America's Energy Security

Floor Speech

Mr. CRAMER. Mr. Speaker, let me begin by thanking my colleague, Mr. Reed, for his leadership on the Congressional Diabetes Caucus. Thank you, that was very inspiring.

Mr. Speaker, I am of the firm conviction that America's national security and America's economic security are tied directly to America's energy security.

We have a wonderful opportunity today to vote on a couple of very important bills that will enhance that energy security, and I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on both of them.

I get to represent the entire State of North Dakota. North Dakota was once described by one of our favorite sons, Eric Sevareid, the famous CBS newsman, as the rectangular blank spot in the Nation's mind. But today, everybody is talking about North Dakota. It is the fastest growing economy in the word. It has the lowest unemployment rate in the country. It has the fastest growing personal income in the country. In fact, today, Mr. Speaker, there are tens of thousands of high-paying jobs in North Dakota waiting for more people to come to the State to fill them. If you are willing to work hard and put in a full day's honest work, you can be very successful there.

We have heard some speeches already this morning about the need to reduce hunger. We have heard some speeches this morning about the availability of affordable health care. I am for both of those things, and the best way to enhance availability of health care and to reduce hunger is to provide jobs.

Again, I would urge my colleagues today to vote for the bills that will be in front of us.

H.R. 1965 is the Federal Lands Jobs and Energy Security Act. It is not a complicated bill. It acknowledges two things. It acknowledges the vast energy resources that our country owns under its Federal lands onshore. It also acknowledges contemporary technology that provides all of the security and safety that is required to do the job well. But what it does is it diverts some of the resources into the right places, that allows the streamlining of permitting while also empowering the local offices of our Bureau of Land Management and our U.S. Forest Service in ways that allow them to do the jobs that they do very well even better.

This is something I know a little bit about. Prior to coming to Congress, I was an energy regulator for 10 years in North Dakota. I worked closely with our Federal partners, in fact, found them to be some of the best people that
I had the opportunity to know. I just met with a number of them last week out in the western part of the State. They do a great job, but they need more resources, especially in an economy that is so competitive for workforce and so competitive in areas like rent and housing and the cost of living.

So by allowing the local offices to keep more of the permitting fees, we can channel the resources to allow them to do their jobs better and faster, without compromising the integrity of their charge to protect our other natural resources above the ground. They do it as well as anybody, and we ought to let them do that job and empower them to do it.

H.R. 2728, the Protecting States' Rights to Promote American Energy Security Act, simply acknowledges what the Constitution guarantees, and that is that we are a Nation of States and that States are, in fact, sovereign, and that nobody is more protective of the land and the water and the air than the people who live on it and drink it and breathe it. It simply states that if you have fracturing rules in your State, that is good enough. It is your State, and the Federal Government's minimum standards ought not impose, be an imposition, on the States and their rights to develop their resources the way they want to. It frees up resources of the Federal Government, while unleashing the ingenuity and innovation of our energy economy, providing wealth, providing jobs, and, by the way, reducing the cost of energy for the rest of us, which makes us even more competitive in the global marketplace.

We have a grand opportunity today, Mr. Speaker, to pass these two bills and to put America on a path to full economic recovery and, perhaps, to bring more troops home from the Middle East to reduce our dependency on foreign oil. Let's do this not only as a country, but as a continent, acknowledging that our friends in Canada are better trading partners than Venezuela. Let's build the pipelines and infrastructure necessary. Let's unleash American ingenuity, and let's put America back to work by becoming more energy secure.

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