Boutique Fuel Reduction Act of 2007

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 1339 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Hastings). All time yielded during consideration of the rule is for debate only.

I yield myself as much time as I may consume. I also ask unanimous consent that all Members be given 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks on House Resolution 1339.

Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 1339 provides for the consideration of H.R. 415, to amend the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act to designate segments of the Taunton River in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as a component of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System.

This structured rule provides for 1 hour of general debate to be controlled by the Committee on Natural Resources. The rule makes in order four amendments which are printed in the Rules Committee report. The amendments are each debatable for 10 minutes, and the rule also provides one motion to recommit with or without instructions.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of this rule and in strong support of the underlying legislation. Introduced by my colleague from Massachusetts, Chairman Barney Frank, I am proud to be an original cosponsor of H.R. 415.

This legislation would designate portions of the Taunton River in Massachusetts as part of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers program. It is important to note that this legislation has support from every House member from Massachusetts and Rhode Island and from every government of the affected communities along the river.

Mr. Speaker, I would also like to point out that this designation only affects three congressional districts in Massachusetts and two in Rhode Island. It does not impact any other State in our country.

Mr. Speaker, the Taunton River fully qualifies for and deserves this designation. As determined by the National Park Service, and I repeat, as determined by the National Park Service ``the Taunton River is eligible for wild and scenic designation based on its free flowing condition and the presence of outstandingly remarkable natural and cultural resource values.''

Mr. Speaker, it is also important to note that this designation is distinct for different segments along the Taunton. Two segments of the river would be designated ``scenic'' and two as ``recreational.''

Now some of my friends on the other side of the aisle have suggested that the Taunton isn't scenic enough or that it's too urban for this designation. One of my colleagues even went so far as to say that the only thing scenic about this area is the graffiti on the bridges. Mr. Speaker, I find that statement not just wrong-headed but deeply offensive to the people that I represent. That kind of elitism serves no purpose and has no role in this debate.

I would ask my friends on the other side of the aisle who believe that the Taunton River doesn't meet the right criteria for this designation to actually pay attention to what those criteria are. The Taunton River is the longest undammed coastal river in New England. It is home to over 150 species of birds, 45 species of fish and 360 plant species. It is the largest contributor of fresh water to Narragansett Bay. And its shoreline provides for a wide variety of recreational opportunities. For the communities of Fall River, Somerset and the others along the Taunton, this designation will support the economic development plans within the area. In my district, the Fall River portion of the river, the ``recreational'' designation complements the city's plan for waterfront revitalization, which includes a marina and a boardwalk.

Lastly, Mr. Speaker, I want to address the baseless claim that this legislation is some sort of end around to prevent energy development in Massachusetts. This is an argument cooked up by one particular energy company that wanted to build a liquefied natural gas facility within a stone's throw of people's homes. This company has even purchased full- page newspaper ads in an ill-conceived lobbying campaign. Sadly, some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have bought into their false argument hook, line and sinker.

First off, efforts to designation the Taunton began well before any proposal for a liquefied natural gas plant was announced. My mentor, Congressman Joe Moakley, filed legislation to study the river's designation in 1999, while the proposal for LNG was made public 3 years later in 2002. Secondly, this legislation is based on a study compiled by President Bush's National Park Service between 2000 and 2002.

And finally, this LNG plant proposal has been roundly rejected by the United States Coast Guard, the United States Navy, and the Commerce Department, due to overwhelming navigational suitability, environmental issues and maritime safety concerns. In other words, there is nothing this legislation can do that hasn't already been done by the people we task to keep our waterways safe.

Mr. Speaker, this legislation has never been about stopping LNG or energy production. In fact, by denying the communities and the Taunton River this designation, we further hinder their ability to utilize the river as a catalyst for economic development. This bill is about protecting the natural and cultural resources of the people who live along the Taunton River. It's about telling the people of southeastern Massachusetts that their environment, their heritage, their recreational opportunities and their economic development matter too.

I very much look forward to this debate. And I am eager to hear what my friends on the other side of the aisle have to say about this bill. I encourage my colleagues to support this rule and the underlying bill.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, let me begin by saying that I have great respect for the gentleman from Washington State. But listening to his remarks, it makes me sad that this Chamber, this Congress, has kind of disintegrated to a point where there seems to be no collegiality and no kind of honest debate about what the facts are here.

I'm happy to yield to the gentleman.

I thank the gentleman for has question. I don't recall Mr. Frank's remarks verbatim. I am happy to look at the transcript. I did not say that. Let me respond here. And maybe the gentleman didn't hear my opening statement. But the Taunton River is eligible for a wild and scenic designation. But also part of it is eligible based on ``recreational.'' That is the word that the Bush administration's National Park Service has said is appropriate. Now, I very rarely agree with the Bush administration on anything. And I'm sorry the gentleman disagrees with the Bush administration on this. But what I find particularly cynical is the photograph that the gentleman just held up which is the exact photograph that this big-moneyed energy company published as part of an ad in a number of newspapers.

It is a photograph of the Taunton River. But the interesting thing about that photograph is the angle at which it has been taken. The fact of the matter is that this photograph that this big-moneyed energy company that my friend on the Republican side has held up is saying that this will be part of the, this area will be included in the designation which seeks to prove I think how inappropriate it has become because this industry has actually manipulated this photograph. But in fact much of that photograph is of a park.

You will note in the picture a World War II battleship. That is the USS Massachusetts. And let me show you it is no part of any industrial use today. It's part of a recreational area. The battleship is the centerpiece of a very important urban park called the Heritage Park in the city of Fall River. And there is a great deal of open space that is shielded cleverly, very cleverly in that photograph that was paid for by a big-moneyed energy company. On the opposite side of that river are boat ramps and houses that go right to the river for recreational purposes. And it's part of my district.

Now the gentleman maybe has a bias against providing working class people who live in urban areas any benefits from any kind of environmental designation. I disagree with him if that is his opinion. But he mentioned that the purpose of all of this was, in fact, to prevent an LNG site facility from being built in the middle of Fall River.

Let me put this out there so my colleagues understand this. There are currently only eight LNG terminals in the United States of America. Of those eight, Massachusetts currently has two LNG terminals in operation with a third one that has been approved by FERC. Massachusetts is the only State to permit not one, but two new LNG import facilities this decade in this country. Each of these facilities is authorized to double its output capacity.

I will yield after I finish my statement.

Reclaiming my time, the bottom line is we in Massachusetts realize the need for these LNG import facilities.

And I would like to point out to the gentleman from Washington, and if my geography is correct, Washington is still a coastal State, unless that has changed, but that his State has no LNG terminal in operation, under construction, or even proposed.

So when he implies that somehow the Massachusetts delegation is not stepping up to the plate in terms of making sure that not only New England but this Nation has energy, he is wrong. Massachusetts has been a leader on this.

Let me point out one other thing. This is not a Republican-Democrat issue with regard to the LNG facility and the Fall River. Mitt Romney, who the last time I checked was a Republican, and still is a Republican, was a leading opponent in the siting of the LNG facility in the middle of Fall River. In 2006, Governor Romney stated, ``Weaver's Cove and Fall River strike me personally as being an ill-advised site to receive LNG.'' Realizing that they were trying to site an LNG facility in a highly populated area, Governor Romney asserted, ``I don't like the idea of an LNG facility going into a populated area, not in the post-9/11 world.''

We in Massachusetts have worked with energy companies to try to site these LNG facilities safely offshore. The idea that you would site an LNG facility in an area where there are countless people within a 1- mile radius of this facility is crazy.

Richard Clarke, the terrorist expert said, ``This is a bad idea.'' Now that is one opinion. Another opinion is the U.S. Coast Guard said it is a bad idea. The U.S. Navy says it is a bad idea. The Commerce Department says it is a bad idea. You are the only one who says it is a good idea, you and a big moneyed energy company.

Mr. Speaker, we are hearing all kinds of red herrings here, but understand one thing, this is not about energy. This is about whether or not a working class city, kind of the home base of the industrial revolution that is located on this river, can be designated as a wild and scenic area, whether or not the recreational aspects of this river can be recognized, whether or not we can afford this city of Fall River the benefits to help them use this river as a catalyst for economic environment.

It is too bad that this has become an elitist debate about well, no, you don't deserve it because this is a working class, urban area, home of the industrial revolution. You don't deserve that designation. I think that is wrong.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the previous speaker, and I am confused because he doesn't address what we are talking about here which is the designation of the Taunton River as having a wild and scenic designation.

Again that photo that he held up, which my colleague from Washington State held up, which was a photo taken by a big moneyed special interest energy company, is inaccurate. I mean everything below the bridge seen in the middle of that picture is not covered by this bill.

Here is if you take a picture from the other side which actually is the part that we are talking about being covered, it is a much, much different picture. It doesn't fit into the strategy of this special interest big moneyed energy company, but the reality is you see a much different picture of what we are trying to protect and what we are trying to preserve.

If people want to have a debate on energy, fine. I would simply say Massachusetts is doing its part. We are actually moving forward on licensing more LNG facilities. We recognize the need to do our part. We are doing the right thing.

The objection to this site for that LNG facility is that it is in the middle of a densely populated area that when these ships had to go down the Taunton River, three bridges needed to be shut down. The Coast Guard said it was a bad idea. I'm sorry you know more than the Coast Guard, about I trust the Coast Guard to tell me about navigational matters more than I do any of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. The U.S. Navy complained about it. The U.S. Department of Commerce said it didn't make any sense.

So this is a smoke screen, and it really is an insult to the people who live in this area. These are hardworking people and they don't deserve to be a pawn in your political debate. So I would urge my colleagues to support the underlying bill and support the rule.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Would the gentleman yield to me?

That picture is inaccurate. You are holding up a picture that is inaccurate. What we are looking at there is not what is covered by this designation.

Mr. Speaker, we have all kinds of inaccurate statements being made here and inaccurate photos being shown here.

Let me repeat, as determined by the National Park Service, ``The Taunton River is eligible for wild and scenic designation based on its free-flowing condition and the presence of outstandingly remarkable, natural and cultural resource values.'' That is a quote from the National Park Service.

It is also important to note that this designation is distinct for different segments along the Taunton River. Two segments of the river would be designated as scenic and two as recreational. This is not something that Congressman Frank or myself came up with out of the blue. This is what the Bush administration National Park Service has concluded.

I mean, I trust the National Park Service to tell me whether or not something fits this designation or it doesn't fit this designation, more so than some of my colleagues who are trying to make this into a political football.

Again, I would show this picture which is a more accurate picture of what we are trying to protect. And I would also say again that what I find

particularly offensive about this debate is that the people who are trying to be denied the benefits of this designation are hardworking people from Fall River. These are people who work in factories. These are people who have really been an engine for the economic development of this country over the years. And they are working class people. All of a sudden we are told that somehow they don't deserve this kind of benefit from this designation. Talk about elitism.

The National Park Service says this is the right thing to do. The previous designation of the other part of the Taunton River, by the way, when my colleague Joe Moakley brought it up, was voice voted. Everybody here thought it was a good thing. Now because we are all into politics and it is the election season, people are looking for anything to try to make a political point.

Enough with the political posturing. Let's once in awhile do the right thing. Let's once in awhile listen to what the National Park Service has said on this issue. Let's do what the people of this community want. Let's help this community benefit from the economic development incentives that will come from this designation.

These are good people. This is a good community. I am proud to represent the people of Fall River. Congressman Frank is proud to represent the people of Fall River, and I urge all my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to put the politics aside and do the right thing and vote for this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

This is a photograph.

Yes, it looks so beautiful it looks almost like it has been painted, but it's a photograph.

Would the gentleman yield?

I would say first of all Massachusetts currently has two LNG terminals, and we have licensed another one. We are not opposed to LNG. We are doing our part.

Mr. Speaker, I feel like I'm in a Twilight Zone episode here. This doesn't make any sense. None of this makes any sense.

First of all, I would say to the gentleman that we have just as many LNG facilities as you do in Louisiana. I would say to the gentleman that we are moving forward. We just licensed another LNG facility.

I don't know what he's talking about. It doesn't make any sense to me when you talk about we are trying to frustrate our efforts.

Let me also say to the gentleman, with regard to this particular site, the United States Navy opposed the LNG terminal in Fall River, as they indicated it would disrupt their operations in their nearby Newport, Rhode Island, base.

The Commerce Department, Commerce Secretary Gutierrez ruled that Fall River would be an inappropriate site, citing the negative impacts on the flow of commerce along the waterway and environmental concerns. The United States Coast Guard. The Coast Guard.

Now you may be an expert on navigational issues, but I trust the Coast Guard more than I trust you on these issues. The Coast Guard has rejected the LNG plant in Fall River three times.

Captain Roy Nash, the head of the port of southeastern New England, found that the plan is ``unsuitable from a navigation safety perspective for the type, size and frequency of LNG marine traffic.''

So this site doesn't make any sense. So the State of Massachusetts said, but we want to do our part, so we have licensed another facility. So where are we frustrating attempts on energy?

I yield to the gentleman from Louisiana.

If I may reclaim my time, the U.S. Navy, the Commerce Department and the Coast Guard said this particular site is unsuitable. Oh, and by the way, here is another photo, not an artist rendition. It looks like it might be an artist. It looks, again, very picturesque, like it could have been done in oil colors. But this is another photo of what we are trying to protect.

Let me also say that the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act of 1969 does not discriminate between urban and rural. This bill is consistent with the law and recommended by the Bush administration's National Park Service.

I yield to the gentleman briefly.

I reclaim my time.

The gentleman obviously has not read the Coast Guard's recommendation on this issue. It is more than just about a bridge, and there are many bridges involved.

Again, I would say to the gentleman that the debate is not about an LNG facility, it's about whether or not this area deserves the designation that we are debating here today.

And I'm sorry, I understand it's a political year, it's an election year, and the people on the other side are just trying to make political points. It's just sad that they are doing so potentially at the expense of some good people in Fall River.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve my time.

There is a difference between the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald, I should tell the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, the Bush administration's National Park Service has suggested that this is an appropriate designation. Maybe they were brainwashed, I don't know. But it is just sad that you have, on the other side, some on the other side, have tried to make this a political pawn in your election-year politics.

This is really sad, and it's unfortunate, again, that the potential losers on this could be the hardworking people of Fall River and Somerset and the people along the Taunton River. This, to me, makes sense. Again, the Coast Guard has been emphatic in their opposition to this. I am interested. It's fascinating to see some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle claim they know more than the United States Coast Guard. But when it comes to navigational and safety matters, I trust them.

But when it comes to designations, when it comes to parkland designations and wild and scenic designations and recreational designations, I am going to trust the Bush's administration's National Park Service more than some of my colleagues.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I would just respond to the gentleman that on the issue of energy, Massachusetts has twice as many LNG facilities as Georgia. I would suggest he go back and do his part to help provide more energy for our country.

I reserve my time.

Mr. Speaker, how much time is remaining on both sides, please?

Mr. Speaker, I just want to ask unanimous consent to insert into the Record an editorial from the Fall River Herald News in support of this, in support of the underlying legislation.

Mr. Speaker, after that spin, I am going to reserve the balance of my time.

I will show more pictures. I will be the last one speaking on this side.

No, this is just a photograph. It is so beautiful it looks like art.

This is a photograph too. If you come up closer, you can see that it is a photograph.

That is correct.

I yield myself the balance of our time, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, in conclusion, let me say that this debate has been somewhat unfortunate because it has been about everything but what the underlying bill is about. As determined by the National Park Service, let me quote again, ``The Taunton River is eligible for wild and scenic designation, based on its free flowing condition and the presence of outstandingly remarkable natural and cultural resource values.''

It is also important to note, Mr. Speaker, that this designation is distinct for different segments along the Taunton. Two segments of the river would be designated scenic, and two as recreational. By any measure, this should be a noncontroversial bill. This should be up under suspension. There should be relatively little debate on this. I mean, this is a no-brainer.

But my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have tried to make this about everything other than what this truly is about, whether or not this community of Fall River, and the community of Somerset and other communities along the Taunton River can benefit from this designation; whether or not they deserve to be able to get this legislation passed, and use this legislation to help be a catalyst for economic development.

This is a hard working city, Mr. Speaker, good people who have hit some tough economic times and who are desperately trying to rebuild the city by bringing the waterfront back, and this would help.

And this is not about whether or not a LNG facility should be there or not. I mean, I personally believe it should not be there. But the State, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is doing its part. I mean, it is not like Massachusetts is saying no to any LNG facility. We have two up and running, and we have permitted another. So we are doing our part.

My friend from Washington State comes from a coastal State. There are no LNG facilities there. I implore him, help us out. Do your part. We are doing our part in Massachusetts, so this is not about us saying no to LNG. We favor LNG. We favor responsible siting of LNG and we are doing that. We have more LNG facilities than anybody else here. So we are doing our part. This is not about that. That is just a smoke screen. That is just a way to politicize an issue that shouldn't be politicized.

Now, the gentleman's suggestion that we need to start drilling in ANWR. The Republicans argue that opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is an imperative for lowering gas prices, although their presidential candidate disagrees with them.

ANWR, Mr. Speaker, is a pristine wilderness, one of the most important onshore polar bear denning habitats in the Arctic. But right on the other side of Prudhoe Bay is the National Petroleum Reserve Alaska. This area has been set aside for oil and gas exploration since the 1920s. And according to the U.S. geological survey, it contains more oil than ANWR, over 10 billion barrels of oil total. And it is open for leasing, Mr. Speaker. It is open for leasing. About 3 million acres have already been leased, and about 4 million more will be up for leasing later this year. But there have been only 25 test wells drilled there since the year 2000, and no companies are producing oil from NPRA yet.

So why would we need to open ANWR when we have this huge, untapped resource right next to the existing oil infrastructure in Alaska? And when a natural gas pipeline gets built, NPRA will be even more important. It holds over 60 trillion cubic feet of gas, nearly 16 times what ANWR holds.

The focus should be on the area that has the most oil and that is open for leasing that isn't a highly sensitive environmental area.

Mr. Speaker, we need an energy policy in this country. Unfortunately, from this White House we have gotten zero. Two oil men who are focused on nothing but what the oil companies want, and for too long a Congress that has been complicit in giving the oil companies what they want and not engaged in forward thinking policies to become energy independent. That needs to change.

But in the short-term, we also need to do something else because the fact of the matter is that there are citizens in our country right now who are paying record high gas prices, and we have a winter fast approaching where oil is going through the roof. We need relief now as well.

And that is why the President should do what the Speaker of the House has urged, and that is to tap in to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve which is now filled at a record high, and put more gas and oil into our market to help stabilize and lower prices to make sure that people in the immediate term can get through these difficult times.

And then we need to embrace the energy policy and the energy principles that the Speaker, the Democratic majority has laid out of a way to get to energy independence, a way to drill in a sensible and an environmentally sensible way embracing alternatives, clean renewable sources of energy now and in the future.

But what they're proposing is not the way to go. It is a smokescreen. This debate has been politicized unnecessarily. This is all about political points. It is sad that on an issue so noncontroversial that it has come to that, but it has. That's the way they want to play, but it's the wrong way to do things around here.

Mr. Speaker, I would urge a ``yes'' vote on the previous question and a ``yes'' vote on the rule.

The material previously referred to by Mr. Hastings of Washington is as follows:

Amendment to H. Res. 1339 Offered by Mr. Hastings of Washington

At the end of the resolution, add the following:

Sec. 4. Immediately upon the adoption of this resolution

the House shall, without intervention of any point of order,

consider in the House the bill (H.R. 2493) to amend the Clean

Air Act to provide for a reduction in the number of boutique

fuels, and for other purposes. All points of order against

the bill are waived. The bill shall be considered as read.

The previous question shall be considered as ordered on the

bill and any amendment thereto to final passage without

intervening motion except: (1) one hour of debate on the bill

equally divided and controlled by the chairman and ranking

member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and (2) an

amendment in the nature of a substitute if offered by

Representative Dingell of Michigan or his designee, which

shall be considered as read and shall be separately debatable

for 40 minutes equally divided and controlled by the

proponent and an opponent; and (3) one motion to recommit

with or without instructions.

I yield back the remaining time I have, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Madam Speaker, Lord, I don't even know where to start. I've sat here for the last 45 minutes and listened to the Blue Dogs. And I appreciate them very much because there's about 40 or so of them, I think, and they could do a lot to help us, Madam Speaker, with the energy problem. I just hope that they will stand fast.

I listened to my colleague from Arkansas (Mr. Ross). And I'm on his bill because it brings about more energy independence for this country, Madam Speaker. And it's interesting that the Blue Dogs talked a lot about all the things that we have done thus far, at least that the Democrats have done thus far, the majority, Madam Speaker. And I don't even know how to start to unravel some of the facts that have been laid out here tonight. There were some facts that I agree with, but there are some facts that are very, very misunderstood, and hopefully during this hour sometime, Madam Speaker, we can put some truth into it.

It's interesting that I heard some of the Blue Dogs talking about increasing oil production. And I know that in May of 2007 there was an amendment that we passed that prohibits us from drilling shale oil, where there's two trillion barrels of oil. Two of the speakers here tonight voted for that amendment to keep us locked out of that acreage out west where the shale oil is.

And Madam Speaker, if people could see this chart, May of 2007 is when the biggest spike in the oil prices happened. And I think that's a time when the speculators saw that this Congress was not going to do anything about our own oil production. We refused to do it. And I think the speculators took great advantage of this and said this is a country that's not going to look to their own resources, they're going to be totally dependent on foreign oil, so we'll do with them as we wish.

What has happened over the past, I guess, 3 or 4 weeks is people have been calling our office and calling me, Madam Speaker, and asking me if I had signed a petition; there have been several of them on the web page about ``drill here, drill now, lower prices.'' There's petitions on there from the Sierra Club and other environmental groups about not allowing people to drill. And as I got these petitions, and especially when I was at home, Madam Speaker, one day and I saw a petition on the counter of a gas station, and I guess the owner of the station had it there to give people something to do rather than talk bad to him about the price of gas, but it was a petition that said, ``Sign here if you want to lower gas prices.'' And so I came up with an idea that what I would do is start a petition, Madam Speaker, in this House where the American people could know how their Congress person felt about increasing the oil production in this country to lower their price that they were paying for gas at the pump. And so we came up with this very simple thing. In fact, there is no legislation attached to this, there is no discharge petition, there is just a simple statement where Members of Congress can make a statement to their constituents, Madam Speaker, much like our constituents have been making their thoughts known to us by signing these petitions online and at local convenience stores. This simply says, ``American energy solutions for lower gas prices. Bring onshore oil online. Bring deep water oil online. And bring new refineries online.''

And I put everybody's district, all 435 and the seven delegates that we have that represent territories of the United States. It gave people the opportunity to sign. And it simply says, ``I will vote to increase U.S. oil production to lower gas prices for Americans.'' And I don't care if it's the production of biodiesel fuel, biomass, oil, whatever it is, to make us less dependent on foreign oil.

And we've listened to a lot of the Blue Dogs tonight, but none of those Blue Dogs have signed this petition. And Madam Speaker, I have often learned in life that your walk has to match your talk. And some people say, well, this is just a political statement. It's not a political statement at all. We've had some Republicans sign it, we've had some not sign it. We've had some Democrats sign it, we've had some Democrats not sign it.

If you want to know if your Member has signed it, you can go to House.gov/westmoreland. And on that page we have those that have signed it and those that have refused to sign it. If you don't see their name in either spot, then we're going to take it that they did want to sign it, we've just not had a chance to talk to them personally, Madam Speaker.

But we believe that your walk should match your talk. And so we do have some Democrats on there, some people--Neil Abercrombie from Hawaii, a great leader, we have Mr. Cazayoux from Louisiana, Mr. Melancon from Louisiana, some from Texas--that are on here because they believe that we need to increase our oil production to lower the gas prices, and we do. That's just a fact. We heard about all these biodiesel plants, and those are great. But you know what? Until we start using our own natural resources--we see what the speculators did when we voted not to.

Now, oil came down $4 a barrel. It came down, and I understand one of the reasons it came down is because Ms. Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, Madam Speaker, sent a letter to the President saying we need to get into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is a reserve of our petroleum that we have, millions of barrels of oil that we would have in an emergency, in a crisis, in a disaster. She wants to release that, which means to me, Madam Speaker, that she realizes that we need more oil, we need more production. But because of the radical environmentalists that have controlled the majority, or at least influenced the majority greatly, they cannot afford to do what we need to do politically; it's not politically correct for them.

I think that the American people, Madam Speaker, are tired of us in this body being politically correct. They just simply want us to do what's right, the things that we swore, took an oath that we would do, and that is to protect the American people.

And as the Blue Dogs said tonight, this is not just an economic policy, this is a national security interest that we have. And we've got to own up to our responsibility and make sure that we live up to the challenges that our constituents have given us by electing us to this body. We have got to act. We've got to get out of the fetal position, and we've got to act and do some things that will bring about some relief at the pump.

A lot of them in the past 45 minutes or the last hour or so have talked about all the great things we've done. Well, with all the bills that have been passed, I haven't noticed the price of gas coming down one dime. It's almost like putting lipstick on a pig. You can make it look good, but it's only going to be a pig. So we can make things look good, we can make things look like we're doing something, but all we're doing is just making a nice window for people to view at. It's time that we got down to some hard decisions. And there are some hard decisions that have got to be made.

And there are things that we are doing. We have put up discharge petitions--and I say ``we,'' I'm talking about the minority party--but they're there for everybody to sign. The week of June 9, we put a discharge petition, ``No More Excuse Energy Act of 2007.'' What that would do is it would reduce the price of gasoline by opening new American oil refineries, investing in clean energy sources such as wind, nuclear, capturing carbon dioxide, and making available more home-grown energy through environmentally sensitive exploration of the Arctic Energy Slope and America's deep-sea energy reserves. Now, what that takes is 218 Members to sign that discharge petition. We hear a lot of talk, but we don't see a walk.

The week of June 16, H.R. 2279, Madam Speaker, Expand American Refining Capability of Closed Military Installations. It would reduce the price of gasoline by streamlining the refinery application process--which in 2005 was passed by a Republican Congress and later stripped out by the new majority--and by requiring the President to open at least three closed military installations for the purpose of siting new and reliable American refineries. A lot of people, Madam Speaker, might not realize that we import refined gasoline of almost seven billion gallons a year, almost the same amount of diesel fuel, Madam Speaker, that we bring into this country because we do not have the refining capabilities. Not a refinery has been built since 1978.

The week of June 23 it was H.R. 5656, the Repeal of the Ban on Acquiring Alternative Fuels; reduce the price of gasoline by allowing the Federal Government to procure advanced alternative fuels derived from diverse sources like shale oil, tar sands, and coal-to-liquid technology.

Do you realize in the energy bill, Madam Speaker, that was passed by this majority, that Federal agencies cannot use these alternative fuels? We heard a lot tonight from the Blue Dogs about using alternative fuels, increasing alternative fuels, but yet we will not let our agencies use it.

The week of July 7, this week, H.R. 2208, Coal-to-Liquid Fuel Act, which, Madam Speaker, happens to be authored by a Democrat, reduces the price of gasoline by encouraging the use of clean coal-to-liquid technology, authorizing the Secretary of Energy to enter into loan agreements with coal-to-liquid projects that produce innovative transportation fuel.

There shouldn't be one Member of this body not on that discharge petition to say let our oil go.

The week of July 14, we are going to have H.R. 2493, Fuel Mandate Reduction Act of 2007. It will reduce the price of gasoline by removing fuel blend requirements and onerous government mandates if they contribute to unfavorable gas prices. Right now part of the problem that we have with the high gas prices in areas in California and other cities that don't meet the attainment is the boutique fuels that we have.

The week of July 21 brings H.R. 6107, the American Energy Independence and Price Reduction Act. It will reduce the price of gasoline by opening the Arctic energy slope to environmentally sensitive American energy exploration. The development footprint will be limited to 1/100 of 1 percent of the refuge, and revenue received from the new leases would be invested in a long-term alternative energy trust fund.

The week of July 28, right before we go on the August recess, H.R. 6108, Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act of 2008, reduces the price of gasoline by enabling the United States to responsibly explore its own deep ocean to produce American energy. The bill would grant coastal States the authority to keep exploration 100 miles from their coastlines, and it would also allow States to share in the revenues received. As Mr. Cazayoux said today, it helps Louisiana protect their vital coastline and all the great natural resources that they have there.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to now yield to my friend Mr. Roskam to hear his comments.

I thank you for your comments. And just a couple of points that you made about the amount of money that we give to some of the people who are not friendly to us, even in our own hemisphere, we give Hugo Chavez $170 million a day.

I hear the other side complain about what Big Oil makes, and I don't know.

Big Oil, according to the records and stuff I read, make about a 10 percent profit, and I am not saying if that's good or bad for their business. But what do they think Mr. Chavez is making off of $170 million of U.S. dollars every day? And, listen, he is not our friend.

And the other thing that the gentleman has brought up is a great point, and we heard it today and I heard it on the floor earlier today that we need to all work together. Well, I agree we do need to all work together. But when the majority party brings the energy bills to the floor, some under suspension, when there's only 20 percent of debate on each side, no amendments, no committee hearings, no subcommittee hearing, no regular process, how are we all working together, Mr. Speaker?

Mr. Speaker, you know if we are going to all work together, if we're going to all be part of the process, if all the people in this country--this is a republic. It is a representative form of government. And if I don't have an opportunity to amend or give input into the process, my people are shut out of the process. If there are no amendments, nobody on this side of the aisle and many people on this side of the aisle, the people they represent are shut out of the process.

So let's do all come together. Let's have an energy bill on the floor that can work, this open rule. We can have 435 plus the 7 delegates offer changes, offer solutions, as Mr. Roskam just did, about the people that have come up with solutions in his district; as Mr. Scott did previously about the biofuel in his district. We all have good ideas, but when we are shut out of the system, you can't work together. And I don't know what part of that the majority doesn't understand.

I would like to now yield to my colleague from Georgia, Dr. Gingrey.

I want to thank my colleague from Georgia. That was a great test. I think anybody, anybody in the United States should be able to pass that test, Dr. Gingrey. I am glad you put it up, because that simplified it.

This is something, this little simple petition, I will vote to increase U.S. oil production to lower gas prices for Americans; 435 lines. So far, we have 191 signatures. This is just telling the American people we are ready to do all of the above. If you want to find out if your Member has signed this simple petition, much like the petitions that many of these people have signed, Mr. Speaker, that are listening to us, have gone on the Internet and signed petitions saying, Hey, drill here, drill now, lower our prices, and bring the U.S. back to being dependent--back from being dependent on foreign oil, go to House.gov/westmoreland and you will find out if your Member has signed, refused to sign, or is in the category of not making a decision because, Mr. Speaker, I feel like the American people are going to have to make the majority party understand that they want some change.

See, in April of 2006, then minority leader, now Speaker Pelosi made a statement that the Democrats had a plan. They had a commonsense solution to the skyrocketing price of gas. Of course, gas was about $2.05 then. So we are still waiting on that solution. We are still waiting on that commonsense plan. It hasn't been unveiled yet.

Although, in January of 2007, H.R. 6, the Energy Independence and Security Act, Dr. Gingrey, was passed in this House. The Republicans called it the ``no energy'' policy. I will read you some of the key words. This was a 300-something page bill. Crude oil was mentioned five times in that bill. Mr. Speaker, gasoline was mentioned 12 times. Exploratory drilling was mentioned twice in a 316-page bill about energy independence.

Offshore drilling was mentioned zero; domestic drilling, zero; domestic oil, zero; domestic gas, zero; domestic fuel, zero; domestic petroleum, zero. Gas price or gas prices, zero. Common sense, zero.

Now what was mentioned was greenhouse, 103 times. Green building was mentioned 101 times; ecosystem, 24 times; climate change, 18 times; regulation, 98 times; environmental, 160 times; geothermal, 94 times; renewable, 333 times; swimming pool, 47 times, because there was a swimming pool safety bill in the Energy Independence and Security Act.

Lamp, CFL, the new fluorescent lamps, 350 times. Three-hundred fifty times. Contains mercury. Only produced in China. We can't even dispose of it. If you drop one, you need to put on a mask, evacuate the house, let it air out until you can clean up a broken light bulb.

This was the commonsense plan, I hope not, that then Speaker Pelosi, then Minority Leader Pelosi was talking about bringing up, because gas has almost doubled, or more; maybe doubled when this commonsense plan came out.

But I want to read you one thing before I yield to my friend from Illinois. This was a statement made on January 18, 2007, the day, Mr. Speaker, this bill was passed. It says, ``It is sad to see the Republicans come to this. Now, they laughably say that this will lead to higher prices.'' That was Mr. Peter DeFazio from Oregon on how the Democrat's 2007 energy bill would affect gas prices. ``It is sad to see the Republicans come to this. Now, they laughably say this will lead to higher prices.''

Well, Mr. Speaker, I'd hate to say this, and I hate to say this, but we were right. It has led to higher prices. It has led to oil going out the roof because now the speculators in this world know that we, as a country, are not going to become energy independent as long as the leadership continues the course that they are on right now.

I'd like to yield to my friend from Illinois, a great leader in the energy battle and somebody that I think has made some real movement in the policy here, and that's Mr. Shimkus.

If you would yield for just a minute.

When these energy bills have come to the floor, have you been able to offer an amendment for some of your ideas that you have had here to present it to see if your constituency and your ideas could possibly be heard on this floor?

So what I hear you saying is we need to take the politics out of this, and we need to put people in front of power, and we need to put process in front of politics and do something that will move this country toward energy independence, rather than just staying in the fetal position, so-to-speak, that we have been in, and being held hostage by radical environmentalists who the majority may feel is a big part of their base. I don't want to put words in your mouth.

Right now, one of the reasons we are not being held hostage by our enemies, the people that supply us with our oil, is because we have the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. If it was zero, trust me, we would have a bad time getting any oil.

With a sail on the top of it.

I am going to yield now to my classmate that we came in together, my colleague from Texas, where there are thousands of jobs every day where people go to work working in oil fields, and that is my friend Mike Conaway from the great State of Texas.

If you will yield for just a second, every bill that has been passed through here has had Davis-Bacon, which is the union pay scale, attached to everything we have passed through here. So I am sure if they pass something, if they ever did about building a refinery, I am sure Davis-Bacon would be added to it.

I understand, but I am sure it would be part of what they do.

I think it is interesting, you mentioned the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and the letter that Speaker Pelosi wrote to the President. It is interesting that oil came down $4 a barrel. Now, if it will come down $4 a barrel on just a letter going to the President asking him to take the crude out of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, think of what it would do if we voted in this body to drill without even sticking a drill in the ground. These speculators would run for the hills. And so I think you make a great point. And trust me, if we didn't have the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, we would not be getting oil from our enemies because they would know that they had us down.

Mr. Speaker, in closing, we have got just a few more minutes here, let me just say this. I think what you have heard tonight is that this is an all-of-the-above solution. It is all of the above. But a very important part of this is this country producing oil, to increase our oil production.

Rahm Emanuel on TV said, yes, increasing oil production is part of the solution. The Speaker has acknowledged that increasing oil production or at least having more oil is part of the solution. But as my colleague from Texas said, we don't need to take that out of our savings account. We need to bring it out of our natural resources, out of the ground.

Senator Schumer in the Senate about 3 weeks ago said that if we could just get Saudi Arabia to increase oil production 1 million barrels a day, it would drop the price of gas 50 cents a gallon. I don't know if that is true or not, but at least on the other side of this building some of the Democratic leadership understands that increasing oil production would bring down the price of gas.

I don't know why it is so hard to get a bill like that to this floor. I think the reason is strictly politics. It is strictly the radical environmental groups that has a grip or their claws into this majority.

And so I think what is happening is we are putting power above people, we are putting politics above process. Because as these gentlemen have talked tonight, with these ideas that they have shared they have not had one opportunity to offer one amendment on the energy bills because they have been brought either under suspension, under a closed rule, no committee hearings, no subcommittee hearings. The process has been broken. And so when the process is broken, the product is flawed.

Let me just close with this: www.house.gov/westmoreland. Mr. Speaker, go there, see if your Member has signed this simple petition that says I will vote to increase U.S. oil production to lower the gas prices for Americans.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern) for yielding me the customary 30 minutes. I yield myself such time as I may consume.

(Mr. HASTINGS of Washington asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I oppose this unfair rule and the underlying bill that makes a mockery of our Nation's Wild and Scenic River law.

First, this rule unfairly restricts Members from being able to offer amendments on the House floor. It's not the first time. It's a continuing pattern that we have seen over and over and over again. While every Democrat amendment filed with the Rules Committee was made in order, this rule allows only two out of 15 Republican amendments to be offered on the floor.

Seven attempts were made in the Rules Committee meeting on Monday to allow more amendments to be offered and to allow the House to consider the bill under an open rule allowing every Member of this body an opportunity to offer amendments on the House floor. Yet Democrats on the Rules Committee voted to block each and every attempt to allow a more open consideration of this bill.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle may attempt to argue that some of the amendments weren't allowed for technical reasons, but those excuses ring hollow, Mr. Speaker, when they block every single attempt to allow for a more open debate.

Now, Mr. Speaker, to the underlying bill to designate the Taunton River in Massachusetts as a wild and scenic river. Mr. Speaker, I openly admit that I have never visited this river myself. But as they say, ``a picture is worth a thousand words.'' Mr. Speaker, I could say nothing at all, but a picture does say a thousand words. Here I have a photograph with me of a portion of this river that is anything but wild and scenic.

Now, a simple glance at this photo would be enough for the House to just halt consideration of this legislation. Such a heavily developed and industrialized riverfront, with its multilane roadways, massive bridges and fuel storage tanks should disqualify, should disqualify this section of the river from being labeled wild and scenic.

Now it's argued that the reason this portion is included is because it's ``recreational.'' Mr. Speaker, honestly, it's hard to imagine that one would choose to go swimming or enjoy a peaceful canoe trip through this portion of the river. Quite simply, this portion of the river simply should not be afforded among the highest environmental protections possible under Federal law by designating it as a wild and scenic river. Mr. Speaker, quite bluntly, if this qualifies, if this qualifies as a wild and scenic river under the intent of that statute, then downtown Manhattan can be a national forest and Six Flags can be a national park.

This bill was scheduled to be considered by the House last week, yet it was postponed and rescheduled again for this week. This delay was caused when questions were raised that the true purpose of the bill, to name this river as wild and scenic, was to block a liquefied natural gas, or LNG, plant that has been proposed to be sited there. With record gas prices and high energy costs, Mr. Speaker, this is a serious question, because passage of this bill would block the proposed LNG plant from ever being built.

Now my colleagues will argue, as they have already argued, that it already won't be built because the Coast Guard and others have raised objections and there are difficult hurdles under current law to overcome. However, the fundamental point is that today the law allows, the law allows today, for an LNG plant to be built if it can meet the necessary requirements. If it can't meet them right at this minute, then over time they may meet them. Or as the need for this energy becomes more apparent, then maybe the groundswell of support could allow this project to go forward. But if this law passes, Mr. Speaker, it will be impossible to build an LNG plant if this bill becomes law.

So, Mr. Speaker, at a time when the liberal leaders of this House block any effort to increase energy production right here in America, when gas prices are skyrocketing and Americans are hurting, now is not the time, is not the time, to make energy more difficult to get or more expensive.

Now the sponsor of this bill, Mr. Frank, testified before the Rules Committee on Monday. And Mr. McGovern in his remarks elaborated on this facility. He asked that the wishes of the

Massachusetts delegation be respected in naming this a wild and scenic river because it only applies to them in Massachusetts. Well, Mr. Speaker, I must note with irony, with irony, that a request coming from the Massachusetts delegation to respect their wishes on this river, this bill, in opposition to this LNG plant. The argument is that this is in their backyard. And yet, Mr. Speaker, members of the Massachusetts delegation have repeatedly, repeatedly, voted to oppose the wishes of the Alaska delegation. On what you might ask? Well specifically on Alaska's wishes to develop the oil reserves in ANWR. Mr. Speaker, the folks of Massachusetts may have big backyards. But they don't stretch thousands of miles away to Alaska.

We must recognize that if this industrial riverfront is permitted to be added to our Nation's wild and scenic rivers list, then truly all qualified rivers are diminished. This doesn't just affect Massachusetts. It affects every State in which there is a wild and scenic river. And in my home State of Washington, there are several.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose this rule and oppose this bill.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Would the gentleman yield?

Well, I appreciate the gentleman yielding. I tried to get him to yield when he was closing on the last bill, and he didn't. So when one talks about collegiality, one should start maybe with his own.

The point is, on this issue, is it not correct that in Rules Committee last night or the night before last when we were up there, you stated, and Mr. Frank stated, very specifically, that the House should respect the wishes of the Massachusetts delegation? And is it not true that the gentleman I think from Massachusetts and maybe other members of the Massachusetts delegation have done precisely the opposite as it relates to the wishes of the Alaska delegation?

Would the gentleman yield on that point just for clarification? Is the gentleman denying that this is not a photograph of the Taunton River?

Mr. Speaker, how much time remains on both sides?

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Westmoreland).

I yield the gentleman 30 additional seconds.

Mr. WESTMORElAND. If you can look at the overall connection of the dots, this is just another one of those connections that shows that the majority party here is not going to give a clear up-or-down vote on increasing our oil production. It is going to continue to give the world and other countries the idea that we are going to be dependent on their foreign oil, and it is another example of: Well, we may have stretched the truth, and the people ate it up.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, in my opening remarks I made the observation that passing this bill with what this picture shows--

I would be happy to yield to the gentleman.

Reclaiming my time, when I asked the gentleman if this in fact was a picture of the Taunton River, the gentleman responded in the affirmative. Now there may be some changes, but he did say this is the Taunton River.

Now in my remarks I said that this diminishes the wild and scenic rivers that are in every place in this country. I said that there are several of them in my State. So I would just ask my colleagues this one simple question: Are we going to change the wild and scenic designation in this country to look like this? Or like this? This is a picture of the Klickitat River which is a wild and scenic designation in my State.

So if we are going to argue on the merits of wild and scenic, and making something that is urban like this as wild and scenic, we need to take into consideration what it historically has been, like the Klickitat River in my State.

That is a fundamental argument that is going on here today. There are others things that enter into it, and I would be more than happy to engage in that later in my remarks. But this is a fundamental difference, and what they are trying to do with this wild and scenic designation in an urban area compared to what has been done all across the country, including my home State of Washington.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, before I yield to my friend from Louisiana, I want to ask my friend from Massachusetts, and I will be happy to yield, that picture you have, I understand, is an artist's rendering of the river; is that correct?

It is a photograph?

I thank the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, at this time I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Boustany).

Mr. Speaker, how much time on both sides?

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.

A lot has been said here just recently in the last exchange about plans. I have here a Boston Herald editorial called ``Cold Water on River Plan'' dated the 10th of July. I will read parts of it here:

``Bay State pols have a long tradition of using the law rather creatively to further their own political aims. But the effort by U.S. Representative Barney Frank to transform a stretch of industrial riverfront in Fall River into a 'wild and scenic' resource is as shameless as it gets.''

They go on to say, ``It is the latest attempt to kill a controversial plan for the Weaver's Cove liquefied natural gas terminal.''

I repeat once again, it's not people from other parts of the country talking about this. This is the Boston Globe. Or the Boston Herald.

[From the Boston Herald, July 10, 2008]

Cold Water on River Plan

Bay State pols have a long tradition of using the law

rather creatively to further their own political aims. But

the effort by U.S. Rep. Barney Frank to transform a stretch

of industrial riverfront in Fall River into a ``wild and

scenic'' resource is as shameless as it gets.

Think ``A River Runs Through It'' and you can picture the

waterways that typically win ``wild and scenic'' designation.

But until Republicans intervened Frank was close to securing

that protected status for the Taunton River, limiting

development along the river and its ``immediate

environment.''

It is the latest attempt to kill a controversial plan for

the Weaver's Cove liquefied natural gas terminal. A vote was

canceled yesterday, with Frank's office suggesting

Republicans wanted to make it a ``national issue.''

Well, they HAVE pointed out the irony of top Democratic

leaders (Sens. Kennedy and Kerry sponsored the bill in the

Senate) going all out to kill a plan that would ease the

delivery of natural gas to New England customers. . . .

Yes, environmentalists have been seeking a special

designation of the river for years. But if anyone believes it

would have gained this kind of momentum without Weaver's

Cove, well, we have some rusty container ships, fuel storage

tanks and warehouses along the Taunton River you might be

interested in.

The amusing thing is none of this seems necessary, given

that the Coast Guard has already rejected Weaver's Cove based

on quite ligitimate concerns about navigation and safety.

Guess you never can have enough insurance.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Westmoreland).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

We have had a discussion in several areas on this project. Let me start with the most fundamental area, and that's the designation of wild and scenic. I pointed out, by making this river, which is industrial--and I might add, by the way, that the initial study called for studying the wild and scenic designation only on the upper stretches, as I understand, of the Taunton River, not the lower. But the final report came back, because, as the report said, if the river could talk, this would be what they wanted.

My goodness, we are listening to rivers. I would like to see that testimony to see what the river exactly said.

But at any rate, the bottom half was put into this wild and scenic designation.

As I pointed out, this is dramatically different, dramatically different from other wild and scenic designations across the country like the Klickitat River in my district. We talked about the issue of power and siting energy plants.

The gentleman from Louisiana, where there are a lot of natural gas areas, among other energy producers in that State, is certainly knowledgeable when it comes to that. There is a lively exchange on this.

Also, the Boston Herald, as I pointed out said, editorially, a week ago, less than a week ago, that this is a shameless way in order to take this issue off the table.

But here is the final component, and we really haven't talked about that yet, but I do want to talk about that.

I have an article here from The Herald News, which is the Fall River Herald News, and it's an article, the byline is by Mr. Will Richmond, it was written on the 15th of July, which was yesterday.

The headline that I see here is ``Scenic Designation Could Sink Riverfront Businesses.'' I bring that up in this context because my friend on the other side of the aisle was making the argument that this designation would be

good for the economy and so forth, presumably from the standpoint of tourism and so forth, but there are some businesses that are located right in this area, and they have some real doubts.

Let me read a couple of excerpts, if I may, out of this article:

``With the U.S. House of Representatives scheduled today to vote on the designation of the lower Taunton River as part of the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, shipbuilders and other businesses located on the banks of the waterway are anxiously watching.

``The designation would hamper businesses, they say, possibly even leading to closures.''

Now before I go on, I would just say, how does that help the people that live in this area by this designation?

And I go on to quote, and I'm quoting a Mr. Donald Church, who is with Seaboats, Inc. He is the owner of Seaboats, Inc. And he says, ``It's all great to be touchy and feely, and it's great to protect the environment. But people in this city have got to have jobs.''

He goes on to say that because of this, there is some question, and it ``could easily lead to him selling his business,'' which, I might add, has a $5 million annual payroll.

On the other side of the river, there is another shipbuilder, Gladding-Hearn, and their president, Peter Duclos, and I hope I say that correctly, said, and I quote, ``Our feeling is that it's a stretch to be applying a noble environmental act on this part of the river,'' Duclos said. ``This area is industrial historically. Fall River wouldn't be here without a deep water part. I'm not sure this legislation is in the best interest of the businesses along the river.'' And he's talking about potentially adding 50 new jobs, but they have some real concerns about this designation.

Now, I might say, Mr. Speaker, from my experience in the western part of the United States, where we have these ``nice'' environmental designations, wild and scenic being among them, you have, our experience in the West has been, a restriction of use on these rivers, rather than an expansion. And this is precisely what these shipbuilder owners are saying with this potential designation on the industrial area of this river.

So we have three aspects to this, as I mentioned. We have the aspects of undermining what the intent was of wild and scenic designation as it was put in law to really protect wild and scenic. We have the issue of energy. That has been well discussed, especially when we have energy prices going up, and we have a potential here to locate an LNG plant. And then we have the issue of jobs in this area where there is concern in this area.

So, Mr. Speaker, I would say that, if for no other reason, it is a reason to defeat the rule, it is a reason, actually, to defeat the previous question so we can talk about energy; and I will be offering an amendment to that effect. But it is about defeating the rule so maybe the Rules Committee can go back, make an open rule and perfect this legislation to make it more palatable, not only to the Members of this House, but also to people that live in that area.

And, Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to have this inserted in the Record.

And with that, Mr. Speaker, I will reserve my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop).

I yield the gentleman 1 more minute.

Once again, Mr. Speaker, how much time is on both sides?

Mr. Speaker, I ask my friend from Massachusetts if he is prepared to close, if I close.

I just asked the gentleman is he acknowledging that the other was an artist's rendition? Is he acknowledging that then?

I am talking about the other one.

Mr. Speaker, I surmise from that that he is the last speaker on that side; is that correct?

Mr. Speaker, with that then I will yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, instead of considering a bill to designate industrialized riverfronts as wild and scenic to block an LNG energy plant from ever being built, this Congress should be debating bills that result in more energy and more energy production within the United States. Instead of bills that could result in higher energy costs, like this one, Congress should be working to lower gas prices and decrease the cost of energy. America needs to produce more oil and gas and energy using our own abundant reserves.

It is time for the House to debate and vote on bills to open ANWR, our oceans and Federal lands to drilling. If we were to increase the supply of oil, then the price of oil will decrease. Instead of allowing these proposals to be given a fair vote, the liberal leaders of this House are bending over backwards to block ideas to produce more American-made energy. Today, every Representative will have a chance to break Speaker Pelosi's blockage against bills aimed at lowering gas prices, and they can do that, Mr. Speaker, by voting no on the previous question. By voting no, we can end this obstruction and we can get to work.

If the previous question is defeated, I will simply amend the rule to allow the House to consider H.R. 2493, the Fuel Mandate Reduction Act, which will reduce the price of gasoline by removing fuel blend requirements and onerous government mandates if they contributed to unaffordable gas prices. This is a commonsense bill that will help lower gas prices by ending government mandates and manipulation that increase the cost to everybody's pain at the pump.

So, Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to have the text of the amendment and extraneous material inserted into the Record prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, I once again urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the previous question so that we can debate, in an open manner, the part of the energy crisis and solutions to the energy crisis that we face in this country.

And with that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, most Americans think that Members of Congress are somehow privileged and above the ordinary everyday concerns of the constituencies that we represent. I think all 434 of my House colleagues know that that's not true. By normal standards, we do get a very adequate salary, $162,500 a year, but out of that we have to pay our expenses of living in our districts and here in Washington, D.C. We have the same expenses that every other American family has.

This morning, before I left to fly to Washington, DC, I opened our credit card bill. We have a MasterCard. And on that bill we put most of our gasoline expenses and our routine living expenses. And my wife, Terry, has been working very, very hard this year to minimize the amount of expenses on that credit card. And we've both made an effort to make sure we only put things that we have to put on the credit card. So the vast majority of our MasterCard is now for gasoline.

And I just happened to look down the list of all the gasoline expenses from the early part of last month to right now, and it added up to over $600. Now, $600 is not an extraordinary amount, but a year ago that same amount of gasoline would have been about $300, maybe $350, and 2 or 3 years ago, it would have been about $150. And now it's over $600. And that's not taking any trips. That's not driving to see our families. That is my wife and my step-daughter and my day-to-day drive to work, drive to school, drive to the grocery store, do all the things that we do in everyday living in central Texas.

Now, as I said earlier, I make a very adequate salary and my wife makes an adequate salary. And it pinches us, but we can afford it. But what if my wife and I were on an income of, say, $4,000 a month, $48,000 a year? Having to spend $600 a month for gasoline just to go back and forth to work and to go to school and to go to church and to go to the grocery store would be a real struggle.

So we have a situation today where the new Democratic majority in the House has come in promising to bring energy prices down and a new commonsense plan for energy. Here we are, with approximately 5 months to go in this session of Congress, at least through the election in November, and energy prices are up almost 200 percent, gasoline prices, since the day that our Speaker, Mrs. Pelosi, took the gavel from Mr. Hastert.

And the response to the higher energy prices, at least so far, has been, at best, symbolic. We passed a bill giving the right to sue OPEC. OPEC supplies about 40 percent right now of our energy, our oil, so we're going to sue OPEC if that bill were to become law.

Several weeks ago we passed a bill suspending shipments of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve; that's about 60 to 70 thousand barrels of oil a day. There were great predictions that day that passage of that one bill would bring prices down $25 a barrel, and I think one Member said 50 cents a gallon. Well, the day the bill passed, oil prices went up almost $2 a barrel. And a week after that, they hit an all-time high of $135 a barrel. They have now come down a little bit, but they're still, I believe today's price is about $127 a barrel.

So I think it's fair to ask my friends in the majority, where is our energy policy to really bring energy prices down for America? I'm not happy that in my little part of America I'm having to spend over $600 this month when we pay our MasterCard bill just for gasoline. And if the projections are true, later this summer I may have to spend seven, eight, even nine hundred dollars a month just for basic transportation in Arlington, Texas.

Most people think that we're helpless, that we can't do anything about these high energy prices, that they're almost like one of the Ten Commandments. Luckily, and hopefully, the truth is not that; we have tremendous energy resources in this country that have yet to be developed.

We can do something about these energy prices, and we can do it with made-in-America energy. We've been debating whether we should drill up in Alaska and ANWR for the last 20 years. We actually passed a bill and sent it to the President that would have allowed that in 1996. The President at the time, President Clinton, vetoed that bill. Had he not vetoed that bill or had we been able to override his veto, projections are that ANWR would probably be producing in the neighborhood of two to three million barrels of oil per day right now. I say projections because you never know until you actually drill the wells and start to produce the oil. But there are huge oil reserves in ANWR. And the minimum assumption would be half a million barrels a day within 3 to 4 years of the go-ahead to begin production. And that's just one oil field.

If we want to go off the coast of California where we drilled the original offshore oil wells, where you still have oil seeps that naturally come to the surface, where you do have some producing platforms that were in existence prior to 1968, it's estimated that we probably have three to five billion barrels of oil available right there, and that we could produce another half a million to a million barrels just off the coast of California.

If you want to go to the east coast, where we've done almost no exploration at all because of various moratoria, if the Gulf of Mexico is any indication, we probably have billions and billions of barrels of oil reserves and natural gas reserves off of that coast.

We know that there is oil and gas off the coast of Florida that's not being drilled right now because of a moratorium. Interestingly, the communist Chinese are drilling off the coast of Florida through a lease arrangement with Mr. Castro and the Cuban dictatorship in Cuba. It would be ironic if the communist Chinese ended up getting more oil and gas off the coast of Florida than Americans do.

If you don't want to drill offshore, what about onshore lower 48? We have probably two trillion--trillion is a thousand billion--we have two trillion barrels of shale oil reserves in Wyoming and Colorado. In the Energy Policy Act of 2005, we passed a procedure to inventory those and to do an expedited permitting process of the Minerals Management Service so that they could perhaps come into production, but on the floor of the House last year this Congress put a moratorium on implementing those rules. So we're putting our shale oil reserves off limits.

So it comes as no surprise, if you look at all these areas where we've put the stop sign up, that oil production in the United States is going down. At our peek, we produced over 10 million barrels of oil per day in the United States of America. At one time we were the number one producer of oil in the world. That's down to a little less than six million barrels a day. We use the equivalent of nine to ten million barrels of oil per day just for mobility purposes. We're only producing in the neighborhood of six million barrels.

We have tremendous energy reserves in this country. And if we want to bring these prices down, we don't have to look overseas to the Middle East, we don't have to beg OPEC, we don't have to sue OPEC, we do have to take our energy future into our own hands and begin to produce more American energy.

It's more than just oil and gas, obviously. We have tremendous coal resources in the United States. We have somewhere between 250 and 400 years of coal reserves. We've got lots of research being done to convert that coal to a liquid, a diesel-like fuel that we could use to fuel our transportation fleet.

When we had the debate on the so-called energy bill last year in this Congress, the rules were set up so that no amendment on coal-to-liquids was made in order in the Energy and Commerce Committee, the committee of principal jurisdiction, nor in the Rules Committee, nor on the floor of the House of Representatives. So we passed an energy bill which I voted against because there really wasn't any energy in it. It had no coal in it. It certainly had no oil or gas drilling in it. It was basically a mandatory conservation bill.

So my statement to the American people this evening, Mr. Speaker, is pretty straightforward. We've got tremendous energy resources in this great Nation of ours. We've got the ability, within a reasonably short period of time, and I would say that would be 2 to 4 years, maybe 2 to 5 years, if we made a decision in this Congress to produce some of the energy reserves that we know we have, we could, in all probability, double the amount of oil

that we're producing right now. We could certainly increase it by three to four million barrels a day, if not double it. And if we did that, energy prices would come down.

On the world market, oil is a fungible product, which means it can move anywhere, it's a commodity. We have the ability, worldwide, to produce on an average day around 85, 86 million barrels of oil. Unfortunately, the demand for oil is about 85 or 86 million barrels per day, give or take a million barrels or so. So we have a situation where you don't have a cushion, you don't have a capacity cushion. And the econometric models have shown that if you don't have about a 5 percent cushion, which would be about four or five million barrels a day, that price is going to tend to spike upwards. And that's what we have today.

We have a demand-driven price because we do not have on the world markets enough cushion to dampen the speculation, so the American consumers are having to pay right now on average right at $4 a gallon. I don't know about you, Mr. Speaker, but I don't think American voters and the American citizens are going to be really happy if, in the face of these higher prices, our decision as a Congress is to just shake our fists and say we have the ability to sue the foreign cartel which we call OPEC.

So I have the ranking Republican on the Energy and Commerce Committee. I have been working for the last 6 months with a group of Republicans both on and off the committee. Several weeks ago, we put in a package of 15 bills. These bills, taken together, would produce more American-made energy for American workers and energy consumers. They run the gamut. I'm not going to go through every bill right now, but we look at the oil and gas industry, the coal industry, the nuclear power industry, the alternative energy industry. You name it. We take a look at it, and do something to bring into play American-made resources for American energy consumption.

I would encourage all of our Members of Congress to take a look at these bills. We are going to try to get them to the floor as quickly as possible. I certainly think that if we are naming post offices and are commending watermelon festivals and things of this sort that we certainly can find room to have some real energy bills on the floor and to have a debate and to, hopefully, pass those bills to the other body.

At this point in time, Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield to my good friend from Ohio, Congressman Latta. Congressman Latta comes from a distinguished family of congressmen. His father was the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee when I was a young pup. Our current Congressman Latta has come to Washington with the same common sense that his father exhibited 20 years ago.

So I would yield as much time as he may consume to Mr. Latta of Ohio.

I appreciate the gentleman from Ohio's insightful comments.

As he has pointed out, it's not a lack of American energy; it's a lack of willpower on this floor to develop that energy. What we need is American-made energy for America's families and factories.

To talk a little bit more about that, I want to recognize the distinguished conference secretary of the Republican Conference, the gentleman from Williamson County, Round Rock, Texas, Congressman Carter, for such time as he may consume.

I thank the gentleman from Round Rock.

Mr. Speaker, can I inquire how much time we have remaining in our Special Order, please?

Thank you. I would now like to yield such time as he may consume to Mr. Gingrey of Georgia, a physician, who, before he became a Member of Congress, was a baby doctor and delivered over 5,000 American lives into our great Nation, and is concerned about their future and wants to make sure they have affordable energy.

Dr. Gingrey.

I thank the gentleman. I want to point out he needs to change his sign. He has his ``9'' upside down. If you subtract 5 cents from $3.98, you get $3.94 or $3.93. You don't get $3.63. He has his ``6'' and ``9'' down there.

Mr. Speaker, I think you begin to get the point we are trying to put across this evening. America has got great energy resources. We are not using those resources right now. For various political reasons, we have put them off limits.

We are not allowing any exploration or production in ANWR in Alaska. We are not allowing any exploration or production off the West Coast of the United States. We are not allowing any exploration or production off the East Coast of the United States. We are not allowing our shale oil resources to be developed in the interior of the United States. We are not developing our coal resources with the clean coal technology that the gentleman from Ohio spoke about. So we are a victim of self- inflicted wounds in this country.

I would like to say that it can't get any worse, but it can. I was just on a congressional delegation that visited Europe. We went to Slovenia and to Italy to interact with the European parliament and then toured some NATO bases in Italy. They are paying the equivalent of $9 a gallon for gasoline, $9. So even though we think $4 a gallon is way too high, there are other parts of the world that are paying double what we are paying.

If our energy prices continue to go up, there will be consequences. General Motors just announced yesterday they are closing four of their automobile assembly plants in this country. Ford Motor Company, one of the icons of American industry, their stock is selling at almost an all-time low, at least a modern era all-time low. They just divested part of their company. They sold it to an Indian automobile company. The higher prices go, the more uncompetitive America is in world markets and the more Americans are thrown out of work. It is kind of a self-propelling cycle.

We need to do something about it. The good news is that we can do something about it. We have the ability more than any other Nation in the world to produce our own energy for consumption here in the United States. American-made energy for American families and factories is a doable deal. It is not a pipe dream. But we have to start in this Congress.

Now, we have a package of 15 energy bills that have been introduced at various times in this Congress. They are active. They have bill numbers. The Speaker of the House and the majority leader and the chairwoman of the Rules Committee and the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee and the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee could schedule these bills for committee action, could schedule these bills for floor action and bring them to the floor.

It wouldn't bother me a bit if the Speaker wanted to bring these to the floor under an open rule; let Members of both political parties go to the Rules Committee and have amendments made in order. Let's have a full, fair, open debate in committee, the Rules Committee and on the floor of the House of Representatives.

Some of these bills would probably pass on a suspension calendar if they were brought to the floor. Some of the bills would be very controversial. The access bill, opening up ANWR, H.R. 6107, would be a close vote, no question about that, but I think a majority of the House of Representatives would vote in the affirmative to let us develop an energy resource that could have as much as 10 billion barrels of oil in it. On a daily basis that would be somewhere between 1 and 2 million barrels per day with existing technology, if we were to make the decision to let that go and to start producing it.

We have a shale oil reserve bill. We have an alternative fuel for defense and aviation bill. Mr. Gingrey talked about that. We have a- coal-to-liquids bill that is Mr. Shimkus' bill that has a Democrat sponsor, Mr. Boucher, the subcommittee chairman of the Energy and Air Quality Subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee. We have a renewable fuel standard bill that would take the renewable fuel standard back to the 2005 Energy Policy Act. We have a bill to encourage new refineries, Congresswoman Heather Wilson's bill. We have a bill on speculation that was introduced by myself. We have a boutique fuels bill, H.R. 2493, introduced by our Republican whip, Mr. Blunt. We have a bill that provides for some tax provisions by Mr. Terry of Nebraska. We have some bills on nuclear energy. We have an Outer

Continental Shelf bill that has been introduced by Congresswoman Myrick of North Carolina.

I could go on and on. The point I am trying to make is we have American energy resources that could be developed and I think should be developed. We are not hopeless, we are not helpless, but right now we have a majority that, for some reason, has decided that it is okay for American citizens to pay these high energy prices, and, as I said earlier, if we sit here on our hands and do nothing, the prices are going to go up and up and up, which is not a good thing for our economy.

Mr. Speaker, with all due respect, we are planning a series of special orders. We are going to continue to try to educate the American people on the energy situation. But we are not just out here complaining and whining and bemoaning our fate. We have a positive solution that, if implemented and sent to the President and signed into law, would begin to bring immediate results in the terms of additional energy resources and lower energy prices.

Let's work together. As Daniel Webster says in the saying above the Speaker's rostrum, let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions, promote its great interests, and see whether we also in our day and our generation can do something that will be seemed worthy to be remembered by future generations.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

And just to make sure that my constituents know that I have not changed States, it's Michigan. It starts with an ``M,'' it's up north, it's cold, generally. I can understand that. But I'm sure proud to represent Michigan, and more importantly, the Seventh District of Michigan in this great House of Representatives.

Tonight I am committed to talking about an issue that is of extreme importance to my constituents, and in fact from what we read, constituents of all of our districts all over this great United States because we are in a time and place and setting right now that, frankly, we aren't used to.

And may I submit tonight to all who would listen that, frankly, I don't think we should ever get used to it for America is too great of a Nation and has been the ambassador of great blessing to the rest of the world in many cases. It has set the course, has charted the way toward greater economic achievement, standard of living, advances in technology, business, industry, education, medicine, and transportation.

I happen to come from the district where Henry Ford had his home, made homes and schools for his employees in a great part of my district, used the resources from that district, including during some wartimes some Sassafras trees just three miles from my house that were used to make a light but strong frame for his motor cars with the absence of steel at that point in time because of the war effort.

I come from the State that has been known as the Motor Capital of the World, Michigan. Detroit has set the standard that the rest of the world has followed, emulated, copied, and sometimes even expanded upon, and yet still America, Michigan, the Motor Capital, charts the way.

Just the other day--I tell this story for a purpose, but just the other day I had something of an experience happen to me that has never happened before, nor did I expect it to happen. I filled the tank of my Harley Davidson motorcycle, which has a 5-gallon tank, and it cost me over $20. Now, for those of you that have ridden motorcycles, it is almost unbelievable to think that a vehicle that gets great gas mileage, that has a small tank like that would ever cost double digits, let alone over $20 to fill. But that's the place we're in right now with gas today on average across the United States at $4.04 a gallon. My Harley happens to take premium. So I paid $4.27 a gallon for that 5- gallon tank fill.

Less than 2 years ago, very seldom, if ever, would I double-digit fill my tank, even if it were on empty. Now, I don't ride my Harley Davidson for transportation anymore.

It's primarily for recreation, but 38 years ago when I started riding my first motorcycle it was for transportation, to get to and from my work.

Over the course of successive years, I would use my motorcycle in the better seasons of the year, the warmer time, to ride to work and enjoy that experience but also as commuting. I don't do that anymore, but we're paying gas prices now that should not be part and parcel of what America is.

We talk a lot about energy independence and being willing to compete and make sure that the rest of the world has to compete with us, as opposed to the other way around. And yet, up to this very day, in the outcome of what has gone on in Congress, it has been just talk and no action.

Last week, I heard the governor of our great State of Michigan announce on a major radio talk show that she was now riding a bicycle to the Capitol from her governor's residence each day, and when the host expressed concern about her safety, she said, oh, no problem, my security detail are following me on their bicycles as well.

Now, that's a nice story. I don't give any negatives toward our governor for being efficient in her use of energy resources, but you've got to understand that, when I heard that, it shocked me. And in fact, if not angered, it frustrated me to think that the governor of the motor capital of the world was riding a bicycle to work, even though she has an energy efficient, flex-fuel vehicle that I've seen her use and seen her actually fill the gas tank with fuel.

Right now, more importantly, getting to the real world of real people, people who pay those gas prices each day, people who pay their taxes, that includes supporting this Congress in what we do, right now most Michigan families that I know of, as I go back to my district each weekend, are giving up things like nights out eating at restaurants or family vacations or traveling to family events in order to cover the rising cost of gasoline. If Congress does not take action soon, families will be giving up much more than that. They will be giving up very specific needs, necessities in their life. And in fact, what I've heard in many town hall meetings, some are already giving up even necessities of their life in order to pay for the gasoline to get to their workplace the next day in order to sometime hopefully pay for some of these necessities.

Just this past weekend, AAA announced that the nationwide average gas price finally reached over $4 per gallon. It's been much higher in Michigan for several weeks. High gas prices are affecting families, truckers, farmers, small business owners. I met a small business owner in my office today who said the cost of transporting copy machines, office equipment to and from her client is getting almost prohibitive. Emergency services, public safety, and numerous other entities in Michigan's Seventh District and all over this U.S. are being negatively affected by the high cost, and I say the unnecessarily high cost, of fuel.

Despite fuel costs at levels previously only seen in Europe, leadership in this Congress refuses to increase American energy production. Instead, Speaker Pelosi and leading House Democrats would rather increase taxes on domestic energy production and increase our reliance on OPEC or, as suggested last week, sue OPEC for what all that's worth.

On a related note, the United States Department of Commerce recently announced the U.S. trade deficit reached its highest level in 13 months in April. Our trade deficit also increased by $4.1 billion between February 2007 and February 2008.

This is why our country is facing a rising trade deficit, even though American-made exports grew by 12 percent in 2007. The issue related to energy and the cost of energy has a direct influence on this. This is why we need to provide incentives to increase America's investment in alternative energy and overall production of energy.

The United States imports around 12 million barrels of oil a day, and a barrel of oil has gone from $70 to $140 over the last year, dramatically increasing our trade deficit. Our reliance on imported oil and increased oil prices means we are sending even more money to foreign countries and some that don't like us very much at all and certainly don't share our interests.

For both economic and national security purposes, and again, I want to reiterate that, national security purposes, Congress needs to finally get serious about an energy plan that truly lowers prices at the pump, reduces our dependence on foreign oil, and makes real progress towards energy independence. Instead of increasing our dependence on OPEC, America needs to return energy production to the United States. Doing so will create American jobs and provide needed economic stability and transportation that's efficient and usable to our American taxpayer.

The answer to our current energy crisis must be multi-pronged, and I have cosponsored legislation to provide incentives along those lines for solar, wind, cellulosic ethanol, biodiesel and other green alternatives. We must increase domestic energy production through carbon-free nuclear power and clean coal technology as well. I'm also cosponsoring legislation that would encourage conservation with tax credits for green buildings and legislation that would spark a revolution in clean hydrogen technology.

There are many sources where we can move toward if we're willing to dig down deep and do what's necessary and walk away from those unnecessarily strong, critical, excessive environmental forces that don't speak to the welfare of this great country.

Today, I introduced a discharge petition, something that isn't done regularly in Congress, something that isn't successful regularly but has been. I trust that this discharge motion will be. As of this point in time, with just a few hours with that discharge motion being on the floor, 93 of my colleagues have signed on, moving toward the 218 that are necessary.

This petition, if effective with 218 signatures, will force a vote on Congressman Mac Thornberry's No More Excuses Energy Act, an Act suitably entitled, legislation to increase U.S. energy production and invest in alternative sources of energy as well.

This appropriately named legislation would impact the price at the pump and lower electric bills. It would encourage the construction of new refineries, boost alternative energy, supplemental energy development by extending the wind production tax credit for 10 years, giving some certainty that if I were to invest in wind energy production, I would have a reasonable amount of time to see a return on my investment.

It would increase American oil production by allowing environmentally sound drilling in Alaska, the Outer Continental Shelf and the Gulf of Mexico, and it would help increase our supply of electricity by encouraging the construction of new nuclear power plants. Even leaders, in fact, one of the founders of Greenpeace, have come out strongly encouraging the use of nuclear power as being clean, green energy, not given over to continuing production of greenhouse gases.

Rather than increase taxes on domestic energy production, as some in Congress have proposed, I'm working to pass sound legislation that will bring down the price of gas and reduce our dependence on Middle East oil. Legislation like the No More Excuses Energy Act of Mac Thornberry would increase the supply of American energy and increase the number of good paying jobs in this country and in my district, the Seventh District of Michigan.

Policies such as a 23-year moratorium on exploring and developing offshore production of clean and green natural gas need to be lifted in order to lower prices and reduce our dependence on foreign gas. Natural gas provides 23 percent of our Nation's energy. It should be more. And America is the only developed Nation that prohibits offshore production and exploration of this clean, green, clean burning resource, and Americans are paying higher electricity and heating bills as a result of this.

Like all of you, I'm tired of paying these high prices. Whether it's for my motorcycle, whether it's for my car or whether it's for my pick- up truck, I'm tired of paying this because it's unnecessary, as we've done nothing to change that except talk, and it's time to put action into place.

I know high prices are affecting all of us. This is unacceptable. It is unacceptable for America to put up with this. The good people of south central Michigan, the good people of Michigan, the good people of the rest of the States in this wonderful country who depend on gasoline or diesel to get to work, drive their kids to baseball practice and visit family members deserve better.

The volunteers who offer to drive veterans to VA hospitals in my district and other districts in other States deserve better.

The volunteers who offer to drive Meals on Wheels to needy senior citizens deserve better than this.

Our churches and synagogues, our places of worship all across this great country that will be looking at looming fuel bills that many will be unable to pay this coming heating season deserve better than this because America doesn't need to be in this situation.

So I'm delighted that tonight I'm joined by a number of my colleagues who will add to what has been stated already, probably more eloquently, with points of experience that come from all over this country. I appreciate their commitment to doing something more than talking about energy independence, doing something more than talking about resuming America's position of leading the world in all areas, including the area of energy production and usage.

We have blessed the world with our standard of living, with our technology and with our energy, and it is time to get about that project again.

So at this time, I would like to ask my good friend and colleague from Georgia, Dr. Paul Broun, to add to what has been said. I appreciate you taking the time to be with us this evening.

Well, Congressman Broun, I think we want to do that. And I think you've brought up some points that are interesting to think about. Not only do we have a governor riding a bicycle to the Capitol, we are exploring for ice on Mars, but not doing exploration for oil-- that we know is there----

In Alaska, in ANWR.

And for those nations that love America and appreciate America, we're not standing in a

strengthened position that we can afford to them the assurance that America will be there when necessary because we can take care of ourselves, we're independent. And I think those are issues you bring up.

I'm delighted that we have the Dean of the Michigan delegation here, Congressman Fred Upton, who has been here through a lot and I'm sure has taken a lot of grief on this issue.

And Congressman Upton, before I turn to you, let me just, for the record, state, as you and some of my longer serving Republican colleagues are chastised for not getting this done in the House, you have attempted to get it done on numerous occasions. If we look back at the last decade, by the numbers, votes on ANWR exploration: House Republicans, 91 percent support it; House Democrats, 86 percent opposed.

Coal-to-liquid: House Republicans, 97 percent support it; House Democrats, 78 percent opposed. Oil shale exploration: House Republicans, 90 percent supported every vote on that in the House; House Democrats, 86 percent opposed.

Moving to the Outer Continental Shelf exploration, where right now foreign countries like Japan, China and Mexico are within 44-50 miles of our shores, and they are drilling and taking out natural gas and oil. On these votes, House Republicans, 81 percent support it; House Democrats, 83 percent opposed.

And then finally, refinery increased capacity, and now that we're offering the ``no-more-excuses'' Energy Act, the opportunity to put them on abandoned military facilities, government lands, House Republicans, 97 percent support it; House Democrats, 96 percent opposed.

Who is willing to take action? Who has evidenced that by their votes in this great body, this House of Representatives? Republicans, 91 percent, when you put it all together, of House Republicans have historically voted to increase the production of American-made oil and gas while 86 percent of House Democrats have historically voted against increasing the production of American-made oil and gas.

And so why do we see an ``energy-less'' energy bill that you talked about that gives incentives for bicycle riding and not energy? I think we have to say it's a leadership problem. So I thank you for bringing up those points.

Congressman Upton, from my home State of Michigan, I want to turn it over to you as well for a little perspective.

As long as my colleagues don't yield and sing them the theme song.

If my colleague could yield just a moment here on one point that ties into that. We heard yesterday from one of our Senate colleagues from a northern State, a northeastern State, say that what we ought to do is buy one million barrels a day from Saudi Arabia. That would reduce the cost at the pump by about 50 cents. Well 50 cents right now would be great. But why not take that from ANWR? We can get one million barrels per day from ANWR right now, we are told, at least that, if we are to take it from there, and not have to buy it from any other foreign country, have it shipped to us from any other foreign country, and use it exactly like you said down here to make this great country run on its own fuel as opposed to buying from someplace else.

I thank you for that and the points you make so clear.

I would like to yield back for a moment to my good friend from Georgia, since we have two Michiganders here and two Georgians now speaking, Dr. Paul Broun, for some additional comments, I know you have a point to make, before I go on to my good friend from Oklahoma.

Congressman Broun, you point out the fact that we have all sorts of energy sources. And we ought to be using them and developing them.

I want to move to a good friend, colleague and leader in our conference from Oklahoma. Congressman Cole, I appreciate your joining us tonight. I know you have taken some ribbing already about Oklahoma. I know you can handle it, but certainly I know our people would like to hear what you have to say about this issue.

I thank you for sharing that history. It is a good point to know what has been attempted and what hasn't been accomplished. But it would also give the opportunity for our constituents to voice their concerns now with factual information to say there are things you can do. Now get it done.

In the time remaining, I would like to turn a portion of that over to my good friend and colleague from Texas, bringing the southern States in now, Congressman Randy Neugebauer.

I thank my good friend and colleague from Texas for ending it on a point that is poignant, that reminds us what this really costs. I wish we could go on and on tonight to bring out more points like this. This is critical. It is a security issue, as well as a point of life, and you made it very clear. I don't want to write a check for $170 million to Hugo Chavez. Let's get it done.