Press Stakeout Following GOP Senate Policy Luncheon - Transcript
HEADLINE: PRESS STAKEOUT FOLLOWING GOP SENATE POLICY LUNCHEON
PARTICIPANTS: SECRETARY OF ENERGY SPENCER ABRAHAM; SENATOR KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON (R-TX); SENATOR PETE DOMENICI (R-NM); SENATOR LARRY CRAIG (R-ID); SENATOR LISA MURKOWSKI (R-AK)
BODY:
SEN. HUTCHISON: Of course, this week is a very important week in the Senate, because we are taking up the energy bill that Senator Domenici and the committee have worked very hard to have a balanced bill that would create energy, it would create distribution systems and it would create conservation. Fifty-six percent of our energy needs are imported from foreign countries. We cannot continue to allow that to happen. We must have more energy self-sufficiency in America, and that's what this energy bill will do. I'm very proud of the job that Senator Domenici and the Energy Committee did in balancing all of the needs and the very important priorities for America.
And this bill should pass the Senate in the next week or two, at the most, if everyone works together and makes it a positive effort, which we really should do for the security of our country. We cannot be fighting wars overseas and not have energy self-sufficiency at home.
I'm very pleased to have with us today the secretary of Energy, who has done a wonderful job trying to create more energy in our country and trying to make sure that we have all of our weaponry well- secured. And he's doing a great job. Senator -- Secretary Spencer Abraham. (Laughs.)
SEC. ABRAHAM: Well, thanks, Kay. (Laughs.)
SEN. HUTCHISON: (Chuckling.) Some people don't graduate.
SEC. ABRAHAM: Yeah, some of us don't graduate. Right. We, first of all, want to thank both Pete Domenici and the rest of the Senate Energy Committee team, as well as the Senate Republican leadership team, for bringing energy legislation to the Senate floor this early in the session.
In the last Congress we tried to get an energy bill passed. It just started too late, and the job couldn't get done. And America I think has paid a price for that because we haven't been able to move ahead on some of the important priorities which this energy legislation will address.
As Senator Hutchison said, we want a stronger economy, we want a strong national security. Both are in many ways linked to having strong energy security. And that's what this legislation will help us achieve. It'll help create jobs in the short term, but it'll also help lay the groundwork for having affordable and plentiful supplies of energy over the next 20 years so we can not only reduce our dependency on foreign energy, but we can guarantee that America's economy moves forward in the kind of growth-oriented fashion we want.
At the same time, we know that the environment's important. This legislation helps us balance properly the various energy sources as well as the balance that we need between strong energy security on the one hand a clean environment on the other.
And so, I want to thank Senator Domenici and the entire team that's been working on this. The administration looks forward to working with them to finish the job, and to do so soon.
Thank you.
SEN. HUTCHISON: First, Pete Domenici, as we all know, was a great chairman of the Budget Committee, and he voluntarily left that to take over Energy because he felt that that was THE pressing need of our country at this time. And he's doing a great job.
Senator Domenici.
SEN. DOMENICI: Let me be brief. This is a complicated subject, but suffice it to say that we brought out of this committee a bill that was bipartisan. And it provides a great variety of energy sources for America in the future. And it does everything from stimulating the use of more clean coal and cleaning it up to the use of nuclear power, if that is necessary, and providing the tools where that can be done, to a great impetus for wind energy and related types of energy. When you add all those up, and things like biomass, you have a bill which provides for the American people a myriad of energy sources, which means thousands of jobs in the short term, and over the long term a great variety of energy and energy sources.
We all know that right now America is basking in the -- kind of in the plentifulness of natural gas, but we know that that's not going to continue on forever. In order to add to the supply, we've done some very exciting things to help Alaskan natural gas come down here -- and we'll let the new senator from Alaska explain that -- as well as provide some offshore natural gas and crude oil from some areas that are not in contest with reference to where they can be produced. We're giving some incentives to some areas that already are producing, where much more can be found. You add everything together, and we have a bill where a great deal of conservation will take place, as well as a myriad of production and literally hundreds of thousands of jobs.
I believe we can pass this bill in the next eight or 10 days, take it to the United States House and hopefully, in conference, get it done and before the year's out present a bill to the president of the United States, with a new policy for America's energy future.
SEN. HUTCHISON: Thank you. Thank you. And now Senator Larry Craig, a member of the Energy Committee, will talk about the agricultural side of the issue.
SEN. CRAIG: I think oftentimes we take for granted the glare of that particular floodlight or all of the electronics you use, or the ease with which we transport ourselves around the world or across our country, or the cheapness and the abundance of our food supply.
Agriculture still remains the most energy-intensive industry in our country, from the very preparation of the land to the preparation of the food that it yields. And we're not going to have that inexpensive food supply ready and available to all of you if we don't have an abundant energy supply. It just simply goes hand in hand, but oftentimes we don't connect all of the dots.
What Senator Domenici has done has brought out one of the most diverse energy baskets we've seen. By that I mean a cross-section of all kinds of energy are within this bill. It stimulates both environmentally sound energy and perpetuating existing forms of energy. It drives technology in ways that we've not seen it.
It is a major new investment in the physical technologies, if you will, the physics of energy, of a kind we've not seen for decades in this country.
So it truly is a balanced bill that provides, once our country goes back to work, probably more jobs, more technology, more development than we've seen in a long while in the field of all forms of energy.
SEN. DOMENICI: Senator, we might mention that ethanol will be in this bill also. Ethanol is a great tool for rural development as well as gives America an opportunity to use less foreign oil. It will be adopted overwhelmingly after a series of amendments. We're glad to have it on this bill to move it along.
SEN. CRAIG: Well said.
SEN. HUTCHISON: Senator Lisa Murkowski, a member of the Energy Committee, whose state is very affected by this bill and is one of the great resources for our whole country for energy.
SEN. LISA MURKOWSKI (R-AK): Thank you. And my appreciation to you, Chairman Domenici, for shepherding this very important legislation through the process.
You know, before we went on the Memorial Day break, we passed the president's economic stimulus package with the thought in mind that we would stimulate the economy and develop jobs. This is really the second part of that jobs legislation, because with an energy bill, with an energy policy, we do create jobs, and lots of jobs.
We've talked about a lot of numbers, but we're looking at 38,000 construction jobs alone, direct and indirect jobs across the country, not just in my state, but across the country, approximately 400,000 jobs, bringing revenue into the federal treasury.
But we need to look beyond that. We need to look beyond just the job creation at what this energy policy and, quite honestly, from my state's perspective, the construction of an Alaska natural gas pipeline gives to the country. It gives to us a level of energy security as it relates to natural gas that we recognize that we need, but we need to push in order to make that a reality.
Right now, as was said earlier, we're somewhat comfortable with our reserves of natural gas. Given five to 10 years, we could be in the same position that we are currently with oil, being over 55, 57 percent dependent on outside sources. We cannot let this happen. The only way that we can keep it from happening is to get Alaska natural gas down from the North Slope into the Lower 48.
We're working very hard to do it. We've got some key provisions in the legislation before us -- loan guarantees, some fiscal incentives -- that we feel will be necessary to make this project a reality. I thank the chairman for the support. We feel that in Alaska we're here to supply your energy needs, we can do it in a very sound environmentally balanced way. But we've got to provide the reserves necessary for the rest of the country. And we're ready and willing to do it, and looking forward to a successful bill in a couple weeks.
SEN. DOMENICI: Very good.
SEN. HUTCHISON: Very good. Now, both the secretary and the chairman are willing to take questions, or -- anyone else.
Q Mr. Secretary, last year the House and Senate energy bill got all the way to conference and then they kind of stalled out. Is there reason to believe that this year there is more support for an energy bill, there will be less difficulties or --
SEC. ABRAHAM: Well, I think that we ran out of time in the last Congress, and I think that's because the Senate action occurred not in the first but in the second year of session. And so I think by starting this bill, finishing it in the next couple of days, getting this to conference this year, that there's no doubt we'll have the time to get it accomplished. I also think that the American people have now gone through another series of energy crises in these last few months. We saw a strike in the Venezuelan oil sector, we saw the lead-up to and then the war in Iraq, we saw the unrest in Nigeria cause a spike in the energy prices. We've seen the percentage of imports continue to go up. All of these factors I think call for action. I think the American people expect action. And with Pete Domenici's leadership, the Senate will give them action and give it very soon.
SEN. DOMENICI: I think the best thing you can say without being egotistical is that Pete Domenici is going to chair the conference and Billy Tauzin's going to be on the other side of the aisle. The two -- those two will produce a bill. How's that sound? Is that all right?
Q That sounds -- that sounds good.
SEN. DOMENICI: That's a good answer.
Q Senator Domenici, you said you think you can pass this in eight to 10 days. Is that realistic, considering the number of amendments that are -- potential amendments that are out there?
SEN. DOMENICI: Oh, yeah, eight to 10 working days to do it. We won't get much more than that. Eight to 10 working days would be all this week and all next week. We've got to get it done in that much time. And frankly, I believe that we can. What's happening now is the typical slowpoke start-up. As soon as the senators start voting tonight, I would guess we will have as many as four, maybe five votes, and I would think that would precipitate a myriad of votes tomorrow and the next day, and we'll be on the way.
Thank you all very much.
SEN. HUTCHISON: Another question?
Q Senator, I have one on another issue, WMD. Could both of you senators comment on the mood of your conference to the extent that there are concerns or not on the absence of weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq and the prewar intelligence that the administration offered both to you as senators as well as to the public. What is your sense of the situation right now?
SEN. HUTCHISON: Well, let me say that we had a very good discussion in our caucus about the weapons of mass destruction issue. I would say it is the consensus that there are weapons of mass destruction. We've already seen those. They could be for no other purpose than biological warfare and chemical warfare. We believe there will be more. And we believe there is a connection between Saddam Hussein and terrorist organizations. And we could not stand by and allow that to happen. And I think our caucus is very much behind the president. Would we like to have been able to find something that would be really big? Sure. But we believe that Saddam Hussein had the capability to move things around, to bury them. We think we will find more, and I think the caucus is very much behind the administration.
SEN. DOMENICI: Well, I think the issue in our caucus is that -- a high level of confidence that the war was justified, that the world has been rid of a terrific culprit and the world's much better off. There's almost a certainty that this man, who has used weapons of mass destruction before, was prepared to use them again and that he was, in fact, a master at weapons of mass destruction.
The idea that somebody has lied or withheld information is totally disavowed by our caucus, and it is believed that a thorough reading of the intelligence reports will justify the facts that what Secretary Powell said was true. And there are thousands of pages of documentation that cannot be shown to the public that will verify to senators who are interested that, in fact, the truth was there.
In conclusion, in our caucus, Senator McCain wrapped it up by talking about what kind of man we went to war with and how there could be any concern about whether or not it was a justifiable cause to go to war against him, and whether it is even sensible to think that he did not have weapons of mass destruction and that he would not have used them had we not taken care of him in the manner that we did.
I think that's the general consensus.
Q Senator, just one clarification. You said that we had found them. Are you making a reference to the trucks in your earlier statement earlier?
SEN. HUTCHISON: Yes. With the biological weapons -- we have found the evidence of that. And then certainly we've seen the chemical weapons being used on the Kurds in the past. So we know Saddam Hussein has had them. And I think it is very clear that there will be more. But you can't avoid the connection between the terrorists, Saddam Hussein and the weapons of mass destruction. Just the fact that Saddam Hussein wouldn't cooperate with the inspectors shows he had something to hide. So I think we have all confidence that more will be found and that this was certainly a part of trying to change the dynamic in the Middle East in order to try to then begin a peace process.
SEN. DOMENICI: Let me make comment. Yesterday evening I happened to be watching the news -- might have been on your channel -- when one of the experts on the Middle East -- I think it was a Palestinian expert -- and then I heard an Israeli expert. Both of them commented on what was going on now. And it's very interesting that both commented that things have changed so substantially in the last two or three months that it seems like there is a chance for the new map -- road map to work.
What were they referring to? The only thing that's happened is that the United States has destroyed Saddam Hussein and everything he stands for. For those kind of experts to say that has changed the dynamics in the Middle East, sufficient that we might get peace, seems to me to outweigh all the questions about did we have every bit of evidence that we say we had or not. We won a war that seems to be a big victory for peace in that part of the world, and before it is all over with, there will be ample justification of what kind of person he was, and it will be that he had plenty of weapons of mass destruction.
Q Thank you.
SEN. HUTCHISON: Thank you.
END