Congressional Budget for the United States Government for the Fiscal Year 2006

CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET FOR THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT FOR THE FISCAL YEAR 2006

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Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk. I have sent an amendment to the desk that I am offering to strike the language from the budget resolution the reconciliation instructions to the Energy Committee that assume Arctic drilling. Specifically, under the instructions, the Energy Committee must report legislation by June 6 at the latest that produces $2.7 billion in revenue from 2006 until 2007.

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The Senator from Washington [Ms. CANTWELL], for herself, Mr. Kerry, Mr. Lieberman, Mr. Feingold, Mr. Jeffords, Mr. Lautenberg, Mrs. Boxer, Mrs. Feinstein, Mrs. Murray, and Mr. Corzine, proposes an amendment numbered 168.

The amendment is as follows:
(Purpose: To ensure that legislation that would open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, other federal lands, and the Outer Continental Shelf to oil drilling receives full consideration and debate in the Senate under regular order, rather than being fast-tracked under reconciliation procedures; to ensure that receipts from such drilling destined for the federal treasury are fairly shared with local jurisdictions; and does not occur unless prohibitions against the export of Alaskan oil are enacted)

Strike Section 201(a)(4).

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I thought for the benefit of my colleagues we would lay that down tonight so people could understand the amendment and we could continue debating it in our time this evening and continue debating it tomorrow. I hope that clarifies issues for my colleagues.

I start by saying a word to the Senators from Alaska because I think both Senators from Alaska have been diligent in their concerns for this issue, in their advocacy for making sure the issues they would like to represent are heard in this debate, and that the accuracy of information provided is correct. I certainly applaud them for that. But, I certainly don't diminish the difference of opinion we might express tonight as it relates to where this country should go on an energy policy.

I believe our energy policy must be very aggressive in creating a future for new energy technology and renewables, in making a downpayment on getting off of our overdependence on foreign oil, and, specifically in continuing to diversify off of our country's dependence on oil in general.

I may have a different opinion about what I think our energy strategy should be. If the last generation of Americans were smart enough to put a man on the Moon, this generation of Americans ought to be smart enough to get off our overdependence on foreign oil. But that assumes we would pass an energy bill that would outline these policies and that we would have a debate about them. We have been trying to have this debate, and we certainly have had disagreements about what the policy should be.

For the last couple of years, I have expressed concern over our country's overfocus on fossil fuels, the fact that 60 percent of the incentives in the Energy bill have focused on fossil fuels.

And I think we should start incentivizing other types of energy supply and move ahead.

That is why I find this particular process to be an end run on energy policy and energy discussions. In fact, I think it is somewhat absurd that we can simply mandate the opening of ANWR by putting language in the budget, by simply saying: Let's put the revenue in the budget, and by doing that, we will then start the process for legislating that ANWR could be opened.

The reason why that is so bothersome to this particular Senator--think, for example, if in the next budget we put revenue in there expediting timber sales in our National Forests or basically expediting the leasing off the coast of Florida for oil production. Or, God forbid, why don't we put revenue in the resolution recognizing oil leasing in Yellowstone National Park, even though it is a National Park? Why don't we do this process by continuing to put revenues in the budget resolution?

Well, I think the energy debate deserves far more attention than simply sticking language in the budget resolution demanding the Energy Committee report a bill capture this revenue. I think that is what other people have started to see about this proposal. In fact, the New York Times recently ran a story about this, the refuge drilling, and basically pointed out:

Others who advised Mr. Bush on his energy plan said including the refuge was seen as a political maneuver to open the door for more geological promising prospects off the coasts of California and Florida.

So my first question is, If we don't stop this now, where does this stop in the future? I ask my colleagues, both Democrats and Republicans, if today you are going to allow the opening of ANWR by simply putting language in the budget requiring that we produce revenue, where will you go next? And clearly, I do not think the discussion of opening up leasing off the coast of Florida or the coast of California or even in ANWR belongs in the budget resolution. I do not think we should legislate in the budget resolution. To me, the process of having this debate now is very bothersome. But I understand there are some who will continue to push this until they find a way to make this proposal a reality.

I do not think anybody can say our side of the aisle cannot be concerned about this type of tactic. I simply say, we should vote for my amendment tomorrow and turn this proposal down and start a real discussion on the energy bill.

The senior Senator from Alaska, I know, is very concerned that this not be referred to as a wilderness area. He is right. It is a wildlife refuge. He is right. It is a wildlife refuge. It is not a wilderness area. One of my colleagues would like to make it a wilderness area, the Senator from Connecticut, Mr. Lieberman, and he has proposed legislation to do that. We have had that debate, too. We have had that debate about as long as we have had this debate about whether we should open up ANWR to oil drilling.

The fact of the matter is, in 1980, section 1003 of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act specifically prohibited oil and gas development in the entire refuge or the leasing or development leading to the production of oil and gas from the range unless authorized by Congress. So that is what we are here debating: unless authorized by Congress.

I have given you my reasons why I do not think we should authorize on the budget resolution this significant of an action without discussing energy policy and the impacts of opening up ANWR on the refuge.

I personally think there are many things we should be doing to attain our energy future. I think there are many policies that would be far more interesting to us as a country because a lot of people are trying to argue that we should do this now because it is an energy supply and it is national security.

Well, I can tell you, this Senator, along with my fellow west coast Senators, is outraged over the price of gasoline in America. We are from a State such as Washington, where we have four refineries, we are the closest to the supply that you could get, and yet we have some of the highest gasoline prices in America.

So what this Senator would like to see--just as I have forced and pushed, and will continue to speak out on market manipulation of electricity prices--I believe we should do our homework and make sure we are holding those responsible accountable as to: Why do we have this diversity of gasoline prices when there is so much available supply right in our backyard?

I know the Senator from Oregon, Mr. Wyden, has asked for investigations into these high gasoline prices, and threatened to hold up various nominations over the issue. I have certainly put questions to various members of the Department of Energy, the Department of Justice, and to our own State's Governor, and will continue to do so, because I think the price of gasoline is outrageous.

This particular Senator is not a supporter for opening up the SPRO. I agree, we should have energy for energy security, an energy supply. I think people have made that point and made it well. But I want to see us continue to diversify into other areas. So this Senator will join the Alaska Senators any day of the week to talk about the development, the delivery, the execution, and expedited access to Alaska natural gas. We need to have natural gas. If there is any proposal that deserves an expedited review by this body, it would be to get that production to the United States at a faster rate.

Let me remind my colleagues, when security was a national debate in the 1970s, when we were all at the gasoline line filling up our cars, waiting, with the most absurd price for gasoline, America took notice. America took notice of those gas prices and said: What are we going to do about it? And we had an aggressive plan to get off of our dependence on home heating oil. We realized the price of oil was so expensive that it was not smart for America to continue a policy of investing in that as a delivery source of energy. Now, decades later, we have reduced our dependence on home heating oil 35 percent. We got the natural gas. We got the necessary supply. We got it to where people needed it. And we made a major shift in America. We took the prices that were facing us and we acted with the certainty about the future we wanted to see in America, with a cleaner source of energy supply.

So first on my list would be making sure we have the North Slope natural gas pipeline project moving. We certainly heard today from a variety of people about renewable fuels.

I should say, by the way, people talk about the drilling in the Arctic, and we don't know for sure, but economically recoverable oil might be somewhere between 3.2 and 5 billion barrels. That is generally what people think. Well, there is at least 35 trillion cubic feet of natural gas available. So that is the energy equivalent of 6 billion barrels of oil.

We could continue to look at renewable or nonpetroleum fuel, such as ethanol made from crops, something the other side of the aisle has also supported, and look at requirements for renewable content of gasoline. That would be about 5.1 billion barrels by 2013--again, a source of cleaner energy that would be important for us in an energy plan.

We can invest in new technology to convert agriculture waste to oil, something some States are doing on a much smaller scale. But we could produce as much as 4 billion barrels of a cleaner product on an annual basis.

I certainly am a fan of making sure that CAFE standards are passed by Congress. If you think about the CAFE standards and fuel efficiency, that would help us. We could save 60 billion barrels of oil over the next 50 years.

Why are we not focusing on that in our proposal for an energy plan? Just making sure the tires of our transportation system are properly inflated and educating America on the oil savings of that simple action could save 200,000 barrels of oil per day. Yet we are out here discussing a proposal that has been discussed for years, with much controversy and much concern because of what it focuses on--first, a refuge wildlife area that was set aside and preserved, and a focus on oil that some of us, including myself, are saying we need to diversify off of.

I could go through other examples of renewable technologies, of energy efficiency technology that could continue to save the equivalent of another 4.9 billion barrels of oil--something that I know would make great progress with the building and development sectors of our country as they add efficiency improvement, and install renewable technologies and distributed generation. But that is the kind of leadership I think we should be talking about. We should not be talking about whether we want to go and open up this wildlife refuge.

If I may, I know my colleagues have put up a few pictures. I would like to put up a few pictures of the area as well because I think when the area was first established as a wildlife refuge, people recognized the uniqueness of the coastal region. The government looked at it as an area to support wildlife and sustain their migration patterns. We have heard a lot about that for the last several years, the caribou and their migration habits. I never thought the Senate would become such experts on the migration habits of the caribou, but I think both sides of the aisle have expressed quite a bit of knowledge. I am simply offering a few pictures of the wildlife that resides on the coastal plain of the refuge. The reason I am showing these photographs is to remind my colleagues and individuals that we have choices, and we have options like this refuge drilling proposal that we have debated before, and it is fine to debate them. What I object to is the process of trying to essentially stick authorizing language on a budget bill. That is a bad precedent and it is trying to limit discussion on an issue that was never intended to be considered in this way without the Energy Committee and the Energy Committee debate.

Now, I know some people have talked about the supply of oil we might get from the refuge. I think that New York Times article was very interesting in the sense that it said:

Even the plan's most optimistic backers agree that any oil from the refuge would only meet a tiny fraction of America's needs.

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Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I ask my colleagues as we continue this debate to think about this proposal and the fact that we ought to be taking ourselves in a different direction, and this proposal will not provide us the leadership for an energy future that we need.

I yield the floor.

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