A bill to designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 127 South Elm Street in Gardner, Kansas, as the "Private First Class Shane R. Austin Post Office".

Madam President, I thank Senator Inhofe for yielding to me. I am going to take a very few minutes. I have not had a second round on this. I assume both of us will. I have to leave the floor shortly for another meeting. I will stay here up to the last minute. I want to make a couple statements about the bill, as introduced, and what it does in terms of the transportation, gasoline, and diesel consumption in the country.

We have just had the Senator from California explain an amendment that is no longer an amendment; it is in this bill. The Senator expressed in a very profound way, in a very lengthy explanation, this provision which the Senator from California originated. But we must understand that, today, it comes to us from the Commerce Committee, wherein the Feinstein proposal is encapsulated in the bill that was managed in committee by Senator Inouye and Senator Stevens.

I believe Senator Feinstein would join us in giving our appreciation and thanks to the Commerce Committee for the courage they showed. They met to try to help us put together a bill that would address the energy problems of our country and, obviously, immediately we ran into provisions of the law, or matters of law, that had to be changed, which were not part of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

The big one out there is what do we do about CAFE standards. What happened before is we had a big hoopla on that, and we will probably still have it, so the Senator from California ought to be ready. Obviously, even though she did not amend, it is in the bill. Those who don't like it will offer an amendment to the bill striking or modifying that provision of the CAFE standards of America that is in the bill.

Over all these years, we have been going back and forth, never getting anything done--until this year. Clearly, this bill before us, which took the CAFE standards and finally said we are going to adopt the changes recommended in the Feinstein bill, which have been bantered around--we are going to adopt it in the language of the Commerce Committee and send it over to the leader, and it will be incorporated in the bill. So when the bill comes over, it has whatever was done in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, to save our consumption of gasoline and related products. It has the CAFE standards and a couple of other provisions. I want to say that I believe the bill before us includes the CAFE standards we have spoken of, which were put in the bill by the Commerce Committee, headed by Senators Stevens and Inouye.

In addition to that, which is by itself one of the biggest modifications of our

gasoline usage in this country and, obviously, it has a ways to go because it might not clear the Senate later today, or tomorrow, or whenever we figure out that the Senators who want their amendments finally come up. But as before us, this is the largest transportation savings of fuel in history. CAFE standards all by themselves would have been a very big achievement. Everybody knows that. That is in the bill. So there is one.

Secondly, we adopted just about what the President spoke of in his State of the Union Address with reference to biofuels and a new standard for those set forth in the 2005 Energy bill; that is, the big bill. We started down the path of biofuels, but all we had in there was corn-produced biofuels. What we have done in this bill is mandated 21 billion gallons which has to come from cellulosic ethanol by 2022. So the total biofuel required in our bill is 36 billion gallons. Let's hope--I think it will--that we will produce the little, tiny, remaining technology breakthrough, which we are putting everything in, and if that works, we will be on our way to the breakthrough that will permit us to use the cellulosic ethanol I have been speaking of. That will permit us to reach this new high standard of 36 billion gallons.

Remember, we get the CAFE standards, which have been explained, which reduce the amount of gas and diesel used, and then we have this gigantic breakthrough that we expect, and this tremendous amount of fuel that will come from biomass, which I stated to you was 36 billion gallons. Then this bill has a giant set of mandated efficiencies, increases in efficiencies, the biggest we have ever had. In fact, $12 billion will be saved by our consumers from the efficiency provisions, the big items you buy at your hardware store or big chain store, the items you use in your kitchen and that you wash your clothes with-- those big items have the new efficiency standards, and we have been toying with them for years. Senator Bingaman has been trying to get them done. They are in this bill.

People might still take them out in the next week, but I don't think so. I think this bill will stay as it is. It is bipartisan. The provisions I am talking about, so far, came out of the Committee bipartisan. CAFE did not come out of our committee, but it came out of Commerce bipartisan, with a very huge majority.

I am pleased that right away when we finish that, we get on with the next thing the bill ought to have in it, and that is some new production. That brings the Senator from Oklahoma in, who has been for a long time trying to get us to do something about the refining situation in our country. I am not even totally familiar with the Senator's amendment. He has given it to us and submitted it to the Senate. Senator Bingaman and his staff are looking at it. We will be looking at it. I don't know when we will vote on it. With his permission, I assumed he would not be upset if we set it aside and go on to some other work and then call it up in due course in the Senate. We will do that after the Senator is finished. We don't think we are going to vote on it right away because we have to study it, and the Senator would not have wanted it otherwise. Senator Bingaman wants to look at it.

There is another matter that was also in this Commerce bill. It has been packaged. We have Energy matters, Commerce matters, and I note that Senator Cantwell is standing on the floor. She had something to do with an amendment in the Commerce Committee that has to do with trying to--if there is gouging taking place out there in the hinterland of America, this amendment she and I will talk about when we are finished with Senator Inhofe's amendment will tell everybody what is in the bill about antigouging that the distinguished Senator worked on. It is mostly hers. Others might have added something, but we will talk about it, so that we put together what will be the package we can all understand--that is, the Energy and Commerce package, plus whatever else came in through the Environment and Public Works Committee--a smaller portion. Put all that together and it is a pretty good bill.

With that, I yield the floor and thank the Senator from Oklahoma for having given me a chance to speak.

Will the Senator yield?

Madam President, I told Senator Bingaman that I have to leave the floor for about 20 to 25 minutes, and I need somebody here.

That is what I wanted to tell the Senator. Madam President, can the Senator from Oklahoma stay in my stead?

Madam President, reserving the right to object.

Madam President, I would like to talk to the Senator. We are still on the amendment. What are you asking? That we set it aside for what purpose?

Madam President, parliamentary inquiry: We have set aside only one amendment to proceed with another thus far; that is, the amendment of the Senator from Oklahoma was set aside; is that correct?

Madam President, now he is asking that be done again.

Madam President, I ask the Senator, how long do you think you would be before we could return to the regular order?

One-five?

I do not wish to restrict you. You talk long similar to myself. Would you rather have 20 or 25 minutes?

Twenty minutes is all right by me.

Madam President, we have reviewed the amendment, and actually we have similar activity already prescribed for in the bill. This modifies some, changes some, adds in other places, but all of it is authorizing to the extent that it expands--it is pretty much the kind of thing the bill contemplated. So we have no objection on our side.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Madam President and fellow Senators, I need now to bother you with a few minutes of time, because some very good Senators have come to the floor to speak in favor of a proposal that was brought to the floor by the distinguished Senator from Connecticut, and he was joined by the Senator from Colorado, Mr. Salazar. Between the two, they mentioned and enumerated a number of Senators who favored this--good Senators here who favor this proposal that was brought to the Senate's attention, as it was a freestanding amendment that has been floating around the Senate for quite some time as something that maybe we should consider. Now, it sounds good. Senators who spoke about it spoke eloquently about it, but I would suggest that maybe, just maybe, these goals in this amendment were necessary yesterday--maybe yesterday, Senator Bingaman--I am not sure, but maybe.

But I encourage my colleagues to look to the underlying bill and compare it to the goals that are set forth in that amendment. We don't need the goals, because we have already--the amendment they offer sets goals and then directs the administration to figure out how to get where they are supposed to go. I think that is sort of like outsourcing. That is outsourcing of the legislature duties and responsibilities to the executive, and then praising the bill because it tells the executive they have to reach these goals and save all of this oil. Well, if it were that easy, ever since we found out we were greatly dependent upon foreign oil, it would have been a cinch. There would have been nothing to it. We could have come to the floor and said we have an answer.

We want a dream. We want a dream, and the dream is a two-sentence bill that says the executive branch of Government shall have OMB proceed to direct goals that will get us to the point where we are no longer dependent. What a dream they could say that is. I am kind of paraphrasing my wonderful friend from Colorado who talked about the dream, that this was a dream to achieve big things. But you see, this is merely saying to the executive branch: You do what we ought to do, and when you do it, or if you do it, we are going to take credit today, because we told you to get OMB, the Office of Management and Budget, or somebody in your branch of the Government, to set the goals and then tell us how to do it, and then do it.

Let me get back to why we don't need it, if we ever needed it. I would have made this same argument in any event, but I want to say yesterday it was a little more relevant. My colleagues understand we have a bill before us, and we the Congress set goals on gasoline savings and then we set the policies that will attain the goals. They are tough, hard goals. They are not saying to the President: You reach these goals. We reach the goals. In fact, we will vote on this bill and when we do, if we do, and if we have enough courage, we will be voting on changing the automobile standards in a big way. For the first time in decades, we will have changed the standards for automobiles, for new automobiles, and made the automobile manufacturers make cars every year less dependent, more efficient so they use less gasoline.

But we don't say: Executive branch, You do it. Set the goals. And aren't we happy we dreamed big and we said to you, you set the goals for CAFE standards. We didn't say that. We said: Here, we changed them. And if anybody wants to vote to change the CAFE standards, they are already changed in this bill. If you want to change the CAFE standards and save a huge number of barrels, since they are talking

about barrels, a huge number of barrels of crude oil, because all the gasoline for the most part comes from that, you will achieve those savings by voting for this bill. You don't have to vote for an amendment that says to the President: You set the goals, Mr. President, and then you achieve them. And, boy, when that gets done, we will have made a real dream come true.

Now, I figure we should stop dreaming. We dreamed so much on energy and we have been working so hard that today, for the first time in the transportation section, the section of our law that is transportation oriented, we took one big bite out of the use of transportation fuel, and we did not need the amendment I am opposing that was brought here today and that the distinguished Senators from Colorado and Connecticut and others spoke in favor of. We don't need it anymore, because we don't need anybody else setting the goals. We achieved the goals ourselves right in the bill.

In 1972, President Nixon set the goal of being energy independent by 1980. We were about 30 percent dependent on foreign oil at that time. Today, unfortunately, we are 60 percent reliant upon foreign oil. That tells me goals are not enough. We need action. Interestingly enough, this bill that they offer an amendment to is the action. It is the action per se. We have not had any action that makes us less reliant, substantially less reliant, as does this bill. By adoption of the changes in the laws that apply to new cars, we have dramatically reduced what Americans are going to spend on gasoline and diesel fuel in the forthcoming years because we have changed the law and have caused that to happen in a very good way. But we haven't asked anybody to do it for us. We haven't said: Mr. President, would you find in your administration somebody who could set these goals and achieve them? Boy, we have told you how to do it. We have set them very high so we can go home and tell the American people how high we have set the goals and how much we achieved. But we did nothing in the amendment. We did nothing; we just asked the White House to do it.

I know a lot of people have endorsed a bill that does this, that has these goals that asks the President to ask the OMB to achieve the goals, and we have everybody on it. We have people in ordinary life who are great citizens. We have former Senators, former members of White House staff. They all joined this bill. But the bill was nothing more than a set of goals, and it said the White House should go out and achieve them. It was sort of saying: We would like to be President, but we are not. Since we are not, we are going to adopt this amendment and it is going to tell the President that is what he ought to do. But I say that once again, the amendment, which I am going to call the Salazar amendment for a moment, would require the administration to develop a plan to reduce oil consumption by 2.5 million barrels of oil per day during the calendar year 2016, ramping up to 10 million barrels per day during calendar year 2031. But the bill we are considering already includes an ambitious gasoline savings goal. It goes on to achieve the goal. The bill itself achieves the goal by changing the law. Senators are going to be voting--not the President--to get it done. The bill we are considering already includes ambitious savings. The bill sets gasoline savings at 20 percent by calendar year 2017, 35 percent by calendar year 2025, and 45 percent by calendar year 2030.

Now, we did not ask the President to ask staff to come up with a goal and then today brag on the goal because the President is going to do it. What we did in this bill is we adopted these goals and then changed the law to achieve them.

As you know, we changed the law to achieve the savings, by changing the law on new automobiles and other things in this bill. These goals are consistent with what the President articulated in the State of the Union Address. But we didn't wait around to see how he was going to do it and let him call the shots and then brag that he set the goals. We did it ourselves. The President's Twenty in Ten Initiative calls for a reduction in gasoline usage by 20 percent in 10 years, or by 2017.

This bill not only includes these gasoline savings goals but establishes the programs that will put us on track to meet them. In particular, the bill includes an ambitious renewable fuel standard that will displace foreign oil with homegrown renewable fuel.

I urge my colleagues to oppose the amendment. Then we set the policies that attain the goals we are trying to achieve. Outsourcing our authority--we outsource it to the White House in the amendment that was put before us--Senator Lieberman first brought it up. I don't know who takes credit as its author. Perhaps it is the distinguished Senator from Colorado, Mr. Salazar, but we all know which three or four Senators first came up with it.

I wish to talk for a moment about this. On the biofuels part of the bill, we save 2.5 million barrels per day by 2017--I have converted some of this to barrels so they won't wonder what we are doing--4.5 million barrels per day by 2025, and 6.5 million barrels per day by 2030. This is just the renewable fuels section. If we add the CAFE standards from the bill, we probably will exceed these goals in practice by passing this bill.

This amendment is unnecessary. The amendment offered by Senator Salazar and others here today is unnecessary because we, as a matter of fact, already adopted law changes. We will be the ones who were courageous and did the work. We are not going to just set goals and put numbers there and say, now we have done our job, and say to the President, you go do it, and then come to the Senate and say, won't it be great. We set these goals, and the President will do it.

I don't believe that is the way we are going to do that. If that was the way we were going to do it--I told you about Richard Nixon and how far we were already substantially indebted to the world, 20 percent dependent. We were all trying to get a balanced budget in terms of the energy consumption. He wanted to have a zero difference. He wanted to make everything work, where we didn't have any excess use of oil, and he announced that. But, you see, he was President. He could have done whatever he wanted that was legal. He must have found that the President cannot do it. He didn't achieve it. The Congress tried but could not achieve it with him, and nobody could do it very easily.

We have been doing very well when you consider what we did in the bill we passed 2 years ago, the Energy bill, plus the two things which are in this bill which are gigantic, the likes of which we have never done--the CAFE change, which is giant. You heard the effects from Senator Feinstein. That is not set in stone. That is adopting the changes in CAFE standards, big changes. And then we did the dramatic thing the President recommended in terms of moving ahead with ethanol and beyond ethanol to the kind of cellulosic ethanol, which is going to be truly a magnificent substitute for the oil we are using. But we are not setting a goal; we are going to do it. The bill will do it. By the time we are finished, the bill will achieve almost as much as the Salazar amendment requested in goals.

With that, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, I want to get it clear in the Record who this amendment belongs to. It was introduced by Senator Bayh some time ago. It had as sponsors Senators Brownback, Lieberman, Coleman, Salazar, Cantwell, Kerry, Dodd, and Kohl. The amendment was also proposed by Senator Reid. I now have it straight that these were the Senators on this amendment.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, we probably are going to enter into an agreement to have a vote this evening, but I didn't want the good Senator to leave the floor without me making three points.

I do not seek now to have an argument about his approach. I will do that before the vote when we set that up. But when the Senator from Minnesota talks about a goal of saving oil and the bill before us has savings of gasoline, I just wonder if he knows that most of the crude oil goes to gasoline in the United States. That is a fact, isn't it? Most of the crude oil we import, that we bring into our country to go to refineries, is turned into gasoline and used by automobiles.

Madam President, I am going to yield the floor in a moment. I just want to say, if my colleague thinks carefully, the amendment that was offered that was spoken to by my good friend sets goals to be achieved by the White House, by the executive department. We have a bill before us that I am so proud of because for the first time, we did it right. We put in the bill the kinds of law changes that will save gasoline and oil because we change the law. We don't have to ask the President to find ways; we did it. When Senators vote for it, they will not be voting for a goal that asks the President to do something. They will be voting for a change in the law that makes cars more efficient in the future if produced and used in the American market.

That same bill will save tremendous amounts of electricity and whatever is used with electricity because we are going to become so much more efficient on appliances and the like.

And, third, there will be some enormous savings because we are going to make gasoline from something other than crude oil and other than by making it out of corn. We are going to make it out of switchgrass and other products that are part of the biomass approach.

I am proud that just those three will do more than we have ever done, and we won't be asking a President to set goals to achieve, which a President has never been able to do. If they could, they would do it without us asking them. We are doing it in this bill.

I yield the floor and will return when we have a vote on this matter.

Reserving the right to object, what were the last two lines?

I have half the time?

I have no objection.

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

Mr. President, fellow Senators, let me say, we are getting close to the end of a good day on the bill. This is a three- part bill that came to us from the Energy, Natural Resources Committee, the Commerce Committee, and the Environment and Public Works Committee. Then the majority leader put them together, and I was very proud to be able to come to the floor and tell the Senators and the American people what an outstanding bill this was. We had not heard much from anybody, and people were not quite sure what happened. But people kept saying: We had an energy bill. Well, we can, at the end of the first day, say we still have it. It has not been changed any. We accepted one amendment. It was an authorizing amendment, and it enlarged upon some pieces of the bill. But essentially it is intact.

And, lo and behold, without this amendment that is before us, which I urge the Senate not pass, that they not vote for it--it is harmless, but I do not think we ought to pass it. I wish to tell you all why. To do that I have to talk a little bit about the bill, because the bill changes the law. If all of the things in this bill get adopted, we will save huge amounts of crude oil and gasoline.

The other side keeps mentioning that the bill saves more gasoline and not enough crude oil. But I guarantee you that if we could get the kind of savings that could be forthcoming from transportation fuels, America would be safe, America would be happy, and we would not be dependent, because we would be using much less crude oil also.

So there is no difference. They are almost the same. Nonetheless, the truth of the matter is that never in the history of the Congress have we saved so

much gasoline--that is the thing that moves transportation in America: diesel fuel, transportation, and related products. Never have we changed America so much in terms of how much of that fuel we would use. What fuel? The fuel everybody says makes us more and more dependent, the transportation fuel. Right.

Now, what happened is we did not adopt a bill in the Energy Committee or the Commerce Committee, headed by the Senator from Hawaii and Senator Stevens from Alaska. Those bills that produced that came from these committees and are actually changes in the law.

Let's talk right off and say the biggest change is the CAFE standards. The Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction, had the courage and the guts to adopt a long-standing amendment sponsored by the Senator from California, Mrs. Feinstein, and it had been regularly known as the bill that changes the CAFE standards. We adopted it. It is in here. The changes we have been yearning for are here. We adopted them, and they are now before us. We don't have to ask anybody to make the changes that will cause the biggest single savings in transportation fuels that we ever did.

Then right on top of that, the Energy and Natural Resources Committee adopted a huge multiyear program to use more ethanol but ethanol that would not be produced by corn but, rather, by switchgrass and come out of that whole area we are now researching and just almost over the hurdle in terms of a new kind of production of ethanol. When you add the two together, it is the biggest reduction in transportation fuel we will ever get.

I wanted to make the point that we did not set any goals; we did not adopt any targets; we did not ask the President to find any savings. We asked the President to sign a bill that will make the savings because we change the law.

When oil savings amendments were offered in the past, people would say this was a hidden CAFE standard. They were correct. When you direct the executive branch to save oil in such a dramatic way, one of the only ways you can do it and reach that goal is to change the CAFE standards. So whenever you were telling the President to make these savings, everybody would say: In transportation, the only way you can do it is to change the CAFE standards. Isn't that interesting? But we didn't do that here today. We changed the CAFE standards and saved oil and gasoline over the next 30 years, calculated as it is in the bill, because we got that done.

We don't need a hidden CAFE in this bill, which essentially is the only way you could get to your targets in oil is to do something to transportation consumption, and that means you would have to do something with the so-called hidden CAFE standards that would be incorporated in your suggested targets. In the bill we have, there are real increases in the CAFE standards that are adopted and they were articulated by Senator Feinstein and talked about at length. Perhaps when we pass this amendment asking the President to save oil, perhaps when we do that--and I know my good friend, the occupant of the Chair, thinks that amendment I am talking about is a great thing because it sets targets and let's us dream, as he says, but I think all the President would have to do, if we adopt and sent to him the Bayh amendment--that is properly the name of it because he was the first name on this many months ago--I would venture to say, without fear or trepidation, if we had the bill we have before us today, Senator Bayh wouldn't be introducing this amendment with these kinds of targets, because he would look down and say: The biggest target for crude oil that is used in gasoline is already done because they have changed the CAFE standards. They don't need another target.

If we continue this way and we adopt the Bayh amendment, then when the President signs our bill, he can send it back to us and say: This is my plan, to do what you asked me to do, because in this bill we have already accomplished the things you were talking about.

Let me say, there isn't any rancor. I am not trying to belittle anybody. The truth is, when you have to set targets and tell the President to achieve the targets, you have accomplished nothing. Because if that is the way you could have saved crude oil in the past, every President would have done it himself, would have taken us out of this crisis by doing just what your targets say, go out and find them and do them. But you can't do them. You have to have Congress. You have to change laws.

I want to sit down for a moment and reserve the remainder of my time.

How much time do I have?

What do you want, five total?

I will say five.

Mr. President, that was an eloquent statement and I want to acknowledge it. But I want to make sure those who are worried about America's energy crisis know a mere statement, whether it be verbal or written down on a piece of paper, that says we ought to achieve this doesn't achieve anything. Or we in the Senate think our goal should to be save 3.5 million barrels of oil and then say how proud we are that we are going to achieve this great goal; that doesn't do anything. All you have is, if you have a bunch of targets and goals and they are high and they are big, you can say: We are a better dreamer than the other side, because we have these great dreams about how much we should save and what our target should be. But think for a minute, what do they accomplish?

The truth is, the underlying bill, for a change, saves on crude oil consumption and gasoline, because we have changed the CAFE standards permanently. As anybody in here remembers, every time we were talking about saving large quantities of gasoline, if we could just change the CAFE standards. Remember? Well, we changed them. The biggest way to save on gasoline is to change them. We changed them. We don't need a target in the bill that says we should save on gasoline. Maybe you should say by changing the CAFE standards, but the President can't change the CAFE standards. Only we can, and we did.

They have some auspicious goals, some magnificent targets. They can speak eloquently about what will be required to do them. But the point is, they don't save one single penny's worth of gasoline. They don't achieve 10 cents' worth of savings. They are merely goals, things we wish to do. I guarantee you that the bill they are attaching this amendment to for a change will truly save by changing the CAFE standards permanently. By changing the standard for ethanol and the second generation of ethanol, we will save more on gasoline and then on crude oil, which it comes from, than we have ever done before. So we don't need an amendment to a terrific bill. The bill is something we can be very proud of. Three committees participated. They did it bipartisanly.

Now we have bold and high words about what the President should do because it says the President shall find ways to achieve these goals. That is essentially the plan: Mr. President, we have these goals. Mr. President, you go talk to OMB and you achieve them.

That is it. I do not believe anybody thinks that will work. But I would say, if it passes, I do not know what it does, and I do not know what we would do with it because I do not know how you get any savings from that kind of proposal.

But I kind of know where we are. A lot of Senators and non-Senators got together before we were here with this bill and decided they would introduce a bill that sounded good, that set high goals, and they did. Then we come along with a bill that actually does it, and they want to amend it to get in on the action, which I do not believe would accomplish much.

I compliment the Senators for the way they have worked, and in particular Senator Bayh, whom we do not see very much, but I see him a lot, and I am pleased always to see him. I say to the Senator, I thank you for the way you have responded.

I wish to say again, I don't believe with the bill we need your bill. With the bill that is underlying, we do not need another bill.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

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

Mr. President, I have come to the floor to discuss one of the provisions of this Energy bill that is now before the Senate. This is the provision that would increase the fuel efficiency of our Nation's fleet of vehicles. These provisions were approved by the Commerce Committee with substantial bipartisan support. They are known as the Ten-in-Ten Fuel Economy Act.

I come to the floor in place of Chairman Inouye, who is ill today and has asked me if I would mind describing the provisions of this legislation, and, of course, I am delighted to do that. The legislation is supported by a bipartisan group of Senators, including Senators Stevens, Snowe, Dorgan, Collins, Durbin, Boxer, Cantwell, Carper, Klobuchar, and Kerry.

The basic premise of the legislation is to increase the fuel economy of cars, SUVs, and light trucks by 10 miles per gallon over 10 years-- that is the ``10 over 10''--and to do this by 2020. But the bill does do more than that. It continues beyond 2020 and increases fuel efficiency by 4 percent a year through 2030. This is with the addition of the Dorgan legislation which the Commerce Committee added to Senator Snowe's, Senator Inouye's and my 10-over-10 bill in the Commerce Committee.

Some would have liked this legislation to go further, perhaps to 40 miles per gallon or more. Others do not want any significant increases. But I think this legislation strikes the right balance, and it sets forward a significant, achievable standard for the future.

It would be the first major fuel efficiency increase in the past 25 years. Can you believe it? With all the talk and all the discussion in the past 25 years, nothing has been done to increase fuel efficiency. I have been working on this legislation in one form or another--first, it was with Senator Snowe as an SUV loophole closer. We have been doing this for more than a decade now.

But the simple truth is that today the technology exists to accomplish the goals of this legislation. It can be done without reducing safety and with significant benefit to our economy and our environment. It does so in a way that gives auto manufacturers the flexibility and the time they need. I hope they listen to this because I think they have a misimpression of the bill. This is not according to just us, but it is according to the experts--the National Academy of Sciences, the International Council on Clean Transportation, and experts at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. So it is time to break the logjam.

We all know our Nation faces stark energy challenges. Gas prices have risen to above $3 a gallon--more than doubling in the past 5 years. Global warming is real, it is happening, and it is having an impact on the world around us. The United States needs to address the transportation sector's emissions of carbon dioxide. Transportation, in 2004, accounted for 28 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. With a war in Iraq and tense relations with Iran, we need to move away from our dependence on foreign oil. Through this legislation, we believe we can have a significant impact in each of those areas.

By 2025, increases for cars and light-duty trucks would save 2.1 million barrels of oil per day. That is nearly the amount of oil imported daily from the Persian Gulf, so it would be a savings, by 2025, of about what we import each day now. That is consequential. It would reduce carbon dioxide emissions--which is the primary global warming gas--18 percent from anticipated levels in 2025. That is the equivalent of taking 60 million cars off the road in a year. And--and this is a big ``and''--it would save the consumer, the driver, the family, a net $69 billion at the gas pump. That is based on a $3.08 a gallon gas price. That is the recent average price nationwide. So with gas costing $3.08 a gallon, the net consumer savings--if this bill were in place--would be $69 billion. This would mean, if you go to the individual or the individual family, it is a savings of $700 to $1,000 a year for families with children, depending on the price of gas. So the time has come to act.

Now, here is what the measure would do. I hope people will listen. It would set achievable fuel economy standards for all vehicles, increasing fleetwide average fuel economy for all cars, SUVs, and trucks by 10 miles per gallon over 10 years--or from 25 to 35 miles per gallon by model year 2020. So 25 to 35 miles per gallon by 2020, and it is 2007 today. It would provide for an additional 4-percent annual increase after that until 2030. It would require the Department of Transportation to improve the fuel economy of medium and heavy-duty trucks over a 20-year period--not tomorrow, not today but over a 20- year period--for the first time in history addressing this particular area of concern.

America, do something about your heavy trucks, and over the next 20 years try to see if you can't make them more fuel efficient.

The key to this bill is it changes the way automakers are allowed to meet these standards in fairly substantial ways. I wish to describe them.

The provision provides the time and the flexibility needed for automakers, we believe, to meet these standards. This is where Detroit does not listen. We believe--we sincerely believe--it creates a level playing field for all automakers. Let me describe how.

Under the existing CAFE system, each automaker must meet a 27.5 miles-per-gallon standard for their particular fleet of cars. This current system disadvantages American companies that build larger cars with lower gas mileage. So we admit the present system disadvantages American automobile makers.

But under the newly proposed system contained in this bill, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration would have broad discretion to divide vehicles into classes based on their attributes, such as size. So a small car in a small-car class is evaluated against other small cars--not a small car evaluated against a Navigator or a Cadillac but class-by-class evaluations. This requirement would no longer apply to each automaker. This is additional flexibility. Different automakers will meet different standards, depending upon the mix of cars they choose to make.

From 2011 to 2019, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration must set fuel economy standards that are the maximum feasible

and ratchet these standards up at a reasonable rate.

By 2020, the total average must meet the 35 miles per gallon--the total average. Some cars will be below it, and some will be above it-- as long as the total average meets the standard. This gives Detroit the flexibility they say they need. I do not know why they will not understand it.

This effectively gives the automakers 13 years to get the job done, and it means fuel economy will increase across all classes--from the smallest sedans to the largest SUVs. It may be different by the class, but, nonetheless, it would increase, so that the average fuel economy would be 35 miles per gallon. At the same time, the measure establishes a credit trading program under the direction of the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, known as NHTSA. NHTSA would design, run, and operate this credit trading program.

The provision was strongly recommended by the National Academy of Sciences in 2002. It would give an automaker a financial incentive to exceed the standards. If it does, it could sell credits to another automaker and profit from having a more fuel-efficient fleet. So that an automaker that makes a car that attains 37 miles a gallon can sell that differential to someone who cannot quite make it.

It would also allow the banking of these credits for up to 5 years-- insurance if a company falls below the standard in a later year. If an automaker cannot meet the standards in a given year, they can purchase these credits, use bank credits, or borrow from projected surpluses from future years. So the bottom line is this is a practical, workable system which ensures substantial increases in fuel efficiency. Quite frankly, it is a major improvement over the current system, which has a much more rigid approach.

I want to say something. In all the time I have been working on this legislation, nobody from the automaker community has ever come to me to say: Look, we like this, but we don't like this. If you just changed it this way, it would appeal to us.

We have bent over backward to try to accommodate a bill to meet what for the past years--every time this comes up on the floor, I hear them argue: You can't evaluate small cars against big cars. Well, we don't do that in this bill.

Another thing we have done--and this was pursuant to Senator Stevens' request and interest in the committee--this measure provides an off- ramp in 2020 in the unlikely event that there are substantial unforeseen costs.

The measure would give NHTSA the authority to set a standard lower or higher than the 35 miles per gallon in 2020. The authority could be invoked only if a thorough review of the costs of putting new technologies in our automotive fleet exceeds the agency's best estimate of the value to the Nation of setting the standard at this level. So that is the off-ramp. There can be an evaluation, a kind of cost- benefit look at the situation, and there would have to be clear and convincing evidence that the costs exceed the benefits. Obviously, we wanted to make it somewhat difficult--not a rollover so everybody could get out of it--somewhat difficult.

NHTSA would have to take into consideration billions of dollars in fuel savings, national security implications of reducing our dependence on foreign oil, the effect of global warming and air pollution, and, on the other side of the scale, additional costs to manufacturers and consumers. Given all of the clear and meaningful benefits, we believe automakers can and will be able to meet these standards, actually with little difficulty, but the provisions give NHTSA discretion in the event it becomes clear automakers cannot meet the standards down the road.

So that is what the bill does. The fact is, this legislation is past due. Our Nation has seen gas prices skyrocket over the past 5 years. It now costs $50, $60, or $70 to fill up a tank with gas. In my State of California, this is a big deal. People often have to use at least 2 tankfuls of gasoline, so instead of a tank at $20, if it is a tank at $70, instead of 4 times 20, which is $80, it is 4 times $70, just to drive to work.

In the long term, a key to reducing gas prices is to reduce demand for gasoline. By increasing fuel efficiency, we can reduce consumption and thereby reduce demand. Americans understand this. That is why, in poll after poll, the American people overwhelmingly support increased fuel efficiency. A poll published in April of this year by the New York Times and CBS shows that more than 90 percent of Americans favor legislation for acquiring more fuel efficient vehicles. Ninety percent. That is amazing. People want more fuel-efficient vehicles. A poll commissioned by the National Environmental Trust shows that more than 80 percent of truck owners favor higher fuel economy standards. That was done between April 28 and May 1 of this year. These results are consistent all across ideologic and geographic divides. Simply put, Americans by large majorities want improved mileage on their automobiles.

Now, some question whether the standards in this legislation are achievable. You have only to look at what other nations are doing to see that, in fact, they are. Canada has proposed raising its fuel economy standard to 32 miles per gallon by 2010--32 miles per gallon by 2010. Australia's fuel efficiency averages 29 miles per gallon and is expected to rise to 34 miles per gallon by 2010. Europe's fuel efficiency currently exceeds 40 miles per gallon, and that is expected to increase over the next few years. Japan's fuel efficiency averages 46.3 miles per gallon and is expected to rise to 48 miles per gallon by 2010. Even China will have a new vehicle fleet averaging 37 miles per gallon--not in 10 years, not in 5 years, but next year. So these standards have to be met by American automobile manufacturers manufacturing in China next year. They will have to meet 37 miles per gallon.

In the United States, it is 25 miles per gallon. This is really unacceptable. These higher standards are being met abroad by the same automakers who claim it is impossible to do it here in the United States. This includes BMW, DaimlerChrysler, Ford, General Motors, Porsche, Volkswagen, Honda, Mazda, Nissan, Subaru, and Toyota. All have agreed to push fuel economy well above 40 miles per gallon in Europe but say they cannot achieve these standards in the United States. Does that make sense to anybody in this body? I think not. Does it make sense to anyone in America? I think not.

Now, also, the simple truth is that the technology exists to achieve a 35-mile-per-gallon standard by 2020. Existing technology can do it. So as Detroit complains it can't do this or it can't do that, the National Academy of Sciences says it can.

This is what they tell us:

We can increase the fuel economy--

This is what they say can be done, the National Academy of Sciences--

of mid-sized SUVs to 34 miles per gallon with existing

technology, large cars to 39 miles per gallon with existing

technology, minivans to nearly 37 miles per gallon with

existing technology, and large pickups to nearly 30 miles per

gallon with existing technology. When you average all of this

together, you will find that the fleet could achieve 37 miles

per gallon, 2 miles more than this measure envisions.

This is a conservative estimate. The National Academy of Sciences study measured cost-effectiveness based on $1.50 per gallon as opposed to today's $3 per gallon. So now you can see how conservative it is. The academy didn't consider hybrids and other emerging technologies such as the popular Toyota Prius, just the standard American automobiles. So it is quite possible that even greater increases in fuel economy could be achieved.

Now, how can this all be done? By using existing technology and simple design improvements. Let me give my colleagues some of the things for which the technology already exists: better aerodynamics, alternater improvements, engine friction reduction, using more efficient transmissions, electric power steering, electric water pump, reduced engine friction, and using only engine cylinders that are necessary. These changes still could be made to great effect.

A 2006 study by the Canadian Government concluded that the cost- effective technologies identified by the 2002 National Academy of Sciences report remain available and more cost-effective than ever. Our current fleet is more powerful, accelerates more quickly, and brakes more effectively. But with all of these advances, there is one critical design feature we have not improved at all in 25 years: Today's cars get the lowest number of miles to the

gallon since 1988. That is 20 years ago--the lowest number of miles to the gallon since 1988. This has to change.

I would say to all of those who want to fight this because they think it is too strong and because Detroit objects to it that the handwriting has been on the wall for a long time and Detroit has not come in and made a suggestion. All of this scientific evidence indicates that Detroit can meet these standards, that the technology exists to meet these standards, that they are doing it in other countries but for some reason they have buffaloed the Congress of the United States into believing you can do it in China, you can do it in Europe, but you can't do it in the greatest economic power on Earth--the United States of America.

Some also say we can't increase fuel economy without reducing safety, but this also is simply not true. A recent study by groups, including the International Council on Clean Transportation, has concluded that no tradeoff--no tradeoff--is required between fuel economy and vehicle safety. The conclusion of this report is consistent with the conclusion of numerous other studies. Let me quote directly from the report:

Vehicle fuel economy can be increased without affecting

safety, and vice versa.

That is on page 2 of their report.

Advanced materials allow vehicles to be both bigger and

lighter, providing multiple ways to improve safety and fuel

economy without sacrificing functionality. Fuel economy can

be dramatically improved without compromising safety. Safety

can be bolstered without sacrificing fuel economy.

That is on page 17 of their study.

There is technology in place today to be used to increase safety without sacrificing fuel economy. Let me just give my colleagues a few examples: seatbelt reminders, window curtain airbags, lower bumpers, electronic stability control, improved body structure, seatbelts that tighten if a vehicle were to roll over. It seems to me that is such a simple thing, that if automobile manufacturers wanted to improve safety, they would do that.

We saw what happened to a former colleague of ours who was not wearing a seatbelt. Nobody can challenge that seatbelts don't make one of the biggest safety improvements in the history of the automobile. When the Governor's crash took place, everybody else essentially was OK in the car except for Governor Corzine, and he didn't have his seatbelt on. If anything is clear evidence of the safety of seatbelts, this is it. So safety can be improved without an effect on fuel economy.

This legislation includes a provision that will help improve safety. It directs the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration to issue a rule that seeks to reduce incompatibility between SUVs and passenger vehicles. This could be done through measures which ensure that bumpers hit bumpers in the event of an accident. I just saw this coming to work today, where a Sedan had rear-ended an SUV, and you saw the difference because of the inequality of the bumpers. This happened just a few blocks away.

In response to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Ford assembly plant in Richmond, CA, switched from making cars to assembling Jeeps, tanks, and armored cars. By July 1942, just 6 months after the bombing, the Richmond Tank Depot and the women who worked there were supplying our Armed Forces with the best military hardware in the world.

Technology, paired with American ingenuity and hard work, helped us prevail in that struggle and has been a key ingredient of America's unprecedented wealth and security.

Today, we face a much different threat. It is the threat of our Nation's addiction to fossil fuels--to oil--and what that will do to our economy, to our environment, and to our foreign policy if we don't change our ways.

These are serious questions and they deserve a serious response. Increasing fuel economy is not a silver bullet. I am the first one to say that. It won't solve problems by itself. However, it is a major piece of the puzzle. We have the best universities in the world, the strongest financial system, and the best workers. We can do this. We can make these improvements. We can lead the way. We have only to find the political will.

I am very proud the bill before us now contains this legislation. I believe, as I have tried to describe--and I apologize for the length of this statement--that it is compatible with the needs of Detroit; that the legislation is drafted to respond to those needs by the class-to- class comparison, to avoid what always has been in every discussion on this floor the greatest threat to Detroit, which is to compare a small car to a large car and, therefore, make it difficult for them to manufacture large cars. This will not do that. I hope it will be voted on.

I very much thank the Chair. I know Senator Snowe was going to come to the floor and, hopefully, she will.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I call up amendment 1505 and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

Madam President, I want to explain this amendment, but first I will yield to the distinguished ranking member of the committee, the senior Senator from New Mexico.

Madam President, reclaiming my time.

Madam President, I appreciate having had the opportunity to yield to the Senator from New Mexico for his explanation. I think it is very important that we understand there are a lot of good things we are looking at in this bill. But he so accurately points out that the big problem we have today--not 10 years from now--is supply. We need to do something about the supply. The bill doesn't adequately address that.

The amendment I have called up, No. 1505, is essentially the same amendment we considered in my Environment and Public Works Committee during the years I served as chairman. It is one of these things where it is very difficult to figure out why anyone could vote against it, because it is permissive, it allows States to do things; it doesn't mandate.

I was pleased to hear the majority leader recognizing that the United States has become too reliant on foreign sources of energy. Unfortunately, the majority's bill presently doesn't improve the situation. Indeed, it could actually worsen it. The fact is that Americans are paying more at the pump because we don't have the domestic capacity to refine the fuels consumers demand. So we are talking about two ways to resolve the problem of supply. One is production, and the other is you can have all the production in the world, but if you don't have the refining capacity, you cannot get it refined and into use.

Some Members' answer is more hybrids than SUVs, but that ignores the profound impact high fuel prices have on our economy. According to the Department of Labor's recent numbers, about 3 percent of the Nation's inflation is directly attributed to high fuel prices. That means whether your constituent drives a gas guzzler, a hybrid, rides a bicycle, or walks, they are paying the same for high fuel prices.

In order to lower those prices, we have two options. We can increase the capacity at home or import more from abroad. The LA Times wrote in May 25, 2007, that ``gas supplies are tight because the United States lacks refining capacity, and every time a refinery shuts down for maintenance, or because of an accident, prices rise. Americans are starving for affordable energy, and the majority's bill tells them to go on a diet. That is good. We want to have these things to help with our consumption. But the Energy bill really does nothing today in terms of taking care of the supply problem we have.

The good news is it is not too late to do something to improve the situation. It is in that good faith to improve the energy security position of our country that we are offering the Gas Price Act. The lack of domestic refining capacity is not new to many Members, the public, or even to the Federal Reserve. In May of 2005, Chairman Alan Greenspan stated:

The status of world refining capacity has become worrisome

and the industry is straining to meet markets which are

increasingly dominated by transportation fuels that must meet

ever more stringent environmental requirements.

While chairman of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, I held a series of hearings to look into this issue. The very same month I held one of those hearings, the senior Senator from California, who was on the Senate floor speaking a moment ago, Mrs. Feinstein, made this statement in a letter to the Governor of California. It says:

I can see where the cumbersome permitting process, with

uncertain outcomes, would make it difficult to plan and

implement projects . . . I encourage you to improve the speed

and predictability of the permitting process, and believe

that this will allow business and government to focus on

their limited resources on actions that most benefit the

environment.

That is the statement Senator Feinstein made in a letter to Governor Schwarzenegger. I wholeheartedly agree with that statement.

The amendment that Senator Thune and I are offering today will improve the energy security of the United States, and it will do so in complete compliance with environmental laws and in concert with State interests.

In her letter to Governor Schwarzenegger, the senior Senator

from California was correct in recognizing much of the permitting decisions are by States and not by the Federal Government. That is why we work very hard to recognize the importance of State and local groups in making those decisions.

The Environmental Council of States, which represents State departments of environmental quality, said as much. Keep in mind, this is the council that represents all the different State departments of environmental quality, as well as noting that the Gas Price Act does not weaken the environmental laws.

Similarly, the National Association of Counties stated:

It goes a long way in addressing the concerns of local

governments during a refinery siting, ranging from the

importance of considering local needs, concerns, and honoring

a county's land use authority.

It is important to point this out because it seems that time and time again, some of the Members of this body hide behind the vague concerns over the environment in defending their failure to improve U.S. energy security. After working with a variety of stakeholders, this bill achieves both goals. It increases energy while preserving local governments and environmental quality.

The fact is, like it or not, the United States needs to increase its domestic refining capacity if we are to solve the economic struggles facing every family.

The amendment we are offering today redefines and broadens our understanding of a refinery to be a domestic fuels facility. Oil has and will continue to have a role in the U.S. economy, but the future of our domestic transportation fuel system must also include new sources, such as the ultraclean synfuels derived from coal and cellulosic ethanol derived from homegrown grasses and biomass.

Expanding the existing domestic fuels facilities or constructing new ones is a maze of environmental permitting challenges. This is what the Senator from California was talking about a few minutes ago in trying to encourage Governor Schwarzenegger to streamline this permitting process.

This amendment provides a Governor with the option of requiring the Federal EPA to provide the State with financial and technical resources to accomplish the job and establishes a certain permitting process for all parties. The public demands increasing supplies for transportation fuel, but they also expect that fuel to be good for their health and for the environment.

To that end, the amendment requires the EPA to establish a demonstration to assess the use of Fischer-Tropsch diesel and jet fuel as an emission-control strategy. Initial tests found that Fischer- Tropsch diesel significantly reduces criterion pollutants over conventional fuels and could easily be transported with existing infrastructure.

It should be noted that the ongoing tests at Tinker Air Force Base in my home State of Oklahoma found that Fischer-Tropsch, or coal-to-liquid aircraft fuel, reduced particulates 47 to 90 percent and completely eliminated the SOX emissions over fuels that are used today.

I might add, this is a technology that is here. It needs to be improved upon. We are currently flying a B-52 that has eight engines using this type of fuel.

Good concepts in Washington are bad ideas if no one wants them at home. As a former mayor of Tulsa, I am a strong believer in local and State control. This is something that is controversial in Washington. There are a lot of people in this body who don't think any decision is a good decision unless it is made in Washington. I am the opposite. I feel closer to the people. They should be more involved, and that is why we structured it the way we did.

The Federal Government should provide incentives rather than mandates on local communities. Increasing clean domestic fuel supplies is in the Nation's security interest, but those facilities can also provide high- paying jobs to people in towns in need.

Our amendment provides financial incentives to the two most economically distressed communities in the Nation, towns affected by BRAC and Indian tribes, to consider building both liquids and commercial scale cellulosic ethanol facilities. Here we are talking about people who have gone through the BRAC process, people who have in their States facilities that were military facilities that were closed during the base realignment and closure process.

I am very proud my State of Oklahoma is the leader in the development of the energy crops for cellulosic biofuel. The key now is to promote investment, and nothing would speed the rapid expansion of the cellulosic biofuels industry more than investments by the Nation's traditional providers of liquid transportation fuels.

We have in the State of Oklahoma the Noble Foundation, Oklahoma State University, and Oklahoma University--all very much involved in the development of cellulosic biofuels. It is a technology that is coming. We know it is. I guess what we need to do is understand, while it is coming, we still need to run this great machine called America.

Many integrated oil companies have formed and substantially expanded their biofuels divisions within the past year to prepare for the eventuality of cross-competitive cellulosity biofuels. Oil companies invest in exploration because their stock prices are affected by their declared proven reserves. Creating a definition of renewable reserves would create a similar incentive for them to invest in cellulosic biofuels.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 directed the Department of Energy to accelerate the commercial development of oil shale and tar sands. Given the country's interest in developing renewable alternatives to fossil fuel, it is logical that the SEC would develop criteria in cooperation with biomass feedstock sources in its hierarchy at the same time.

This is Congress's least expensive way to jump-start the cellulosic biofuels industry. Increasing capacity to produce clean fuels at home is critical in making America more secure. Passing the Gas Price Act would be a material and substantive action toward this majority's stated goal of energy independence. To vote against it underscores something altogether. They like higher gas prices at the pump.

What we are talking about is something that is permissive. It allows States to opt out, if they want, and it streamlines the permitting process. It requires EPA to establish a demonstration to assess the use of Fischer-Tropsch diesel and jet fuels. It will help in our refining capacity, if we are talking about refineries for petroleum or refineries for biofuels or any other kinds of refineries.

To have a comprehensive Energy bill, we need to do what we have done, what we have already done in this bill, but the problem is here today, as was pointed out by the Senator from New Mexico. We have a supply problem, and that supply problem is here and now. The gas price amendment to expand our refining capacity would dramatically and immediately relieve that problem.

Again, there are two supply problems--one in production and one in refining capacity.

I will be glad to yield.

I will be happy to do it. Let me repeat what I told Senator Bingaman privately. I have no intention of bringing up this amendment for a vote now. We will set this amendment aside for other amendments and then hopefully we will have several lined up tomorrow. I think tomorrow we will start these votes.

Madam President, I will stay in his stead.

I yield the floor.

Let me respond.

I am not sure what bill the Senator from California is talking about. She didn't really describe this bill at all. Let's go through very quickly her four points, if the Senator from California would like to listen.

First of all, the EDA portion provides grants to local communities, not oil companies. This is not grants going to oil companies. Maybe the Senator from California has not gotten emotional in experiencing what has happened when there are BRAC closings and some of the bases have had to close. But when that happens, the EDA does have the function, and the EDA in this case can provide grants if local communities apply for these grants. If they do not want to apply for them, they do not have to do it. The fund seeks to promote development of future fuels, coal to liquids, cellulosic biomass, not just oil.

This is not the same amendment, I might add, as we tried to pass unsuccessfully by a one-vote margin in the Environment and Public Works Committee.

Second, this idea that there is a rollback in environmental laws--the association representing the environmental

concerns of every State, the Environmental Council of States, clearly states this will not do any such thing. Here is the Environmental Council of the States. Every State belongs to this, including California. It says in here:

This bill does not weaken the standards and allows each

State to choose its best course on most of the matters

detailed in the bill.

So there you have it. On this matter, the organization that represents all the environmental groups is strongly supporting this.

Will do nothing to increase energy independence? The reason the United States is vulnerable, in a vulnerable position, is because we don't have an adequate supply to meet the demand. Supply--that is what I have been talking about since we started talking here. Reducing demand is only one part of the equation. We want to reduce demand. We also want to increase supply.

I would say probably the most damaging thing that has been stated by the junior Senator--here is a quote by the senior Senator from California. When she talks about streamlining permitting, yes, that is one of the big problems. So I used a quote by Senator Feinstein in a letter to Governor Schwarzenegger. I will read it again because I think maybe the junior Senator wasn't in the Chamber when I talked about this. This is a quote out of the letter:

I can see where a cumbersome permitting process, with

uncertain outcomes, would make it difficult to plan and

implement projects . . . I encourage you to improve the speed

and predictability of the permitting process, and believe

that this will allow business and government to focus their

limited resources on actions that most benefit the

environment.

That is exactly what we want to do. That is a very acute observation by the senior Senator from California.

With that, I yield the floor.

This is a quote. Would you like me to read it again?

I will read it again.

No, no; I am saying she is concerned about the permitting process.

``I can see where a cumbersome permitting process, with uncertain outcomes, would make it difficult to plan and implement projects . . . I encourage you to improve the speed and predictability of the permitting process, and believe that this will allow business and government to focus their limited resources on actions that most benefit the environment.''

This is exactly what this bill does. We have a section in here that allows States, if they want to do it--and there is nothing wrong with allowing States to do what they see is in their best interests. I agree with Senator Feinstein that this would allow States to overcome this cumbersome permitting process, as she states in her statement.

Let me respond again. The distinguished junior Senator from California can say over and over and over again as many times as she wants that it is giving money to oil companies. It is not.

Specifically, the EDA portion provides grants to local communities if they want them. If the local community doesn't want them, they don't have to have them.

At this point in the Record I want to have printed a letter from the EDA that says:

No for-profit entity is eligible to receive EDA assistance.

Then, also, the permitting process is a small part of this amendment, but it is a very important part. It is a part that we have, subtitle A, about 4 pages, talking about trying to make the permitting process more streamlined. And that is where I used the statement from Senator Feinstein, who certainly agrees when she says: I can see where a cumbersome permitting process with uncertain outcomes would make it difficult to plan and implement projects.

Well, that is just one of the many things that we are trying to correct with this bill. Again, I have responded to all of the other statements that were made. I would repeat in terms of the environment, I am going to go ahead and submit for the Record at this point, along with the letter on the EDAs, a letter from the Environmental Council of the States, when they state very specifically: The bill does not weaken the standards and allows each State to choose its best course for most matters.

I think there is a basic, as I said before, problem in disagreement on the floor of this body when there are a lot of people who do not think that decisions, good decisions, are made unless they are made in Washington, DC.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I would observe that the junior Senator from California is not going to support my amendment. However, I would also observe that you can't keep saying the same thing over and over and over again and make it true.

We have quoted the Environmental Council of the States. They all say there is nothing in here that is going to be damaging to the environment. Anyway, it is my understanding that I am going to be willing to set this aside for other amendments, so we can perhaps get in the queue and have several votes tomorrow, whenever the appropriate time is.

I yield the floor.

Will the Senator yield to me for a question?

Because there is so much concern about this amendment

from within this committee and others, I would like to have a vote on this amendment. I don't want to take a lot of time. But I am wondering if my friend will propound some type of unanimous consent request so that the Senators on the floor can respond to the presentation by Senator Inhofe, but then give him time. I just think it might make for a more even flow.

Madam President, of course, I support Senator Inhofe's right to offer this amendment, but, to me, it is a disastrous amendment because it is a taxpayer giveaway to the oil companies. And I will explain why it is a total taxpayer giveaway to the oil companies that are making more money now than ever in history.

It doesn't do one thing to expand energy supply--not one thing. It shortcuts many environmental laws, which I will not go into at this time, but if we get further time, I will do that. It shortcuts many environmental laws that protect the air quality which is so important to our families. In California, 9,900 people every year die of particulate matter in their lungs. We cannot afford to say we are going to forget about air quality. That is a disaster. We don't want to become a China where they don't care about their people and their people suffer. We don't want to go there.

In the Energy bill in 2005, oil companies got a huge break, and it was made very attractive for them to open new refineries. My staff informs me that not one company has taken advantage of this break. So there is nothing that I think suggests that even going as far as Senator Inhofe goes, which is a total giveaway, will result in increased energy supply.

This bill never made it out of our committee when the Senator was chairman. It was never offered in the committee since I have been chairman. And if it were to be offered, it would go down.

Let me tell a story about Bakersfield, CA, where Shell Oil owned a refinery. We were all saying how important it was to continue the production of gasoline. In California, 2 percent of our gasoline supply came from this particular refinery.

Guess what. Shell Oil announces they are shutting down the refinery.

We were stunned, and we said: Why?

They said: We are not making a profit.

Guess what we found out. They were making a huge profit.

Then they said: We can't find a buyer.

We said: Really?

We went to the attorney general. We said: Can you help us?

He got involved. At that time, it was Bill Lockyer. Guess what. Somebody stepped forward to purchase the refinery.

Shell Oil wanted to shut down the refinery because they wanted to manipulate the supply. It is as simple as that--more money in their pocket, vertical integration. These are the people we want to reward with the Inhofe amendment? I think not. I think quite the opposite. I think we ought to agree to Senator Cantwell's antigouging amendment. I think we would want automatic investigations by the FTC. That is what I think we would need.

I wish to address some other aspects of this bill. As I understand it, there is an aspect of this bill which I want to make sure my colleagues understand before they come to vote on it, if, in fact, we have a vote. When I say this is a taxpayer giveaway, I mean what I say. There are expedited permits, waiver of all kinds of environmental laws, there is access to Federal lands, free. I say to my friend from New Mexico, can you imagine any other industry that gets free access to Federal lands? Not only do they not have to pay for the land, but they get 88 percent of the costs of the refinery if they are on Federal land and 100 percent reimbursement if they are on Indian land. What a situation--at a time when oil company profits are going through the roof and CEOs are coming before us and putting their heads down as we look at the amount of bonuses they are getting--into the tens of millions of dollars. This is the time to give them Federal land for refineries, which they have shown they are not interested in building? Waive all environmental laws to the detriment of the health and safety of America's families? Reimburse them for 88 to 100 percent of the cost of building their plant? What a deal. If people vote for this, I have a little piece of land in a very rocky part of California I could sell you. This makes no sense at this time.

I say to my colleagues, it is very important that we have supply. I am supporting this new fuels mandate. I see wonderful opportunities in the area of cellulosics that I think are fantastic, very exciting. I am willing to invest in research so we can use coal in a clean way. These things are all exciting. This is an opportunity for business. We don't have to give away the store to the oil companies to build these refineries when, again, I have experience that tells me they are actually shutting down refineries.

In California, the case in point is the Shell oil refinery in Bakersfield, one of the biggest scandals we had there, with nontruths coming after nontruths.

``We don't really want to close it down, but we have to because it is not profitable.'' Oh, yes, it turned out it was profitable. They just want to manipulate the supply.

``We can't find a buyer, we are looking high and low and can't find a buyer.'' In 3 weeks, the attorney general found them a buyer.

Here is the point about this Energy bill which Senator Bingaman is managing. It is the product of three or four different committees, and the bills that are included in the majority leader's package are bills that came out of committee. They have gone through the committee. They have been debated, they have been discussed, and they have been voted out. This particular plan of my friend's--he has every right to offer his amendment. I defend his right to offer it. But it never passed our committee even when the Republicans were in control. It certainly would not pass out of committee today. It is a taxpayer giveaway with absolutely no proof that refineries would be built.

I stand so strongly against this bill, on behalf of the American taxpayer as well as in behalf of the American families who want their health protected and do not want us to waive every single environmental law that protects the quality of the air they breathe inside their bodies.

I yield the floor. I will be back to respond to the comments of my good friend from Oklahoma.

Madam President, I was not aware that Senator Feinstein was supporting your amendment. Is that what you are suggesting?

I would like you to read it again.

I would really like that because you are implying that she supports your amendment.

We all are. That doesn't mean we support your amendment. Go ahead, read it again.

Madam President, if I might say, I appreciate hearing that. It has nothing to do with this particular amendment, which, basically, is a giveaway to the energy companies at a time when they are making a fortune.

We have a Federal Clean Air Act. We have it for a reason: Air goes from one State to another, one region to another. That is what we have. It is a Federal Clean Air Act. This was passed under Republican and Democratic administrations, over and over again. This is what the people want.

Do they want streamlining of permits? Yes. We all do. I was a county supervisor. I did a lot of my work streamlining permits. That doesn't mean backing off on protecting the people you represent and making sure you have an adequate timeframe to ascertain what are the pollutants that are going to come out of the smokestacks here. What are the diseases that could follow if these pollutants get into the lungs of the people?

This is an amendment which hides behind the word ``streamlining.'' But what it really does, it waives environmental laws.

Yes, I know a lot about this particular amendment. I have to say, the Senator from Oklahoma talks about these local redevelopment authorities--you could have 10 people from oil companies on those redevelopment authorities. You could. So you cannot stand here and tell me this is protective of the public interest.

We have an amendment which has been offered as some kind of a fix to the lack of refineries. You take a look at our refineries. I think the Senator from Washington is aware of this. They remind us a lot of the problems we had with Enron. They keep taking power offline, shutting down the refineries for so-called maintenance, at higher and higher levels. And when Shell Oil had a chance to expand a refinery or keep it going, they chose to shut it down.

My friend doesn't think the refinery companies, I guess, are making enough money. They are making record profits. He wants to give them land for nothing. He says it goes to a redevelopment agency. Yet there is no protection for the public there. At the end of the day, these companies are getting it for free, whether they are getting it from the Federal Government directly to them or the Federal Government through a redevelopment agency. Environmental laws are waived. People in this country will not be protected. It is a backdoor way to repeal part of the Clean Air Act at a time when people are dying of particulate matter.

Now, if you are on Indian land, you get that land, and you get reimbursed 100 percent for the plant. So my friend can get up and say: I didn't read it. And he could read me a quote from my friend, Senator Feinstein, who, as far as I know, is not supporting his amendment. I mean, it is a very tricky thing. I can hold up a statement from Senator Domenici and say: Look at this statement.

I can hold up a statement from every Republican from a speech they made saying how important it is that the people be protected from lung cancer. That has nothing to do with this amendment. It is a good debating tactic, but at the end of the day this amendment failed in the Environment Committee when the Senator from Oklahoma had the gavel, and this amendment would clearly have failed in the committee when I was holding the gavel.

So the fact is, what we are trying to do in this particular legislation is gather around amendments that have been voted out of committee in a bipartisan fashion, that were not contentious, like this one; that are not argumentative, like this one; and that are very unclear and are going in uncharted waters, like this amendment.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I just have one last response. I don't know how many of my colleagues ever sat on a redevelopment agency. I happen to have done so when I was on county board of supervisors. And it is disingenuous to say it is the redevelopment agency that gets the benefit. The redevelopment agency is the conduit to the private sector, and that is where the benefit goes.

Now, in many cases it is totally fine. When I sat on the redevelopment entity, it was because we had a very run-down part of our county that needed support. And so whatever it was we could give to them, any benefit in the Tax Code, et cetera, that is what we did.

But how about this? The benefit goes to the particular businesses now that are making record profits. I would tell you, the American people looking at this debate are going to say: Why aren't you protecting us from price gouging like Senator Cantwell suggests? That is the bill that is in the package, not this bill which essentially says we are taking away clean air protection, we are going to have 50 different standards here, 50 different permit processes. What a nightmare. We are giving away the money of the taxpayers to the biggest corporations in America that are making the most money ever--not only giving them the land but paying them back for all of their costs.

To me, to put this in this package will doom this package. I just hope if and when this does come up for a vote, there will be a resounding no. It was voted down in the committee, and it ought to be voted down on the floor of the Senate.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I wanted to follow my colleague, Senator Boxer, to talk just a bit about the automobile efficiency standards that are in this bill. I played a role in the Commerce Committee in helping to write a portion of that.

Before I do that, let me say it is often the case that a piece of legislation brought to the floor of the Senate dealing with an important issue is described as something that is very significant, earthshaking. And in most cases it does not turn out to be quite that significant.

My dad once told me: Never buy something from someone who is out of breath. There is always kind of a breathless quality to reform packages that are brought to the floor of the Senate. I must say, however, that I think what we have on the floor of the Senate, perhaps with some amendments, is a significant change with respect to an issue that we should address; that is, energy.

Let me talk about the automobile efficiency issues and the issues of renewable fuels and renewable energy. Now, I noted that the OPEC countries have weighed in the last few days. This is dated June 7. It says: OPEC--that is the cartel--those are the countries that have formed a cartel. They produce a substantial portion of our country's energy, the world's energy. About 40 percent of global oil production comes from the eight OPEC countries.

Here is what OPEC says. OPEC, on Tuesday, warned Western countries that their effort to develop biofuels as an alternative energy source to combat climate change risks driving the price of oil, ``through the roof.''

The Secretary General of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries said: The powerful cartel was considering cutting its investment in new oil production in response to moves by the developed world to use more biofuels.

So let me say again what this is. This is the OPEC cartel, which, of course, would be illegal in our country, getting together and saying to the United States: If you begin to produce more biofuels, ethanol and so on, we may well cut our production of oil, which would have the capability of then putting upward pressure on oil and gas prices; almost certainly it would do that. An interesting and I think also disturbing message from the OPEC countries.

But this underscores why we need an Energy bill. I mean we are held hostage by a group of people sitting in a room, called OPEC ministers, deciding how much they are going to produce, at what price they want to produce it. They close the door, make judgments in secret in a secret cartel that would be illegal in this country. They say to us: Oh, by the way, if you want to get out of this box that you are in, by producing more of the energy yourself in the form of renewable fuels, good luck. By the way, tough luck, because we may well decrease our own production.

Well, if I might just point out that this bill itself, it has some titles. Let me read the titles of the bill. I am sure my colleagues have done that: Title 1, Biofuels for Energy Security, it is a very important title; title 2, Energy Efficiency, there is substantial energy to be gained in the efficiency standards; title 3, Carbon Capture, Storage, Research and Development; title 4, Cost-Effective, Environmentally Sustainable Public Buildings. All of this is important.

With respect to the biofuels, I was thinking as I was sitting here, about a young guy who came up to me one night. He was about 21 years old. He came up to me at a community meeting in North Dakota and said: I just came in from the west coast. I drove a pickup truck from the west coast on vegetable oil. He was fueling his pickup truck using vegetable oil.

Here is a kid that is working for alternative fuels groups out on the west coast someplace with stars in their eyes and dreams about finding alternative fuels that work.

I said: Well, how does it work when you use vegetable oil?

He had modified his engine in his pickup truck and drove across the Northern Tier using vegetable oil. He said: It worked great until they got to Montana, by the way, no offense to the Montanans here. He said it worked great until we got to Montana when it got kind of cold. Then the viscosity of that vegetable oil thickened up and they could not quite use it for a while.

But the point is, there are a lot of people doing inventive, interesting, fascinating things fueling their vehicles, creating modifications to vehicles. We are talking about creating a very substantial and aggressive standard for what are called biofuels, particularly ethanol and cellulosic ethanol, and so on.

Now, my colleague from California talked about automobile efficiency, and the automobile efficiency standards that we have created. Let me make the point first that there has been no change in 25 years to these standards. None. I have actually been persuaded in years past by those who say: Well, let's have NHTSA, the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration within the Department of Transportation, develop these new standards.

The fact is, that is an excuse for doing nothing. It is pretty evident to me now that nothing will happen if that is what we continue to do. So we, as a Congress, on a bipartisan basis, have said: We need more efficiency with respect to our vehicles.

We use about 145 billion gallons of fuel a year in this country, 145 billion gallons of fuel. If we blended every gallon with ethanol, that would be a market of 14\1/2\ billion gallons of ethanol. We have created a renewable fuel standard of 7\1/2\ billion gallons of ethanol by 2012. I was one of the authors of that just a couple of years ago. We are going to exceed that very quickly. We are probably at that level now, and going to be at 10 billion gallons in 2 or 3 years.

So now we are going to go to 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels. The OPEC countries say: Oh, this is awful. The roof is going to come in. We may decrease production of oil if you decide you are going to move in another direction.

Even as we do that, believing that with 70 percent of the oil that we import into this country being used in vehicles. And, understanding then we must make the vehicles more efficient if we are going to become less dependent on the OPEC countries and less dependent on foreign sources of oil from whom we now get over 60 percent of our oil, then we have a CAFE standard in this bill.

Now here is the result of the CAFE or the automobile efficiency standard in my State's newspapers, and I assume others by the auto industry. This is the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. They are putting full-page ads in the newspapers, and they are also doing direct mail to constituents: Say no to extreme fuel economy increases. Make sure you don't pass these increased automobile efficiency standards.

Well, that is what they have been saying for 25 years, and nothing has changed. I have told this story repeatedly, and I will again because I think it is important. The first car I purchased as a young boy in high school was a 1924 Model T Ford for $25. It had been sitting in a grainery for decades. A guy sold it to me for $25. I spent 2 years trying to get it to run.

I restored that old Model T Ford. What I discovered was you put gasoline in a 1924 Model T Ford exactly the

same way you put gasoline in a 2007 Ford. Everything else about the vehicle has changed. Everything. There is more computing power in a 2007 brand new car than there was on the lunar lander that put the astronauts on the moon. Everything about these vehicles has changed except you still have to stick a gas hose in the tank and start pumping.

We did that in the 1924 model car, and you do it today in a 2007 model car. I would like to see us move and pole-vault to a new future. I happen to believe we ought to move to a hydrogen fuel cell future, where you have twice the efficiency of power to the wheel and put water out the tailpipe.

What a wonderful thing that would be. And hydrogen, of course, is ubiquitous. It is everywhere. You can take wind energy, produce electricity from the wind, use the electricity through the process of electrolysis, separate hydrogen from water, store hydrogen for vehicle transportation.

There are so many things we can do, but let's start, let's at least start, with the current vehicle fleet, saying to the automakers that we intend and expect you to produce more efficient automobiles.

The CAFE standards we have created that are in this legislation are called ten-in-ten. It is not unreasonable to believe that we should expect greater efficiency in these vehicles. Yes, we know the improvements that have been made in vehicles: better cupholders, more adept sound systems, all of the wonderful things that come with all of these new cars. But what about more efficiency? Nothing has changed.

A friend of mine looked at an identical vehicle they purchased 10 years prior. They loved the vehicle. So 10 years later they are ready for a new vehicle. They looked at the sticker on the window and discovered that in 10 years, the efficiency of that vehicle had not changed by 1 mile per gallon, not 1.

That describes the failure. We ought to certainly expect better than that.

Let me say also, in addition to supporting the automobile efficiency standards we will be voting on--standards that are bipartisan, standards that are reasonable, standards that have an off ramp so if they are not achievable, the industry will not have to meet them--they will have to demonstrate they are not capable scientifically of doing so.

In addition to that issue, which is so important, I wish to mention the issue of fossil fuels. We are, in fact, going to use fossil fuels in our future--coal, oil, and natural gas. I am a big supporter of renewable energy sources and renewable fuels. I believe that strongly. Whether it is wind, biomass, geothermal, renewable fuels, all of those are critically important. We will continue to use fossil fuels. It is important to me that we find ways to unlock opportunities to continue to use coal in a way that doesn't degrade the environment.

We have now finally come to an intersection. That intersection includes energy policy and climate change. We need to find a way, through clean coal technology and other issues--I will be working on that in the appropriations subcommittee which I chair--to continue to use those resources, particularly coal.

My colleagues have included, with my support, the efficiency titles of this legislation which are very important. Everything we do every day, from turning on a light switch to using appliances, everything we do every day and in every way uses energy. There are dramatic advances in lighting and dramatic savings to be had with respect to lighting standards in this bill. We fought for a long while about an obscure term called SEER 13 standards for air conditioners. We fought tooth and nail. The requirement for SEER 13 standards on air conditioners is very important and will require us to build fewer new energy plants because of the savings and the conservation that comes from that efficiency standard.

There is a lot to commend in this legislation. The next important step will be an amendment offered by Senator Bingaman that I will cosponsor with others called the renewable energy standard which will require 15 percent of our electric energy to come from renewable energy. That is an important standard and one I hope the Congress will embrace and support.

I am going to be speaking on other amendments as well. I again commend Senator Bingaman and Senator Domenici. We have a good start. I come from not only the Energy Committee but Senator Stevens and Senator Inouye on the Commerce Committee on which I serve, Senator Boxer and Senator Inhofe and others who have worked on this legislation. We are off to a start that can be a very important policy change and a new direction for the country in energy policy.

I yield the floor.