A resolution congratulating Spelman College on its 125th anniversary.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I rise today to join the discussion about the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act, and I want to say at the outset that I support legislation to open up lease sale 181 as reported out of the Senate Energy Committee, and I support new environmentally responsible energy exploration in the gulf.

Obviously, this legislation before us differs from what we passed out of the Energy Committee, and we are still looking at the various impacts of this particular legislation. Some of my colleagues have come to the floor to talk about the larger energy debate, and I wanted to make sure I came down and expressed my concerns and comments about what we need to do to move forward on not just having a piece of energy legislation come to the floor that only has one particular provision in response to our energy needs, but what we can do for a broader energy strategy.

Many of my colleagues may have also turned on the television and seen that oil companies continue to report astronomical profit, and the public has a right to ask why. I hope that next week, when we take up the legislation dealing with the reauthorization of the Commodities Futures Trading Act, we might be able to discuss the issue of price gouging and what we can do to protect the public from those kinds of activities. I know many people in America are shocked to see, again, quarter profits from companies like Exxon jump 36 percent, and that is over last year's $10 billion record profit. So a lot of people in America want to know what we are going to do not only in the short term, but also in the long term on this energy issue.

I know that while we are only discussing this particular proposed piece of legislation on one issue, this Senator thinks it is very important to bring up a broader global context to the challenges that the United States faces in this energy crisis and why it is imperative, with everything going on in the Middle East, that we continue to be very aggressive about a U.S. energy policy that will get us off of our focus on oil and get us on to being a leader in the world economy not just in the United States on energy technology but around the globe.

Earlier this month, I spoke to the Washington Council on International Trade. That is in Seattle. It happened to coincide with the 33rd anniversary that Senator Magnuson had taken a trip to China to visit with the Foreign Minister. Maggie led that congressional delegation after President Nixon opened up the door to China, and he had a 2-hour meeting with the Foreign Minister there. It is interesting because there are notes from that meeting in which Senator Magnuson said he was going to talk about everything from the Pacific Northwest to energy issues, but he happened to scribble a little phrase on a piece of paper that is still recorded in history, which says that China can no longer be an island in the world. I certainly believe that China can no longer be an island in the world. Three decades ago, this policy was correct, but it is even more important today as it relates to our global energy needs and the United States and China working together.

It is no surprise that China's influence has come to the forefront of the global economy debate and that everybody realizes that we are tied together in so many ways. President Hu was recently in Seattle, and we discussed a variety of issues between the Pacific Northwest and, obviously, we have a great economic relationship in selling airplanes, coffee, software, and a variety of agricultural products to China. We continued those discussions.

What we see today is that the global energy issues are prevalent in our trading relationship with China, and they are also important to our national security issues and, obviously, to our environmental issues. That is why I believe it is time for us to take up and establish a formalized, high-level dialog between the United States and China on energy policy. There are various accidents of geology in this world, and I think I have said many times on the Senate floor that the United States only has 3 percent of the world's oil reserves. So when it comes to that situation, basically, China and the United States have landed in the same boat; that is, neither one of us can drill our way to energy security within our borders. But both of our economies have grown increasingly susceptible to these global energy spikes, and we need to act aggressively together to address these issues from a global security perspective.

As a result, I think it is in our mutual interest not to view ourselves as competitors for scarce energy resources but as global partners in the race to move beyond the petroleum dependency. Establishing a sustained cooperative relationship with China on energy policy will open up new markets for new American technologies and companies that we can help create and foster with our energy policy here.

Recently, Thomas Friedman wrote that you can, with these new markets, ``turn Red China into green China,'' providing America with economic opportunity and a long-term environmental benefit.

But here are some of the facts: Today, China accounts for 40 percent of the increase in oil demand. The number of passenger vehicles on the Chinese roads have more than tripled since 2001 and may equal the United States by 2030. So China faces a massive transportation infrastructure modernization. We know there are still 30 million Chinese who didn't, in 2004, have electricity. So trying to keep pace with the growing demand, China is essentially adding a huge 1,000- megawatt coal-fired plant to its grid each week. That is like adding the capacity every year to serve the entire country of Spain.

These new coal plants have created problems such as widespread pollution. Sixteen of the world's 20 most air-polluted cities are in China.

Even with the influx of plants and patchworks to the grid, there are various areas of the country that still have uncertain access to power. In 2004, China had a power shortage in 24 of its 31 provinces. They are struggling with the mammoth task of trying to keep pace with their energy needs. Since 2001, their consumption has grown at a rate 1\1/2\ times the growth of its overall economy. So we see that China, because it was poorly endowed with natural resources--except for coal--has increasingly become dependent on oil imports.

Now China relies on the Middle East for half of its oil, which is similar to our circumstances. Beijing has been racing around the world trying to lock in production for oil and gas in Canada and Saudi Arabia, and they are looking at suppliers for a variety of energy needs. Unlike the United States, they are looking in places such as Sudan, Angola, Burma, and Iran. As one of our distinguished international national security experts, Henry Kissinger, has suggested, energy resources may cause international conflict in the coming years.

So what do we need to do about that? I believe we need to get serious about this effort here and that the United States and China share concerns about high oil prices. We have a common interest in working together to mitigate global supply shocks and resulting price spikes.

Both nations need to work harder to increase energy efficiencies and to achieve continued economic growth. There is no reason the United States and China should not work together on the same side in virtually all international energy negotiations.

Currently, this is far from the case. Today, China views the United States as a competitor in these energy markets, and we look at them the same way.

The congressionally chartered U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission warned of a ``petroleum collision course well before the world's aggregate petroleum supply is exhausted.''

I think they are saying that because they realize this collision course could be avoided if we work aggressively.

This Senator believes we must take three concrete steps that will put us on a proactive path for engagement and cooperation.

First, President Bush should work with President Hu to convene a U.S.-China energy summit.

Second, we should put at the top of our agenda an effort to establish a U.S.-China working group with Cabinet-level leadership from the administration. Establishing such a group was one of the major recommendations of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission in a report to Congress in 2005.

Specifically, this proposal reinvigorated a 1995 U.S.-China energy efficiency and renewable protocol which I think we should get back to.

At the time, over 30 U.S. firms were involved in activities and programs which were designed to strengthen the bilateral cooperation and advance the role of the private sector by the United States in China's energy development.

A permanent working group would also be necessary to oversee any kind of joint R&D effort and could serve as an arbiter and negotiator for technology transfer issues.

And, third, I believe, in addition to the bilateral engagement, we should work to bring China into a membership of the International Energy Agency.

I know the Presiding Officer has thought a great deal about energy issues, energy cooperation, and protocols. The International Energy Agency is an intergovernmental organization with 26 different member organizations which prepares and seeks information about how to mitigate global supply and shocks.

In recent years, this organization has served as a clearinghouse for information on global energy prices and technologies. With China's membership in this organization, I believe we would see a lot more cooperation and information that could help us mitigate some of these spikes.

Some people have looked at China's energy policy and called it ``mercantilistic'' as they go around and buy up these resources at the wellheads in various regions of the marketplace. Encouraging them instead to be involved in the IEA would move Beijing to be a more constructive player in the global energy marketplace.

Clearly, these initiatives--a Presidential summit, establishing a direct U.S.-China working group, and promoting China's engagement in the International Energy Agency--are just a few steps down a very long road to a complicated energy security issue.

But it is clear that the economies of the United States and China are now intertwined, and our energy security should be considered with a common purpose.

This issue will color our relationship with China for decades to come, but if we are direct and proactive in our engagement, there is also opportunity, and an opportunity for the United States in meeting China's energy needs is key to their domestic stability and economic growth. Improved cooperation between our nations could have significant economic benefits for both countries.

Let me talk about that innovation for a second.

The reason I am raising this issue within the context of today's debate is because we are missing an opportunity today. Rather than simply focusing on drilling, we should be debating what is going to give America and American companies the lead in 21st century energy technology.

Because there is an opportunity on the horizon in China and other growing economies, there is a huge opportunity to export American technologies and products, but we need to seize the technology lead to do so.

Earlier, I spoke about the challenges China faces with its incredible growth in demand. Modernizing China's domestic energy infrastructure will require a $35 billion investment. That is every year for the foreseeable year--$35 billion in investment every year for the foreseeable future.

So we must work to open up these Chinese markets to grid management software, smart metering technology, new transmission technology, biomass and biofuels, and related innovations. These things are emerging technologies in the United States, which we

could further accelerate not just for our domestic benefit, but also as a supplier for that growing, demanding Chinese market.

Given the evolving nature of China's energy industry from its complete state-controlled entities into more hybrid models, we can help crack open these markets, I believe, overnight, and gaining entry, once again, requires us to be very proactive and engaged, with a sustained commitment. I believe whoever develops these technologies that break through to these economies will hold the key to the 21st century. I want the United States to be the technology leader there, and I want us to continue to look for these huge market opportunities to do so.

Essentially, China today has a 20-percent more fuel-efficient target than we do. The 2005 renewable energy law mandates that 15 percent of China's energy comes from renewables by 2020, and the plant also sets a 20-percent savings standard for new appliances and other technologies.

Consistent bilateral involvement with U.S. counterparts through a U.S.-China energy working group could help foster the changes that we would like to see with U.S. technology companies and could help us grow those businesses and opportunities.

Figuring out how to navigate these barriers, as I said, I believe requires greater cooperation and greater administration involvement in making sure there is a U.S.-China relationship.

The International Energy Agency estimates that China will spend $2.3 trillion over the next 25 years to meet its growing energy demands, and that just modernizing its electricity grid would require $37 billion annually, a figure that I referred to a few moments ago.

So these are great opportunities for U.S. markets. They are great opportunities to show that we can work together to be effective. For example, already some organizations on the west coast are working together with private foundations and public-private partnerships. For example, last year the State of California signed a pact with a sister province in China to provide technical assistance to work together on demand-side technologies. The agreement came in large part due to the work of the U.S.-China Efficiency Alliance, a nonprofit group that counts as its founding members and leaders various State officials, academics, environmentalists, and, obviously, some of the large utilities.

The reason China is a huge market for these kinds of opportunities and that this is taking place, obviously, from the west coast perspective is because the west coast has already had an aggressive trade relationship with China and also has been aggressive about these clean energy technologies. So this is happening to a certain degree already on the west coast, but it is a great economic opportunity for our entire Nation if we continue to accelerate it.

The question I have in mind today is, why are we ignoring this larger debate and opportunity? Why are we not debating a larger energy bill for the 21st century in which we continue to promote the energy innovation that can lead to a cleaner environment, better energy security, and certainly greater national security?

Fourteen years before he went to China, Senator Magnuson told the Seattle PI newspaper that failing to trade with China was basically ``pretending 700 million people in the world don't exist.''

Thirty-three years later, it is about time that the United States really understand that phrase. It is time that we understand the internal transformation and opportunity to work together on energy policy to solve some of our common problems and realize some of our great economic opportunities.

I hope next week we will continue to discuss various energy policies. I hope we will continue to open up this legislation to further amendments so that we can get to other issues that will really help the United States succeed in addressing our energy challenges.

Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I want 15 minutes as in morning business. We could go back and forth. I think we could accommodate that quite easily if the Senator from Kansas wants to speak. I ask unanimous consent that following the Senator from Kansas, if I could have 15 minutes in morning business, and then go back to the other side.

Following my remarks, if the Senator from Alabama wants to go, I would be happy to agree to that.

Mr. President, I revise my request and ask that following

the remarks of the Senator from Kansas for 15 minutes, the Senator from Alabama for 5 minutes, and then I would be recognized for 15 minutes.

Mr. President, we have waited day after day in the Senate on political issues when we should be taking the Senate's time to make America more secure.

Last week, the majority leader mentioned port security in a long list of issues to be debated before the August recess.

While Senator Frist continues to pay lipservice to this important priority, I remain concerned that with only a week left before the August recess we have no firm schedule or commitment to bring this bill to the floor.

I am worried that while the majority says it wants to act, it refuses to put any action behind that rhetoric.

And here's the bottom line--if God forbid there is an incident at one of our ports--the fingers will point to this Chamber.

And people will want to know: Why did the Senate sit on a bill that passed

the full House and passed the Senate Homeland Security Committee? Why didn't we make these ports secure when we had the chance?

The only thing keeping the GreenLane bill from protecting us is the Senate's failure to take it up. We have to bring up and pass this bill before it's too late.

I am here today because nearly 5 years after 9/11 our country is still vulnerable to a terrorist attack.

Just this week, an article in the Seattle Times showed us that our ports are not secure.

A reporter was able to enter two West Coast ports simply by hiding in trucks that were entering those ports.

The reported walked around cargo containers in areas that are supposed to be secure.

In this case, the security gaps appeared to be on the ``land side,'' but as the article notes--an incident at any port--whether from the land or sea side--could shut down all of our ports. Time is not on our side.

Each year, 6 million cargo containers enter U.S. seaports. And that number is expected to quadruple in the next 20 years. These cargo containers carry the building blocks of our economy.

But without adequate security, they can also provide an opportunity for terrorists to deliver a deadly one-two punch to our country.

The first punch would create an untold number of American casualties.

The second punch would bring our economy to a halt.

Today, we are not doing enough to keep America safe. Standing in this Chamber, it can feel like the dangers at our ports are a distant concern. But given that our ports are connected to our Nation's transportation system and are often close to major population centers, the threat is never far away.

A recent example makes this threat crystal clear. On March 21, a container ship called the Hyundai Fortune was traveling off the coast of Yemen when an explosion occurred in the rear of the ship.

About 90 containers were blown off the side of the ship, creating a debris field 5 miles long. Thankfully there were no fatalities, and the crew was rescued. Fortunately, this incident does not appear to be terrorist-related.

Now I want to imagine this same burning ship sitting just a few feet from our shores--in New York harbor or Puget Sound, off the coast of Los Angeles or Charleston, Miami, Portland, Hampton Roads, the Delaware Bay, or the Gulf of Mexico.

Now imagine that we are not just dealing with a conventional explosion. We are dealing with a dirty bomb that has exploded on America's shores.

Let me walk through what would happen next. First, there would be an immediate loss of life. Many of our ports are located near major cities. If a nuclear device exploded at a major port, up to 1 million people could be killed.

If this was a chemical weapon exploding in Seattle, the chemical plume could contaminate the rail system, Interstate 5, and SeaTac Airport, not to mention the entire downtown business and residential district.

At the port, there would be tremendous confusion. People would try to contain the fire, but it's unclear who--if anyone--would in charge.

Then--when word spreads that it's a dirty bomb--panic would likely set in. There would be chaos as first responders try to react, and residents try to flee.

Next, our government would shut down every port in America to make sure there weren't other bombs on other containers in other cities.

That shutdown would be the equivalent of driving our economy into a brick wall. It could even spark a global recession. Day by day, we would feel the painful economic impact of the attack. American factories would not be able to get the supplies they need. They would shut their doors and lay off workers. Stores around the country would not be able to get the products they need to stock their shelves. Prices for these goods would spike, as demand began to outweigh the supply. And consumers would not be able to afford the items they rely on every day.

In 2002, we saw what the closure of a few ports on the west coast would do. It cost our economy about $1 billion a day. Imagine if we shut down all our ports.

One study concluded that if U.S. ports were shut down for just 9 days, it would cost our economy $58 billion.

Next, we'd realize we have no plan for resuming trade after an attack--no protocol for what would be searched, what would be allowed in, and even who would be in charge. There would be a mad scramble to create a new system in a crisis atmosphere.

Eventually, we would begin the slow process of manually inspecting all the cargo that's waiting to enter the U.S. One report found it could take as long as 4 months to get them all inspected and moving again.

Finally, we'd have to set up a new regime for port security. And you can bet that any new, rushed plan would not balance strong security with efficient trade. Unfortunately, the scenario I just outlined is not the stuff of fantasy. Rather, it is a realistic portrayal of events that could happen tomorrow.

Nearly 5 years after September 11, we still have not closed a major loophole that threatens our lives and our economy. Time is not on our side. We must act, and we must act now.

I approach this as someone who understands the importance of both improving security and maintaining the flow of commerce. My home State of Washington is the most trade-dependent State in the Nation. We know what's at stake if there were an incident at one of our ports.

That is why I wrote and funded Operation Safe Commerce to help us find where we're vulnerable and to evaluate the best security practices.

It is why I have worked to boost funding for the Coast Guard and have fought to keep the Port Security Grant program from being eliminated year after year.

Right after 9/11, I started talking with security and trade experts to find out what we need to be doing to both improve security and keep commerce flowing.

Last year, I sought out Senator Collins as a partner in this effort. I approached Senator Collins because I knew she cared about the issue, I knew she had done a lot of work on it already, and I knew she was someone who could get things done.

Since that day, we have worked hand-in-hand to develop a bill and move it forward. I am also grateful to Senators Lieberman and Coleman for their tremendous work.

We know we are vulnerable. Terrorists have many opportunities to introduce deadly cargo into a container. It could be tampered with anytime from when it leaves a foreign factory overseas to when it arrives at a consolidation warehouse and moves to a foreign port. It could be tampered with while it's en route to the U.S.

And there are several dangers. I outlined what would happen if terrorists exploded a container, but they could just as easily use cargo containers to transport weapons or personnel into the United States to launch an attack anywhere on American soil.

In fact, in April, 22 Chinese stowaways were found at the Port of Seattle. They had reached the United States inside a cargo container. In that case, they were just stowaways. Imagine if they had been terrorists sneaking into our country.

The programs we have in place today are totally inadequate. Last year, thanks to the insistence of Senators Collins and Coleman, the Government Accountability Office found that C-TPAT, the program in place, was not checking to see if companies were doing what they promised in their security plans. Even when U.S. Customs inspectors do find something suspicious in a foreign port, they cannot force a container to be inspected.

We have a very clear and very deadly threat. We know today that current programs are inadequate. What are we going to do about it? We could manually inspect every container coming into this country, but that would cripple our economy.

The real challenge is to make trade more secure without slowing it to a crawl. That is why Senators Collins, Coleman, Lieberman, and I have been working with all the stakeholders and the experts to strike the right balance. The result was the GreenLane Maritime Cargo Security Act. It provides a comprehensive blueprint for how we can improve security while keeping our trade efficient.

At its heart, this challenge is about keeping the good things about trade--

speed and efficiency--without being vulnerable to the bad things about trade--the potential for terrorists to use our engines of commerce.

I am happy to do that if I can have additional time to answer the Senator's question.

Mr. President, the GreenLane Maritime Security Cargo Act does five things.

First of all, it creates tough new standards for all of our cargo. Today, we don't have any standards for cargo security.

Second, it creates the GreenLane, which provides an even higher level of security. Companies have the option to follow those higher standards of the GreenLane, and their cargo--those companies which agree to that--will be tracked and monitored from the moment it leaves a factory floor overseas until it reaches the United States. We will know where that cargo has been, we will know every person who has touched it, and we will know if it has been tampered with. The GreenLane will simply push the borders out by conducting inspections overseas before cargo is ever loaded onto a ship bound for the United States. And we will provide incentives for companies to use those higher standards of the GreenLane.

Third, our bill sets up a much needed plan to resume trade quickly and safely to minimize the impact on our economy.

Fourth, our bill will secure our ports at home by funding port security grants at $400 million. That funding will help our ports and our port operators to develop and implement security plans. They can use this funding to strengthen their perimeter of security, which would have helped prevent a number of security lapses that were highlighted this week in the Seattle Times article.

Finally, our bill will hold DHS accountable for improving cargo security. The Department of Homeland Security is long overdue in establishing cargo security standards and transportation worker credentials. We need to hold them accountable. The bill we have written provides the infrastructure to ensure accountability and coordination.

I take a minute to thank Senator Collins for her tremendous leadership on this critically important issue. I thank Senator Coleman for his leadership and work as chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Senator Coleman has helped expose our vulnerabilities, and he has worked with us to develop solutions. I also thank Senator Lieberman for his leadership on this issue. I commend all the other cosponsors of our bill: Senators Feinstein, Snowe, DeWine, Salazar, Santorum, Graham, Cantwell, Durbin, and Byrd.

We are seeing tremendous progress on the House side with the Safe Port Act. I thank Representatives Dan Lungren and Jane Harman for their bipartisan leadership.

Finally, I thank the numerous Federal, State, and local officials as well as all the industry representatives for their tremendous assistance in crafting this legislation. Those people truly are the front lines of securing our Nation's ports. I have been very proud to work with all of them.

Right now, today, we have a choice about how we deal with cargo security and the challenges facing us. If we wait for a disaster, our choices are going to be very stark. We should make those changes now on our terms before there is a deadly incident.

Let's protect America before an image like this hits our television screens. Let's not wait until a terrorist incident strikes again to protect our people and our economy.

Earlier this year, the American people woke up and spoke out when they heard that a foreign government-owned company could be running our ports. That sparked a critical debate. Now we need to set up a security regime that will actually make us safer. Until we do, none of us should be sleeping well at night. A terrible image like this, a burning container ship with a dirty bomb in one of America's harbors, could be on our TV screens tomorrow.

This Congress needs to act today. We have heard the majority leader say we need to address port security, but words will not protect us from terrorists, words are not going to help us find a bomb that is hidden in a cargo container, and words won't help us tell which containers could be holding a group of terrorists who are trying to sneak into our country. We need more than words. The Senate needs to take up and pass the GreenLane Maritime Cargo Security Act. We only have a few days left before we can do this. We need to act. I urge the leadership, before the August break, to finally bring up and pass the GreenLane Maritime Cargo Security Act before it is too late.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, recognizing that our colleague from the other side is here, traditionally, we

switch sides on recognition. I ask that after our colleague from Wyoming speaks, that I have 20 minutes to make mine.

Mr. President, today we heard some interesting news. I would have used the term startling, but based on the news we are seeing from the various war fronts, it is hard to find anything more startling.

The reference I make to this news is brought about by a report. I come out of the corporate world, so I am interested in corporate performance in this

country. I saw the report. If you watch television or read the papers-- ExxonMobil, I would say, had a pretty good year. Their profit for this quarter was $10.4 billion--for the quarter. That is up from $7.65 billion the same quarter last year.

That is pretty stunning news. It is the largest quarterly earnings of any corporation in America, save one. That is in the history of this country. In the history of this country, ExxonMobil, the quarter just ended in June, was the second highest in the history of the country.

If they were selling widgets or some product, we would say: OK, that is a pretty good job. But when they are selling a commodity that people are literally begging for by way of availability, it is a different picture.

This oil and gas is so much a part of our life that it is almost like the air we breathe or the water we drink. It is incredible.

That then spurred my curiosity. I am, going to file an amendment to the Energy bill. I send it to the desk.

I am sorry?

I am not offering the amendment, Mr. President. I am simply filing it.

I thank the Presiding Officer.

This amendment is to change the bill's title, to call it the ``Lee Raymond Oil Profitability Act.'' I propose that we rename the Energy bill to reflect Mr. Raymond's profitability courtesy of ExxonMobil.

It is quite a thing. As we look at the turmoil this country is going through while people struggle at minimum wage jobs and we see the kinds of profits that are being made off the backs of working people, it struck me, as I dug further into the history of the company--it is a pretty well-run company, but it is so profitable because Americans are going to the pump and buying gasoline at over $3 a gallon typically. I have seen it as high as $3.35 a gallon. People who work in these gas stations can't even afford to buy the gas they are pumping. That is how extraordinary this pricing is.

I come from the corporate world and I ran a very successful company. The company is called ADP. It has been in business 50 years. I started it with a couple of other fellows, and we watched our profits carefully. So I know how to read a financial statement.

When I see this, while people are stuck at minimum wage of $5.15 for 9 years--I am going to detail some of the extraordinary results Mr. Raymond got as a result of his leadership in that company. The profits, I think, are unconscionable. I don't understand where Board of Directors' conscience is, as I read his benefits program. There is no conscience, and there is no soul at all.

At the end of 2005, Mr. Lee Raymond retired from the chairmanship and CEO position of ExxonMobil. He was working and got a decent week's pay. I think his salary was running about $500,000 a week. That permits a lot of things to be acquired. But he also then held $151 million in stock options and holdings. His total compensation for 2005, including salaries, stock options, and pension, totaled $140 million. He made $140 million running a gasoline company where prices typically have gone, since January 2002, from $2.24--and any of the audience that sees this should mark it in their mind--it was $2.24 at the beginning of this calendar year; it is now $3. That is the average price. So it has risen some 36 percent I think is what the number works out to be.

It is incredible that during this period of time, while the average working person is struggling and things are getting harder and harder, the cost for gasoline, which is a requirement for virtually every family in this country--whether they have a car or are using fuel oil in their homes--it is outrageous that Mr. Raymond, in addition to those things I just mentioned, has seen his package of stock ownership and stock options go from $151 million in this period of time--$151 million he had at the end of 2005--to $250 million now, so it is a $100 million boost. Remember, he made $25 million in salary. But the absurdity of it all and the offensiveness of it all, is that Exxon's board also agreed to pick up Mr. Raymond's country club fees so he could make sure he could buy enough golf balls for a round of golf. Country club fees, use of the company aircraft, and still pay him another $1 million to stay on as a consultant for another year. Where is their conscience? I don't understand it.

So that is why my amendment would rename this bill the ``Lee R. Raymond Oil Profitability Act.'' That is what it ought to be called, so everybody knows what is happening in this country of ours. People are struggling for a living with a $5.15 minimum wage, which has been in place for 9 years. Those people are making $206 a week, if they are working at minimum wage, and they haven't had a raise in 9 years. That doesn't matter. Big business is the interest served by this Government and by the Bush administration. It is incredible.

When President Bush took over, gas was $1.06 a gallon. That was back at the end of 2000: $1.06. Now it is over $3 a gallon. Two years ago, President Bush threatened that if John Kerry was elected President of the United States, he would tax gasoline. Look at this: From $2.24 up to $3, this year alone. There is no limit. But that doesn't bother the conscience of the board members of ExxonMobil, and it doesn't bother the conscience of Mr. Raymond. If he asks for country club dues to be paid on top of everything else, to have an airplane for his private use, he feels entitled to it. These are company expenses, and because they are company expenses, they are tax deductible. It is shameful, I think, and I hope we will do something about it.

I rise to speak against this so-called energy bill. The bill is simply another gift to the oil industry. It is dressed up as some kind of benefit to consumers. I know the media likes to talk about who is winning the debate on this issue or that issue. But you don't see these commentators saying: Let's look back at the effects of legislation after it is passed. So here we are considering a second Republican energy bill. We should ask: What was the effect of the first Republican energy bill? My colleagues across the aisle said of the first energy bill that it would lower gas prices as it goes into effect. Well, here is what we have seen happen in just this year alone: up by 36 percent.

A few months after President Bush signed the first Republican energy bill, gas prices started to soar. So now we know what happens when you take care of the oil companies: Tax breaks and subsidies, and everyday Americans get charged more, pay through the nose, as we say, and now we are ready for a repeat performance.

Will this bill help get gas prices over $4 a gallon? Think about that, for the average family. Spend 80 bucks to fill up your gas tank. Right now you have to spend over $60 to fill up a 20-gallon tank. We have to do a reality check about who is writing these bills. President Bush and Vice President Cheney are both former oil company executives. They focus on helping their friends in the oil business. Big oil companies want to open up our coastline to oil drilling, to platforms, pipelines, and tankers.

Everyone jumps to attention in the Cabinet room there and they say: Yes, sir, as they do here on the Republican side of the aisle. And the oil companies' profits continue to explode.

Just this week, BP announced its largest quarterly profit in their history: $7.27 billion. BP is a piker compared to Exxon, which made over $10 billion. This was 30 percent more than the same period a year ago.

I remember hearing in the Commerce Committee when we asked about price gouging and so forth, and the oil company executives denied it: Oh, we don't price gouge, no. Well, somebody is making a heck of a lot of money while people who struggle for a living have to pay more than they can afford just to buy gasoline. Other big oil firms continue to enjoy record profits as well. Royal Dutch announced second quarter profits of $7.3 billion, almost $2 billion more than the same quarter a year ago. While Shell's profits increased 40 percent, its total revenue increased less

than 1 percent. So look what has happened. Their profits increased 40 percent, but their revenues increased less than 1 percent. I would like to hear an economist or an accountant explain how wonderful their management is, how good management must have been to pull that trick. In other words, sales were relatively constant, but profits jumped significantly.

Then there is our favorite, the poster company, ExxonMobil. In 2005 ExxonMobil raked in a record $36 billion in profits. That translates to almost $100 million a day in profit and more than $4 million every hour in profit for one oil company. And while all of these oil companies profit, consumers pay.

Now, as this Congress winds down its work for the year, the majority and the administration have proposed nothing that will lower gas prices at any time in the near future. They have nothing to offer in the way of a serious idea or a plan to reduce consumption, to improve efficiency, or to develop renewable sources of energy.

Whatever the question, the answer for this administration and the majority in this Congress is always the same: Hand over some more money to their friends in the oil industry, and give them more opportunities to drill and explore in environmentally sensitive areas. What do we get in return? Higher and higher gas prices. And now they want permission to drill in areas that are sensitive, areas where an oil spill could be disastrous. We had an oil spill in the Delaware River that separates Pennsylvania from New Jersey, and it didn't look too bad, but the cost to clean it up was $267 million. So there are a lot of risks with drilling in these areas. Higher prices aren't the only negative consequence of this bill.

The bill is going to harm our grandchildren's birthright to enjoy the natural beauty of our coastlines and beaches. I have seen the worst of oil spills. I was sent to Alaska with the Coast Guard 3 days after the Exxon Valdez ran aground. Exxon paid approximately $4 billion in compensatory damages and the punitive award was $5 billion, and that was in 1989. So we are looking at 17 years ago, and Exxon has yet to pay a dime on the punitive damages. The company has smart lawyers, and they have kept it bottled up in court. They say: Don't pay the bill, whatever you do. ExxonMobil makes $10.4 billion in a quarter, and the company is still trying to get out of paying the $5 billion that resulted from the court decision.

It is clear the plan is to pass this bill in the Senate, and then combine it with the House bill that opens up the coastal waters of New Jersey, Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, California, Oregon, and Washington State to oil and gas drilling.

The effects of even one spill off the shore of New Jersey would be devastating. Tourism, a principal business for us, is a $26 billion industry in New Jersey, and it supports 390,000 jobs. My State has already seen how much economic damage can result from threats to our shore. In 1988, a bag of medical waste washed up on the New Jersey shore. The incident was widely reported in the media and we lost a third of our tourism revenues that year--one-third of our tourism revenue.

We can be sure of one thing: If we drill for oil, we will spill oil, and New Jersey and other States cannot afford to have oil washing up on their shores or polluting their water. States that depend on beaches and marine recreation and clean water for fishing and other activities can't afford to have oil spills along those shores. Our commercial and recreational fishing industries in New Jersey are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. An economic catastrophe would result from an oil spill that reaches our shores, whether the drill rigs are located in the waters off New Jersey or Massachusetts or Virginia.

In short, it is absolutely certain that the current bill can only go from bad to worse. This bill is a Trojan horse and it should be rejected by any Senators who are concerned about protecting their coastlines and their coastal economies. It also should be rejected by Senators who care about developing a long-term, sustainable energy policy, and by any Senator who has a vision for our country which says we owe our children and our grandchildren a clean environment. We owe them relief from what we see now. I have not even discussed fossil fuels and global warming.

In the Netherlands last week, they reported the hottest temperature in June--this past June--ever since temperatures have been recorded: 1704, I believe, was the year. The hottest month ever since that time, since 1704. We see evidence of global warming all over the place. I don't hear anybody on the Republican side standing up here and saying: My gosh, we have to find a way to get these temperatures normalized. We have to find a way to reduce the number of hurricanes. We have to find a way to reduce the ferocity of these hurricanes. We don't want any more Hurricane Katrinas. But here we are, big oil companies are soaking the public with $3 per gallon for gasoline. It is not fair. We can do better than ``more of the same.'' I hope my colleagues will hear from their constituents back home and oppose this bill.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I ask to be recognized on the minority time relative to the debate on S. 2711.

Mr. President, pending before the Senate is a bill that will allow us to drill in areas of the Gulf of Mexico that currently are not being explored for oil and gas. There is some controversy attached to this proposal--whether this is an environmentally sound decision to go into these areas. The fact is in many parts of the Gulf of Mexico there is currently exploration and drilling for oil and gas, so it is not the same as the debate on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, where the administration was proposing that we drill in areas that have been protected for over half a century.

This area of the world and off the coast of the United States has been explored for quite some period of time, and oil and gas have been brought out of it.

It is going to be an interesting debate and a legitimate debate over whether this is the appropriate amount of exploration and whether it is environmentally responsible to do it in this fashion. But we should never believe that this debate is about creating America's energy policy. Sadly, America today--with gasoline prices going through the roof, with no certainty about our future when it comes to energy--does not have a national energy policy.

This administration, for 6 years now, has had an opportunity to come forward with a proposal that would move America away from dependence on foreign oil, but the administration has not done so. The only proposals we have received from them relate to very isolated, narrow issues. One of them I referred to earlier, whether the United States should now start drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The House and the Senate have rejected that idea on a bipartisan basis. Their belief, which I share, is that we have reached a rather desperate moment in American history if the only way we can look forward in terms of energy self-sufficiency is to start drilling in some of the most environmentally sensitive places in America. That is why I have opposed drilling in ANWR in Alaska. That is why it has been defeated. The majority has felt this is not the way we should go.

This is a different issue. This is about drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

We will debate it this week and vote on it next week. But we should not believe that passage of this bill is the creation of a national energy policy. The fact is if we pass this bill next week, it will have literally no impact on gasoline prices today and no impact on our dependence on foreign oil. If we are going to address that, we have to do it in a larger context. On the Democratic side of the Senate, we have proposed a bill that will move us forward, looking at the national energy picture and moving us toward breaking our dependence on foreign sources of energy in the future. That is important for us to do.

Today we are so dependent on foreign sources of oil that we are at the mercy of the OPEC cartel, and at the mercy of the major producers we are doing business with in countries around the world buying their oil and gas--and these countries are virtually our sworn enemies. There are many countries in the world that we send billions of dollars to as we buy their oil and gas that turn around and use the money we send against us in the war on terrorism. That is as horrifying as I can think of at the moment, that we would send American dollars to these countries to subsidize terrorist activities. Yet it is happening because we are so dependent on these foreign sources.

What can we do? What should we do? First, we should look at the obvious. Sixty percent of all the oil we bring into the United States of America is used for our cars and trucks. All of us are burning that oil as we drive around America. Sadly, the vehicles we drive in are less fuel efficient and get less fuel economy every single year. The vehicles are heavier, less fuel efficient, and we burn more gallons of gasoline each year to travel the same number of miles we went last year. I am speaking on average. There are some people who have fuel- efficient vehicles, but by and large, when you look at cars and trucks in America, that is the story. It doesn't have to be this way.

In 1975, we faced long lines at gasoline stations with the prospect that OPEC was going to cut off oil to the United States, and our Government made a decision that the first thing we needed to do was to have more fuel-efficient cars and trucks. At that moment in time, the average fuel efficiency of the fleets across America was about 14 miles a gallon. The Government mandated that over the next 10 years manufacturers had to have an average fleet fuel economy of cars that would virtually double to almost 28 miles a gallon in 10 years. The manufacturers of cars and trucks--particularly those in the United States--said it was an impossible goal which we could never reach, and that if we did, it would compromise the safety of the cars we would drive and would invite importation of automobiles into the United States. We did it anyway. We imposed the standard to increase fuel efficiency in America. Between 1975 and 1985 the average fuel economy of cars in America went from 14 miles a gallon to 27.5 miles a gallon. We achieved our goal. We did it without all of the terrible outcomes the opponents had suggested.

What has happened in the 21 years since then? What has happened since 1985 when we reached an average of about 28 miles a gallon for cars in America? Sadly, the fuel efficiency of cars in America has gone down progressively. Now it is around 22 miles a gallon, or 21 miles a gallon, meaning we are driving less fuel-efficient cars today than we were 21 years ago. And, of course, there was the truck loophole. We said when it came to fuel economy we would make an exemption for trucks. Someone invented the concept of a sports utility vehicle, SUV, and we called it a truck. It escaped the requirements of fuel efficiency. We all know those SUVs we are glutting the used car lots in America with, have some of the worst fuel efficiency of any vehicles we drive. They have helped to drive down our efficiency in America and driven up our dependence on imported oil.

A national energy policy has to include more fuel efficiency and fuel economy of cars and trucks we drive--and it can do it.

Recently, my wife and I made a decision about a car. We wanted to buy American and we wanted a hybrid. So we bought a Ford Escape hybrid. It is a good car, clean burning. We get about 28 miles a gallon, which is good but not great. I think we can do a lot better. Many of the cars that are coming in from overseas manufacturers get much better mileage. The people who make cars in America tell us there is no appetite for fuel-efficient cars in the United States. How wrong can they be? Toyota is about to come out with a Camry with a hybrid engine which will get better fuel mileage than most cars in the United States, and there is a 10-month waiting list to buy their cars. It tells me there is an appetite for obvious reasons. People understand gasoline is extremely expensive. If they can reduce their consumption of gasoline, they not only save money, but I think they know intuitively it is a good thing. It reduces the pollution and the greenhouse emissions.

Our failure to have a national energy policy leaves us in a position where we have foreign automobile manufacturers making fuel-efficient cars and hybrid cars and bringing them into the United States and selling them to American consumers who are anxious to buy their products.

The obvious question is, Why don't we have the leadership in Washington on a bipartisan basis that would create standards for fuel efficiency and fuel economy that would move the United States in the right direction on national energy policy? That is an important question. It is not addressed by this bill.

If we are talking about a national energy policy, this bill is not a national energy policy. There are other things which we should do as well. We have a situation in the United States where the oil companies are making outrageous profits. You can always tell when they have stepped over the line because when you open the morning paper, there will be a full-page ad where the major oil companies are explaining that they warrant that profit. Really?

ExxonMobil's second quarter profit jumped to the second highest level for any company in the history of the United States. ExxonMobil said today that it earned $10.36 billion in the second quarter, the second largest quarterly profit ever recorded by a publicly traded U.S. company. The earnings figures were 36 percent above the profit it reported 1 year ago. High oil prices, according to this Associated Press story, helped boost the company's revenue by 12 percent to a level just short of a quarterly record.

Think of this when you go to fill up at the gas pump. You reach into your pocket, pull out your wallet or your purse and pull out the credit card to pay for the gasoline, and the money that is coming right out of your checking account is going to record profits of the oil companies across America.

What has been done in Washington to try to contain these profits, to try to

say that the oil companies are going too far by creating burdens and handicaps on individuals and families and businesses across America? The answer is nothing. Nothing has happened informally. The President has not called in the leaders of these oil companies and said it is not healthy for America's economy for you to be taking so much money out of this economy, driving up inflation, making the cost of business go up so that they have to lay off employees and can't expand if they would like to, and making the burdens for families who have to drive on a regular basis unbearable. The President has not done this. Other Presidents in history have. This President refuses to.

When it comes to the more formal means of turning to those Federal agencies that have the power over these oil companies, they have been virtually silent as Americans and consumers are fuming over what is happening at their gas stations.

I would say to my colleagues in Congress when they go home over this August recess to take some time and talk to the people they represent. Gasoline prices, frankly, are one of the biggest issues that trouble the people across America.

ExxonMobil's report of earnings comes a day after ConocoPhillips said it earned more than $5 billion in the quarter at a time when many drivers in the United States are paying $3 a gallon for gas--and more. ExxonMobil, the world's largest oil company by market cap, said earnings amounted to $1.72 a share in the April-June quarter compared with the profit of $7.64 billion or $1.20 a share a year ago. These results top even Wall Street's expectations. The oil companies are raking in this money at the expense of consumers and businesses across America.

If we want a healthy business climate in this country, we cannot allow one industry--the oil industry--to make outrageous profits at the expense of other businesses as well as the families and individuals across America.

I think what we have before us is a bill that is worthy of debate about drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. It is something we will debate, but we shouldn't believe at the end of the day, even if it is passes, that we have addressed the most serious challenge facing America. We still need a national energy policy.

We should remember two numbers as we engage in this debate. The numbers are 3 and 25. If you look at all of the energy available in the world, the United States has access in the continental United States and offshore to 3 percent of the energy reserves of the world. Yet every year the United States economy consumes 25 percent of the energy that is produced in the world.

We cannot drill our way out of this situation. We have to have environmentally responsible exploration and production, but we also have to deal with conservation and efficiency. It is not just a matter of reducing costs and reducing consumption. There is not another issue that is as important as energy. It is the issue of the environment. We have to understand that as we burn energy, as we destroy this energy for our economic purposes--carbon fuels, for example--we are releasing emissions into the environment. Carbon dioxide, for example, which ultimately form a cloud over our globe, this greenhouse effect which captures the heat of the Sun and warming the planet we live on to the point where we are seeing dramatic climate change in America and around the world. We are finding from those in the private sector who look at this in cold economic terms that decisions are made which suggest we are facing serious problems if we don't do something about it.

When the major insurance companies announce they are not going to write property insurance for many businesses on the gulf coast of the United States because of the severity of the hurricanes we have seen in the last few years, it is a wake-up call to America. When we know that the glaciers are melting, when we know the temperature is going up on this globe we live on, when we know species such as the polar bear are doomed to extinction if we don't make some serious changes, we have to combine this debate on a national energy policy with the national environmental policy that sets a standard--that says to the world engage us in this effort to protect the planet on which we live.

S. 3711 is an interesting and important bill. I am glad we are debating it. But make no mistake; it is not a national energy policy.

I reserve the remainder of my time and yield the floor.

Mr. President, if I could inquire of my colleague from Washington--and I have my colleague from Alabama who seeks recognition--maybe we can get some order set up here. I have a 15- minute presentation. I believe my colleague from Alabama is seeking recognition, if I could inquire.

I would inquire of my colleague from Washington a timeframe she would want, in an effort to establish some order.

If my colleague from Washington would be willing to allow 5 minutes for my colleague from Alabama to finish up his comments? Is that asking too much? I don't want to press it too far.

I thank my colleague from Washington in particular for allowing us to do this. It is very much appreciated.

I am happy to yield to the Senator from Texas.

I believe I am to be recognized for 15 minutes. If the Presiding Officer will notify me when 2 minutes remain?

Mr. President, I rise to speak on the pending business before the Senate, the Gulf of Mexico Energy Act, S. 3711. I wholeheartedly support this bill. We face a dire situation in this country regarding our energy dependence.

I believe this debate is about two numbers and those numbers are 3 and 75--$3-a-gallon gasoline and $75-a-barrel oil. That is what this debate is about, 3 and 75.

We are reminded about this every day. There are probably places in this country paying well over $3 a gallon for gasoline. The price of oil hit $75 this past Friday. There is a good possibility it will even go up from there. We need more domestic drilling to take place. We must reduce our foreign dependency, our dependency on foreign oil. In the future and in the near term as well we have to reduce our dependency on oil.

Things are striking. In the United States we burn 10,000 gallons of oil per second. The United States uses four times more oil than any other nation. Relative to economic output, the United States consumes 7.5 gallons of oil for every thousand dollars of GDP. Oil imports cost us--this is a 2003 number, so they are higher now--oil imports cost us $10 billion a month, as a nation. Those are 2003 numbers.

Energy economists estimate that since World War II, oil price spikes have cost the economy 15 percent growth and $1.2 trillion in direct losses. There is a $7.4 billion increase in the U.S. oil bill per year for each $1 increase in the price of oil. Imagine what that adds up to when you push $75-a-barrel oil. A $1 increase in the price of oil costs U.S. companies and consumers about $828 million in trucking costs each year.

In addition to these facts, we get a large amount of our oil from regions that are unstable at best and unfriendly at worst; 65.3 percent of the world's proven oil reserves are in the Middle East. The Middle East OPEC States already supply the United States with 2.5 million barrels per day, 25 percent of our daily imports.

Further, every day, 26 million barrels of oil flow through two points. One of those points is the Straits of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf. We know the instability that can happen there. A few targeted strikes against one of these two states or against oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, which holds a quarter of the world's oil reserves and essentially all spare capacity--if you can consider any of the capacity spare today--it could take several million barrels of oil off the global market every day for months and send oil prices soaring.

These facts, coupled with the increases in demand that are taking place in countries such as China and India, do not bode well for our national and economic security.

There will be very difficult if not potentially disastrous consequences to our economy if we do not reduce our dependence on foreign oil and, in the future, oil period. If we remain so dependent on foreign oil, we court disaster.

Currently, we have these two mega numbers, 3 and 75; $3-a-gallon gasoline and $75-a-barrel oil.

This bill, the Gulf of Mexico Energy Act, will help lessen the dire situation we are currently in. It opens up 8.3 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico for oil and natural gas exploration. It is something we need to do, we must do now to be able to help reduce our demand for oil products, for foreign oil.

I want to also talk about the midterm of what we need to do. This is something we have to do now to mitigate the situation we are currently in. We really need to do it. But on a midterm basis, we have to reduce our dependence on oil, period. That is why a bipartisan group of 28 Senators has put forward the Vehicle and Fuel Choices for America Security Act, S. 2025. I urge my colleagues to look at cosponsoring this legislation. I think it is the most bipartisan and comprehensive energy legislation pending in front of the Senate today.

We filed it as an amendment on this bill, but as I understand the procedural situation we are in, it is unlikely this is going to come up now. It is still important that we look at this legislation and others to reduce our long-term dependence on oil. It is appropriate Members of Congress from every region of the country and every political stripe-- conservative, liberal, everything in between--have all arrived at this same point. For our national security and our economic security, we must reduce our dependency on oil.

It is common sense to reduce our oil consumption, and it is doable. This bill uses new ideas and does not visit old debates or fights. We know the edges of this debate where we divide this body. This doesn't go there. It says what areas can we agree upon, and let's press forward there. For too long our foreign policy has been dictated in part by our need for foreign oil. It is in the interest of America's security for us to look at ways of lessening our dependence on foreign oil, and it is also in the interests of our economy. The pocketbook of every American is affected when the price of oil goes up.

We can create market incentives to use the technology available today to deal with the problem that we are facing right now. We don't have to wait for any new inventions. We can start solving the problem today simply by sending the marketplace the correct signals. There is broad public support for reducing our oil consumption.

This, to me, is one of those American-type problems. We have a problem and it needs to be addressed and we can do it with good, old- fashioned American ingenuity. It exists. The great thing about this bill, S. 2025, is that our 10-year goal is for reduction in oil consumption of 2.5 million barrels per day. That is roughly 10 percent of our total oil consumption and the same amount we import daily from the Persian Gulf region.

How do we do it? Ethanol and renewable fuels must play a clear role in this fight. They are homegrown. We need to be more dependent on the Midwest than the Middle East. Therefore, this helps keep the money at home. We ventured down this road before, but we have never fully committed as a nation to renewable fuels. Now is the time to do it.

I am encouraged by the fact that so many people are literally buying into ethanol today, and into biodiesel--soybean-based diesel fuel. Bill Gates has invested over $100 million of his own money into ethanol. Richard Branson of the Virgin Empire, famous for his success in venture capitalism, is investing in ethanol. These are great signs for the future of renewable fuels, as it is an industry that needs capital investment.

As a government and as a people, we need to fully commit to make renewable fuels a viable alternative to petroleum-based fuel. As long as oil remains above $70 a barrel, the economics of renewable fuels makes good sense. It makes sense for us to continue to push its development, and it makes clear sense regarding our foreign policy and security needs.

Biodiesel is another renewable fuel option and is a farm success story. After Operation Desert Storm in the early 1990s, soybean farmers were struggling to maintain profitability. I was the Secretary of Agriculture in my State of Kansas at that time. Because

of high energy prices and low commodity prices, the farmers were struggling. The soybean farmers started investments in the development of biodiesel. It was a priority for farmers eager to contribute to our energy supply and develop a new market for soybeans. Farmers invested more than $50 million of their check-off dollars. These are dollars they tax themselves to be able to promote their industry. They did this to be able to conduct research and development in biodiesel.

As a result, the biodiesel industry has shown slow but steady success since the early 1990s. However, in the past 2 years it has grown exponentially. In 2004 there were approximately 25 million gallons of biodiesel sales. That increased to 90 million gallons in 2005, and currently it is on track to exceed 150 million gallons this year.

Likewise, we went from 22 biodiesel plants in 2004 to more than 60 biodiesel plants currently, and there are over 40 more plants currently under construction.

Congress has, and continues to put in place, policies that enhance our Nation's energy security. Renewable fuels are playing a significant role in helping to achieve this objective while providing economic benefits to farmers and rural communities.

Another key element to freeing ourselves from our foreign oil dependency is to introduce electricity as a transportation fuel option. Recently, I and many of my colleagues in the House and Senate test drove plug-in hybrid vehicles on Capitol Hill. These cars drive exclusively on electricity for the first 30 miles of every trip. After 30 miles, these cars switch to a normal combustion engine. Over 50 percent of all Americans drive less than 30 miles each day. That means we could have over half of our drivers in America driving exclusively on electricity, not using any oil at all.

The good news is that our electricity generation is produced here in America, whether it is coal, natural gas, nuclear, or renewable sources such as water power and wind. We would be fueling a majority of our transportation sector with American sources of energy as opposed to foreign oil. Plugging in your car during offpeak hours when power is in a surplus and cheaper would soon just become part of the modern daily routine like plugging in your cell phone before you go to bed. Offpeak electricity can be the equivalent of 50-cent-a-gallon gasoline.

The car I sat in, and other Members drove, went 100 miles a gallon by using the plug-in technology, the hybrid technology in the car, and fuel in a combustion engine--100 miles to the gallon, a car available today.

This was a modified Prius. I don't want to tell everybody that this is broadly available. But the people who have modified it to include plug-in technology were using this hybrid vehicle.

Not only will we be sending out money to countries that dislike us, but we will be buying American-made power instead.

Another great bit of news is that we already have the infrastructure in place to produce electricity as a transportation tool. All you will need is an extension cord and a wall outlet. We can't drill enough domestic oil to break our addiction to foreign oil.

However, this bill takes an innovative market-based approach to solve these problems. We can provide tax credits for the production and purchase of advanced technology cars. We expand the renewable fuels infrastructure through a variety of means. We also expand research and development in critical areas such as light-weight materials and cellulosic ethanol. This ethanol, instead of being made out of grain, is made of plant fibers or out of woodchips. We amend the Federal fleet requirements to reduce oil consumption by allowing electric drive technology to qualify under the EPA act.

We require 30 percent of the Federal fleet requirements to be met by advanced diesel, hybrids, or electric plug-in hybrids by 2006.

We also provide tax credits for companies that have fleets of 100 or more vehicles to purchase more fuel-efficient vehicles.

We are all solidly behind the ideas in this bill. It has 28 cosponsors, and we look forward to moving these ideas forward because it is critical for our national and economic security and our economy and our future that we do so, plus it is just good old American ingenuity that we would do something like this and lead the world in moving toward an important electric renewable source fleet of vehicles for our consumers.

Clearly, if we are to continue to live freely in this country, we must figure out a solution to our rising dependency on foreign oil.

That is part of my support for S. 3711. Near term, we have to do more production. Longer term, we have to reduce our dependency and our addiction to oil, period. Here is a bill and a way we can do it. As we observe what is taking place in the Middle East--even today we can see volatility in that region. As we observe what is taking place in our marketplace, I believe you can see a yearning for vehicles that get higher mileage and we can use with plug-in technology.

I think we have to pass S. 3711, and then in the future let's move this car fleet to be based more on renewables and to be based on plug- in technology using electricity.

I look forward to working with my colleagues to be able to accomplish that. I urge us in the near term to do what we have to do--pass this bill which is before us today.

I yield the floor.

I would be happy to yield during the remainder of my time.

I thank the chairman.

Madam President, we are on a subject that is near and dear to the heart of the Senator from Florida--both Senators from Florida. It is a subject of which, a year ago, in bringing up an energy bill, there was an attempt to drill off the coast of Florida, and this Senator had to start his first filibuster. We were able to resolve that with the help of the distinguished senior Senator from New Mexico, Mr. Domenici, who, true to his word, let the Energy bill go on without bringing up the portions with regard to drilling off of Florida when it went to conference with the House of Representatives. And I have thanked Senator Domenici many times on this floor for being a man of his word.

I must say, in the negotiations that have brought this legislation to the floor now, I give great credit to the senior Senator from Louisiana, Ms. Landrieu, in looking out for the interests of her State in receiving revenue--what would come from new drilling that this legislation addresses not only for Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, but especially for Louisiana. It addresses those revenue needs that the State needs since it is losing all of those wetlands. We saw the results of that in the great tragedy of Hurricane Katrina a year ago. So I give great credit to Senator Landrieu.

But I also give great credit to Senator Landrieu because she knew the interests of Florida had to be protected in order for her to get an agreement because both Senators from Florida were willing to filibuster any legislation that threatened the interests of Florida. To her great credit--Senator Landrieu's--she worked with the two Senators from Florida. She also worked with the other gulf coast Senators. And what has been crafted is a piece of legislation that addresses just the Gulf of Mexico.

Now, you might wonder: Why does Florida not want its waters off the coast of Florida to be drilled? Well, this Senator is going to explain that. Certainly, there are economic interests with a $57 billion a year tourism industry that depends on pristine beaches. Certainly, there is the delicate environment--the 10,000 Islands, the Big Bend area, the bays and estuaries, Apalachicola Bay--all of these environmental areas that are so delicate to the ecology of the oceans where so much marine life is spawned.

But there is another big reason that most people do not understand, and it is right here as shown on this chart. Most people do not realize that the entire Gulf of Mexico off of Florida is restricted airspace. Why? Because this is the largest testing and training area in the world for the U.S. military. All of this area has restricted air use and naval use.

You wonder: When the U.S. Atlantic fleet training in Vieques--the little island off the eastern end of Puerto Rico--when it was shut down, why did most of that training come to Florida? It is because you can do combined air-sea exercises and land exercises from Eglin Air Force Base, Pensacola NAS--Naval Air Station Pensacola. Squadrons of Navy F-18s come down and spend 2 weeks, 3 weeks at a time, and are stationed there because when they lift off out of Key West NAS, within 2 minutes they are over restricted airspace where they can go about their training.

So here is a large part of the reason--as shown right here on the chart--why there is no drilling off the west coast of Florida in the Gulf of Mexico. The importance of what is called the Eglin Air Force Base Gulf Test and Training Range has been emphasized in the letter that was received by the Senate Armed Services Committee, signed by the Secretary of Defense, Don Rumsfeld. That letter was delivered to the committee last November, in which he says: You cannot have oil and gas rigs out here where we are testing and training sophisticated weapons systems, and where we are training our pilots--Air Force and Navy pilots--and where we now will have the F-35 all-pilot training for the new Joint Strike Fighter, the F-35 for all branches of service, all out here because of that restricted space. So Secretary Rumsfeld made it very clear: You cannot have oil and gas rigs.

I remember the Senator from New York, Mr. Schumer, one day said: Why should Florida be protected? Here, this is the reason. This is the historical reason, in addition to the reasons of the environment, as well as the economy of Florida in protecting our tourism industry.

So this is what we are dealing with, as shown on this chart. All of the yellow on this chart off the State of Florida is going to be protected until the year 2022. That is three planning periods of 5 years each. That is 15 years after the planning period of 2007 kicks in. All of that area--which is 125 miles from Fort Walton, it is 100 miles from Perdido Key, 100 miles off of the Alabama coast right here. Then it comes around, and it then follows this critical line, this black line that is called the military mission line, a military mission line that was established in 1981 by the Department of Defense in that they said they wanted no drilling east of that line. Therefore, that line becomes the critical line, of which you see that most of the area of Florida, then, is protected from drilling. And that is all the way through the year 2022.

That area, by the way--from this point off of Clearwater, which is in the Tampa Bay area--is 235 miles due west of the Tampa Bay area beaches. For Naples, it is in excess of 300 miles. No drilling. So you can see the protection for Florida also happens to be the protection for the U.S. military in these ranges.

Now, we have had people come to the floor and say they are concerned about this going down to the House. The House-passed bill basically lifts the moratorium for drilling off the Outer Continental Shelf of the entire United States--the Pacific coast, the Atlantic coast, and so forth.

I want to speak about the assurances I have been given when this bill will leave here and go to the House of Representatives. But let me tell you why this bill only deals with the Gulf of Mexico. From Florida's standpoint, from the military's standpoint, from the Nation's defense standpoint, we do not want to lift the moratorium and have drilling off the east coast of Florida and the rest of the southeastern United States because, look right here on this chart. Here is another major Air Force and Navy training area off the northeast coast of Florida and off the east coast of Georgia. In addition, right there is a place called Cape Canaveral. The Cape Canaveral Air Force Station is where we launch our rockets to put all of our satellites, our defense satellites, into equatorial orbit.

You can't have oil rigs out here where you are dropping the first stages of the expendable booster rockets that are putting our highly sophisticated and highly classified defense payloads into equatorial orbit. Just to the north of Cape Canaveral is a place called the Kennedy Space Center. It happens to have launch pad 39A and launch pad 39B from which we launch the space shuttle and, after the year 2012, it is estimated we will launch the new space vehicle called the Crew Exploration Vehicle. You can't have oil rigs out here where we are dropping the solid rocket boosters from the space shuttle when we launch, those two big candlesticks on either side of the external tank of the space shuttle. After they have expended their fuel 2 minutes into flight, they separate from the space shuttle and parachute back into the Atlantic Ocean. They are then brought back in, refurbished, and reused. You can't have oil rigs out here.

So as people talk about wanting drilling off the east coast of Florida, which this legislation in front of us does not address but the House bill does address, you can't do that out here with an interest of the Nation at stake--the military preparedness plus the defense of this country, with the important payloads that we are launching out of the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, as well as the Kennedy Space Center. When people say that this legislation we are passing in the Senate does not address protections of the east coast, the east coast isn't a threat. Right now the east coast is under a moratorium until the year 2012. That is not where the threat is. The threat is here in the Gulf of Mexico. That is why we have the legislation before us that we do. That is why this Senator is coming to the floor to announce my support for this legislation, which I have helped craft and on which I have waited until today, until I had assurances that this legislation was not going to be in any significant way changed when it leaves this Chamber and goes down to the House.

What are those assurances? I have been authorized to say from the majority leader, Senator Frist--and I am reading from an e-mail to me. This is a quote Senator Frist sent to me today--

The Senate bill is a carefully crafted compromise and I

believe it represents what is achievable in the Senate this

year. I will not bring a bill back before the Senate that

does not provide adequate protections to the State of

Florida. I look forward to working with both Florida Senators

to achieve this goal.

Yesterday, I spoke personally to Senator Frist on the telephone. He told me he would do everything within his ability to keep it to the Senate version when the bill returns to the Senate. That is a pretty good assurance for this Senator to protect the interests of Florida.

I went to our leader on this side of the aisle, the Democratic leader, and Senator Reid has written a letter to me:

Dear Senator Nelson:

It is my expectation that the House of Representatives will

accept S. 3711 as passed by the Senate without amending it

and without modifying it in a conference committee. If the

House does not accept the Senate bill as passed, I will join

other Senators and Senator Nelson and produce the votes to

sustain a filibuster to prevent the passage of the bill when

it would return to the Senate.

That is the end of the quote from Senator Reid's letter.

Around here, you have to take a man at his word. I accept the word and the assurances of the two great leaders of our two great parties in protecting the interests of Florida. I am prepared to come and support this legislation and to thank the leadership on both sides as they have worked with the two Senators from Florida to try to do what is right for the country.

In the legislation that addresses the drilling, there is another important component for Florida; that is, there are a few leases out in this area from years past, decades past, that have never been drilled because they have never gotten the permits because of all that we have been going through, keeping these waters protected in a moratorium. Senator Landrieu has crafted a portion of the bill that revenue will go to four Gulf States from the revenue generated to the Federal Government from new leases. The interest of Florida, since there won't be drilling, is to get rid of the ancient leases that are never going to be drilled. So there is a provision in the legislation that will allow the swapping of these leases by their value for new leases in the area that can be drilled in what is called lease sale 181, and other leases in the central and western Gulf of Mexico, new leases that we want to be drilled where a swap would occur.

People say that is voluntary for the oil companies.

I ask unanimous consent for 3 additional minutes.

You would ask, if it is voluntary, why would they do it? Because there is a financial incentive for oil companies who want to pay for new drilling in 181 or elsewhere

in the central or western gulf, not to pay that by swapping out their financial interest in these ancient leases that are still here. They are of minor value compared to the entire value of the leases elsewhere in the Gulf of Mexico, but nevertheless that is there.

Why it is important that we keep the Senate bill intact and not expand it with any version of the House is because the House-passed legislation works for the Gulf of Mexico, but the House-passed version lifts the moratorium for the entire country and allows, with State legislative approval, drilling to come up to 3 miles off the coast of a State. Of course, Atlantic seaboard Senators, Pacific Ocean Senators, would be violently opposed to that, and then the Senators who start realizing that it starts getting into their military- restricted areas, their defense-restricted areas, would find that enormously objectionable. That is another reason we need to keep this legislation intact as it goes to the House and then comes back to the Senate.

My colleague from Florida, Senator Martinez, has made several statements on the floor--and it is my understanding that he will again--that he is given assurances that the protection of Florida will be there when this legislation comes back from the House. It is the privilege of this Senator from Florida to support this legislation.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, we are debating the Energy bill, the bill that would allow drilling in deep sea waters off the coast of the United States in the Gulf of Mexico. We have heard a lot of conversation about that. I don't want to repeat all of the arguments that have been made, but I want to put it in a perspective that I think might be useful to some who would be watching.

Of course, we have this debate against the backdrop of $3-a-gallon gas. Everyone gets excited about that, and they say it is caused by $75-a-barrel oil, and what can we do to bring down the price of oil? The law of supply and demand determines what the price might be.

There are those who think that is determined ultimately by oil costs, but that is not true. It is determined by the world market, and the United States is only one country that is drawing on the world market and asking for this oil to fuel our economy.

We must start with the understanding that the world runs on oil right now in a variety of ways and in a variety of places, which means that everyone in the world--whether they are in China or India, in Europe or the United States--needs oil.

Why oil? Why don't we have other kinds of energy? The answer is that historically oil has been the cheapest source of the energy we need. People said: Well, let's have wind, let's have solar. Wind and solar up until now have been unable to survive unless there is a serious government subsidy for it. As soon as the subsidy is withdrawn, all of a sudden we can't afford to generate energy from these other sources because it is cheaper to generate it from oil. So we have the infrastructure for oil built up, we have the infrastructure for gasoline for our transportation system built up, and it would take an enormous investment and a great deal of time to try to change it. So people need oil.

All right. There is plenty of oil in the world, and it is relatively cheap to produce in some parts of the world. But what is known as the lifting cost--that is, what it costs to lift a barrel of oil out of the ground and put it into that tanker--for Saudi Arabia is about $1.50. You can produce a barrel of oil at a cost of about $1.50 in Saudi Arabia. The lifting costs elsewhere are much higher than that.

If we come to my home State of Utah, where we have more oil than they have in Saudi Arabia, the lifting cost to get all of that oil is around $30 to $40 a barrel because the oil is locked up in rocks known as oil shale. That is why we don't produce oil from oil shale--not because it isn't there but because it can be produced more cheaply someplace else.

Since it is a world market, people put their oil on the world markets, and the world law of supply and demand determines what will be paid for it. The key number to keep your eye on to determine what the oil is going to cost is

the excess capacity that is available. Let me explain with some numbers.

Right now, the world as a whole is using about 85 million barrels of oil a day. The world capacity to produce oil is about 86 million barrels a day. These figures are not exact. They never are. They change from day to day. But let us use them as representative figures to illustrate the point.

All right. If you are in a position where you have to be sure you can get your oil for your future needs and you look at the world situation and say: You know, there is only a million barrels a day of excess capacity out there, and that million barrels a day could disappear with the snap of a finger--a problem in Iran, a decision by the oil minister in Saudi Arabia, another outburst--explosion, if you will--by the new President of Venezuela. A million barrels a day is not enough excess capacity to guarantee me that my oil will be there when I need it, so I will bid a higher price than I normally would pay just for the certainty that the oil will be there when I need it.

So the oil goes from $50 a barrel to $60 a barrel to $70 a barrel. We have seen it approaching $80 a barrel. Then when word comes out: Well, that excess capacity is a little more than a million barrels a day. Well, I may not want to bid quite so much for the oil. And the price will settle down a little. When there are indications that the supply of oil will be more secure in the future, the price starts to come down.

This is what we see in what is called the futures markets because people are buying oil for the future. They are making long-term contracts.

All right. The key ingredient in bringing the price of oil down is to make sure the surplus capacity above the amount of oil we use gets bigger and bigger. Right now, as I say, it is only about a million barrels per day. If it were 2 million barrels a day, if there were an additional source of oil, then the price would come down because you would have a bigger cushion to be sure you can get your oil in the future.

Look, there is overcapacity of 2 million a day. Back in the days when oil was available for $30 a barrel or $25 a barrel, the excess capacity was 5, 6 and 7 million barrels a day. People were comfortable making long-term contracts because they knew that excess capacity would make the oil available to them.

Just as a side note, in this body, we approved, along with the House of Representatives, back some 6 years ago authority to drill in Alaska. President Clinton vetoed that bill. It takes about 6 years for that kind of investment to bring oil on line. If the bill President Clinton vetoed had been signed, we would have an additional million barrels a day of oil on line in the world right now. That would virtually double the amount of excess capability that is currently available. But that was not done. We are where we are.

That is why this bill we are debating is so important--not just for the amount of oil that is there but for the amount of increased capacity it will deliver to the world markets when it comes on line. And then what happens? Then, by virtue of that amount of excess capacity above the amount the world is using, the futures price for oil will start to come down. That is the way the law of supply and demand works. Around here we have never been able to figure out a way to repeal the law of supply and demand. That particular law trumps virtually everything else we do.

That is one of the reasons I am supporting this bill, to say the time has come for the United States to have that impact on the world price of oil by virtue of our ability to produce that additional capacity.

But there is something else here as important as oil with respect to what is available to us in what we call area 181, and I am talking about natural gas. The same thing that I have to say about the impact of excess capacity on oil applies to natural gas. Natural gas is something more than just energy. This is why natural gas is doubly important. Yes, we use natural gas to heat our homes. We use natural gas to cook our meals. We use natural gas to generate electricity. Natural gas is the fossil fuel of choice. Everyone wants it. Everyone says it is clean, it is plentiful. Historically, it is cheap. Let's put in natural gas. When everyone wants it, that means the demand for it goes up, that means the supply gets tight.

We discovered a few years ago something about natural gas that is very obvious but that some people had not realized. Natural gas is the one form of energy we cannot import. Natural gas gets imported by pipeline. The only place we can bring in natural gas once we have tapped all of the natural gas available in the continental United States is by pipeline from Canada and Mexico. There is a lot of natural gas elsewhere in the world, but we cannot bring it to the United States because it comes in by pipeline.

Now, it can be liquefied. It can be put on a ship. It can come here as LNG, liquefied natural gas, but we don't have that many ports that can receive LNG. It is a very major financial investment to build the port, to equip the port to handle LNG, to build the tankers that can handle LNG. There are those who are doing that, but in the meantime the amount of natural gas available in the American economy is confined by the rising demand.

Natural gas, the petrochemicals in natural gas, are a critical element of the chemical industry. When the price of natural gas goes up, the price of all of our chemicals goes up. It is a critical element in the fertilizer industry. We are proud of our capacity to produce enough food to feed all of America and still make it a major export, but we cannot do it if the cost of fertilizer drives farmers off the land. And the cost of fertilizer is tied to the cost of natural gas.

When you realize that in area 181 there is not only enough oil to change the balance of the overcapacity that can bring down the futures market in oil, there is also enough natural gas to have a significant impact on the price of natural gas and help us with lower costs in the chemical industry, lower costs in agriculture, lower costs with fertilizer across the board, you realize that opening this area for exploration and drilling is something that should have been done a long time ago.

We know one of the main reasons why it was not. It has to do with State interests and State concerns about what will go on. This bill very cleverly and carefully crafts a series of royalty incentives to get the States on board.

With Senator McConnell, I went down to Mississippi and then to New Orleans to see firsthand the devastation. In the presentation that Senator McConnell and I received was an exposition of the damage out in the Gulf of Mexico to those lands that have acted as some kind of a barrier for future hurricanes. That area desperately needs to be rebuilt. It needs to be rebuilt for economic reasons, it needs to be rebuilt for environmental reasons. It is in serious trouble. The State can't afford to rebuild.

But with the revenues that are in this bill for the State of Louisiana, there is a possibility that they can start to rebuild and produce enormous benefits for all of their people and for all of the country. This becomes a source of revenue that can be dedicated to that particular ecological activity that is good environmentally and good economically.

So you put it all together, you have a bill that I think should pass unanimously. I know it won't. We never do anything unanimously around here unless it is completely noncontroversial, and something of this kind always has a little controversy connected to it. It probably comes as close to being the right bill at the right time in the right place as anything we have seen.

A year ago we passed a comprehensive energy bill that has us started down the road toward increased nuclear activity with respect to creating electric power. This bill, coming a year later, is a logical companion piece to the bill we passed a year ago because it starts us down the road toward alleviating the upward pressure, the constant upward pressure on the price of oil and the price of natural gas and doing it in a way that those States that have previously resisted this kind of economic activity now say we understand and we will participate in a beneficial way. That is why this bill is bipartisan. That is why it is supported by the Senators from the States most heavily hit by Katrina and the other hurricanes that occurred.

One of the things Katrina taught us that should give us further comfort as we debate this bill is that our technology for deepwater drilling is sufficiently stable that it can withstand a

hurricane of Katrina's force and not produce any kind of an oil spill, not produce any kind of an ecological difficulty.

It is interesting to recognize the greatest ecological damages from oil spills have come from tankers bringing oil across the ocean, rather than from oil platforms drilled in the ocean. If we want to reduce our dependence upon the oil being shipped in the most dangerous way in terms of the environment, we should pass this bill and proceed with this activity.

It comes as no surprise that I express my strong support for this bill for economic reasons, for environmental reasons, and for long-term planning reasons. It is, as I say, the right bill at the right time and in the right place.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, while the majority leader is still here, I understand the procedure he has followed, and that is to do what we refer to here as ``filling the tree'' with amendments so that other amendments cannot be offered.

I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside so that I may be able to offer an amendment.

Hearing objection, I wish to take a few minutes and explain the amendment I was intending to offer so that Senators will understand what the alternatives are that we could be considering today.

Madam President, just to pick up on the point the majority leader was making, I certainly want to build on the good work we did in this body last year with the passage of the Energy Act of 2005. I believe very strongly that the way to do that is to have an open process, allow Members to offer amendments, allow those amendments to be voted on, and see what the will of the Senate is. Unfortunately, that is not the process which is being used in connection with S. 3711.

I stated extensively yesterday the substantive reasons I think S. 3711 is not good legislation, and I will repeat a few of those points.

Let me talk about the amendment I wanted to offer this morning. The amendment I was going to offer consists of the text of S. 2253, which is the legislation we reported out of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on a bipartisan basis in March. My amendment would take that language and it would modify it to add the so-called 181 south area for leasing.

Let me put up a chart so everybody knows what is involved here. The white area on this chart, the box there, is the area that we proposed in our Energy Committee bill that we reported to the floor to open for leasing. That thatched area to the right of that, to the east of that on the map, is an area which would be open with the consent of the Secretary of Defense or under appropriate circumstances and conditions which would be specified by the Secretary of Defense. That is what our bill called for.

As I say, I would propose in this amendment, if I were able to offer it, to add the yellow area below that which is now being referred to as 181 south.

The legislation we came out of committee with and I would desire to have us consider on the floor today would require that the lease sale be conducted within a year. It would provide that leasing in the 181 area south be done as soon as practicable after the date of enactment.

Overall, the amendment I would like to have been able to offer would make available 7.37 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 1.58 billion barrels of oil. These are substantially more energy resources than the 5.83 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and the 1.26 billion barrels of oil made available under the pending legislation; that is, S. 3711.

At the same time, the legislation we came out of committee with and that I wish we were able to consider on the floor would provide there would be no leasing closer than 100 miles from the Florida coast at any point and leasing east of the military mission line under the bill, as I indicated, could only occur with the prior consent and agreement of the Secretary of Defense.

The 1-year timeframe for conducting the lease sale in this 181 area is intended to allow for full compliance with all environmental laws. The amendment does not impose any new leasing moratorium, such as the pending bill would. Also, it does not divert revenue from the Federal Treasury to four coastal States, as the pending bill proposes to do.

Earlier this year, I was pleased to work with Senator Domenici to develop and introduce S. 2253. That is the basis of the amendment I am offering. We had a hearing on the bill in committee. We reported the bill with a very strong bipartisan vote.

However, after the committee reported its legislation, several colleagues indicated they had problems with this bill, in particular my colleagues from Florida, who sought a new long-term moratorium off the Florida coast, which has been agreed to by those who are now advocating the pending legislation--this is a 16-year moratorium in a very large area--and my colleagues from other Gulf Coast States have insisted upon a provision that cedes to their States Federal revenues for oil and gas produced in the Federal Outer Continental Shelf off their coasts. Thus, S. 3711, which was written by Senators Domenici, Landrieu, and others, includes significant new provisions that I believe undermine the goals of our original bill.

I am disappointed we did not have a chance to vote on the bill which was reported out of the committee. I believe the Senate would have acted favorably on that bill had it been given an opportunity to do so.

S. 2253 is good energy policy; it is responsible fiscal policy. S. 2253 would have resulted in oil and gas being produced without locking up vast areas of the Outer Continental Shelf and without raiding the Federal Treasury at the same time.

As I stated in the Senate yesterday, because S. 3711, which is the pending bill, locks up these vast areas of the Outer Continental Shelf off the coast of Florida, and because the bill provides for the sharing of billions of dollars in Federal revenues, I must strongly oppose it.

The pending bill, S. 3711, expands areas under moratoria and sets precedence for imposing new long-term congressional moratoria.

This next chart is the one many Senators have been using to make many different arguments on the Senate floor, but the point is very clear when one looks at this chart. There is a vast area, the yellow area on the chart, that is being put off limits to oil and gas development for a very substantial period, 16 years, longer than virtually any of us are likely to be in the Senate.

The Department proposed, as I understand it, in return for gaining access to 2.76 trillion cubic feet of natural gas over what the Interior Department proposed--this bill currently pending in the Senate puts 21.83 trillion cubic feet of natural gas off limits until 2022. I think that is a mistake. I think it is a bad deal for America.

Two of these areas within the original 181 lease sale area that are more than 100 miles off the Florida coast would be offered for lease under my amendment. And most importantly, my amendment would not impose any new moratoria on Outer Continental Shelf leasing.

Likewise, the amendment I would offer would not include the ceding of Federal revenues to the four Gulf Coast States.

Let me make it very clear: I recognize there are needs to protect the wetlands along the gulf coast, and I recognize that the Federal Government should provide assistance to these

States to accomplish that wetland restoration and protection work. But I believe very strongly that should be money that comes out of the Federal Treasury. We should not be taking a stream of revenue that has historically always gone into the Federal Treasury--that is, royalty from production in the Outer Continental Shelf--we should not take that stream of revenue and divert a substantial portion of it directly to those States. We should, instead, bring those funds into the Federal Treasury, determine what the needs are for those States and for other communities in the country, and then appropriate the funds appropriately to meet those needs.

That is my strong view. That is what the amendment I would have offered would contemplate, that is what current law contemplates, and that is what the Supreme Court has always said was the appropriate course. Of course, I cited former President Truman and his strong position, which is consistent with the position I am advocating today.

In summary, the amendment I would like to have offered this morning, if the majority leader had not blocked our ability procedurally to offer amendments, would open this area called 181 south and also a larger portion of the 181 area originally than the pending legislation proposes to do. There would be an additional 1.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas made available. There would be an additional 300 million barrels of oil made available for our Nation over and above what is being made available under S. 3711.

The amendment would accomplish this in a manner that protects Florida's coast without imposing new leasing moratoria. It would also do so in a manner that protects the fiscal interests of our Nation. I regret I am not able to offer the amendment today for consideration.

Moreover, the amendment would achieve greater oil and gas production without setting dangerous precedents. I think one of the most disturbing things about what the Senate is preparing to do, if it goes forward and adopts S. 3711, is that we are setting precedents, both for putting areas off limits to production for long periods of time--a 16- year statutory moratorium--for areas that have not been subject to statutory moratorium, in some cases at all. I think that is a big mistake. I think the precedent we are setting with regard to so-called revenuesharing or ceding of revenues, Federal production revenues and royalties to coastal States is also a very major mistake, and it sets a very bad precedent which will come back to haunt us.

I know very well that the other Senators who represent coastal States will in the future come to this Senate floor and insist, as the Senators from these four Gulf Coast States have insisted, that if production is going forward off their coasts, their States are entitled to Federal revenue as well.

This is bad policy. This is bad energy policy. It is bad fiscal policy. It is a course of action that I believe the Nation will regret in future years if we go forward with it.

I am disappointed that there is no place in this debate for us to offer amendments to correct the policy. I am also disappointed that there is no place in this debate for us to address other important energy-related issues. We should be proposing amendments to this legislation with regard to energy efficiency. We should be considering the legislation that Senators Obama and Lugar have proposed with regard to vehicle fuel efficiency. We should be considering a variety of bills--S. 2747, the Enhanced Energy Security Act, which tries to put in place a variety of provisions that would add to the efficiency with which we use energy in this country. All of those are legitimate issues we should be able to address by amendment to the Energy bill on the Senate floor.

In fact, if we were building on the Energy Policy Act work this Congress did last year in the first session of this Congress, we would be, in fact, allowing those other very meritorious amendments to be considered as part of our debate as well.

I regret that. I regret the decision of the majority leader to deny us the right to offer amendments.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent my amendment be printed in the Record.

I yield the floor.