Both Senator Murkowski and Senator Cruz could speak and Senator Barrasso is here. I think we would all be done by the 12:30 window.
Let me say to my partner, once again, this is the kind of bipartisan approach we have tried to show in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. I am very appreciative of all she does to make our partnership to work.
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Mr. WYDEN. Would the Senator yield for a question--I am going to ask a question and respond to Senator Sessions' point in one second.
There are differences between the House bill and the Senate bill. The House bill does not get the government out of the helium business permanently. The Senate bill gets the government out of the helium business permanently; A, it does it in a way that is fully offset and, B, not only is it offset under our proposal, passed unanimously in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, $51 million would actually be used to lower the deficit. There is a full offset, A; get the government out of the helium business permanently, and $51 million would be returned to be used for deficit reduction.
What I wish to do, by way of moving things along--and Senator Cruz has been very gracious in terms of the handling of this and saw me on short notice. I am very appreciative.
I wish to propound the unanimous consent request at this time. I am asking the Senator from Texas, Mr. Cruz, a question, if this is acceptable, and then we will go right back to my colleagues.
I wish to ask the Senator from Texas if we would now move to ask unanimous consent that at 2 p.m. the energy committee be discharged from further consideration of the House bill and the Senate proceed to its consideration; that the substitute amendment at the desk, which I have been discussing and I have talked about, be agreed to.
We would then have 15 minutes of debate equally divided between yourself and myself or our designees; that upon the use or yielding back of time, the bill would be amended and be read a third time and the Senate would proceed to vote on passage of the bill, as amended; that motions to reconsider would be considered made and laid upon the table, with all of the above occurring with no intervening action or debate.
I ask the Senator from Texas would this unanimous consent request be acceptable?
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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, let me thank the Senator from Alaska for an excellent statement. It very much reflects our desire to make this bipartisan.
I particularly appreciate her noting the contributions of two of the members of our committee, Senators Risch and Flake, who also made the point that, yes, we are getting the government out of the helium business; yes, we are making sure we are not putting at risk millions of high-skilled, high-wage jobs; but we have to be serious, as my friend from Alabama likes to say, about this budget deficit. And so I will be. He and I have talked often about Medicare and other areas. We will be serious about that deficit reduction, as Senator Murkowski has talked about. And particularly in light of the comments of Senator Risch and Senator Flake, we were able to meet the needs of people, working families across this country who depend on these high-skilled, high-wage jobs. So we are meeting those needs, and we are contributing to deficit reduction. So I thought the Senator's points were well taken.
UNANIMOUS CONSENT REQUEST--H.R. 527
At this point, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at 2 p.m. today, the energy committee be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 527 and the Senate proceed to its consideration; that a Wyden substitute amendment, which is at the desk, be agreed to; that there be 15 minutes of debate equally divided between Senators Wyden and Cruz or their designees; that upon the use or yielding back of the time, the bill, as amended, be read a third time and the Senate proceed to vote on passage of the bill, as amended; that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, with all of the above occurring with no intervening action or debate.
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