Fuels Security Act of 2005

Mr. President, yes.

Yes, we will send the amendment to the desk.

Mr. President, I know there are many colleagues who want to talk on this issue. I do not know how many members on the other side of the aisle want to speak. I would think we can dispose of this within a couple of hours. That would be my guess.

That is correct. I think we will start the debate on the Cantwell amendment, and if other Members want to address that or other issues, we are happy for them to come down and address those issues as the afternoon progresses.

Mr. President, I thank the chairman of the Energy Committee for his participation and help in clarifying this next segment of debate on the Energy bill. While I think we have several issues left to discuss, I think it is very important to realize what a milestone we have achieved. After a couple of sessions of the Senate trying to get energy legislation, we are now on the precipice of having an energy bill that has great bipartisan support.

I compliment the chairman of the Energy Committee for his hard work and diligence in getting an energy bill that has such great bipartisan support. As a member of the Energy Committee and as a relatively new Member of the Senate, I can tell you how honored I was that Senator Domenici visited me in my office to talk about the issues impacting the Northwest--because we have been hard hit by an energy crisis in the last several years--and his willingness to work with my office on those Northwest issues, particularly related to the hydro system.

I can say with certainty that just about every member of the Senate Energy Committee participated in the markup of this legislation by getting ideas and concepts into the Energy bill. While each of us have different perspectives because we represent different regions of the country, people should realize that getting an energy bill is a very important step forward in our Nation.

I contrast that to the House version. The House version reminds me of where we were in the Senate version 2 years ago, except for the House version just kept going in the wrong direction. It basically has what I call ``gratuitous special interest deals'' relating to groundwater pollutants. This includes letting MTBE manufacturers off the hook from their liability, something I know the Presiding Officer has concerns about. The House bill also has rollbacks of the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act. I think these are bad precedents to set.

I am trying to bring attention to the fact that the product we are starting with in the Senate is good legislation. The next week and a half will probably make this legislation even better, as Members who are not on the committee bring up issues, some of which, Members who are on the committee left to be discussed by all the Members on the Senate floor.

Something of particular importance to the Northwest is the electricity title in this legislation. Establishing the electricity title was a very meaningful step toward responding to the scandalous Enron crisis and the unethical practices of market manipulation. We are really getting tough on energy traders and executives who perpetrate the kinds of abuses that we saw in the western energy market. We are sending a message to those industries and businesses that the consumer will not provide the deep pocket for Enron kinds of bankruptcies.

I am grateful to the chairman and the ranking member from New Mexico for their hard work on this legislation. There was a great irony taking place the moment the Senate was about to make a decision on changing the filibuster rules. Members of both sides of the aisle and all their staffs were hard at work marking up a very comprehensive energy bill in a very bipartisan fashion. If people were there, they would have realized it was the Senate at its best doing its best work.

There are still outstanding issues that we decided we were going to bring to the Senate floor. Some of those issues were related to a variety of concerns that we thought were best addressed on the Senate floor. One of the issues that I think is important to bring up is my amendment on energy security. It is an amendment that will set a national goal for getting off our overdependence on foreign sources of oil. I am pleased to be able to offer that amendment with Senators Durbin, Salazar, and Kerry because it is important that energy independence be

part of our strategy for a national energy policy.

Many Americans are feeling this overdependence at the gas pump today. They know we are overdependent on foreign oil. They want to see more competition in gas prices. Americans may not realize that now the United States imports about 58 percent of our oil supply. That is about 11 million barrels a day. This number is expected to grow to about 62 percent by 2015. The underlying bill tried to address this by saying we should cut our dependence on oil by a million barrels a day, but what that underlying bill does is leave us worse off by 2015 than we are today. It would leave us more dependent on foreign oil than we currently are. The mathematics of the underlying bill need to be improved.

My amendment would direct the President to develop and implement a long-term strategy to reduce our dependence on foreign oil by reducing 7.6 million barrels of oil per day by 2025. So, instead of allowing our foreign oil imports to grow from the 58 percent that it is today to 68 percent in 2025, my amendment would reverse this alarming trend.

We can see where we are today and where we need to get to reduce this dependence.

Under my amendment, this would be a 40-percent reduction by the year 2025. It is very important that this goal be included as part of our energy legislation.

It should be no surprise because many of the Members have talked about energy independence as part of the energy legislation. If my colleagues believe in the underlying fundamentals of this legislation, then they must believe that we can be successful in getting off our overdependence on foreign oil.

What this legislation is missing is an adequate goal to actually reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

It is no surprise that consumers and experts alike agree on this. In fact, there was a recent poll which showed that 92 percent of Americans are very worried about our dependence on foreign oil, and 93 percent of Americans want our Government to develop an energy strategy that will get us off our overdependence on foreign oil. In fact, the President has joined in the call, saying that in order to make sure our economy grows, we need to encourage small business sector growth and vitality. We need to address a major problem facing our country, and that is our Nation's growing dependence on foreign sources of energy.

The President has joined in this debate in saying that getting off our foreign dependence is important.

We have had many others speak out, such as the leadership on both sides of the aisle. In the House, Speaker Hastert said: Our Nation is dependent on a fickle foreign oil market that is being stretched to the limit by foreign demands.

National security experts, such as CIA Director James Woolsey, former Secretary of State George Schultz, and others in the Energy Future Coalition, have said that the possibility exists for future oil embargoes and supply disruption that make us more dependent on the Middle East.

In fact, those gentlemen, in their report, said: For the foreseeable future, as long as vehicle transportation is dominated by oil, the greater Middle East and especially Saudi Arabia will remain in the driver's seat.

We have a chart that shows who owns the oil supply and who are the top global oil companies in the world. If one thinks about these companies on the chart, looking at the names, Aramco and various companies, and they look at the countries that basically own these companies, people will see that they are 100-percent owned by those entities. We can see what countries they are. We can see where the supply is.

If Americans look at this chart, then they know that we cannot leave our economic future and our national security for future oil supply in the hands of these governments and these countries. What we need to do is to get off of our overdependence on foreign oil and diversify, and that is specifically what my amendment calls for.

I ask unanimous consent that a letter from the Energy Future Coalition that calls for major new initiatives to curtail U.S. oil consumption be printed in the Record.

Specifically, this coalition believes that domestic biofuel, something that we just debated as part of this energy strategy, can be used to produce a very significant amount of our future energy, and they are calling it an extraordinary opportunity for American leadership for job creation and economic growth.

I think this group of individuals, who are part of a coalition that is interested in our country's national security, are pointing out that this very chart, showing the ownership by foreign entities, is of great concern to our future. I think this letter does adequately call on us to do our job in making sure we are getting off of our foreign dependence.

I believe this underlying legislation gives us the tools to do so. That is especially true if you think about the framework that is in the bill and the debate we just had on biofuels, the 8 billion gallon biofuels goal by 2012. What is great about the biofuels amendment that was adopted and revised from the committee markup is that it includes both ethanol and biodiesel, and specifically ethanol research and development of what are called cellulosic ethanols--biomass-based ethanol materials.

We know we have Midwestern States that are already producing ethanol and giving us a source of supply. But if you take those five Midwestern States and try to transport that product to the Northwest, as we do today--we are selling biofuels and ethanol in a variety of places in Washington State today, but you are adding a 30-cent to 50-cent transportation cost. What the amendment we just adopted does is make sure that various parts of the country can also be in the biofuels business; that we can start producing products in other parts of the country, closer to the source and consumers that are going to use them. So it is a very positive step forward.

The bill also includes clean coal technology, that I know my colleague who is on the floor, the Senator from Tennessee, has worked on so diligently. It includes hydrogen fuel cells, and it includes next generation nuclear power, things I know my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have worked hard to perfect. It includes new research and development, to play a vital role in the commercialization of new technology. It promotes in, a bipartisan way, conservation initiatives. It is exciting to catch a sense of the new technology that will be in this bill to give us more efficiency in our homes and businesses. We will get a lot of savings from these programs and tools.

There are many tools in the underlying bill to achieve the goals we set out for ourselves. We believe this underlying bill has the right technology answers; that is, it has all the various means by which we can get off our foreign oil dependence, but it is simply lacking a goal. That is what my amendment will provide. This legislation should reflect the resolve of the American people, who say that getting off our overdependence on foreign oil is a national priority, and we are going to stick to it.

I know various Members are going to come down here and offer amendments

on other issues, issues related to global warming and greenhouse gas emissions. We are going to have proposals regarding a renewable portfolio standard, which would basically mean that our electricity grid would use more renewable energy to provide supply. I think Senator Feinstein is still going to come down and offer her amendment to close the SUV loophole, to try to make SUVs more fuel efficient.

We are going to have a lot of discussion to help improve the bill. But without setting a national goal, without saying our country has to get off our dependence on foreign oil, we will have missed an opportunity. This underlying legislation sets a goal that will actually make us, in 2015, more dependent on foreign oil than we are today. I think we need to set a goal as a legislative body, that we want to reverse that trend. In 2025 we want to actually be importing less foreign oil, and that is exactly what my amendment does.

Why is this so important? First, we all know it is in the economic interest of the United States to diversify off foreign oil. We know our dependence has cost us, since 1970, something like $3.6 trillion. In 2003, imports cost us $10 billion every single month, and our oil imports count for about 34 percent of our existing trade deficit. Think about that, 34 percent of our trade deficit, just because of the cost of oil. In fact, Alan Greenspan has said that the high cost of fuel has basically caused 8 out of the 10 postwar U.S. recessions; they were related to high energy prices and spikes in oil.

We know there is a strong relationship between energy costs to our overall economy. That is what we are trying to change. But a number of factors remain, and that is what is of great concern. Who actually controls those energy costs? We know the OPEC cartel, as well as international events and political events, have an impact. We know the growing demand in China and India for the same supply of oil has an impact. We know we need to do something about it.

If you talk to economists about what is going to happen to the price of oil in the future, the signs are pointing to oil prices could reach $100 a barrel in the next 20 years. If that is the case, that would have a devastating impact on our national economy. Yet that is exactly what we are hearing from them. That is exactly what people are saying. There is a world economic outlook report that was issued this spring by the International Monetary Fund, and that report basically said that oil could spike to $100 a barrel between now and 2030.

The Wall Street firm of Goldman Sachs also predicted that the price of oil could reach $105 in the next few years, and energy markets could easily be in the early stages of a superspike period. I know the United States has been through these periods before, where we have seen extreme spikes in energy costs. It has had a devastating impact on our economy. That is something we are trying to avoid by setting a national goal to diversify away from foreign oil.

We have many economic reasons for this amendment. But as I stated earlier, we also have security reasons. Let me expound on that just a little bit because I think it is important to understand the demand for oil and, basically, who holds the reserves. The oil reserves of every area in the world are in decline except for the Middle East. That means if we continue to be dependent on foreign oil, we are going to be more dependent on OPEC and its member countries. Given that those reserves, let's just say, are constantly under some scrutiny because of the challenges in that region of the world, some analysts, when looking at the oil futures market, basically describe what they call a fear premium. That is, the price of oil futures actually increases because people are concerned that international incidents may happen, terrorist threats and other things, that will damage that oil supply. So the cost of oil futures actually goes up, just on the fear of what might happen.

That is troubling because as we all know, we cannot predict what is going to happen on an international basis. We do our best to protect that oil supply, but Saudi Arabia alone has about a quarter of the world's oil reserves and more than 60 percent of that country's total oil inputs are processed at a single facility. So if you think about it, it is the home to almost all of the world's spare production capacity. Again, we are putting all our eggs in one basket. I am simply saying lets set a national goal to get off that dependence on foreign oil because of this security reason, as well as the economic reason and who owns this supply and how important it is.

I would like to talk for a second about the picture as it relates to other people interested in that oil supply. I mentioned China and India and the projections of the price of oil reaching $100 a barrel. Analysts agree that China, because of its growth and huge demand, is likely to shift the whole center of gravity for energy markets. That is, China has already moved past Japan in its global energy consumption. It is the second largest oil consumer and the third largest oil importer. In the next decade, China is going to continue to grow to about half of today's U.S. combined car and truck total, so they are going to be looking for lots of energy supply. It is expected that their imports are going to double by 2010 and quadruple, to 8 billion barrels of oil a day, by 2025. Imports will be 60 percent of China's total oil consumption.

While we are looking at the picture, already knowing we are overdependent on foreign oil and that the challenges to security are there and that the American economy is already suffering, we also need to recognize there are other nations who are going to be bidding for that same resource.

We need to get off our overdependence on foreign oil. How are we going to do that? First, we have to have the resolve. There are many times in American history this country has shown American resolve. We have put a man on the Moon. We have ushered in the nuclear age. We stood up in the OPEC crisis and got fuel efficiency standards for cars. We ought to have the resolve now. We need to bet on the ingenuity of American brain power to get us off our overdependence on foreign oil. If we are smart enough to put a man on the Moon, we ought to be smart enough to get off our overdependence on foreign oil. When John F. Kennedy made the declaration of wanting to put a man on the Moon in a 10-year period of time, I don't think he had the answer to every single element of how to do that. He left the details up to both the public and private sector in getting new technology developed so we could move forward.

In this case we have an underlying bill that actually can achieve this goal of reversing the trend by 2025 and reducing 40 percent the consumption of the United States of foreign oil. How do we do that? Many people have talked about how we get there. I will show one chart with examples of the oil savings technology in this legislation.

The biofuels amendment we talked about: Many organizations, including some of those security initiative organizations such as Energy Future Coalition and some environmental organizations such as Natural Resources Defense Council, have said biofuels can play a significant role. They could help produce 3.9 billion barrels of alternative fuel a day.

I hope my Midwest colleagues and my colleagues from other parts of the country who are interested in biodiesel and ethanol are excited by that opportunity. It means an economic opportunity for all the regions of our country that can produce those fuels. It also has a higher national purpose, to help us get off our over-dependence on foreign oil.

We can also improve efficiencies in various sectors such as aviation, residential applications, and various modes of transportation. I am very proud the Northwest has figured this out.

At the Paris Air Show we are seeing a lot of news about future planes. One plane you will not see there today but is on the drawing boards and is getting rave reviews from people making purchase orders is the next generation 787. What is great about that is its whole design is based on a more fuel-efficient plane. Boeing estimates it can save between 20 and 30 percent on fuel costs. They figured out the marketplace is going to be very sensitive to the high expense of transportation fuel and have developed a plane to answer the call from the marketplace. What has the marketplace said? The marketplace is responding with over 200 orders for a plane that is not even finished yet.

That is a great example of how we can get efficiencies in aviation and other sectors.

This chart explains how we can make a big step forward in energy savings, which are aspects of this legislation. They are very important aspects to look at.

A few of my colleagues who are anxious about this legislation want to know if it is a back door to higher fuel efficiency standards; that somehow this bill mandates CAFE. It does not mandate a higher fuel efficiency standard, although this Member would certainly support a piece of legislation in the Senate that suggested that. This amendment realizes there are hybrid cars in the marketplace that are likely to come onboard. There are estimates that you can increase the efficiency of our economy using hybrids and save up to 2 million barrels a day by 2015. That's just from the growth in the hybrid auto market. That is just American consumers buying hybrid cars and making that investment. It does not have to be CAFE, although I personally think we are losing a huge opportunity in the American marketplace by not being more aggressive about cars that can run on alternative fuels. I say that, mentioning the Boeing experience in aviation.

The aerospace industry in the Northwest is responding to the demand of more fuel-efficient transportation. I wish the auto manufacturers would be more aggressive. Actually, as oil has hit $50 a barrel they have gotten more aggressive. They have gone over to Japan and said, okay, we want a technology deal with the Japanese auto manufacturers; we want to get more of these cars in the United States market. Maybe that will work.

However, this amendment does not assume we are going to have a new CAFE standard. It simply says to the United States, if you are serious about this problem, you will set a national goal to get off our overdependence on foreign oil by 2025 and start reducing the trend. Instead of continually importing more, we should be importing less.

This chart shows the trend we are trying to reverse. Today we are basically importing 13 million barrels a day; if we do nothing, by 2025, we will be importing 19 million barrels. This is the trend we are trying to reverse. This is the direction we did not want to go in. We want to make a change.

Some of my colleagues ask, how can you set this goal? If you are not specific about how you get there, how are we going to achieve it? There is a lot I am sure that President Kennedy thought about when he wanted to put a man on the Moon, and maybe his original projections were not accurate. There is a lot of research and development we are going to do on a variety of these technologies.

One country that has taken this challenge and embraced it is Brazil. It is a country which looked at this same dilemma the United States has, from the economic perspective. They said, we cannot afford to be dependent on the high cost of imported oil. In fact, in the 1970s, Brazil had about 80 percent of its supply from imports. That was a big challenge.

As it exists today, Brazil has, because of its biofuels initiative, changed that trend. In fact, Brazil has gone from 1975 being 80 percent dependent on foreign oil to 1990 being only 45 percent dependent on foreign oil, and in 2006, Brazil actually plans on being an energy self-sufficient country and maybe even being a net exporter of fuel. That is very interesting. As it stands today, they are only importing about 11 percent of their supply.

How do you go from 1975 at 80 percent to 11 percent in 2003? The country took the initiative and said they were going to produce a competitive product to fossil fuel. That competitive product happened to be sugar-based ethanol. They got good at producing sugar-based ethanol. They got so good at producing sugar-based ethanol they actually can produce it and ship it here cheaper than we can produce it today.

I don't like losing the competitive edge to somebody else on the production of an alternative fuel source. I want the United States to be a leader in the production of alternative fuel sources. It holds a lot of promise for the United States.

One might say, well, Brazil is only one-eighth the size of the United States economy and we have much more demand than Brazil. That is true, but Brazil has learned about the efficient production of ethanol. Are we saying somehow the United States does not have the raw material supply for ethanol, whether it is sugar-based ethanol or biomass-based ethanol?

We actually are trying to put the American farmer in the fuel business. If there is anything we ought to be sure we have its agriculture. We know we only sit on 3 percent of the oil reserves in the world, so we know we are not going to get it from there. We are talking about importing liquified natural gas, so we know we are challenged there. But we sure know that the American farmer can produce a lot of product as it relates to ethanol, whether it is sugar based or biomass based, and we can produce a lot as it relates to biodiesel products as well.

That is exactly what this legislation does. It is very specific about the research and development that needs to take place to get us into the alternative fuels business. I am so certain of the well-crafted nature of that section of the bill that I am willing to say that I think we really can achieve our goal of decreasing our energy dependence by 2025. So it is a very positive step for us to look at what we have seen around the globe as far as other countries trying to get toward energy independence or becoming less dependent on foreign oil.

Now, I have another chart that shows examples of what we are trying to reach. This chart basically demonstrates how we can reduce, by 7 million barrels a day, U.S. consumption. It does not have to be the exact mix as shown on the chart of how we achieve that. This is just one of the proposals. You have market growth in hybrid cars; industrial improvements, efficiency improvements in aviation; efficiency gains in trucks and heavy-duty equipment. One of our National Laboratories in the State of Washington, the Pacific Northwest Labs, is doing great research on lightweight trucks, lightweight materials, transportation efficiency, for the trucking industry in our country. Other areas to reduce consumption: how to make the movement of goods and services more efficient, saving transportation costs; the replacement of tires, you can get more fuel efficiency just by having better balance of your tires to get better gas mileage; and there are transportation choices; and biofuels. Again, biofuels is a big opportunity for us.

So I hope all my colleagues are listening who are very supportive of the biofuels section of this legislation--which I hope there are many because I think it is a great opportunity. If you are supportive of that biofuels section of the bill, you ought to be very supportive of setting a goal because you really ought to believe the national goal is achievable. You ought to believe that the economic interest of our country in getting that new production of biofuels is not only an economic and security matter, it is also just plain good job creation for our country. You are putting the American farmer back in business with a product that now will see huge demand.

Now, I do not know if we have it here on the floor, but I took great note that the Economist magazine wrote a piece on biofuels a few weeks ago. In fact, it was a front-page cover story article that week about biofuels. What was interesting about it is that it discussed the fact that we are at this point where biofuels make so much sense because of the price of oil.

Now, several years ago, when we were talking about oil at $20 a barrel and people were talking about biofuels, maybe it did not make much sense, the economics did not make much sense. But we have hit, as Andy Grove would say, an inflection point, and that inflection point is that now we are seeing prices over $50 a barrel for imported oil.

So the article basically says that it is no longer the ``blue sky'' stuff that people talk about, but it is an idea whose time has come. It is a very substantive opportunity for anybody who can produce biofuels because at anywhere around $50 a barrel, instead of $25 a barrel, biofuels can be competitive.

Now, in Washington State, we are selling biodiesel and alternative fuels. A few weeks ago, we had the opening of one of our first biofuels stations. It was

actually at the same location as a previous traditional petroleum-based station. So they changed over from serving customers gasoline to now serving biodiesel.

Right now, the product is something that is shipped from the Midwest, refined at a production facility in Seattle, and then sent over to what was this particular station, Laurelhurst Oil. They are producing a biofuel in Seattle, even though the oil is still imported from another state. That biofuel, I think at the time, was about 30 cents more than what you could go around the corner and get to fill your car up with gasoline--30 cents more. And you ask: Well, how are you expecting to be competitive if it is 30 cents more? It was 30 cents more because we had the transportation cost of bringing that agricultural product to the Northwest, having it processed, and then sold. The production facility that is actually producing this biodiesel in Seattle believes it can reduce the cost by 30 cents--they could be selling the biodiesel at the same cost we are buying gasoline per gallon in Seattle--by simply producing the product in the State of Washington.

So that is what this bill allows us to do. I think the Economist was right, that the private sector is starting to respond to this and starting to come up with solutions. So then you say: Well, if the private markets are responding, why do we have to set a national goal? Well, let me address that because as a former businessperson, I understand that businesses are responsive to their customers and they are responsive to their shareholders. I do not blame a national oil company for setting its own agenda on when it wants to get into new energy technologies. That is their prerogative.

You see lots of commercials on TV all the time about how existing fossil fuel companies are going to generate biofuels, how they are going to diversify. They would make you think they are doing that in a rapid fashion. I am not so sure it is rapid enough for the consumers of Washington State, who are paying a very high price for gasoline, have paid a very high price for electricity recently, and are reeling from a hard-hit economy because of high energy costs.

We would like to see a much more aggressive effort. But those companies are not going to set a national goal and they are not going to diversify until it is in their financial interest. So the question is whether this body is going to set a national goal, which I think this underlying bill can achieve, and whether we, as a country, are going to diversify off of that overdependence on foreign oil. It is not their job; it is our job. And we should get about showing the American people that we have the will to do it and that we are betting on American ingenuity to achieve it. I have to believe that putting a man on the Moon is a lot harder than discovering how to be as efficient as the Brazilians are in the development of ethanol. I have to believe that was a tougher challenge.

So I think about the things we have achieved in our country's history. I think about the fact that, in response to the threat of what other countries might be doing with the nuclear bomb in World War II, FDR ushered in the nuclear age in 2 years. He shifted our spending in the development of energy in 2 years from about $8,000 to 86 million dollars and ushered in the nuclear age. Why? Because he saw a threat, and he wanted to set a national goal. We have had these instances where our country has decided it was in our economic interest and our security interest to move ahead. That is what we need to do today.

So I am glad to offer this amendment that simply says that we should take the underlying legislation and change its goal. The underlying bill already has a goal. It says that our goal should be to get off of foreign oil by 2015 by reducing it a million barrels a day.

What we need to do is reduce our oil supply in a much more aggressive fashion. We need to reduce that 40 percent by 2025. That is what my amendment calls for. I am happy to hear from my other colleagues on this issue. I hope that my colleagues will take this issue as an amendment to improve the underlying bill.

The underlying bill has the tools and the framework we need. What we need to do is have the resolve as a country to set a national goal. The private sector is not going to do that. We are not going to have consumers make market choices that don't exist. They want more market choices. What we have to do is set the wheels in motion. The good news is, once the Government sets a goal, it is amazing how many people respond to that.

Our country has set lots of goals. We set goals for more homeland security. I have seen more security technology companies come through my office in the last 2 years than imaginable. Why? Because we said we want more homeland security. So we have every imaginable aspect of homeland security being addressed by thousands of companies across America.

If we want to be serious about getting off our overdependence on foreign oil, we will pass this amendment, and we will be on the track for setting a goal that both the private sector and public sector will respond to. I think with that we will be able to say to Americans that we are on the right track, that we are not going to let consumers continue to pay high transportation costs, and that we have a plan for the future. We are not going to continue to be so singularly dependent on the fossil fuel industry. We are not going to continue to have transportation-sensitive industries caught in a stranglehold by high energy costs. We are going to say to them instead that our national security interests, our economic interests, our environmental interests are being met by a new national goal that all of us will participate in making a reality.

I yield to the Senator from Illinois.

The Senator is correct. In the underlying bill, we have language that says we should reduce our dependence on foreign oil by 1 million barrels a day by 2015. The problem with that goal is, when you are currently importing 58 percent of your oil supply from foreign sources and you calculate in the growth of demand--obviously, our economy continues to grow--there is demand for more oil. Even with that amendment, in 10 years, in 2015, we will be importing 60 to 62 percent of what our Nation consumes in oil supply from foreign sources. So the underlying amendment does nothing to stop this trend. In fact, we will continue to be more dependent on foreign oil.

I know the White House has sent some communication to Senators saying they oppose even that milestone in the bill which does attempt to try to reduce oil consumption. But the provision in the bill doesn't take into effect the fact that the economy grows. I guess it is saying: We don't want to have any goal to actually try to decrease the amount of foreign oil coming into this country.

I want to have a goal for decreasing the amount of foreign oil coming into this country. I want to reverse the trend. I want to go from what we are expected to have, 68 percent in 2025,

and say, let's switch that down towards 50. Let's get to 56 percent. Let's start doing as the Brazilians did, which is an amazing story, if you think about it. Here is a nation that basically went from 80 percent, now, today to 11 percent, and is on the verge of becoming an exporter. When you think about the economic opportunities our country has in actually being an exporter of new energy efficiency technology, it is a great opportunity.

The Senator is right that the administration opposes any goal setting in this bill. Why would somebody oppose goal setting? All the tools are here in this legislation. I am not saying which technology is going to win. Basically, our amendment is technology agnostic. It doesn't say: You are going to have CAFE; you are going to have nuclear power.

A lot of my colleagues are betting on nuclear power. There is new language in here for new nuclear technology. A lot of people think it will provide us hydrogen sources, and we will have hydrogen fuel cells. We will move to having a more fuel-efficient economy that way.

I am not being prescriptive because 2025 is a long time from now. But I know if we look at specifics, we can get there through these various means, but we won't get there without a goal.

The Senator from Illinois brings up an important question, which is with China's interest in global oil supply and the demand, is it going to drive up the price. I don't think an oil company really cares whether the price of oil is driven up or not. What do they care?

Somebody is going to pay them, whether it is $50, $55, $60, $80, or $100. With an increase in demand, that is good news for them. Oil supply costs just go up. They reap the benefits; they reap the profit. But what it is not good for is the American economy.

So the Senator is absolutely right, China's entrance into the demand for foreign oil should be seen by this country as an economic and security risk. China's consumption and growth rate is staggering. China is going to be consuming I think I said 8 million barrels of imports. They have already overtaken Japan, and they are fast on our heels to catch up to our consumption, and they will get to a point where they are the 800-pound gorilla in the dynamics of world oil supply.

Even our underlying bill says you can try to ramp up different sources of U.S. production. But we all know with the United States being situated on 3 percent of the world's oil reserves, it is not a likely scenario for us in the United States to be able to drill our way to energy security. So the Senator is right, China is a unique concern in this. We ought to take that, along with the other national security factors, and the fact that the oil supply is located primarily in these Middle Eastern countries--if we can put the chart back up there. If you look at where the supply is already, the countries and state ownership, that is already worrisome enough. Now, when you throw into the equation that China is going to be demanding more supply from these entities, it is going to lead to a higher price. I am not sure any of these countries are worried about the U.S. consumer and what they have to pay for transportation costs. I don't think they are responsive to the needs of U.S. consumers. The United States might be responsive to our own consumers if we were the owner of these companies, but we are not.

So this is about setting a national goal that recognizes the hardship the American economy is going to encounter, and that we are going to be under in the future if we continue to pay these prices. We might, in 10 years, be happy we were talking about $50 a barrel prices, if some of the expectations of Wall Street come to pass--the predictions that we could see superspikes and get to $100 a barrel. We are already feeling the pain now. Americans are losing jobs, pensions, like the pensions of transportation workers, where there are issues because of high fuel costs; and people are curtailing economic activity because of high transportation costs. We ought to take the Chinese part of the equation and realize this goal needs to be set and we need to make it a reality, just as we did to reach the goal of putting a man on the Moon.

My colleague from Tennessee is also on the floor. I want to give him an opportunity to add whatever comments he wants to add about this.

Amendment No. 784

Mr. President, I call up my amendment at the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that further reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, I know there are many Members who want to speak. I ask unanimous consent that Senators Feinstein and Reid be added as cosponsors of the legislation.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that following the Senator from Tennessee, Senator Kerry be recognized to speak.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Tennessee for his comments and for his diligence in following energy policy both on the committee and on the floor. I know he cares greatly about this issue and has spent many hours on the details in various sections of this legislation. I appreciate his interest and unique focus on clean coal technology. He has great interest and knowledge about clean coal technology, and has articulated his views about that numerous times.

I know my colleague from North Dakota is here so I want to give him an opportunity to talk, but I want to respond. The 7 million barrels reduction is an achievable goal. If you believe in the underlying technology the Senator from Tennessee just discussed, which is the various ways we can get to that goal, he and I are in agreement. Where we seem to be in a disagreement is whether we want to set this goal. I believe the American people deserve to have a goal set that is achievable.

The underlying bill that says in 2015 we will be more dependent on foreign oil than we are today doesn't seem the goal we should be putting forth. While the committee passed that out of committee, we knew we were going to come out here and discuss a variety of issues. Now that we have the perspective of the entire bill with a lot of different technology solutions, I would say it is time for the Senate to be more bold about this.

I commend to my colleagues this report, ``Securing America; Solving Our Oil Dependence Through Innovation.'' There are two different organizations, the NRDC and the IAGCS, that basically outline in their report how we can save close to 7 billion barrels of oil per day.

We have a submittal to the Record from the Committee on the Present Danger, on our oil security. It, too, talks about how we can achieve this goal and what some of the sources are.

I ask unanimous consent to have that printed in the Record.

There are lots of third parties saying we can achieve this goal. I want to bet on the American ingenuity that is outlined in this bill, and other American ingenuity, that we can achieve what it takes to get there. So I am not afraid of setting this goal. I am glad third parties are validating that we can achieve it.

My colleague wants to say this is about putting a man on Mars or something of that nature. I can tell you, the American people are right here on planet Earth and paying $2.36 or close to it for gasoline in Seattle, and that is too high. What Americans want is relief. What they know they will not get is relief from language that says we are going to be more dependent in 2015 than we are today. They want us to set a goal to get off that overdependence because, frankly, there is not true competition on oil prices. That is to say when Americans have no alternative fuel at the pump and they have to pay that price, there is no true competition. So Americans want to get off that overdependence. That is what the amendment says and that is what we want to achieve by 2025, 20 years from now.

With all the myriad technology in the legislation and all the technology we can create between now and then, let's reverse the trend and be less dependent on foreign oil in 2025 than we are today. That seems to be a national goal on which everyone in this body ought to be able to agree. We should not be afraid of the underlying bill and the great work that has been done by my colleagues. I cannot say who the ultimate winners and losers will be. My colleague has spoken about new nuclear technology, he has talked about natural gas--there will be many ways. But I know if we set this goal and tell the American people they are not going to be strangled by high energy costs moving forward maybe up to $100 a barrel, then we will actually achieve that goal. But our underlying language right now does not get us there. So I hope we will embrace the bipartisan effort that the Senate committee had and work together on this to set a goal we will be proud of, in the sense of reversing the trend so we are not in 2015 being more dependent on foreign oil, but in 2025 being less dependent on foreign oil.

I yield the floor to the Senator from North Dakota.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from North Dakota for his comments. I wish I could take credit for the bold idea in the sense that I am happy to be the sponsor of this amendment, but there are many people in America who have been talking about this as an idea.

I submit for the record another organization that has supported a blueprint for U.S. energy security, the Set America Free Organization, which is a collective organization of individuals, and they actually submit information that would be much bolder than a proposal to set a goal in number of barrels that could be saved by 2025.

There are a lot of people out there who have their sights set even more dramatically than what we are talking about.

Clearly, my colleague outlined that we are talking about something that is technologically agnostic. We are not declaring what technology is going to win. There are lots of great solutions that are provided in this bill. But I would like to remind my colleagues that today at 2 p.m., the price of oil per barrel was up to $56.50. So that is what we are dealing with, $56.50.

I know my colleagues in the Chamber were involved in getting the original language of 1 million reduction by 2025. I think that language first emerged when the Senate was considering previous Energy bills 2 years ago. At the time we originally started thinking about this goal of how to get off our foreign oil dependence or to reduce it, we were talking about oil prices that were much lower, maybe as low as $23 a barrel. Now we are looking at $56 a barrel. It is imperative that we be more aggressive by setting this goal and by working together to achieve it.

The underlying bill is a testament to bipartisan work in saying that there are a variety of ways to reach the goal. Some may ask: Senator Cantwell, why do you want to set this goal? You might actually find the United States pursuing more domestic oil supply as a result of this goal.

I can't say what is going to happen. I just know I want to get off the foreign dependence that we are at today because our economy cannot continue to take that risk. With the concentration of oil supply in the Middle East, we are one mishap away from having our economy face a $100-a-barrel oil cost in the future. We cannot afford $56 a barrel. Some people say: Well, economies adjust to the high cost. I guarantee, in the meantime, a lot of people are going to suffer. There is not a week that goes by that I am not on a plane flying back to the west coast, to my home State of Washington, and a transportation worker doesn't come up to talk to me about their pension, the fact that they are laid off, the fact that they are losing their job because transportation fuel costs in aviation have not been passed on to the consumer. Consequently, it is being taken out on pensions. So there isn't a week that goes by where I don't see somebody who hasn't suffered from the high cost already, at $56 a barrel.

We cannot continue this dependency or the race we are going to be in with China on competing for a limited supply.

I am confident enough in American ingenuity that I am not even going to be prescriptive about how we get there as it relates to whether it is nuclear, another supply of oil, biofuels, what is going to win the day. I showed a chart because I am a big advocate of biofuels. If you can buy biofuels in Seattle now in the $2.60 range, $2.70 range, I know that we can create more incentive, as we are in this bill, more research and development to get that cost down. So I know I can get it competitive to what I think gasoline prices are going to be. I want to do that. I am gung-ho about that.

I am gung-ho about what the Brazilians have done because they have turned their economy around by becoming almost net exporters of energy instead of net importers. That is an incredible story the United States should learn from.

As my colleague from North Dakota said, there are many different technologies in the bill, but other countries are starting to gain the advantage. If we think about it, we are not the experts on fuel efficiency that the Japanese are. We are not the experts on wind energy that some of the Scandinavian countries are. We are not the experts on the production of sugar-based ethanol that the Brazilians are. It bothers me that we are losing the technology edge to other countries.

I certainly am willing to take the risk of setting a goal of 2025 in reducing our foreign oil consumption by 40 percent and saying all the options are on the table. I believe that Senator Domenici and Senator Bingaman did a good job of putting all those options on the table. I believe in the underlying bill. What I think we should reflect on is that the underlying bill includes language from a couple of years ago that may not be bold enough in the sense that if it doesn't reduce our dependence on foreign oil in 2015, we will be more dependent.

We should reflect on that and see if we can get to a point where we are endorsing the underlying solutions in this bill and setting a higher goal so that we can say to the American people, we are reversing this trend.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a letter from Set America Free be printed in the Record.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Louisiana for her comments and for her focus on the fact that the amendment is basically agnostic about where we get future supply. You can get it from more domestic production of oil or natural gas. I have been a big supporter of more natural gas production, particularly from Alaska, because I think it is so important to our country moving ahead.

I appreciate her chart showing what States are involved in energy production because we in Washington State are getting 70 percent of our electricity from a hydro system. She mentioned, yes, you can get energy from damming rivers. Well, that is exactly what we have done in the State of Washington and many parts of the Northwest. It has cost our environment, but yet we get 70 percent of our power from that.

We have one nuclear powerplant in our State. We have one coal plant in our State. We have a few natural gas-fired plants in our State. We have four major refineries that take crude oil and convert it to petroleum products, such as gasoline, jet fuel, diesel, and asphalt. So we in Washington State are involved in all those activities.

The fact is, we do not have significant oil and natural gas off the coast of Washington. I know that is something that is being discussed. But the Minerals Management Service Report that was conducted basically says there is not a lot of natural gas off the coast of Washington. So I am not in the same position as the Senator from Louisiana.

I think you have to take into consideration in this debate what some of my staff call the ``accidents of geology;'' that is, that Saudi Arabia happens to sit on 25 percent of the world's oil reserves, and we in the United States only sit on 3 percent. That is a fact of geology.

So the fact that Louisiana has oil and gas and Washington does not is another fact of geology. But I tell you that we do play our role in Washington State. We help keep the lights on in California. We were forced to do so by emergency order by the U.S. Government during a drought, at a cost to ratepayers in Washington State. So we do play our part in providing energy supplies around the region.

But this is an issue about regional diversity and about getting off our overdependence on foreign oil. I think the Senator correctly articulated what this amendment does; and that is, it basically sets a goal and says it is most important to get off the foreign dependence, to start reducing it. I appreciate that because she came up with the original language and I think is concerned that we do set goals. So I appreciate her comments.

I would like to add to the record, if I could--I know my colleagues from Colorado and Illinois are on the floor and want to speak. But we have had questions about whether we can get a supply of biofuels. I know a lot of my Midwestern colleagues believe in the biofuel section of this bill.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the Executive Summary of the USDA and Department of Energy report entitled ``Biomass as Feedstock for a Bioenergy and Bioproducts Industry: The Technical Feasibility of a Billion-Ton Annual Supply.''

The reason I am asking to do that is because this report, which was done by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Tennessee research facility that is part of our national lab system, has said we currently have enough forestland and agriculture land in our country to produce biofuels to meet more than one-third of our current transportation demand. We are already doing research at these labs. They are already calculating the numbers. They are already saying we have enough forestland and timberland in our country to produce one- third of our current demand for transportation fuels. So I think this report is very telling that we can and are on our way. It is a matter of us setting the goal.

I know my colleagues talked earlier a lot about CAFE standards. One of the charts that was presented was supposedly information from the Energy Information Administration about CAFE standards. The Energy Information Administration does not have any idea where those numbers came from, and they understand this amendment does not say anything about CAFE standards. It says basically we ought to set a national goal.

It is important to set the national goal to get off our overdependence of foreign oil because this is who owns the foreign oil. These are the state-owned facilities. These are the countries: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Venezuela, Libya. These are the places that have the majority of the world's oil reserves. So our policies for the future are going to be subject to factors involving these countries, so long as we are so dependent on foreign oil.

Now, it is in our economic and security interests to diversify. I think the underlying bill gives us lots of tools to do that, but it does not set a goal to reduce the amount we are dependent on foreign oil.

My amendment would say, let's reduce the amount so that in future years we actually have a reduction--not the 58 percent we are importing today, and not the 68 percent of foreign fuel we are going to import in 25 years, but actually reduce that down to 56 percent so that the trend line is going in the other direction. Let's become less dependent on foreign oil than we are today. That is the goal of my amendment.

I appreciate that my colleagues from Colorado and Illinois are also here to speak on that, so I yield to the Senator from Colorado.

Mr. President, we are on the eve of a turning point in the energy future of our country. As we move closer to voting on a comprehensive energy bill, we have a truly historic opportunity to transform the way we think about energy. We have an opportunity to make a decisive step away from dependence on foreign imports and fossil fuels and toward an independent future based on the abundant natural human and technological resources found right here within our borders.

As we wean ourselves from the oil fields of the unstable Middle East and other parts of the world and rely increasingly on field crops and fuel cells produced in America's heartland, we will build an energy future that will make us more secure and a future of which we can be proud.

This is the bottom line. When we talk about moving toward energy independence in this country, we are talking primarily about reducing America's dependence on imported oil. Petroleum accounts for more than 85 percent of our energy imports. As everyone is acutely aware, much of the 85 percent comes from some of the world's most unstable and, in some cases, openly hostile countries.

Today, rising global demand for petroleum is driving prices for gasoline and home heating oil to record levels. This year, China passed Japan as the world's second largest consumer of energy. China's use of oil is expected to grow exponentially over the next few years. So the focus of any national energy strategy must be to reduce our dependence on foreign oil in a sustainable way and as rapidly as possible.

By far, the largest use of petroleum in this country is in the transportation sector, and 97 percent of today's transportation fuel comes from petroleum. Thankfully, we know the solution. It is technologically feasible. We need to build vehicles that use less gasoline or no gasoline, and we need to make an aggressive transition to clean, renewable domestic fuels such as ethanol, biodiesel, and fuel cells.

The goal is a future of vehicles powered by fuel cells. The hydrogen is used to create the electricity to turn the motors that turn the wheels. The power from the fuel cell comes from hydrogen that will be made by renewable resources such as wind, photovoltaic, and other forms of renewable energy.

The biggest single step right now that we can take is to improve vehicle fuel economy. This bill takes a modest step in this direction, for example, by offering tax incentives for hybrid gas-electric vehicles, but we need improvements across the board, including raising the corporate average economy standard for vehicles.

Another commonsense way to reduce reliance on fossil fuels is to make greater use of clean and homegrown fuels. This bill has several provisions that take us in the right direction on this front, starting with the robust 8-billion-plus renewable fuel standard first proposed by Senator Lugar and I and overwhelmingly approved by this Senate last week.

It is very disturbing that even with the price of ethanol well below that of gasoline, fuel blenders are still turning their backs on this cleaner, cheaper, homegrown alternative and turning instead to imports of refined gasoline.

This chart illustrates that. Right now, going back to 5 years ago, there has been a steady increase in the imports of gasoline. This is weekly total gasoline imports--thousands of barrels per day. From April 28 of 2000 until March of this year, gasoline imports increased 66 percent. This is not oil, this is gasoline. This is oil that has been refined in some foreign country, put on a tanker, and shipped to this country. So right now, we are up to just about a million barrels a day. Think about that, that is just gasoline. Not too many people know that. Most people think we are just importing oil. We are importing about a million barrels a day of refined gasoline into this country. That is at the expense of American dollars and jobs. This is taking us in the wrong direction.

A recent report by the Consumer Federation of America found consumers would be saving up to 8 cents a gallon at the pump if refiners were instead adding it to the gasoline at just 10-percent blends.

My consumers in Iowa, right now, are saving as much as 10 cents per gallon on ethanol-blended fuels, for an average savings of at least $100 a year for a typical family.

I believe Americans all across the country deserve the cost and clean air benefits that ethanol-blended fuels provide. It is imperative we insist on our strong 8-billion-gallon renewable fuels standard when this Energy bill goes to conference with the House.

In addition to the renewable fuels standard, this bill in front of us includes tax incentives for alternative motor vehicles and fuels. This is very important. But we need to act more aggressively. For example, I believe we need to mandate that gasoline vehicles sold in this country be flexible-fuel vehicles that can run on E-85; that is, 85 percent ethanol or some other biofuel.

Now, flexible-fuel vehicles only cost maybe, right now, between $100 and $200 per vehicle. That is with just a small amount that are being made. If every vehicle was a flexible-fuel vehicle, the cost per vehicle would drop way below $100 per vehicle. The savings a consumer would get on that few dollars extra added to the sticker price of a car would be more than made up for, probably within the first year or so of buying flexible fuels.

So I am saying, right now we do not have that many flexible-fuel vehicles. We need to mandate that cars sold in America--not made here, sold in America--be a flexible-fuel vehicle. You might say: Is that possible? Well, Brazil is planning on having all of its new cars flexible-fuel ready by 2008. I want to ask the question: If the Brazilians can do it, why can't we? If the Brazilians can do it, of course we can do it.

Now, of course, consumers need access to the renewable fuels. So I am glad the bill in front of us includes incentives for the installation of flexible-fuel pumps at fueling stations. So now the bill has in it, as I said, incentives for installing flexible-fuel pumps at fuel stations. But we do not have a mandate to build flexible-fuel cars.

Right now, there is a fuel savings credit that auto manufacturers get for making E-85 vehicles. It is called the CAFE credits. But it is on the assumption that these vehicles will run on E-85 at least half the time. In other words, an auto manufacturer gets the credits for building a flexible-fuel vehicle on the assumption the vehicle will use E-85 half the time.

But the truth is, most people who own flexible-fuel vehicles do not even know it. So E-85 does not get used at all for that reason, and for the reason there are not many pumps out there. So we call this the dual-fuel loophole because carmakers get the credit for alternative fuels even if no alternative fuel is used. We should close that loophole now by tying CAFE credits to the amount of flexible fuel that is actually used, or by simply letting the credit expire.

So what I am saying is we need a three-pronged approach. We have the incentives in the bill to add flexible-fuel pumps at fueling stations. Secondly, we need to provide these credits will go only--only--on the amount of flexible fuel that is actually used. Third, what I am saying is we actually need a mandate that cars sold in America be flexible fueled.

Now, another important provision of the Energy bill extends the income tax credit for the production of biodiesel, another excellent renewable fuel. Biodiesel offers tremendous energy savings by providing 3.5 times more energy than is used to produce it, and by offering improved air quality over traditional diesel.

In addition to investment in today's biofuels, we also need a strong investment in the future of bio-based fuels and products of all kinds. New technology is making it possible to produce biofuels and a host of industrial and commercial products out of biomass; that is, agricultural material such as corn stalks and wheat straw and switchgrass and wood pulp and things like that--dedicated energy crops that together are expected to produce 10 times the current volume of ethanol at prices equal to or less than that of gasoline, and, again, with tremendous benefits to our environment and our rural economy.

A recent study found that farmers can expect to earn an additional $35 per acre just by selling the excess biomass--the stalks and the straw--from traditional corn and wheat operations.

Now, ethanol made from this residual biomass is expected to have near zero or even negative net carbon dioxide emissions. How can that be? If you are using it, you are burning it, burning the fuel in a car, you put carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That is true. But as these plants grow, they take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere more than what is burned in the automobile. So biomass is a vital part of combating climate change.

Now, the biorefineries that produce this ethanol will also give us bio-based products to supplement or replace everyday products now made from petroleum. I have a couple of posters that indicate that. Shipping materials, building construction materials, roofing materials, elastomeric-type roofing materials, paints, hand sanitizers, and even carpets are made from renewable resources, biodegradable resources. For home and automotive use, just think of all the plastic cups, all these containers made out of petroleum now. And there are lubricants, soy oil. Even rubber tires are made out of renewable resources which are biodegradable. All of these things can be made from the biorefineries that will be producing the ethanol and the biodiesel that we will use in transportation. Many of these products are on the market, not in the future but today.

Tripling the use of bio-based products could add $20 billion in economic benefits just by the year 2010--5 years from now. Replacing the Nation's petrochemicals with bio-based equivalents would save some 700 million barrels of petroleum a year. Just replacing plastics with bio-based counterparts would save another 100 million barrels or more. So there is great potential here. We need to get serious about supporting these bio-based products, and the Federal Government needs to take the lead.

Now, I know we are talking about the Energy bill, and that is what I have been talking about. But I am just going to digress for a minute and talk about a provision that was in the farm bill that was passed in 2002 because it has a lot to do with this Energy bill. Keep in mind what I have been saying is, by getting the biorefineries going and making more ethanol and biodiesel, we have byproducts that can also be made. As I mentioned, they are the plastic containers and the building materials and things like that. There is an important provision in the farm bill, section 9002, that we worked very hard to get in the farm bill, passed and signed by the President 3 years ago this month. Section 9002 requires all Government Departments and Agencies to give a purchasing preference to bio-based products. Now, here is the exact wording. This is section 9002. This is law. It has been the law for 3 years:

Each Federal agency . . . shall--

It does not say ``may''--

shall, in making procurement decisions, give preference to

such items composed of the highest percentage of bio-based

products practicable . . . unless such items (A) are not

reasonably available; (B) fail to meet performance standards;

or (C) are available only at an unreasonable price.

So price, performance, and availability--as long as it meets those three criteria, each Federal agency shall buy them. That is what it says, period.

Think of all the plastic cups and forks used every day in the Senate cafeteria alone.

Think of the Department of Defense, think about all of the plastic materials they use in serving the troops every day. Think of the millions of gallons of metal-working fluids, lubricants, and paint used by the Department of Defense. Yet 3 years after the passage of the farm bill, we still do not have a bio-based procurement program in place in the Federal Government. That has been there. It has been the law. And we are still not doing it. McDonald's can go buy plastic cups made out of renewable resources. Good for them. Why can't the Department of Defense? Why can't the Department of Interior that operates in our national parks? Why aren't they using more biodegradable materials? The law says they are supposed to, but they are not doing it because USDA has yet to issue the rules.

Again, I bring that up because this is part and parcel of the Energy bill. This saves us energy because right now all this material is made from imported oil, or most of it. It could be made by homegrown products here in America. We need to have the Federal Government setting an example and leading the way in reducing dependence on products made from foreign oil. I am sorry to say that 3 years later we still are not doing it.

We also need to invest in research and commercialization of bio-based fuels and products. That is why a few weeks ago, I, along with Senators Lugar, Obama, and Coleman, introduced the National Security and Bioenergy Investment Act of 2005. Our bill promotes targeted biomass research and development in order to expand the cost-effective use of bio-based fuels, products, and power. It provides incentives for the production of the first 1 billion gallons of biofuels from cellulosic biomass; that is, crop residues like corn stocks and wheat straw, or wood chips from lumber mills. It provides bioeconomy development grants to small bio-based businesses. It creates a new Assistant Secretary position at the Department of Agriculture to carry out energy and bio- based initiatives.

It requires the Capitol complex to lead by example by procuring bio- based products. This bill has the support of a broad coalition of agricultural producers, clean energy and environment groups, and national security experts. I have a number of letters from these organizations supporting the bill.

I ask unanimous consent that the letters be printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks.

Mr. President, I am excited about this new bill. I hope my colleagues will get behind it. In fact, we may be offering an amendment to the Energy bill that would take a small part of that and add it to the Energy bill. I hope we can get that done this week.

America's dangerous dependence on fossil fuels extends beyond oil. Natural gas prices have skyrocketed, hurting everyone who uses gas to heat their home or fuel their appliances or to make fertilizer for our farmers. Americans now pay two to three times what Europeans pay for natural gas due to our ever-growing demand and limited availability. Farmers are hit hard. Our farmers rely on natural gas not only to heat homes and run much of their equipment but also for fertilizer in the fields. These impacts on farmers are severe and getting worse. We need an energy bill that looks for sensible ways to lower natural gas costs for all Americans. We need to look for environmentally sensitive ways to increase our supply.

That is why I keep saying, the House put in a bill to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but we all know that oil doesn't amount to anything. Most of that oil--I could be corrected--I believe all of that oil is going to go to Japan. It is a drop in the bucket compared to what we use. But what else they have in Alaska is a lot of natural gas, and we need to pipe that natural gas from Alaska down to the lower 48. That has been on the drawing boards in the past to get that natural gas down here. And for various and sundry reasons that I don't need to go into here, it has been held up.

I call upon the Governor of Alaska to move expeditiously to reach the agreements that are necessary to get the natural gas pipeline constructed and built to deliver the natural gas down to the lower 48. They have been talking a lot about how they would pipe it down--they would liquefy it and then send it down to the west coast, or maybe to the Gulf States. That costs a lot of money when you liquefy natural gas, when we could build a pipeline that could be environmentally safe and bring that gas right down to the Midwest where it is needed, not only for the Midwest but for the upper part, the northern part of the United States. So we need to move ahead aggressively on that, and we are not doing it.

We need to look for all environmentally sensitive ways to increase supply, and we need to look for solar and biomass and wind. I am glad so many colleagues from both sides of the aisle joined together in approving the amendment offered by Senator Bingaman requiring 10 percent of this country's electricity to come from renewable resources by 2020. Wind power in particular has tremendous potential to provide clean, abundant energy in many parts of the country. Wind power generation can provide thousands of dollars in additional revenue to our farmers and ranchers and people in rural areas, while continuing to allow for crop production and grazing. Valuable incentives for wind power production exist in the section 45 wind production tax credit. However, development of this vital industry has been tied up by Congress's refusal to provide a long-term extension of this incentive.

In 2004, when extension of the production tax credit was delayed, more than $2 billion in wind power investment was put on hold. I am pleased a 3-year extension of the production tax credit for wind has been included in this bill. We could do more, much more. It should be extended longer than that, but at least this minimal amount should provide developers the certainty they need to move ahead with wind power projects.

We also need to make sure farmers and farmer co-ops can be full participants in wind power projects. The farm bill's energy title, section 906, is providing grants and loans to farmers and rural small businesses to install wind and other renewable energy systems on their property. It also supports energy-efficient improvements to farm and small business operations. This program has been a real success over the past several years. We expect it to grow substantially in the years ahead.

I have also introduced a bill, S. 715, to help more farmers and other rural citizens become active investors in wind energy by removing restrictions that are in the production tax credit. This bill I am sponsoring includes a pass through of the wind production tax credit to cooperative members, just like the small ethanol producer credit pass through right now. This will provide another needed boost to rural America's wind power development. Right now, if a co-op builds an ethanol plant, they can get the production tax credits passed through to their members. If a co-op wants to build windmills, however, they can't pass it through to their members. Hopefully, we can lift this restriction, and we can do it on this Energy bill before us.

Finally, we need to look to the longer term future, and we need to do it now by laying the groundwork. To deliver truly sustainable energy that will not add to climate change and global warming, that will not pollute the environment, we must invest in clean technologies. What I am talking about is hydrogen. It offers real potential for a clean, domestic, sustainable energy future. But only if it is produced from renewable resources. That is why we need to support research and demonstration of technologies to produce hydrogen from ethanol and other renewable resources. My bill, S. 373, the Renewable Hydrogen Transportation Act, would do just that, by funding the installation of an ethanol-to-hydrogen reformer, as well as the operation of hybrid electric vehicles converted to run on renewable hydrogen instead of gasoline.

Making hydrogen from ethanol and other renewable fuels makes a lot of sense for transportation--one, because we can use the existing ethanol production and distribution network; two, because it could well be the least expensive renewable hydrogen option available. I appreciate the willingness of the chairman and the ranking member to work with me to put this modest, but meaningful, initiative in the bill.

Again, to get to that sustainable future, we have to think about making hydrogen from renewable resources. You use the wind power. When the wind blows at night and you don't need all that electricity and you cannot store it, what do you do with it? You waste it. It is gone. But if you can use that wind at night to turn a turbine that makes electricity, and you can use that electricity to hydrolyze water-- remember the old chemistry experiment where you put positive and negative in water, and off of one comes oxygen and off of the other comes hydrogen. There are two atoms for oxygen for every atom of hydrogen. As long as those turbines are turning, we can make hydrogen. You can store hydrogen. You can save it. You can compress it. You can pipe it. So, therefore, at times when you don't need a lot of electrical power and the wind is blowing, you can make hydrogen. You can store it and take the hydrogen and put it through a fuel cell to make the electricity when you need it. The beauty of doing that is you only get one product--H2O, water. Nothing else. It doesn't pollute, doesn't add to global warming or anything. So that is the cycle that we need. Use the Sun, use the wind, hydropower, whatever is renewable, take that and make hydrogen, store it, compress it, put it through a fuel cell, and make the electricity, and the cycle starts all over again. I know a lot of this is some years down the pike. We cannot do it tomorrow. But we can start now by building assistance that will enable us to move to a renewable hydrogen-based economy in this country.

Mr. President, let me close by thanking Senator Domenici and Senator Bingaman for the extraordinary job they have done during the past months and during floor consideration of the bill. The bipartisan cooperation we are seeing is due largely to their example and impressive leadership, and the entire Senate owes them a debt of gratitude for a job well done.

Of course, we are not done yet. Hurdles remain. We are headed, though, toward concluding a strong, bipartisan bill that leads America decisively into the new world of clean, renewable, home-grown energy. When the time comes, we need to stand firm for the Senate provisions when we go to conference.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Exhibit 1

June 9, 2005.

Re The National Security and Bioenergy Investment Act of

2005.

Hon. Tom Harkin,

U.S. Senate,

Washington, DC.

Hon. Richard Lugar,

U.S. Senate,

Washington, DC.

Dear Senators Harkin and Lugar: The National Corn Growers

Association (NCGA), the American Soybean Association (ASA),

and the Renewable Fuels Association are writing to express

our support for the National Security and Bioenergy

Investment Act of 2005. In particular, we strongly support

the increased procurement of biobased products by Federal

agencies and all Federal government contractors. Biobased

products represent a large potential growth market for corn

and soybean growers in areas such as plastics, solvents,

packaging and other consumer goods to provide markets for

U.S.-grown crops. The biobased product industry has already

started to grow, bringing new products to consumers, new

markets to growers and new investments to our communities.

The procurement of biobased products promotes energy and

environmental security. Products made from corn and soybeans

could replace a variety of items currently produced from

petroleum, and aid in reducing dependence on imported oil.

Already the production of ethanol and biodiesel reduces

imports by more than 140 million barrels of oil. The

production of biobased products generates less greenhouse gas

than traditional petroleum-based items. There are also

tremendous opportunities for grower-owned processing

facilities and rural America and agriculture as a whole. New

jobs and investments will be brought into rural communities,

as new processing and manufacturing facilities move into

those communities to be near renewable feedstocks.

NCGA, ASA and RFA applaud your continued efforts to promote

the use of biobased I products that will encourage the

development of new markets for corn and soybeans and

ultimately help to revitalize rural economies and the

agriculture industry as a whole. We have been avid supporters

of the biobased products industry, and we look forward to

working with you as you continue to provide vision and

direction for this emerging industry.

Sincerely,

Leon Corzine,

President, National Corn Growers Association.

Neal Bredehoeft,

President, American Soybean Association.

Bob Dinneen,

President, Renewable Fuels Association.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Washington for her contribution to the debate today and for her contribution to the debate in our committee process.

While it may seem like ``inside baseball'' to those outside the Senate, the process here is very important. We don't get anywhere unless we have some sort of consensus. That is the way this body operates. So far, over the last several years, we have not had a consensus on energy. I thought the Senator from Washington, at the close of our committee markup proceedings a couple of weeks ago, made a very important comment. She said this was a clean energy bill, but she said it also was a clean process. She was referring to the fact that both Senator Domenici, the Republican chairman, and Senator Bingaman, the Democratic ranking member on the committee, have been working together to try to identify areas of consensus.

Senator Domenici literally set out on that by going from office to office on the Democratic side and on the Republican side to see what he could do. We all had our say. We didn't all get our way in those proceedings, but we had long hearings on gas, we had long hearings on coal, and we had much discussion of renewable energy. In the end, we reported to this body a piece of legislation with a vote of 21 to 1. There was only one dissenting vote.

The Senator from Washington made an important contribution to that discussion, as she did today, with her discussion of biodiesel, which is a promising renewable fuel. It is in its infancy. We don't know how far it will go. Biodiesel has only contributed about 2 percent of all of the fuel we use in the United States today. We have to always remember what a huge economy we have and how long and how much it takes to turn it around. But she offered an amendment that the committee adopted and which was included in the bill now before us. It has as part of the mandate for use of renewable fuels biodiesel.

The Senate, by a large vote a few minutes ago included, I believe, an 8 billion gallon standard for renewable fuels. So she made an important contribution. And the spirit of our discussion so far has been that we recognize the urgency of the issue we are talking about, which is blue- collar workers, homeowners, keeping jobs from moving overseas, and that this is serious business and we need to get it right.

I will make some observations about the Senator's amendment. There will be three observations. One is I respectfully suggest she has the wrong goal for the near term. Two, I suggest the bill we have before us actually presents an excellent, balanced approach toward what we need to do. Three, I will reemphasize the importance of not just reducing our dependence on oil, the growth of our dependence on oil in the United States--that is the goal, I believe--but lowering the price of natural gas for the benefit of blue-collar workers, homeowners, and farmers. That is the point.

The Senator talked about President Kennedy and probably the most celebrated goal of the last 100 years--certainly one of the most celebrated in our history, and very much in keeping with the American spirit and character. We are always setting high goals, such as ``anything is possible'' and ``all men are created equal'' and ``we will pay any price and bear any burden to defend freedom.'' A lot of our politics is about the disappointment of not reaching those goals. In fact, most of American history is the story of setting high goals, missing them, being disappointed, and recommitting ourselves to the goals. But the goals we remember and the leaders we remember are the ones who have challenged us within some reason. We used to have a wonderful citizen of Tennessee named Chet Atkins, who played the guitar. He may have been the best guitar player in the world. He always said: In this life, you have to be mighty careful where you aim, because you are likely to get there.

I don't think we would have remembered President Kennedy as well if he had said in 1960 that we need to put a man on Mars by 1970, or a man on Jupiter by 1970. President Kennedy didn't say that. That would have been far outside of our reach. Our scientists knew that, but it was within our reach to go to the Moon. He said that and challenged us, and we figured out the details of doing it.

I suggest the goal of the Senator from Washington would be like putting a man on Mars. It is out on another planet, it is somewhere out there. It might be the right goal one day, but we have to go to the Moon before we go to Mars. I suggest her goal is the wrong goal. The Senator suggests that the United States, over the next 20 years, reduce its dependence on foreign oil by 40 percent. That sounds pretty good, like going to Mars might have sounded pretty good in 1960, but we would never have gotten there. Let me try to put her goal in perspective.

She says get rid of 7.6. We use about 20 million barrels of oil a day in the United States. It supplies about 40 percent of all of our energy. The Energy Committee, including the Senator from Washington, considered all of this, and we came to a consensus that we should look for wherever the Moon might be in this goal. And we said: Let's save 1 million a day. Let's ask the President to save 1 million a day by the year 2015, 1 million of that 20 million.

That million is a pretty big number. Drilling for oil in ANWR, which we argued so heavily in this body, would produce about 1 million barrels of oil a day. If I am not mistaken, if we were to adopt the CAFE standards legislation that Senator Cantwell herself suggested in earlier debates, that would have saved about 1 million barrels of oil a day. But she is saying 7.6 million barrels of oil a day over the next 20 years.

I agree it might be possible to go higher than 1 million barrels of oil a

day. Senator Johnson and I introduced the National Gas Price Reduction Act of 2005 earlier this year. We had in that an oil savings amendment of 1.75 million barrels of oil a day.

All these amendments direct the President to figure out a plan for doing this and then to implement it. These are not just idle suggestions.

I think there is a consensus in this body, certainly on this side and that side of the aisle, and I might say, as Senator Bingaman mentioned, we did not really vote Republican and Democrat in our committee hearings. We had a lot of votes, but they generally split on our individual views and regions, not whether we are a Republican or a Democrat. I think there is still a consensus here. Of course, we want to reduce the growth of our dependence on oil, but to say our goal should be to reduce by 40 percent in 20 years our reliance on oil is somewhere out on another planet, not within our reach.

Many of us have been reading very carefully the National Commission on Energy Policy report called ``Ending the Energy Stalemate, A Bipartisan Strategy to Meet America's Energy Challenges,'' that includes within it a broad variety of people--Mr. Holdren, Bill Reilly, Mr. Rowe from Exelon Corporation, a representative from the United Steelworkers. We all read it, and I suppose we all like the parts we agree with and try to agree with some things that may have changed our mind. Here is what this commission report, which is an excellent report, says about oil:

Over the last 30 years, the United States has sought to

improve oil security by promoting a greater diversity of

world oil suppliers, reducing domestic consumption through a

substantial increase in new passenger fuel economy between

1975 and 1987, and creating the largest dedicated strategic

petroleum reserve in the world. Due to these policies and as

a result of structural shifts, the U.S. economy today is less

oil-intensive and therefore less vulnerable to oil price

shocks than it was in 1970. The fact that oil imports have

nonetheless steadily increased since that time suggests that

calls for energy independence--while rhetorically seductive--

represent the wrong focus for the U.S. energy policy.

To try to get another example of the practical effect of the amendment of the Senator from Washington, we asked the Energy Department to take a look at it. Here is what they said. Remember, the Cantwell energy security amendment calls for a 7.64-million-barrel-per- day reduction in oil consumption over the next 20 years. EIA, the Energy Information Administration, which looks at all these things, estimated that by a combination of policies outside the transportation sector, the upper limit of what we could do in this country would be 2 to 3 million barrels of oil per day.

So we take out 2 or 3 million barrels of oil a day and let's say that leaves 4.5 million barrels oil per day. The Cantwell amendment would require the President to, therefore, impose on the transportation sector of our economy this achievement, and here is what it would translate to in terms of a CAFE standard miles per gallon. It would require a 78.6-mile-per-gallon CAFE standard. That is a 185-percent increase over today's standard. And it would require 60.8 miles per gallon for light trucks. That is a 174-percent increase.

I submit that is putting a man on Mars instead of a man on the Moon. That is somewhere off on another planet and not anything that we could reasonably do. The effect of enforcing that on the American economy would be to destroy jobs and raise fuel prices and raise expectations and disappoint the people who sent us here.

I much prefer the approach the committee bill takes that came out of the committee 21 to 1, with a very broad consensus. I will admit, we all recognized, when that came out, that we would reserve for debate on the floor some of the more contentious issues, such as MTBE, global warming, CAFE standards, and the size of the oil savings amendment, about which we are talking today.

We said 1 million a day. That is what the committee could agree on. I and Senator Johnson thought 1.75. Senator Cantwell is at 7.6, and that is the wrong goal.

What would the right goal be? The right goal is to say, of course, we want to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. It makes no sense whatsoever for us to rely for so much of our oil on an area of the world where men and women are getting blown up every day, including a great many Americans. It makes no sense whatsoever.

So our goal should be this: Putting us on the path to a steady supply of low-cost, adequate, American-produced clean energy--low-cost, adequate supply of American-produced clean energy. As we do that, we reduce our reliance on all oil. We reduce our reliance on oil not just from around the world but from this country.

Here would be some of the things that are already underway in this bill. As I mentioned, we just adopted an 8-billion-gallon requirement for renewable fuels. Personally, I think that is a little high. That is stretching the limit. I believe the House of Representatives is at 5. Remember, only at 2 percent of all of our energy is renewable fuels. So we have done that.

We have in our bill which is before the Senate research for biofuels, about which the Senator from Washington talks. They are very important, but they are minuscule at this time. We have a way to go. There are some associated waste problems that occur with them, and there are production problems about which we have to think. To produce large- scale biodiesel fuel requires large areas of land. We have to think about that as well. Clearly, we should do it in this bill, which supports research for that.

If we are really serious about reducing our demand for overseas oil, then we should start with efficiency and conservation in the United States, both of oil and natural gas because they often come together. And so the provisions in this legislation, twice as strong as last year's Energy bill, provide for efficiency and conservation standards for such items as appliance efficiency standards. It would avoid building 45 natural gas powerplants of 500 megawatts each and save billions of dollars.

This legislation also includes a 4-year national consumer education program which, when used in California, helped produce a 10-percent cut in peak demand. This is natural gas we are talking about. But we are talking about conserving energy, and oil and gas often are found together.

If we were to add a provision, as I tried to do in the committee, and as I would welcome the Senator from Washington helping me do on the floor as we debate this bill, to encourage utilities to use first the electricity most efficiently produced from natural gas, we could save and conserve even more. Add that to the oil savings amendment of 1 million barrels of oil per day, which is in our legislation, which is about the same as the amount of oil produced onshore in the State of Texas, and then add on top of the provisions that are in the Finance Committee's mark that would continue the deduction for American consumers to purchase hybrid, and I would hope advanced diesel vehicles as well, that saves oil, that gives an incentive, that helps to change the market in a very promising way without a mandate. If we include the provision that is also in this legislation that supports discouraging large trucks from running their motors all night long so they can have their air-conditioning on and their TV on and their appliances on, one may think that is a small potatoes item, but it is actually a big potatoes item. Big trucks are a big part of our energy use in the United States. They are a big part of our air pollution in the United States. When we encourage them to plug into a battery instead of leaving their trucks on, we are using less oil. All of this is a well- balanced approach.

So it is my respectful suggestion that we remember President Kennedy for saying, Let us go to the Moon. We would not remember him as well if he had said, Let us put a man on Mars in 1970. I believe the committee approach is the right goal and is the right balance and much more realistic than the goal of the Senator from Washington State which, according to the Energy Department, would produce a CAFE standard of 78 miles per gallon for cars and 60.8 miles per gallon for light trucks.

I conclude by making a general remark about natural gas and other aspects of how we ought to be producing energy in this country. One important part of it is American-produced. That is what the Senator from Washington

is emphasizing with her amendment. Another important part is low cost. Another important part is reliable and adequate supply.

We use 25 percent of all the energy in the world in the United States of America. We spend $2,500 per person on it. Another important part is clean air. This is not the clean air debate, but it is the debate that will solve the clean air problem, in my opinion, because clean air and clean energy are so intricately related.

The legislation that is before this Senate begins with conservation and efficiency. That reduces our demand for oil, as well as natural gas, and helps to lower prices at least of natural gas. It goes next to increasing supply of natural gas, and I would say oil.

Listening to the Senator from Washington, she is saying we need to reduce our demand for oil from overseas, and since it is unrealistic to think we could save this much oil in that 20-year period of time, that would suggest to me that she would be advocating a big increase in supply of oil as well as natural gas from domestic sources in the United States.

In the legislation that Senator Johnson and I offered, we recommended that. It recommended that we look onshore and offshore for new supplies of natural gas as well as oil in the Rocky Mountain area and offshore. Well, that has been greeted with a very cold gaze by many Members of this body, including some who have created objections to unanimous consent agreements just to stop us from even considering increasing our exploration for drilling the large amount of oil and gas that we have just offshore, even though we could put the rigs far out to sea where no one could see them.

It would seem to me as we are talking about oil savings, if we want to keep prices down in the United States and keep jobs here, we need to talk about oil and gas supply at the same time coming from the United States. I did not hear very much about that.

We also need to hear more about LNG. I am speaking now of natural gas, which is an essential part of this debate. Many in the Senate often talk about gasoline prices. The truth is, as the Senator from Washington accurately observed, there is a huge demand for oil. Prices are going to stay up for the foreseeable future, that is the truth about it in terms of gasoline, and we need to learn to reduce our use of the oil. The one thing we can do is lower the cost of natural gas, which is a big part of this bill. That affects millions of blue-collar workers, millions of farmers, and tens of millions of homeowners.

We have gone from having the lowest priced natural gas to the highest price natural gas, and this is outsourcing jobs, putting farmers out of business, and making home heating and cooling prices too high.

If we are going to reduce the price and conservation does not do it, the next best step is to import some from overseas. That goes directly in the face of what the Senator is talking about to reduce our supply of natural gas. If we do not import liquefied natural gas from overseas, we are going to be exporting jobs from America to overseas. So we can either import natural gas or export American jobs. We have to be realistic in the near term in what we have to do.

I would hope that we could drill offshore and drill in the United States and use the extensive amounts of natural gas we have and bring down the price that way. But if we are not going to do it that way we are going to have to bring it in from overseas at least for a while until we have an alternative form of energy.

When we talk about alternative forms of energy, we often go to the renewable fuels, and I will talk about those more in a moment. I am just as excited about those as anybody. We have in Memphis a Sharp plan, for example, that produces solar energy. They have exciting new technologies. In the Oakridge National Laboratory we have a whole division on renewable energy and renewable fuels. They have exciting new technologies in solar. That is only 2 percent of our energy and 2 percent of our fuels. We have to be realistic about where we are going from there.

Where are we going to get the energy we need that will create this adequate supply of American-produced clean energy? After conservation, after new supply, we have to come to nuclear power. I suggest if we want to talk about American independence, we talk about nuclear power, that we do what France is doing. They are 80 percent nuclear power. We should do what Japan is doing. They are adding a nuclear powerplant every year. We invented the technology. We have used it without incident for more than half a century in our Navy. We produce 20 percent of our electricity today from nuclear power and 70 percent of our carbon-free electricity comes from nuclear power.

So if we really want American-produced energy, we need to build advanced nuclear powerplants so that we can have them at a cost that makes us less reliant on oil and gas from overseas.

Waiting in the wings and right behind nuclear power is coal gasification and carbon sequestration. I see the Senator from North Dakota on the Senate floor. He has been a leader in that area for a long time. He talks about it a lot and talks about it clearly. That technology is not completely with us yet. We know how to do coal gasification; that is, turn coal into gas and then gas into electricity. That gets rid of mercury, nitrogen, and hydrogen by and large. It still leaves carbon in the air, but there is a technology called carbon sequestration. We are a few years away from that, but if we accelerate research on carbon sequestration that would be a good goal.

Then we can burn the coal we have in the United States, and we have a 400- or 500-year supply of it. We are the Saudi Arabia of coal. Conservation plus our own supply of natural gas, plus nuclear power, plus coal gasification and carbon sequestration would fuel this great big economy.

One might ask, what does that have to do with automobiles? Well, hopefully, by that time we will also have invested a lot of money in research and development--not just for nuclear power, not just for carbon sequestration, but also for hydrogen, which the Senator from North Dakota is a leading spokesman for, and for fusion. When we get to hydrogen and these hybrid cars that we see being driven around America today--a gasoline engine with an electric engine, that is called a hybrid--when that hybrid becomes an electric engine and a hydrogen engine, then we have to have some way to make that hydrogen. We are either going to import oil and gas from overseas as we are doing it now, we are going to supply it from our own reserves, we are going to conserve enough, we are going to make it from nuclear, or we are going to make it from coal gasification.

I am glad we are having a debate about American energy independence. Just as President Kennedy is remembered for having the right goal by saying, Let us put a man on the Moon, and not for picking an unrealistic goal in 1960 and saying, Let us put a man on Mars in 1970, let's be realistic. Our bill stretches our country, causes us to aim differently, and if adopted will transform the way we produce electricity and will increase our independence on foreign sources of gas and oil.

One last thought about renewable fuels, before I finish. We need to keep that in perspective. If we were a small country, we might be able to rely on renewable fuels or renewable energy, but we are not. We are a country that uses 25 percent of all the energy in the world. Stretch as we might, for the foreseeable future we are going to have to rely on conservation, on our own supplies of oil and gas, and, yes, on some oil and gas from around the world. Then we are going to have to invest in an incredibly aggressive way in advanced nuclear technology and advanced coal gasification and carbon sequestration technology if we are going to have a reliable, low-cost power of American-produced clean energy.

I hope the Senate will prefer the committee report which was adopted by 21 to 1, that includes a balanced approach to the right goal. I would say it is more in keeping with President Kennedy's ``man on the Moon'' goal. This is a ``man or woman on Mars'' goal, and maybe we will get there one day, but it is unrealistic today. It would be disruptive of jobs if you set a 78 mile per gallon CAFE standard for cars, a 185- percent increase; a 60 mile per gallon standard for trucks, light trucks, a 174-percent increase. I hope we will stick

with the consensus that passed 21 to 1, and one day we might also reach this goal.

I yield the floor.

Will the Senator yield for a question?

I thank the Senator for her leadership. The amendment she is proposing--and we hope will be embraced by both sides of the aisle-- will set a goal to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. I can't think of a single person in America who wouldn't agree with that goal. We can all understand that as we wait every day for a press release from the OPEC nations to try to determine whether or not the price of gasoline is going to go up or down. This proud, strong, leading nation in the world goes hat in hand to the Saudi peninsula looking for oil. We wait for them to determine what the price will be. It affects every individual and family and business and airline, right down the line.

Is it not true that the bill before us, S. 10, has a goal of reducing dependence on foreign oil over the next 10 years by 1 million barrels a day, which is not as ambitious or as far reaching as the goal of reducing dependence on foreign oil by 40 percent over 20 years? Is it not also true that the President sent a letter to Congress yesterday and said if we include this provision--the weaker provision that is already in the bill--reducing the barrels of oil by 1 million a day over 10 years, the President will veto the bill? Is that the message that we have received from the Bush White House about our goal in reducing dependence on foreign oil?

If the Senator will yield for a further question, we can't pick up a news magazine or a newspaper in America without reading about the growth of the Chinese economy. They are expanding at the expense of many other countries, including the United States.

We have lost hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs over the last 4 years to China as their economy is exploding in size. Many of the companies in China that are growing are American companies. The fact is, China is expanding its economy dramatically. It is no longer a backward Communist nation. It is a full-fledged world competitor, and many believe that China and India will be our competitors in the next 50 years for jobs and economic growth.

Is it not also true that China has one problem it has to face, and that is the fact that within the borders, as huge as China is, they don't have a lot of energy resources. So to keep this economy moving forward, they need to import energy into China, which means in the years to come, we will see more and more competition for foreign oil, not just the United States versus the rest of the world, but the United States versus China and the rest of the world, which means oil for $50 per barrel, which has now raised our price at the pump, may go to $100 per barrel.

I ask the Senator from Washington, setting this goal of reducing our dependence on foreign oil through conservation techniques, through alternative fuels, through finding environmentally sensitive resources that we can use, is that not looking forward to the kind of global competition we are going to face and accepting the reality that if we don't do this as a nation, we will find ourselves losing out from a security viewpoint as well as global competition with nations such as China?

Mr. President, I rise in support of the Cantwell amendment and ask unanimous consent to be added as a cosponsor.

Mr. President, I thank Senator Cantwell for her leadership on this amendment. It is going to precipitate a debate which shows the difference in outlook between the two political parties. The goal that Senator Cantwell has spelled out is to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil. She believes that we are capable as a nation, through our innovation, through hard work and bipartisanship, to come up with ways to conserve energy, to find alternative fuels, to find environmentally responsible places to seek new oil sources in the United States; that it is possible for us to lessen dramatically our dependence on foreign oil, 40 percent in the next 20 years. That is her vision.

Does it mean changing the way we live? Slightly. Of course, it does. But it is not too great a sacrifice. Senator Cantwell's vision looks to an America that is no longer going hat-in-hand to OPEC saying: Please give us your oil. We cannot survive without it. Understanding that at any given moment they can cut off oil supplies and we could watch prices skyrocket as they recently have. That is her vision. It is one I share. It is a vision that challenges America to look forward in a positive way, look forward to change which lessens our dependence on oil-producing countries around the world.

In 1973, we imported 28 percent of the oil we used. Today, we are up to 58 percent. If we don't change our ways in the next 20 years, we will be up to 68 percent. When we are so dependent on foreign oil, we give up our freedom. We allow other governments that provide the oil to tax our economy, tax our businesses, tax our lives. We give up our freedom to those who turn on and off this energy spigot and make a difference.

When I was a little boy, years and years ago, growing up in East St. Louis, IL, I had a great aunt. She was a wonderful lady who, when I knew her, was very old. She used to tell us stories about growing up in her lifetime. It was Aunt Mame. I always thought it was curious, as a little boy, that she never referred to the vehicles in the driveway as cars or automobiles. She always called them machines. I thought, who in the world would call that a machine? She explained to me that in her lifetime, these machines had appeared out of nowhere, taking the place of horses and buggies. Getting into a car, which she called a machine, was a big deal for Aunt Mame. I used to laugh, after I left her, with my cousins and say: Can you believe she calls those machines? It reflected her mindset. To her, the concept of a car would always be something new and foreign.

I listened today while Republican Senators, such as the Senator from Missouri, came to the floor and said they cannot visualize or imagine a different kind of car in the future that would be more fuel efficient. They just can't see it. In fact, the Senator from Missouri, when asked what that car would look like, said it would look like a golf cart. That doesn't demonstrate the same kind of vision of our future.

We hear from the other side that the idea of reducing our dependence on foreign oil is a bad idea. They are wedded to the concept that we will continue to be dependent on foreign oil. The idea of challenging America to come up with more fuel-efficient cars and with other ways to save oil is something they don't believe in. They just don't have confidence that American creativity and ingenuity can rise to that challenge. It is a negative and dismal outlook, and they also believe that American drivers and consumers are so selfish they would never consider giving up their Hummers, or their huge cars, if it meant less dependence on foreign oil.

I see the world a lot differently. This Nation comes together time and again, sending our best and brightest and bravest over to fight in wars, rallying around the war on terrorism after 9/11. We do rise to the challenge. That is what we are all about. The Cantwell amendment lays down that challenge.

In the underlying bill, almost 800 pages long, section 151 states:

The President shall develop and implement measures to

conserve petroleum and end uses throughout the economy of the

United States sufficient to reduce total demand for petroleum

in the United States by 1 million barrels per day in the

amount projected for calendar 2015.

This is not a new provision. It is a good one, but it is not a new one. It was offered by Senator Landrieu of Louisiana the last time we had an energy bill. It passed 99 to 1. Only one Senator thought this was a bad idea. Ninety-nine Senators believed reducing our dependence on foreign oil was a good idea. This amendment was an important first step.

But if the United States reached the savings included in this provision of the bill, we would still be importing 14.4 million barrels per day to sustain the economy. That is over 1 million barrels a day more than we import today, allowing America's foreign oil dependence to continue to grow. We can do better. We can slow our growth in demands on foreign oil. We can reduce America's use of foreign oil.

First, we have to agree on a national goal. That is what the Cantwell amendment is all about, a goal that recognizes our national security, our economic prosperity, our environmental integrity, and makes sure that Americans have good jobs. Those are our high priorities. We must agree that sending billions of dollars annually to foreign governments to feed our thirst for energy instead of reinvesting that money in the United States shortchanges our own economy and our future. We must agree that sending our daughters and sons, sisters and brothers, fathers, uncles, mothers, and aunts into regions of the world, whether to establish a national presence or to advance freedom or for the sake of securing our future energy supply can be shortsighted and wrong.

To be drawn into a war to protect a foreign source of oil is to say it is too much to ask someone to change the car they drive, but not too much to ask them to send their son into combat. I, frankly, think that is an easy choice. I believe it is wrong for us to see the world in those terms, that we accept this dependence on foreign oil. That is why I strongly support this amendment.

This amendment seeks to establish a goal to reduce our projected foreign imports by 40 percent over the next 20 years, and 7.6 million barrels a day would be saved. Do you know where that gets us? If we meet that goal in 2025 and reduce foreign imports, we will just begin to reduce our foreign imports overall. Today, the United States imports over 13 million barrels per day of foreign petroleum. That is the 4- month average for this year.

In 2025, after reaching this goal, we will import 11.8 million barrels per day, a decrease of only 1.5 million barrels per day of our current imports.

Energy independence is about reducing imports of foreign oil, not slowing the growth of our dependence or toeing the line. As long as oil remains the sole major fuel source for the American economy, dependence on foreign imports will remain a geologic and economic fact of life.

Last year, I participated in a discussion entitled ``New Energy for America, Jobs, Security and Prosperity for the 21st Century.'' The discussion focused on the need to move America in a direction toward more jobs, security, and prosperity. The speakers included labor leaders, business leaders, lawmakers--all with a different message, but basically saying the same thing: We need to move America in a new direction.

I have been encouraged by new coalitions, such as Set America Free, the Energy Futures Coalition, and the Apollo Alliance, which incorporate unique bedfellows into the same common goals. In a bipartisan nature, these groups have shared resources and

ideas because they share the same values: Put America first. Make America secure and less dependent upon foreign oil.

I appreciate the bipartisan fashion in which Senator Domenici and Senator Bingaman and the members of the committee crafted this bill, and I hope this amendment becomes a bipartisan amendment.

I want to note there are a couple provisions in the bill that take small steps in the right direction, such as the renewable fuels title and the provision to increase the efficiency of heavy-duty trucks by reducing the use of diesel power during idling. These are all good things. But we can do more.

I will offer an amendment on CAFE standards at a later point. That is not what the Cantwell amendment is about. I have heard the argument that the amendment is a backdoor way to increase CAFE, that that is where the Cantwell amendment is headed. But it is not. It is about setting a goal, without a prescribed recipe, understanding that we all may believe there are different means by which America can best meet this goal. We all understand it must be our goal.

How can we be stronger as a Nation while being dependent upon foreign oil? How can we talk about growing our economy if we have to beg the OPEC cartel for the oil we need? It is a fact of life. If you look at the oil resources that are available around the world, it is pretty obvious. Look at this chart. North America. When you look at 2002, we have about 4 percent of the global reserves when it comes to oil. By 2020, it is going to be 1 percent. The lion's share of the global resources is not in America, it is in the Middle East and North Africa. So even if we use all of the current available resources and can bring them forward in an environmentally sensible way, we could not get close to our energy demands. We are always going to be dependent on some other source from some other part of the world. That is why I think we have to move toward those developments in the use of energy which reduce our dependence.

Also, let me say this about China. You cannot talk about the world economy and ignore China. You don't see China on this list of producers. It happens to have a growing economy that also is dependent on foreign oil. But China gets it and the United States does not. Let's take one example. Fuel efficiency in cars. Today, China has higher fuel efficiency in cars and trucks than the United States. They get it. They understand it. If they are dependent on foreign oil, they are going to put vehicles on the road that are more fuel efficient. The United States does not. Why? It is worth a moment's discussion.

I listened to the Senator from Missouri speak earlier about the automobile industry opposing fuel efficiency, opposing this idea of lessening our dependence on foreign oil. There was a time in my lifetime when American automobile manufacturers led the world--not only in inventing the earliest vehicles, but in developing them, setting the standard for the world. Sadly, that is not the case today. Just a week or so ago, General Motors announced 25,000 employees were being laid off. Last quarter, General Motors lost a billion dollars. When you look at the legacy cost to General Motors, there is a serious concern about whether this former automobile giant can survive. When you also consider the fact that Toyota announced last week that it would raise the prices of cars in the United States so as to allow General Motors to raise its prices and stay in business--think of it, the Japanese automobile manufacturer is going to come to the rescue of General Motors for fear they would go out of business. You wonder why.

How can a country that is so good, with an industry that once led the world, be in such bad shape? I think the answer is fairly clear. Detroit and the automobile manufacturers of our country focus on making more cars this year of the same kind they made last year. They lack the vision to look to the future of what we could do, in terms of making a new generation of automobiles and trucks to serve America's economic and family needs, without sacrificing safety. They think it is an impossible dream. While they sit and puzzle over the future, lamenting the possibility of change, sadly, other automobile manufacturers are doing much more.

My wife and I decided to buy a new car a few months ago. I wanted to buy an American car. We decided we didn't need a big SUV. We joke in our house that if you want to drive a Hummer, you ought to join the Army. We decided to get a modest size car to fit our family needs. We wanted it to be fuel efficient. Do you know what? The choices are pretty limited. There are not many American-made cars that fit the standard. We heard about the Ford Escape hybrid and bought one. It is good, but it is not great. I am glad we are doing a little bit to try to reduce our dependence on gasoline in our family and on oil imports as a Nation. That hybrid was introduced in the market 2 years after the Japanese came out with their car.

At a time when there is overwhelming demand for Japanese hybrid automobiles, Detroit still doesn't get it. They are not building that same type of vehicle to compete. I don't understand it. They seem to always miss the new trend and try to convince us to stick with the old model cars that used to be sold.

One of the aspects about this whole debate is security. In a paper that former CIA Director James Woolsey gave to me at a press conference a day or two ago, he identified six technologies that, with vigorous Government support, could dramatically change the nature of our fuel use in America over the next 20 years. I will not go through the list, but they are things that are already available. So when some Senators come to the floor and say we cannot imagine how we lessen dependence on foreign oil without dramatically tripling the fuel efficiency of cars, they haven't taken the time to do the research. If they did, they would understand there are plenty of technologies available today to reach those goals. ``I am not sure every one of these is going to be implemented,'' Mr. Woolsey advised, but at least it gives a starting point to make the changes.

The right mix and standards and incentives are out there. I believe we can find the right set of financial incentives and standards that meet our goal. There are a lot of cynics. They probably had a lot around when Henry Ford said you don't need a horse to get around. But the fact is we know we can rise to this challenge as a nation.

I fully appreciate that in 10 years we may make technological advances we cannot fathom today. I didn't think I would be driving a hybrid vehicle a few years ago or carrying around 2,300 songs on an IPOD in my pocket. You cannot think small in America. You have to think big. Sadly, the naysayers and negative voices on the other side of the aisle cannot envision America growing with this technology and becoming more fuel efficient. I think there are creative and visionary people on both sides of the aisle. I hope they will support this amendment.

We can test the innovation of America, and I know we can rise to that challenge. We burn 10,000 gallons of oil per second today in the United States--10,000 gallons per second. We use four times more oil than any other Nation, even though we know that the United States contains just 3 percent of the world's proven oil reserves.

Two-thirds of the world reserves are located in the Persian Gulf region. In fact, the Saudi state-run oil company alone has 30 times the reserves of ExxonMobil, the largest American company. Today, nine out of ten reserve-richest companies in the world are owned by foreign governments.

Do you understand how that makes the United States subservient to these governments when it comes to our economic future? They own the oil we need to exist, and unless we start weaning ourselves from this dependence on foreign oil, it will just get worse.

A study published by the Rocky Mountain Institute found that in 2000, oil imports cost $109 billion and comprised 24 percent of that year's goods and services trade deficit. In 2003, that figure rose to $10 billion a month, $120 billion. What could we do with $10 billion fed into the U.S. economy instead of into these oil-rich nations around the world?

On the Web site for the Set America Free Coalition, there is a link called, ``The True Cost of Oil.'' This is often a

sensitive subject. Whenever externalities are calculated into the overall cost, there is often wiggle room for debate. However, on this Web site, Set America Free has a link to the National Defense Council Foundation's summary of the hidden cost of imported oil.

The report finds that the economic impact of U.S. dependence on imported oil includes almost $49 billion in annual defense outlays to maintain the capability to defend the flow of Persian Gulf oil, the equivalent of $1.17 to the price of every gallon of gasoline; the loss of 828,000 jobs in the U.S. economy because we are depending on foreign oil; and the loss of $159 billion in GNP, not to mention $13.4 billion in Federal and State revenues. Total economic penalties from our importation of oil, $297 billion to $304 billion every year. And the voices on the other side objecting to this Cantwell amendment are content to let those figures grow. I think that is just plain wrong.

One final striking figure is the cost of periodic oil shocks the U.S. economy has experienced over the last three decades. They estimate they have cost us $2.2 trillion to $2.5 trillion.

Today, vulnerabilities in oil infrastructure could easily send oil prices skyrocketing.

We all know about terrorism and terrorism in the Middle East. Unstable governments in Iraq and Saudi Arabia can certainly threaten the U.S. supply, not to mention Iran.

Finally, I would like to note that the money we spend annually in the Middle East to feed our oil thirst goes directly to the production of hate literature throughout the region. So today, while American men and women are fighting in Iraq, the U.S. consumers continue to send billions of dollars overseas funneled off to support operations that completely undermine our service men and women overseas.

Can we not see the connection here, that in this same Middle East, where we are sacrificing and have lost 1,700 American lives in combat, our enemies are being fed by our dependence on foreign oil?

We have seen the dramatic surge in Chinese economic growth at a rate of 7 percent a year. This week's U.S. News & World Report cover story is, ``The China Challenge: What the Awakening Giant will Mean for America.'' China is the world's most populated country, with 1.2 billion. In 2003, China overtook Japan as the second largest oil- consuming nation in the world, and projections are that the Chinese demand for oil will double by 2025.

Mr. President, I see that the majority leader is on the floor. He has asked to be recognized. I yield the floor to the majority leader for whatever purpose and then reclaim my time after he is finished.

Mr. President, I wanted to come to the floor to make a few brief remarks about the overall Energy bill that is before us, about some of the strong points in this bill and how we might be able to improve upon it.

I would like to briefly mention, along the lines of the discussion that just ensued, importing oil and the challenges that brings to our Nation. I will submit a few documents for the Record and discuss generally the situation that we have in Louisiana. Of course, I will not be offering any amendment at this time but just discussing something I know we will be talking more about as this debate ensues.

While I understand the amendment before us is quite an aggressive amendment--and at this time, I have not made a final decision about it--I would like to say something positive about the amendment.

One of the points I like about this approach, while it is very aggressive because it is similar to an approach that Senator Alexander and I took 2 years ago on the Energy bill, is the flexibility that it provides to the country to try to make smart strategic choices about how savings can occur and smart strategic choices about lessening our dependence on foreign oil.

Coming from an oil-producing State, I can say that the people in Louisiana who produce oil and gas right here at home would like to reduce our dependency on foreign sources of oil.

The question is--and I think the chairman raises a very excellent point, and it is a real question--can we do that this fast, this aggressively, and maintain our economic position? We may or may not. But I want to say that anything we can do to reduce our dependency on foreign oil, while we recognize that we are just about to open to the imports of natural gas because we virtually have no choice--we have to because we cannot step up domestic production fast enough to meet the demands because China, because India, because our industries--chemical, petrochemical, agriculture, and others--are demanding more natural gas. We are about ready to bring in natural gas, where in some ways, while I support that, it will compound the problem of dependency.

It really is a dilemma. I say to the Senator from Washington that I think the flexibility of her proposal is very important, and the fact that this amendment does not say we have to conserve, we could, in fact, produce more domestic oil and gas which I happen to think would be a great idea. I know the chairman and the ranking member support more domestic drilling of oil and gas.

I want to say a word about that for a moment. We do not do anything the same way today that we did in the 1930s. Our telephones do not work the same way. We did not even have computers in the 1930s. Everything has changed. Technology for the large part has made everything better. Some people might argue with that statement, but the efficiency, the convenience, the ability to clean up our environment--everything has been made better in large measure by technology.

The oil and gas industry is not what it once was when the men and women who started it were paddling in a pirogue, a canoe--that is what we call a pirogue in Louisiana. A pirogue is a canoe--in the marsh pumping the oil out of the ground by hand and digging with shovels and crude instruments. This industry resembles more of the space industry today. It is run by computer. It is highly technical.

The environmental advances are absolutely astonishing. I have taken the chairman down to Louisiana. He has seen this with his own eyes. The wells, where they are situated, the offshore platforms, I believe, would make any American proud, even Americans who belong to the California Sierra Club. I absolutely believe they would be proud if they could see the development of this oil and gas industry. In fact, one of the majors told me--and I do not have any reason to doubt them because I think independent studies have shown this--that in the Gulf of Mexico last year, in the entire Gulf of Mexico, that oil company collected three barrels--three barrels--of spilled oil from its operations, and it has billions of dollars invested.

That is how good we have gotten. Guess what. We are the best in the world. Instead of bellyaching, we should be proud of that. We should say thank goodness for that old American ingenuity. We did not do it very well in the 1930s, and we did not do it well in the 1940s, but one good thing about America is we never stop trying to be better. It separates us from so many places in the world.

Coming from an oil and gas State, I would be the happiest person in the world if we could stop importing oil, drill it at home and explore new places that are appropriate. Some places may need to be off-limits but not everyplace.

There is a place that is not off-limits and we are proud of, and that is south Louisiana and the work that we have contributed to this country. I am going to show my colleagues this chart because this is where all of the drilling off the coast of our country occurs: Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. We have been producing oil and gas and sending $5 billion annually to the Treasury in taxes every year. Yes, there have been some environmental impacts which I am going to talk about in a moment, but they have been minor compared to the wealth that this industry has created not just for this region but for the entire Nation.

Does anybody remember we have gone through an industrial revolution? Does anybody remember that everybody moved off the farms and went to the cities? How do people think the cities got lit? It did not wave a magic wand and the lights came on. We have been producing and digging from coal, oil, and gas. So if anybody wants to say that, oh, well, we just do not have to do that any more, heck, the whole country was built on this contribution. People from Louisiana are darn proud of it.

Instead of everybody coming to the floor and saying how we do not care about our land and we do not care about our trees and we do not care about our coast and we do not have anything beautiful to preserve, not only do the people of Louisiana love our land and love our water, we survive on it and in it more than anybody in America. We swim more. We eat more fish. We spend more time in boats. We recreate more on the water than probably anyplace maybe except for a very few. Not only wealthy people get to the water, everybody lives by the water. In some places, one has to have a $5-million house before they can touch the water. In Louisiana, there are people who live in a house not worth $25,000, but they have a gorgeous marsh land behind their house, and those kids go fishing.

So I do not like to hear anybody come to this floor and say that we do not treasure our land in Louisiana. We are going to continue to produce oil and gas. We are going to continue to be proud of it, and we are going to continue to tell the story, whether anybody wants to believe us or not, that this can be done in a very safe environmental way. Why? Because we have good regulation; two, we have courts that enforce the regulation; three, we have all kinds of agencies--some would argue too many--that make sure that all of these companies are doing what they are supposed to do.

We have a free press, which means a lot because if somebody is doing something wrong, there is nothing I can do or the Senator from New Mexico can do to try to stop them from reporting it. So they can report anything they want. There is open information. I wish they would really tell people what is actually happening.

The point I want to make in just a moment is that we are going to continue to do drilling. I appreciate all the good work of my colleagues to try to

give more revenues to the State. We get a little bit, but because we are generating so much and helping everybody so much--let me just use this. I wanted to thank my colleagues for their interest in helping us, but this makes my point even better. When the Senator from Washington said she wants us to be more like Brazil, I am going to learn a little bit more about what Brazil has done because I am not quite sure of the details, but I will tell my colleagues about 11 States in the United States and what they have done. Those States are Utah, Colorado, North Dakota, Montana, Oklahoma, Kentucky, New Mexico, Alaska, West Virginia, Louisiana, and Wyoming. Eleven States out of fifty are the only States in the United States that produce more energy than they consume.

Let me say that again. There are only 11 States in the United States of America that produce more energy than they consume. So if anybody wants to give Brazil an award, please give these 11 States an award first because we have already done that. We produce oil and gas. We are net exporters of energy--well, we produce oil, gas, coal, nuclear. We can produce energy from a lot of different ways. This is not just oil and gas production. This includes nuclear. This is from the Energy Information Agency, our own agency, not from Louisiana or Senator Landrieu. This is the U.S. Department of Energy Energy Information Agency. This includes nuclear, hydro, geothermal, wood, wind, waste, solar, oil, natural gas, and coal.

As the chairman from New Mexico will say, his goal is to increase the choices of all of these so that more States can begin producing something. If my colleagues do not want to drill for oil, then drill for gas. If they do not want to do that, put in a nuclear powerplant. If they do not want to do that, put in some wind turbines. If they do not want to do that, dam up some of their rivers and use hydro. Some people will do that; some people will not. But for heaven's sakes, do something. Do something. If they want to mine for coal, we have given them a lot of money in this bill and they can clean the coal. It can be burned and used efficiently. Put in solar panels. Go get waste from the agricultural areas of their State. That is the whole point of this bill.

We have 39 States that need to make some decisions about what they are going to produce to be free because 11 of us have already figured it out.

I do not know these other States as well as I know my State, but in addition to being a net exporter of energy, I will also tell the country that Louisiana probably has the most petrochemical plants per capita than any State in the Union. Those products that are produced in my State are not consumed by my State alone.

We make these products and send them all over the country and the world. So not only are we producing enough energy for every single person in Louisiana--the 4.5 million of us--and what we need, but we are also fueling every plant, every LNG facility, every petrochemical facility, supplying so much for the Nation and still exporting because people in Louisiana kind of believe in good old-fashioned ``do your part'' kind of work.

We also conserve. I am so tired of people saying, oh, the Senator from Louisiana and the people from Louisiana, all they do is waste fuel. I do not have the document, but I am going to submit for the record--I am going to take the last 10 years--the efficiencies that Louisiana, through our industry, has achieved. Yes, some of them have been mandated by this body and they had no choice and they had to do it, but some of it is voluntary. We have tried to be more efficient as well and, of course, we have produced this energy.

Let me just point out three or four States that are at the top of this list. Actually, I am probably going to do five States.

The States that consume more energy than they produce are California at the top of the list, New York second, Ohio third, Florida fourth, and Michigan fifth.

Let me point out one other thing, because you will say, Why isn't Texas on the green list. I want to find where Texas is--here it is, 25. Texas is not a net exporter, but it is close. The reason it is not is because, of course, it is a big State, a huge State--20-plus million people, and they also have so much industry that they supply energy for, that helps us all, they don't quite make it. But I have to say Texas is doing a great deal. Perhaps they could do more.

But the rest of these you can understand. Maybe Hawaii is too small. Hawaii is not very big, but they are doing a whole heck of a lot better than California.

I want to be clear about who is doing what, who is not, and where we need to go and try to help everybody make the choices that work for their State but that also work for the country. It has to happen.

I will stop for a moment on that issue and move to something else.

I am happy to.

Right.

I thank the chairman, the distinguished Senator from New Mexico, because he is absolutely correct. I share his frustration. All I can say is as we proceed, we will continue to talk about these issues and educate the American people. People are afraid. They tend to be afraid if they are not sure of the facts. Sometimes people get the facts all confused.

But as I hope people understand, as I keep speaking the truth on this and people understand there are ways you can do this drilling, particularly for natural gas, that are safe for the environment, that meet every environmental standard we have today, and actually meet the clean air standards set out in our own act, we can most certainly explore these opportunities and continue to work on this bill. I thank the Senator for his comments, for his interest and his knowledge of the subject. I can only say I will continue to try to tell the story, and as the American people learn more about it, perhaps some of the fear will dissipate, reason will prevail, and we can begin to understand that here at home we have places on our shores and off our shores that we can tap into and minimize our dependency on foreign oil and foreign gas.

For the short term, this bill, and with the support of most of these Senators, will begin importing natural gas. We have policies in this bill to allow that to happen. It is quite ironic we are setting out in a bill to import more natural gas, and we will not take opportunities to drill for more on our shores. Again, this is a work in progress.

Let me share another part of the story that is not just about energy production. It is the great contribution our coast makes to Louisiana. There is the gold coast, the rocky coast, the cliff coast. We are the working coast. We are proud of it. We are the largest and most productive expanse of coastal wetlands in North America. It is the seventh largest delta on Earth. The Mississippi River drains two-thirds of the United States. As I said, it is one of the most productive environments in America.

In addition to the energy production I talked about which is right off this shore--and we have 20,000 miles of pipeline that can wrap around the country 10 times, 2,000 miles each way, miles of pipeline that send oil and gas to Chicago, California and to Washington and New York--in addition to the energy we produce for the Nation, through this Mississippi River, we drain the mountains in the West and all throughout the Nation; we also have a great nursery for one of the greatest flyways in the world for millions of waterfowl and migratory songbirds.

It also is a nursery for the Gulf of Mexico. Most of the seafood in the Gulf of Mexico is produced because this marsh does not exist anywhere else in the coastal United States. Again, it is an unusually large delta created by the Mississippi River. It is unique.

In addition to the energy contributions this delta makes, in addition to the drainage we contribute by our location for the Nation, in addition to the great flyways for migratory birds that this provides, and the nursery for all the gulf coast fish and species, it also serves as a protection for the two million people that live below I-10. This is the main interstate that runs in the southern part of the United States. It goes all the way through Mississippi, to Florida, and all the way through Texas and west. This I-12/I-10 corridor is one of the busiest in the Nation for many reasons. It is a great north-south trade Route.

Below this interstate, basically two million people live in Louisiana. As the map shows, this land is all marsh and low-lying wetlands. The people that live here are in some jeopardy. They are in some danger if this marsh would erode and go away as storms--whether they are hurricanes, floods, or rising tides--continue to pound our shore. That, unfortunately, is exactly what is happening today.

Yet this wetland that supplies all of this energy, seafood and other environmental benefits to the Nation, we are losing a football field every 30 minutes. We are losing 25,000 square miles every year. In the last 50 years, we have lost the size of the State of Rhode Island.

The red on this map indicates a loss of wetland. This is not caused by oil and gas and by fisheries. It is exacerbated by pipeline construction and some exploration, but it is caused primarily by the channelization of the Mississippi River. This river, for all the things I have said it is used for, you could argue the most important thing it is used for, for the Nation, is the commerce--500 tons of cargo, the largest port system in the world. When my friends from the Midwest-- whether it is Senator Harkin, Senator Conrad, or

Senator Dorgan and others--want to get grain and corn out of the States they represent, there is not a whole lot of ways to get it out except by barge. It comes down the Mississippi River.

We are happy for the trade and the traffic. But this river was levied to keep the water in, to create this major port system for the Nation, and as a result, over decades, the river cannot overflow itself, and it then cannot replenish the marsh. That is what is causing the staggering loss of these wetlands. Then, on top of that--which is probably 85 percent of the loss of wetlands, say our scientists who have been studying this for many years, the last two decades in particular--when the oil and gas industry came in and some canals had to be put in for the drilling, it exacerbated it by allowing the saltwater from the Gulf of Mexico to come into this water. We call it brackish. It is part salt and part fresh. It comes into the marsh and kills the marsh grass. The salt is toxic to that particular marsh grass. The marsh grass fades away, and before you know it, you are in open water.

I have friends that have fished down here for years and old timers I talk to. It is getting scary because it is not even people that are that old any more who are saying: When I was a kid, you could stand right here in Terrebonne Bay and look out for miles and see land. I took my little boy down there last week, the same place I used to fish when I was a kid, and there is no land left.

Senator, what is happening? Where is it going? It is eroding. I have been here for 8 years trying to get this Congress--Senator Breaux joined me, Senator Vitter now joins this effort--to try to get this Senate and this Congress to understand that this delta is not only precious to Louisiana--it is not even Louisiana's wetlands, it is America's wetlands--it deserves our attention.

Since we contribute so much toward waterborne commerce, so much to the energy infrastructure and independence of this Nation, we serve as a nursery for the fisheries industry, for the whole gulf coast of Mexico, we serve as a flyway for migratory birds which support a whole emerging and growing ecotourism industry that affects everyone in a positive way, surely we can get a few little dollars to help us save our coast.

We are only one hurricane away. We had a terrible season last season. We had five or six major storms. Luckily, they did not hit directly. Unfortunately, our friends in Mississippi and Mobile were hit. None of us along the gulf coast like to get hit. We are in great sympathy and empathy with each other because we know what a major hurricane will do. My people are sitting ducks. It is getting worse and worse. We can save our coast. But we need to use some of the moneys we can get to invest and to do this and we can make progress.

The Senator from Washington would like to wrap up on her amendment, and so let me conclude in a few moments. I thank the Senator for her courtesy and time.

This is a very precious wetland to Louisiana and to America. It is something that can be saved, must be saved and, if saved, cannot only contribute so much to Louisiana but to the Nation.

This issue is not as clearcut as some would like to believe. As I said, I like some parts of the amendment of the Senator from Washington. She has been a tremendous contributor on the Energy bill and a tremendous voice for conservation. What I do like about her amendment is its flexibility. What I do like about her amendment is the opportunity to produce more domestically so we do not have to get it from somebody else, particularly a somebody who does not share our values, who does not have America's best interests at heart. So I agree with that approach. Again, it may be too aggressive for us. But the Senate will decide if that is the case.

But I want to say from a State that is producing--and we are going to continue to produce; we are happy to produce--there are some coastal impacts associated with it. But even if we were not doing any production off the coast of Louisiana, this loss of wetlands would still be occurring because of the channelization of the Mississippi River done by the Corps of Engineers, at our request, on behalf of the Nation. It is time we get some help and some support for fixing this wetland.

I thank the Senator for her patience and her courtesies, and I wish her the best of luck as we continue to work on our bill.