DOES Act

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I remember those days in West Virginia when all the major airlines operating large jet aircraft served all of West Virginia's airports--jets, actual jets coming into West Virginia. Airline deregulation was a terrible mistake. It changed the very nature of air travel in this country for all. For millions of Americans in large urban areas, it ushered in an era of affordable air traffic. A trip to New York and Los Angeles went down. In fact, at a number of points, it became much cheaper to go

to Los Angeles from New York than to go from West Virginia to Washington. But for West Virginia communities, it meant a loss of service and convenience and often higher prices. It seemed to me that the big jets disappeared from West Virginia within days of deregulation. I remember those nice American, United, and Eastern jets sitting out there on the tarmac, people piling on. Deregulation--boom, they were gone.

For 30 years, small and rural communities have had to cope with very limited and unreliable service. The Presiding Officer knows exactly what I am talking about. Over the last several years, these problems have been exacerbated by the weakened financial condition of the U.S. airlines, which is what this whole effort to get a bill going is about.

After September 11, dozens of communities saw a dramatic decrease in the level of air service. It was measurable, noticeable, and depressing. Many lost service altogether. As the industry recovered from the dramatic downturn in the air traffic that tragic day sparked, small communities did not see the benefits of that resurgence because once they dropped something, it was easier to keep it dropped rather than to help.

Small community air service is facing an unprecedented crisis. If we fail to act to address this problem, dozens of small communities across our Nation will face a future without air service. Consider that for a moment--small communities, viable industries, institutions, people who count. Americans are born equal, but then some don't have air service. That is what we have now. Without access to reliable air service, we throw into question their economic future.

I do not come to the Senate to represent the diminution of possibilities for West Virginia's economic future. I have spoken about the weakened financial condition of our major airlines. But we must also recognize that small regional carriers that provide the air service to rural States such as West Virginia and Montana and parts of Ohio, I am quite certain, also provide the vast majority of air service to midsize communities across the country, and they are teetering on the brink of collapse because of high fuel prices.

As Senator Baucus knows all too well, small airlines across the West have folded, leaving at least 17 communities with no air service at all. Seventeen communities would sort of make up the entire State of West Virginia. That is a terrible blow. So few regional airlines are willing to initiate service to small, isolated communities that, when one withdraws service, it is very hard to find replacement air service. In most cases, it is impossible. Hundreds of small and rural communities across our country are facing drastically reduced air service because of this financial turmoil in the industry. Even in the best of times, these communities face a difficult time maintaining and developing new air service options. Today, their challenge is preventing the complete loss of air service. That is effort No. 1: Hold on to whatever you might have. No matter if it is one flight a day, hold on to it. Fight for it.

I strongly believe the Federal Government must continue to assist our most vulnerable communities stay connected to the Nation's aviation network, a network paid for by all Americans.

The reduction or elimination of air service has been devastating in terms of its effect on the economic well-being of many of our communities across the country. Having adequate air service is not only a matter of convenience, it is a matter of economic survival. Without access to reliable air service, businesses will not locate their operations in these areas of the country, no matter how attractive the quality of life or the quality of the workforce. We have, for example, extremely low housing prices, low property taxes, and an extraordinarily highly productive workforce, with an average in manufacturing of 1 percent annual turnover. That is almost unheard of. Airports are economic engines that attract critical new development opportunities and the people who can make those things happen or continue to grow.

West Virginia is a very good place to do business. Toyota and a number of other large industries, chemical and otherwise, have found that out. I can proudly state that countless large U.S. and international companies have facilities in my State. I can even point out that 20 Japanese companies have industries in the State of West Virginia, three in Wayne County, which the Presiding Officer is familiar with. From West Virginia, a business traveler can get to seven airline hubs and from these seven cities can get to any point on the globe. One-stop service to Tokyo, London, Dubai is critical if my State is going to compete in the global economy. West Virginia has been able to attract firms from around the world because corporate executives know they can visit their operations with ease. That is why we have air service. Rural and smalltown America must continue to be adequately linked to the Nation's air transportation network if its people and businesses are to compete with larger urban areas and around the world.

When Congress deregulated the airline industry, we promised small and rural communities we would make sure they would remain connected to the aviation system. We have failed in our commitment to those promises. The Essential Air Service Program, which Congress established when we deregulated the airline industry, is not a huge program, but it provides money to attract airlines into smaller communities and is incredibly valuable.

But, on the other hand, the essential air service has never met the true needs and expectations of rural air service or the necessary requirements of rural air service.

In West Virginia, the essential air service has often been plagued by high fares and limited, sporadic service. For 10 years, I have worked to strengthen small community air service. I do that because I represent a rural State with hard-working people who have an enormous desire to succeed and to work and are deprived of what many other Americans take for granted. That is not fair in Internet connection; you cannot have a rural and urban divide. It is just as true in airline service; you cannot have urban doing well, rurals being left out because we are all Americans, all created by God to be equal.

So I have worked to strengthen small community air service. In the Aviation Investment and Reform Act for the 21st Century, which Congress enacted into law in the distant past of the year 2000, we began to address the need to improve air service in small and rural communities.

I, along with many of my colleagues, supported the creation of something called the Small Community Air Service Development Pilot Program, a competitive grant program to provide communities with the resources they needed to attract new air service to their town. We try everything we can. We try absolutely everything we can. Over 100 communities now have used these grants to secure and retain new air service options. That is good.

I wish to highlight two success stories which happened in my State. Charleston received money under the program I have described and has used it successfully--Charleston is our capital--they have used it very successfully to attract a new service connection for our chemical industry to Houston. Why is that important? Well, our chemical companies do a lot of the training of their people in Houston and then they come back and they work in our chemical companies. Air service to Houston gave West Virginians an important gateway, in addition, therefore, to the markets of Latin America.

Over the past 2 years, Tri-State Airport in Huntington has been reborn because of the money it received under this Small Community Air Service Development Grant Program. Prior to attracting a low-cost charter operator, the airport had seen a steep decline in the number of passengers using the airport. With fewer passengers, airlines cut back flights. Fewer flights meant fewer passengers. It was a death spiral.

Once the community was able to secure a grant, matched with almost as many local dollars, airport officials were able to attract a new carrier that served the critical markets local residents wanted. For the first time in 20 years, large jets roared off the runways in West Virginia, in Huntington. The airport will have 100,000 passengers pass through its gates for the first time in decades.

Now, that is not very impressive if you are from New York or Los Angeles,

but in West Virginia it shakes the world, and it gives people new hope. I was there when all this happened, and you could see a new sense of vigor and determination in the population. Air service attracts community ambition.

Improving air service must be a collective effort. Communities are most successful in creating new air service options when everyone-- including the Federal and the State governments, airports, airlines, businesses, and citizens--works together to attract, promote, and use the service.

One of the things we learned the hard way in West Virginia was you cannot treat an airport similar to something which is out there which people will automatically go to. We used to have a lot of our people from Charleston driving all the way to Cincinnati and actually not understanding that the cost of traveling to Cincinnati and the fuel and the overnight and all the rest of it actually did not give them that much of a financial break, but they looked at the cost of the airline and off they went. So 16 percent of Charleston's traffic disappeared.

I am now proud to say West Virginia communities have been able to use this important program to rethink their air service needs, to think about marketing airports. You market airports like you market anything else. People have to be aware of it. You have to attract people to it. It is not something which is there. It is something which has to sell itself. LaGuardia does not have to do that. Newark does not have to do that. In West Virginia, we have to do that, and we are doing that.

The FAA bill that is before us extends the authorization for these important programs for 4 more years.

Four West Virginia commercial airports rely solely upon the Essential Air Service program for any service at all. We are extending that and enlarging the amount. No community wants to be dependent on essential air service. It is not a badge of honor. But it is a fact of survival. But for many, it is their only option to maintain air service.

But as I mentioned earlier, the program has not met the needs of many communities. In 2003, as part of the last FAA reauthorization bill, I created a number of new voluntary pilot programs for essential air service communities. I modeled these initiatives after the Small Community Air Service Pilot Program by focusing on incentives rather than punitive approaches.

Under this new plan, a community could receive funds to develop its own marketing plans rather than rely on the airline for one. It could use funds to increase service levels, opt to use different types of aircraft or investigate the use of alternative transportation service. In other words, it said: What is our problem? What are we going to do about it? We cannot wait on other people. We have to make these decisions ourselves. We are doing that in West Virginia.

This year, we have added a number of provisions to strengthen the Essential Air Service program. We have increased the authorization level for the program by $58 million to $175 million a year. We have included provisions to help carriers that provide the essential air service so they can meet the cost of high fuel. It is essential. We have increased the flexibility of the program even further so communities can work with the Department of Transportation and air carriers to find air service that works for them.

Small and rural communities are the very first to bear the brunt of bad economic times. It has always been so. It shall always be so. The Presiding Officer knows exactly what I am talking about. We are always, in West Virginia, at the end of the food chain on everything. We understand that. We do not like it, but that is our current destiny, and so that is why we have to fight harder and try to be more imaginative.

The general economic downturn and the dire straits of the aviation industry have placed exceptional burdens on air service to our most isolated communities. The Federal Government must provide additional resources for small communities to help themselves attract air service. If you have to do the work yourself, you do it. You just do it. The Federal Government must make sure our most vulnerable towns and cities are linked to the rest of the Nation. It is an easy statement to make, but it is a huge statement. We have an obligation in this country to make sure all of our communities and our people are linked to the broad air service opportunities, hubs and spokes. It has to happen.

My legislation builds on existing programs and strengthens them. We must continue to provide our constituents the tools and resources necessary to attract air service, and we are doing that.

So, in closing, I should say a subsidy alone does not solve the problems of small community air service. If our constituents do not use that service, or the airlines take it away--airlines cannot operate unprofitable flights or flights that are marginally profitable, for which they could do better elsewhere. They make a little bit of money or they do not make a little bit of money, and they are gone because their situation is so dire.

I do not know what the future of the U.S. airline industry will look like in 6 months, but our Nation needs a strong airline industry. Our communities need to be connected to the aviation system.

That is why we are going through this most extraordinary exercise of no amendments to be voted on, a good deal of time to sit and talk, a great deal of frustration. But we are trying to pass something called the Federal aviation bill that will provide service to our people. If there is anything in the national interest, it is that. I will not go so far as to say it is more important than the interstate highway system, in terms of economic development and also reaching out to the world, which all our States need now to do on a two-way basis.

So we fight. We continue to fight.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I say to my good friend, the Senator from Georgia, things have changed a bit this morning and decisions are being made on that side of the aisle that will determine whether we can move forward. I am hopeful about that process.

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

Madam President, I say also to my very dear friend from Georgia with whom I have a long and wonderful background because of his strong reaction to our plight in West Virginia with the coal miners--he doesn't have coal in his State but he came into our State and adopted it as his own and we adopted him.

I also wish to tell him that what he is suggesting is something I very much support.

Amendment No. 4642 to Amendment No. 4637

Madam President, I believe there is an amendment at the desk.

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

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

Mr. President, I would like to take a few moments today to discuss what is a catastrophe all across our Nation--and it certainly is in West Virginia--because of the price of gasoline and other transportation fuels.

My State is not wealthy. I think it is either the third or fourth poorest State in our country, and I do not say that with shame, I say that with pride because it was, in a sense, one of the reasons I was a VISTA volunteer. I went there as a VISTA volunteer because I saw a place where I could at least try to help. The people are the best ever. When people have to struggle to make it, day-in and day-out, they are pretty solid people.

As I am sure it is the case for all of my colleagues, for the past few weeks and months I have been hearing from my constituents constantly about rising gasoline prices and the resulting rise in the prices for goods and services throughout our economy.

West Virginians are hurting. West Virginians will always find a way to persevere--always--but right now many are struggling to juggle expenses, making enormous sacrifices to feed and clothe their families, while trying to pay the cost of going to work. We have plants in West Virginia which people drive hours and hours every day to get to. Work is not easily found, so where it is, people have to drive. We are 96 percent mountains, 4 percent flat. We have a lot of roads. People pretty much have canceled the occasional splurge for a movie. We have a baseball team in West Virginia. That has pretty much been pushed off. In other words, if it is a nonemergency purchase, they bypass it. It takes away from their happiness, their stability as a family, but they have no choice. Belts have been tightened just about as far as belts can be tightened.

Yet, this week, we hear that oil company profits are again nearing or exceeding record highs and that these companies have no plan and these companies have no desire to increase domestic refining capacity--one of the very few things we know would actually help bring down prices.

The Energy Information Administration and private sector energy experts tell us to expect gasoline and diesel fuel prices to continue to rise for the foreseeable future. I do not know what that means. I do not think West Virginians care very much what that means. It just means a long time. And a week, a month, is a long time. This is well beyond the usual cyclical annual price fluctuation. And the so-called summer driving season is not even here yet. But other than a brief dip in January, the price West Virginians have been paying at the pump has been climbing steadily since before Christmas--not as noticeable at first, now catastrophic.

The average price for a gallon of regular gasoline in West Virginia has risen from just over $2.70 a gallon in August 2007 to a price on the last day of April 2008 of $3.71. I do not have new wage data for workers in my State. I wish I did. But I am willing to stand on the floor of the Senate and assert that nobody's salary has risen to match that 37-percent increase.

The idea of $4-a-gallon gasoline--which 2, 3, 4, 5 years ago would have sounded crazy--really now is a matter not so much of ``if,'' but ``when.'' The timeframe I just mentioned is relevant, of course, because we are a country that has been at war in Iraq for more than 5 years--spending money, letting people do corruption at all levels. I am always suspicious of oil companies. When our brave American forces set out to impose regime change on that country based upon the false--or at least unforgivably imprecise; I prefer the word ``false''-- intelligence, West Virginians were paying, on average, $1.63 for regular gasoline. That was not that long ago. It had been as low as $1.26 in the months leading up to the invasion.

It should come as no surprise to anyone within the sound of my voice, but in that time oil industry profits have risen steadily: almost $60 billion in profits in 2003, just over $80 billion in profits in 2004, approximately $110 billion in profits in 2005, just under $120 billion in 2006, and just over $120 billion so far in 2007. ExxonMobil, Shell, and ChevronTexaco have each had increasingly larger profits each of the last 5 years. BP and ConocoPhillips have done nearly as well. In all, the five largest integrated multinational oil companies have reaped almost $560 billion in profits since President Bush and Vice President Cheney came into town. I don't particularly want to do it that way, because I blame the companies more than I blame them, but there is lots of blame to go around.

Anyone who looks at the numbers can make this about politics, of course. It is easy to do. But this is, in essence, for me, a former Vista volunteer in my 44th year in West Virginia, all about people. It is simply all about people and families who have been struggling anyway. The average salary for the average working family of four in West Virginia is $31,000. That is not a lot of money, before you get to all of this, and then it is even less.

Today, if you are lucky enough to live or work near Sam's Club in Vienna, WV, which is on the Ohio River, and you can afford to become a member there, you can get a gallon of gasoline for $3.49. It is hard for anyone I know in West Virginia to think of that as cheap, but it is the lowest price reported in the entire State. Frankly, based on the data I have seen, it is so much lower than the rest of the State that you almost have to consider it an anomaly.

If you are running low in Spencer, WV, a rural community, however, you need to be prepared to pay $3.82 at the Exxon station on Main Street. It is $3.79 in South Charleston. Residents of Huntington are paying $3.75. In Berkeley Springs, not far from Washington, it is $3.69. No West Virginia county--none--is reporting an average price per gallon of regular gasoline that is below $3.61. Only three of my States' 55 counties are reporting average gasoline prices lower than $3.67.

Individual price quotes at individual stations are ominous enough, but the real stark numbers, the real telling calculation, is how much more West Virginians are paying for gasoline than they were in years past, and that is not even getting into the meteoric rises in food prices and the other costs essential to daily living. Even those in West Virginia who travel by air, which is the subject of the bill we are meant to be on, those prices have gone up.

Since 2001, West Virginia households are paying almost $2,500 per year more for gasoline. If it is a household with children, that makes it $3,000. I take my colleagues back to the average salary for the average family of four, working family of four in West Virginia: $31,000. When you add on health care, food, rent, and all the rest, everything else, it is an enormous matter. If it is a household with teenagers, it is just below $3,600 more. Families, businesses, and farmers in West Virginia will spend $153 million more on gasoline in April 2008 than they spent in January 2001.

If prices remain at current levels, $1.83 billion more will be spent on gasoline in West Virginia this year than

was spent in 2001. West Virginia consumers, farmers, and businesses are on a track to pay $2.96 billion for gasoline this year.

So West Virginians are asking two questions: How did we get here; but to them, much more importantly, what can be done to fix this.

Nobody in Government, academia, or the private industry can give us a single definitive equation for what makes the price of oil go up and down. We don't know why, but we can't. Generally, increased demand from China, India, and much of the developing world has set the stage obviously for prices that we have to take into consideration.

Much of our oil comes from an unregulated and unresponsive cartel called OPEC. We also know that since the tragic terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the world price for petroleum has been affected by a global struggle against stateless thugs.

The instability brought about by the invasion in Iraq has done nothing but raise the pump price. I don't know a single benefit to our Nation that has been accomplished there. But smaller factors have also had huge consequences. Instability in Nigeria and the outrageous behavior in Venezuela have contributed in similarly negative ways. The recent strike by refinery and pipeline workers in Scotland, unbeknownst to many of our citizens, will not help. Likewise for the very serious refinery explosion in Utah this week.

Economists cannot pinpoint how much speculation in the commodities market is adding to the price of oil, but a congressional study in 2005 suggested it was in the $20 to $25 per barrel range. A more recent study announced by Public Citizen said it is now closer to $30 a barrel. It doesn't matter. Every cent of that is being seen at the gas pumps in West Virginia and around the country, and it hurts, and trying to give a worldwide economic explanation for it doesn't solve anybody's problems or anybody's pain.

We know, too, that the price is manipulated up and down the supply chain. Nobody will ever convince me that there is not a large amount of corruption and manipulation, deliberate, cozy and easy, that goes on around boardrooms in oil companies. From the huge oil companies that find the oil, through more markets and middlemen than we can keep up with, every player has the ability to force the price up for their own bottom line. There is manipulation beyond the reach of my people in West Virginia or the Presiding Officer's people in the State of Colorado. We are at their mercy. We pay the price, we are at the mercy--at the mercy of oil. Federal investigators cannot usually pinpoint collusion, but those acting independently to manipulate prices cost the people of West Virginia all the same. There are a lot of things Federal regulators never manage to find.

In the long term, the things we need to do sound basic--and this is the final part of my remarks and the important part, other than the overriding theme of anger--such as increasing supply and reducing consumption, but achieving these goals has proved to be very difficult.

I have long supported efforts to improve automobile fuel efficiency, and so have most other people--not all. We made a small and long overdue change last year, and I believe we will do more. I think CAFE standards are going to go up and up, as they should; cars will get smaller and smaller, as they should. That will not be good for my legs, but it will be good for my people. But even when Detroit catches up with the rest of the world's automakers on fuel efficiency--I repeat, catches up--we do need to add to our supply now.

That is why in 2006, I supported Senator Domenici's legislation to increase oil and gas exploration in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. When these new fields are fully on line, they will add 1.26 billion barrels of oil to our domestic supply. Now, I say that, but I also have to say in all honesty that I voted against virtually every other attempt to do drilling offshore and in ANWR, for example. ANWR to me has always been a shibboleth. People say: Well, we can get lots of supply there, just as many people or more say it is technically feasible or maybe it is economically feasible, but it is not both. In the meantime, the tundra continues to melt.

That is why I have also consistently supported holding off on additional deposits in our Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It is more than 97 percent full as it is, and there is no economic rationale for filling it to the brim with $120 per barrel of oil. That product should be making its way into the market some place.

I joined my colleagues earlier this year to ask the President to suspend deliveries into the petroleum reserve until the price of oil drops below $75 a barrel. Since the President persists in refusing to stop taking oil off the market, I will support legislation to force him to do it.

I also support, as I have in the past on several occasions, the imposition of a windfall profits tax on integrated multinational oil companies. People say this won't have any effect. I would like to try that out to show that they are wrong and to send a message. The oil companies are making so much money maybe they won't even notice it. But I doubt that, because there are now 300 million Americans who are very angry about what very few of them are doing. As I have said, these companies are making huge, perhaps unconscionable--not perhaps--totally unconscionable profits off the hard-working people in my State and off the wages of struggling Americans everywhere. If they refuse to reinvest in additional refining capacity, which has been their habit, the least we can do is use some of those profits to shore up the highway trust fund for the road infrastructure and transportation projects that we need for the 21st century, and perhaps even for something called aviation. Those projects would create jobs.

I will also reintroduce legislation this week that I first introduced in 2001. It is called the Low Income Gasoline Assistance Program, or LIGAP. This will provide some relief to Americans hardest hit by any rise in prices; to wit, the working poor, which describes a lot of my State. For many West Virginia seniors who have no means of getting to work, the grocery store, or to a doctor's appointment other than their cars or trucks, if they have them, LIGAP assistance for gasoline purchases will enable them to weather this crisis with a little more peace of mind. I say ``if they have them'' because many people in communities I have worked in throughout West Virginia don't have automobiles, so when they have to go somewhere, usually a pretty long distance, they have to hitch a ride. Even though our people are innately good and generous, because they depend on others as others depend on them, they will usually charge a fee for that ride. In any event, whether they can even take that ride will depend on whether they can afford the gasoline price to get there.

So LIGAP eligibility would be linked to and modeled after LIHEAP, the very successful and efficient home heating and cooling assistance program. Funds would be distributed to States as additions to allocations under the existing community development block grant program.

It makes sense. For everyone who qualifies, LIGAP would give stipends of between $100 and $165 a month. Hopefully, this may mean not having to scrimp on their children's food or cut back on prescription drugs and other family needs.

Families are the basis of our country. People are the basis of everything we do. It is just that there are some sectors of our economy that choose to avoid that because they don't have to depend upon those people because those people have no choice but to buy their products.

It is time for Congress and the administration to come together and stop bickering--it would be a majestic accomplishment--and stop fighting over turf, as we are doing on the aviation bill. While we engage in parliamentary tactics that most Americans don't give a hoot about--in fact, they hate us for doing it--West Virginians and citizens in every State are suffering, while oil companies are laughing all the way to their many banks. This must stop. I ask my colleagues to work with me to make this stop.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, in the last several weeks in a number of venues, I have met with hundreds, in fact thousands, of Vermonters, and to nobody's great surprise, the issue that is uppermost on their minds is the very high price of gas and the price of oil. I know that is true in all 50 States in this country and in thousands of communities. It is especially true in rural States because in rural States, especially cold-weather States, it is not uncommon for people to travel 50 miles to their jobs and then 50 miles back. If you drive 100 miles to work, the mileage runs up.

I should mention, I know it probably didn't snow in Florida, but it did snow

in Vermont. We had a small amount of snow. That simply indicates that people know when it gets cold in Vermont it gets very cold. We have a lot of elderly people right now wondering how they are going to heat their homes next winter. We have a combination of working people in a rural State--this is true all over rural America--paying outrageously high prices in order to get to work and, in colder weather States, people very worried about whether they can stay warm next winter.

The arithmetic is not really hard to figure out. If you put 25,000 miles on your car going to work every year and you are paying a buck more than you used to and you get 25 miles per gallon on your car, that is a thousand dollars. If you make $30,000 a year and you get a 3- percent raise, that is 900 bucks. So all of your raise, all of your cost-of-living increase on your job is now in your gas tank. That is happening to millions of American workers. Then these same workers are paying more for health care, are paying more for food, more for education, which, added together, is why the middle class in America is collapsing.

For many years, as good-paying jobs have gone to China, as our people are struggling to make ends meet, people have been worried about how they are going to survive economically. On top of that, we now have the foreclosure crisis and we have the escalating cost of gas and oil in this country, which then leads some 80 percent of the people in this country to believe this country is going in the wrong direction, and one wonders, really, what the other 20 percent are thinking. Clearly, for the middle class in this country, we are facing a very serious problem.

I did an interesting thing a few weeks ago in Vermont. We were having some town meetings on the economy. We brought a professor from Harvard Law School, one of the best writers in America on the economy. Her name is Elizabeth Warren.

In preparation for that meeting, we sent out an e-mail to people in my State and said: Tell me what is going on in terms of the collapse of the middle class and how that impacts your life. Frankly, we expected a few dozen people to reply. As of today, we have received over 700 responses. This is doubly surprising because in Vermont people are quite reticent, not wanting to talk about personal aspects of their lives--700 people. I recommend you and Members of the Senate read some of these responses. They are up on our Web site. The tales people are telling are heartbreaking, they are poignant, they come from the heart, and there are hundreds of them.

Let me just read a few segments of some of the letters we have received and how they touch on gas prices and the general collapse of the middle class in our country.

We are hard-working people. We want to pay our bills. We

want to keep what we worked so hard for. The constantly

increasing cost of gas, oil, groceries are drowning us. I

hear the same thing from most of our friends on a daily

basis--hanging on by a thread, robbing Peter to pay Paul. It

is such a stressful way to live. There are days when I get so

discouraged I just want to call the banks and say just take

it all. I don't have it in me to fight for it anymore.

This is a family in the State of Vermont.

Here is another one. This comes from an elderly couple in Vermont:

My wife and I are both 77, retired and living on a very

limited income. We live in the country, and driving the 60-

plus miles round trip for shopping and health care has become

a financial hardship.

Traveling 60 miles for shopping and health care has become a financial hardship.

Even though we drive a car that gets 35 miles to the

gallon, a tankful of gas eats up an awfully large amount of

our disposable income.

That is true all over America. You have older people who

get in their car, they go out to buy groceries, they go to

the doctor, and suddenly they are finding that just getting

into their car and going where they have gone their whole

lives is now a very expensive proposition, in this case

eating up a large part of their disposable income.

Another family writes:

I live in the Northeast Kingdom, which is a very rural area

in the northern part of Vermont near the Canadian border, and

I have to drive a 30-mile round trip to work in Morrisville

and even farther to Stowe, where most of the jobs are now.

With the gas prices high and most employers paying $8.50 to

maybe $10 per hour, you spend much of your paycheck traveling

to and from work.

In other words, in the real world, there are millions of people in rural Vermont and all over this country and in Florida who are making $8.50, $9, $10 an hour, and if you are paying $3.50 a gallon to get to work and you have to travel any kind of distance, what do you have left? Not a lot.

The average price for a gallon of gas recently hit a recordbreaking $3.62 a gallon, which is more than double what it was when President Bush first took office. The price of diesel fuel is now averaging over $4.17 a gallon, which is more than $1.36 higher than it was just a year ago. The price of oil is now $110 a barrel. I think these prices say it all. They tell every Member or should tell every Member of Congress what the American people understand, which is that we have a national emergency on our hands. If we do not act boldly and rapidly to lower gas and oil prices, the economic situation for millions of working families will only deteriorate even further.

What we are talking about is not just the worker who can't afford to fill up his gas tank, it is the entire economy. It is small businesses, it is farmers, it is truckers. The trucking industry is convoluting right now with these high prices. It is the increased cost of groceries, it is tourism. People come to Vermont and people go to Florida to enjoy vacations. They are not going to be able to drive there with these prices. In fact, what we are looking at is a major economic crisis impacting every segment of our economy.

Sadly, as in so many other areas regarding the needs of ordinary Americans, when it comes to gas prices the Bush-Cheney administration is just not there. This is an administration where, in area after area, you can count on them to stand up with the large multinational corporations. You can count on them protecting the wealthiest people in the country. Now, when the middle class is in crisis, when people cannot afford the rapidly rising costs of gas and oil, they are nowhere to be found.

What is particularly interesting, of course, as most people know, is both President Bush and Vice President Cheney have backgrounds in the oil industry. That is what they did before they assumed the Presidency and Vice Presidency.

Ironically--and this would really be almost funny if it weren't so sad--when President Bush ran for office in the year 2000, he touted his experience in oil as one of the reasons he should be elected President. He knew the oil industry. He would make the energy situation better based on his experience.

Here is a direct quote from what candidate Bush said in the year 2000, in his first campaign, regarding how he would improve our relations with some of the OPEC countries. This is what he said:

I will use the capital that my administration will earn

with the Kuwaitis or the Saudis and convince them to open the

spigot.

That is what candidate George Bush said in the year 2000.

Then he said, also in that campaign:

The President of the United States must jawbone OPEC

Members to lower the price.

End of quote from candidate George Bush in the year 2000. That was 8 years ago. When then-candidate Bush made those comments, the price of oil was $30 a barrel. Today, after 7\1/2\ years of the Bush-Cheney administration, the price of oil is now $110 a barrel.

It seems to me that it is imperative that among many other things, many other actions Congress must take, one of them is to do what President Bush talked about in 2000 but never did, and that is we must demand that Saudi Arabia and Kuwait produce the kind of oil they can. We must also move forward as a Congress to address the reality that OPEC is a cartel. That is their reason for existence. A cartel is formed in collusion in order, in this case, to prevent production of oil, control the production of oil in order to artificially keep prices high.

This Congress must demand two things: that Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and other OPEC members increase their production so we can lower prices, and second, we must be aggressive in telling the World Trade Organization that OPEC is a cartel; it must be disbanded.

Back to President Bush.

In 2004, when Saudi Arabia led the fight within OPEC to cut production

and raise prices, the Miami Herald reported that President Bush ``refused to lean on the oil cartel'' and ``refused to even personally lobby OPEC leaders to change their minds.''

It is true that last January President Bush did visit Saudi Arabia to ask OPEC nations to increase production, but guess what. The Associated Press reported that President Bush's request was ``ignored.''

In 2000, as a candidate, he told us he was going to open the spigot, he was going to get them to produce more oil, but that, of course, has not happened.

Last March, after meeting with Saudi Arabia's oil minister, the Wall Street Journal reported that ``Vice President Dick Cheney suggested there is little more Saudi Arabia can do to increase oil production and relieve price pressures in global markets.'' But Stephen Brown, the energy economist at the Federal Reserve, has disputed this. He has said that ``Saudi Arabia is restraining its production, probably by about 1.8 million barrels a day. And OPEC is probably holding back 2.3 million barrels a day altogether.'' In other words, despite all of the rhetoric from President Bush, all of his experience in the oil industry, the reality is that Saudi Arabia is not producing the kind of oil it should be producing and we are hurting as a result of that.

Many of us are tired of waiting for the Bush administration to act. Congress must act. There are a number of things we must do in order to lower the price of gas and oil in this country. One of them is to demand that Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the other OPEC countries start producing the quantity of oil we know they can produce.

That is one thing we can do, but it is certainly not enough. The national oil emergency we currently face in our country and in many other countries demands both short-term and long-term solutions.

Long term, I think many people in the Senate and the vast majority of the American people understand that we must break our dependency on fossil fuel. We must move to energy efficiency. We must move to such sustainable energies as wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, and others. In my view, the potential is absolutely staggering in terms of the amount of energy we can produce through sustainable energy and the amount of energy we can save through energy efficiency.

Not only that, obviously we need to significantly improve public transportation. Our railroads today lag far behind Europe and Japan. In doing that, building a broad mass-transportation system, we can break our dependency on the automobile.

In terms of automobiles, people are just now beginning--and we must help them--to move to electric cars, move to hybrid plug-in cars. There is just enormous potential out there. Clearly, that is the long-term solution of where we have to go.

But I sometimes hear my friends coming here and they talk about a long-term solution and yet they forget about what is going on in America today for a family making $30,000 or $40,000 a year, and maybe they have two cars because they have two workers, and those people are going broke today.

So I do not think it is an either/or. I think we have got to be aggressive right now in moving toward energy efficiency and sustainable energy, but we have also got to be aggressive today in lowering the price of gas and oil. It is not an either/or. We move forward in parallel tracks.

One of the steps we have to take is to put pressure on OPEC nations to increase the production of oil. I think also we have got to break up OPEC, and let the free market work in that area. But that is only one of the things we have got to do.

Second, I believe it is absolutely imperative that we impose a windfall profits tax on the oil and gas industry. The American people do not understand, nor do I understand, why they are paying record- breaking prices at the gas pump, while ExxonMobil has made more in profits than any corporation in the history of the world for the past 2 consecutive years.

I know ExxonMobil and their propaganda machine will no doubt explain it. But the average person does not believe it and the average person should not believe it. ExxonMobil and the other major oil companies are ripping off the American people. That is clear. We need a windfall profits tax to address that.

Last year alone, ExxonMobil made $40 billion in profits, and rewarded its CEO Rex Tillerson with a $21 million compensation package. That is nothing. He is getting shortchanged, because the guy who went before him, when he retired--his name was Lee Raymond--got a $400 million retirement package. So my suggestion to Mr. Tillerson is: Go back to your board. You are getting ripped off 21 million bucks. How are you going to make it on that?

Here you have a company charging record-breaking prices, having given its former CEO a few years ago $400 million in a retirement package. But ExxonMobil is not alone. Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Shell, and BP have also been making out like bandits. In fact, the five largest oil companies in this country have made over $600 billion in profits since George W. Bush has been President. Not bad, $600 billion in profits in 7.5 years. And people in Vermont and Florida cannot afford to fill their gas tanks.

Last year alone, the major oil companies in the United States made over $155 billion in profits and, not surprisingly, those profits continue to soar. Today, ExxonMobil reported a 17-percent increase in profits, totaling $10.9 billion, $10.9 billion for one quarter.

Earlier this week, however, BP, British Petroleum, announced a 63- percent increase in their profits. Shell's first quarter profits jumped by 25 percent to over $9 billion; one quarter, 3 months. ConocoPhillips' profits increased by over 16 percent in the first quarter to over $4 billion.

It is hard to come up with the words to describe it, because I know, and I am sure you know, Mr. President, the problems middle-class people are facing today and what these high oil and gas prices are meaning to families, and at the same time this is going on, these major oil companies are enjoying obscene levels of profit. With their profits, among many other things, they are very lavish in the kind of benefits and salaries they provide their CEOs. Last year, Occidental Petroleum, one of the ``smaller'' companies, gave its CEO $34.2 million in total compensation. The CEO of Anadarko Petroleum received $26 million. Chevron's CEO made $15 million, as did ConocoPhillips' CEO. He made $15.1 million in compensation.

Let me be clear. I believe oil companies should be allowed to make a reasonable profit and CEOs of big oil companies should enjoy decent compensation. That is a tough job and they should earn a good salary. But they should not be allowed to rip off the American people at the gas pump, especially at this moment in our history when the middle class is stressed out and in many ways collapsing.

The time has come to impose a windfall oil tax on those companies so they cannot continue to gouge the ordinary people of our country. Unfortunately, however, imposing a windfall profits tax on big oil will not be easy. I think we all know the reason, and that is, since 1998 the oil and gas industry has spent over $616 million on lobbyists.

And dare I say that right now on the floors of the Senate, and on the floors of the House, you have very well paid lobbyists, former congressional leaders, big-time law firms, floating all over this place right now trying to convince Members of the House and the Senate to leave big oil alone. Not only have they spent, since 1998, $616 million on lobbying; since 1990 they have spent over $213 million in campaign contributions. That is the way the world goes--lobby, campaign contributions from powerful multinational corporations.

What is the end result? Their profits are soaring and ordinary Americans are hurting. The time has come, it seems to me, for the Senate to stand with working families all over this country, to have the courage to stand up to this very powerful industry and say ``yes'' to a windfall profits tax and ``no'' to the continued urges of the oil and gas industry to pat them on the back and do nothing.

While it is true that oil companies and their executives are making money hand over fist, it is also true they are not the only culprits in this situation. We must begin focusing on the very powerful speculators and hedge fund managers who have also been making obscene sums of money by speculating

on futures and driving an unregulated market up and up and up.

There are some people who estimate, in fact, that half of the increase in oil costs is attributable to the cost of production but to the speculation that takes place.

In my view, Congress must act to rein in greedy speculators by closing what has been referred to as the Enron loophole and increasing oversight over the energy futures industry.

The Enron loophole was created in 2000 as part of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. At the behest of Enron lobbyists, a provision in this bill was inserted in the dark of night and with no congressional hearings. Specifically, the Enron loophole exempts electronic energy trading from Federal commodities laws. Virtually overnight, the loophole freed over-the-counter energy trading from Federal oversight requirements, opening the door to excessive speculation and energy price manipulation. Since the Enron loophole has been in effect, crude oil prices jumped from $33 a barrel in 2000, after adjusting for inflation, to over $110 a barrel today.

Last January, a veteran oil analyst at Oppenheimer estimated there is as much as a $57 a barrel ``speculative premium'' on the price of oil. In other words, he estimates that about half of the price of a barrel of oil is due not to the production and distribution of that product but simply to speculation.

The CEO of Marathon Oil said late last year that $100 oil is not justified by the physical demand in the market. In other words, those guys see that the price of oil is being driven up by speculation.

Closing the Enron loophole would subject electronic energy markets to proper regulatory oversight by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to prevent price manipulation and excessive speculation.

I thank Senators Levin and Feinstein. I know Senator Dorgan and others have been involved in producing legislation and ideas to close this loophole. We must move forward and pass that type of legislation as soon as possible.

In addition--and this is an issue where there appears to be a degree of bipartisan support--some of our Republican friends also agree the Bush administration must stop the flow of oil into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and in my view, my view, immediately release oil from this Federal stockpile to reduce gas prices.

This action has been taken in the past. It is not a new idea. Goldman Sachs has estimated that continuing to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has increased gas prices at the pump by as much as 25 cents a gallon, and that clearly is unacceptable.

Releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in the past, under both Democratic and Republican administrations has, in fact, lowered the price of gas and crude oil. For example, when President Clinton ordered the release of 30 million barrels from the SPR in 2000, the price of gas fell by 14 cents a gallon in 2 weeks.

When President George H.W. Bush, the first President Bush, released 13 million barrels of crude oil from the SPR in 1991, crude oil prices dropped by over $10 per barrel.

Let me conclude by saying that the issue we are dealing with today, in my view, is not only the high price of gas and oil. As serious as that is, and as much impact as that is having on our economy, the deeper issue here is the degree to which people in our country, the hard-working citizens of our country, will or will not continue to have faith that their Government represents them.

It is no secret that President Bush will likely go down in history as perhaps the least popular President and, in my view, one of the worst Presidents we have ever had. But it is also true that the ratings of this Congress are extraordinarily low; they are even lower than where President Bush is.

I think the reason for that is people are suffering terrible problems right now. In almost every area you can think of, this country is going in the wrong direction. The middle class is hurting. We talked about oil prices, food prices, the loss of good-paying jobs, the health care system, Social Security falling apart, people are paying 25, 30 percent interest rates on credit cards. People are in trouble. In a Democratic society, when people are in trouble, they look to the people whom they elected, to their Government, to protect their interests. They are looking to Washington right now. They are looking here. They are hurting, and they are asking whether the Congress of the United States has the courage to stand up to the very powerful financial interests which have so much influence over what goes on here.

So I hope very much we have the courage to once again earn the confidence of the American people, that we understand the pain they are feeling, and that we act properly, that we lower gas prices, that we lower oil prices.

We can do this with bold action, and we can move this country to a new energy policy dealing with energy efficiency and sustainable energy. I think the American people want us to do that. I think that is, in fact, what we should do.

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

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, my understanding is the pending business is on the FAA reauthorization bill; is that correct?

Mr. President, I hope no one is out of breath this week as a result of working on this bill. We had

one vote on Monday at 5:30 p.m. and have not voted since. With legislation this important to this country, why are we not able to move ahead and cast votes and finish this legislation?

This is about FAA reauthorization which includes the issue of modernization of our air traffic control system, which is very important. We read in the newspapers these days about the additional inspections that are required of airlines. We read about airlines going bankrupt because of fuel costs. We read that the FAA system for air traffic control is archaic. We are told that the GPS system in your car is more sophisticated than the system by which we move airplanes around this country in the air traffic control system. We hear the problems with the air traffic controllers, the contract problems they have had with the FAA, the shortage of air traffic controllers, the number who will retire in the near future, and the need for training of additional controllers. We read about all these things in the news. We read about systems that still use vacuum tubes in the air traffic control system because it is that old.

The question for this Congress is, can we pass legislation that reauthorizes the FAA functions and then provides the funding to modernize this system of ours?

We have a lot of people who visit this Capital city, and most of them fly in by airplane. This country moves back and forth quickly from coast to coast using, in most cases, commercial air transportation. They don't think very much of it, frankly. You can fly from one coast to the other in 5 or 6 hours. It is not unusual to leave one part of this country and end up in another part before lunch. It is a wonderful thing to have this system of commercial air travel. The fact is, this system will not survive for a number of reasons under the current circumstances.

As I indicated the other day, I believe there are four airlines that have declared bankruptcy in recent weeks. We also understand, in addition, what high fuel costs are doing to the airlines, and we are talking now about the airlines in this legislation before us. But I could talk about the trucking industry, or I could talk about families and farmers. I can talk about what the high fuel prices are doing to all of this country. There is no heavier user of fuel than an airline.

What is happening is the fuel prices are undermining the opportunity for many of these airlines both to continue operating, in some cases, and, in other cases, to continue operating serving smaller areas or less populated areas of the country. So fuel prices are a serious problem.

The other issue is the modernization of the air traffic control system, the system by which we provide for the safety of the American people. There is going to be a catastrophe one of these days, and then everybody is going to stand around thumbing their suspenders, scratching their heads, and saying: Why didn't we do something about it?

We have a bill on the floor of the Senate right now to try to address this situation, to try to modernize this system, and we have been at parade rest since Monday because we are not allowed to move forward. Everything is blocked. Everything is plugged up. This is unbelievable.

This is important. Some people around here treat the serious things far too lightly and then treat the light things too seriously and never understand the difference. Why is it on a Thursday that legislation as important as this, that should have been passed in previous years, cannot even get amendments up and cannot get votes off because we have people who have decided they are just going to block everything?

I told a group in North Dakota a while back about Mark Twain. Mark Twain once was asked if he would engage in a debate. He said: Oh, sure, as long as I can take the negative side.

We haven't even told you the subject of the debate.

He said: It doesn't matter, the negative side is going to require no preparation.

The negative side never requires preparation. Those who are out here saying, no, you can't, they want to block it. That requires no preparation. What requires preparation is to advance public policy that is in the interest of this country. Does anybody really think modernizing our air traffic control system is somehow a back-burner issue? We see what is happening in the skies in this country. They are absolutely clogged. In fact, because of fuel prices and other reasons, we have airlines now switching to smaller planes, these little regional jets skirting around the sky, hauling as many people but just takes more planes to do it. So that puts an unbelievable strain on the air traffic system.

The question is, Are we going to modernize it? Are we going to do what is necessary? Are we going to provide the funding? Are we going to finally get off this delaying nonsense that is going on and allow legislation to move forward that is essential for the safety of the air traveling public?

I hope the answer at some point soon is yes. This includes items such as the Airport Improvement Program, what is called the AIP, investing in infrastructure in this country. That is very important. Land at some of these airports and take a look at the infrastructure and ask yourself whether we need this investment.

It is interesting, if you travel around the world. If you go to Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and then get in a car and drive to Juticalpa. Take a look at the roads and ask yourself whether infrastructure matters. Land in some of the airports in some of these remote areas and take a look at what you are landing on and the infrastructure needs of that airport. Then ask yourself whether infrastructure is important.

We have always prided ourselves in this country on the investment in infrastructure. When you come to America, you see infrastructure that is maintained. We have always prided ourselves on that until recently, and now somehow infrastructure doesn't matter. It takes a back seat.

In my little subcommittee on appropriations that I chair, the President says: Let's cut water funding by $1 billion from last year's levels for the Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation. These agencies fund much of the nation's water projects and were cut by $1 billion, even as we have 950 water projects in this country which we are paying for in Iraq. Think of that. Let's cut water projects in this country and investment in the future of this country by $1 billion, the President says. However, let's have 950 water projects that the American taxpayers will pay for in Iraq.

I think it is time to start taking care of a few things at home. One of them is the legislation on the floor of the Senate right now, and that is the FAA Reauthorization Act and the investment and the modernization of the air traffic control system. If we do not pay attention to that, we are going to run into very serious problems. I might also say, tragic problems because there is going to be some sort of spectacular tragedy, and then we are all going to sit around and say that somebody should have done something.

We are trying to do something. The fact is, we cannot even get a vote on an amendment on the floor of the Senate. It is unbelievable. As I said in the Mark Twain example, the easiest thing in the world is to oppose. It takes no talent, it takes no time to prepare, just oppose, oppose everything.

My hope is in the next couple of hours, perhaps there will be some here who wish to move ahead. I know Senator Reid has been on the floor offering unanimous consent requests. He has talked with the minority to see if there are conditions under which we might be able to move forward and get something done on some legislation. I understand it takes a while to get things done. I understand we should be deliberative. I understand there should be enough research so we don't have unintended consequences to what we do. Nobody has ever accused this body of speeding, ever, But this is ridiculous. This makes a glacier look fast.

My hope is that those of us who are elected to come here, who try to make some improvements in this country, who do what is necessary for the health and safety of the people of this country will soon understand that the FAA reauthorization bill is not just some other piece of legislation, that it is an optional piece of legislation. The modernization of the air traffic control system is not some option that we ought to consider like any other bill. This is urgent and necessary and timely, and we ought to do it now.

Energy

Mr. President, I wish to talk about energy. Several colleagues have spoken about energy prices, and I related energy prices to the airline industry a few moments ago. I mentioned several bankruptcies that have occurred recently, intensive heavy users of energy in the airline industry, and what it might mean. This country needs a commercial airline industry that works. Without it, there will be devastating consequences to our economy. The question is, What do we do here?

My colleague from Alaska made a point with which I agree. He talked about the speculation in these markets with respect to energy. I wish to talk about that issue. I have some charts.

This is a chart that shows the speculator activity in the oil futures market from January 1996 to April 2008. This is the activity by speculators in the futures markets. These are not people who want to buy oil or hold oil. They have no tanks in which to put oil. They are not interested in oil. They want to buy what they will never get from people who never had it. This is what speculating is about.

Here is the increase in speculation in the commodities market for oil. It is an unbelievable ramp-up, an orgy of speculation, having nothing to do with the fundamentals of oil supply and demand. There is no justification for the current price of oil if we simply look at supply and demand. Supply is up a bit; demand is down a bit. There is no justification with the current fundamentals of supply and demand that would seriously justify the current price of oil.

So then what has changed? What is different? Why is this price $115 or $120 a barrel for oil, acting like a yo-yo at the upper end? A couple issues have changed, especially this. We have hedge funds that are now neck deep in the commodities markets speculating on oil. We have investment banks that are speculating on oil. For the first time in history, I believe, investment banks are actually buying oil storage capacity to buy oil and take oil off the market to sell it later when it is more expensive. This is speculation, raw speculation. I suppose everybody is making money. The brokers are making money, the investment banks, the hedge funds--they are all wallowing to the bank full of cash, driving up the price of oil beyond what the fundamentals would suggest the price should be.

We know those people who are winning, but who are the losers? Well, our country. This is something that is providing great damage to our country's economy. Families drive up to the gas pumps, and it hurts to fill the tanks. Farmers, heavy users of energy and fertilizer that comes from energy, are losers. It is an unbelievable burden on family farmers. Airlines, they just cannot fly through this storm. They go belly up. The list goes on and on.

If this is what is happening with the ramp-up of speculation and it is causing an increase in prices, here is what has happened to oil prices. No one needs a chart to know this, but oil prices doubled in just over one year. Speculation goes up, up, way up, and oil prices have doubled in one year.

Let me cite some folks who have talked about this issue. Stephen Simon, senior vice president of ExxonMobil, April 1, a month ago:

``The price of oil should be about $50-$55 per barrel.'' This from an executive in the oil company. I do not think his company is complaining about where the price is. He is just being candid. According to him, the price of oil ought to be about $50 or $55 per barrel, assuming current fundamentals.

Clarence Cazalot, CEO, Marathon Oil, October 30, 2007:

$100 oil isn't justified by the physical demand in the

market.

Experts, including the former head of ExxonMobil, say

financial speculation in the energy market has grown so much

over the last 30 years that it now adds 20 to 30 percent or

more to the price of a barrel of oil.

Think of that.

Speculation in the energy markets has grown so much over the last 30 years that it now adds 20 to 30 percent or more to the price of a barrel of oil.

I understand the need for a marketplace futures market. It is required for hedging. It is required for liquidity. I understand it is necessary, and I understand we want one that works so there needs to be a futures market, but I also understand that when the futures market becomes something much more than just something that provides for hedging and liquidity. When it becomes an object of intense speculation, then there is a requirement for some intervention. No one quite knows what that intervention should be, but everyone ought to know that it is unhealthy when you have an unbelievable amount of speculation.

There are books written about bubbles in speculation. We have been through recent speculations. The tech bubble that occurred almost a decade ago. The bubble in housing prices is occurring. We have seen and understand about bubbles. This is a bubble of speculation.

Go back 500 years and read about tulip mania. If you have not read about it, I encourage to you do it. Yes, tulip mania. There was a time you could buy a tulip bulb for $25,000. With the hindsight of 400 or 500 years, we can understand how unbelievably absurd it was, but it was a bubble, a financial speculative binge that was almost indescribable.

What is happening in this marketplace now--and most experts will agree--is we have this unbelievable amount of speculation in the futures market that does not justify the current price. The American people and American industry deserve to have a government, in those cases, that steps in and says: There is something wrong here, and we are going to find a way to set it right. This is one of the areas.

This man--in fact, I talked to this man last evening--Mr. Fadel Gheit, the top energy analyst for Oppenheimer Company. He has been there 30 years, he has testified before the Congress, and he is a very interesting fellow.

There is absolutely no shortage of oil . . . I'm absolutely

convinced that oil prices should not be a dime above $55 a

barrel. . . . Oil speculators include the largest financial

institutions in the world.

He said further:

I call it the world's largest gambling hall . . . it's open

24/7 . . . unfortunately it's totally unregulated . . . this

is like a highway with no cops and no speed limit and

everybody's going 120 miles an hour.

That is pretty well said, it seems to me. It describes this bubble of speculation that does damage to our economy and needs to be addressed by this Government. It is not the case that everybody hurts as a result of this.

This is a Wall Street Journal article of February 28, 2008. This is Andrew Hall. I wouldn't know Andrew Hall from a cord of wood. I just see his picture here. Over the past 5 years, Mr. Hall's compensation has totaled well over a quarter of a billion dollars.

What does Mr. Hall do? He makes money by speculating in the commodities market, according to this article. He is not alone. I pulled this because it is an article about him and he has made a lot of money. He has made a lot of money as someone who speculates in these commodity markets.

Is speculation something that is good for these markets? Absolutely not. When you have a speculative binge that drives these prices way out of sight, well above that which would be justified, it can be devastating to the country's economy.

That describes what is happening with respect to speculation. To address the issue of energy, it requires a lot of things. We must do this. If we do not address the issue of speculation, we are not going to solve the problem. We are just not.

But there are other things to do. For example, this administration is putting close to 70,000 barrels of oil a day, every single day, underground. It is being put in something called the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is a pretty good idea because it saves some oil for a rainy day. But just not for any rainy day, for an emergency, strategic emergency, something unanticipated, so we developed it for this purpose. That makes sense to me. But should we take oil when it costs $115 or $120 a barrel and stick it underground, 70,000 barrels? Of course not. That is absolutely nuts. Why would you take the highest priced oil in history, take it out of the supply, stick it underground and by doing so increase the price of oil and increase the price of gasoline?

A man named Dr. Philip Verleger testified before the Congress. He is an economist and energy expert. He said that, by taking a disproportionate amount of oil, a subset of oil called

sweet light crude, out of the supply chain, it has increased the price of oil by 10 percent. You know, with more than $100 a barrel oil, that is at least $10 a barrel for light sweet crude. It is the most Byzantine thing one can imagine.

I have a piece of legislation to stop it. There are now 67 U.S. Senators who have declared themselves to be in support of my approach. There is also a very similar bill that was introduced just the other day by some in the minority, and John McCain running for President out in the country said he supports it. So I have 51 who have signed a letter saying they support suspending the SPR fill for 2008. On top of that, some Republican Senators numbering 15, led by Senator Hutchison, also sent a letter to the President. That takes it to 66. John McCain is out there saying he doesn't believe we should do it, so there are at least 67. That makes it a veto-proof margin. So I say let's do it. End the speculation, and there are ways to do that. Second, stop putting oil underground. That ought to be important.

In addition to all of that, let me just say the other menu of issues is not really very complicated either. Should we produce more? My colleague from Alaska says you have to produce more. I don't disagree with that. I was one of four Senators here in the Senate who introduced legislation, now law, that opens up Lease Sale 181 of the Gulf of Mexico. It opens up an opportunity to substantially increase our production of both oil and natural gas in a new region of the Gulf of Mexico. Frankly, if you look at the offshore capability of the Gulf of Mexico and compare it to the offshore options off the West Coast, East Coast or in Alaska, by far the most significant reserves that are achievable by us are in the Gulf of Mexico. We have not even tapped the potential of the Eastern Gulf either.

I and three others initiated the legislation that opened up a portion of the Gulf of Mexico, Lease Sale 181. But there is a lot more to do because it got too narrow. Ought we go back there and produce? You bet we should. There is more production to be had.

In addition to that, conservation is unbelievably important and so is efficiency. Production, conservation, efficiency, and then renewable energy.

Again, we have new technology that allows us to take energy from the wind. I come from a state that has the most wind potential in America. My state has a distinction of being No. 50 in trees, so we are last in America in trees, and we are first in wind. I am not sure where the merits are there, but all of us who live there lean to the northwest because it blows almost every day. We are the Saudi Arabia of wind, as the Department of Energy suggests, and with the new modern wind turbines, we will continue to take energy from the wind and produce electricity.

We have a great experiment going on in which we produce electricity from wind energy and use that electricity in the process of electrolysis, separating hydrogen from water and storing hydrogen for vehicle fuel. It all makes a lot of sense and helps contribute to our energy future.

There are a lot of things we can and should do. This is not some mysterious illness for which we do not know the cure. This is not some strange disease for which we have no cure. We understand what is happening here, and with a little common sense, perhaps a deep reservoir of common sense, we could begin to fix it. At the very least, we ought to begin to take immediate action to stop putting oil underground, and stop it now. It is time to take some action to stop the unbelievable orgy of speculation in the futures market, and do that soon. Those are the first two steps, and they will reduce the price of gasoline. There is much more to do beyond that, but those are the first two sensible steps we ought to accomplish now.

I yield the floor.

Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. President, the Senator from Minnesota talked about the importance of renewable energy, which I certainly agree with her. Is it the case with renewable energy that we have done a pretty pathetic job as a country to incentivize renewable energy?

In 1916, we put in place tax incentives to produce oil and gas. They have been in place permanently for almost a century now, tax incentives to produce oil and gas. By contrast, with wind and solar and renewable energy, we put them in place in 1992 short term incentives. We have extended them short

term five times and have let them expire three times. It has been a pathetic response to renewables.

The current tax incentives expire at the end of this year, and I have introduced legislation to extend the production tax credit for 10 years. I believe our country ought to say to the world and to investors: Here is where America is headed for a decade. Count on it. Believe in it. Renewables, solar, wind, and so on need a clear signal for investment. You can count on these investments because this is where America is going.

Is it not the case, I would ask the Senator from Minnesota, that we have not nearly done the job in incentivizing renewables and establishing a national policy. Does she agree?

Mr. President, during consideration of the reauthorization of the FAA, a great deal of conversation has gone on on this floor about energy and the cost of energy. It is appropriate that we talk about it at a time when our airlines are struggling and we are attempting to reauthorize FAA. Part of the reason our airlines are struggling is the unprecedented aviation fuel prices. It is only one of the many reasons they are having difficulty today, but clearly the doubling of their costs are putting at risk their corporate structure and their ability to serve an American public.

But it is not just the airlines that are at risk. Every American consumer and every business is finding the tremendous increase in the cost of energy a significant problem. For example, just a few minutes ago, my BlackBerry buzzed. My wife Suzanne is out in Boise, ID. I got an e-mail about the temperature, which is 31 degrees in Boise this morning. At the bottom of the e-mail, she said regular gas just hit $3.53 a gallon. That is a lot of money. Now, that is not as much as others are paying across our Nation, but when an Idahoan fills their tank and they go from community to community, oftentimes they drive hundreds of miles--not just a few miles but literally hundreds of miles. Idaho is a great big Western State. Our distance is oftentimes a significant part of our commerce and our ability to conduct economic activity, and fuel prices have always been significant and important.

Idaho is also a large agricultural State. The cost of the production of foods today has gone up dramatically because of the cost of diesel, if you will, the cost of fertilizer, and all of those components that go into the production of food and the transporting of the food.

Part of the reason food is going up on the retail shelf of the supermarket today is the cost of getting it there, let alone the cost of producing and refining it. Many truckers are saying that just to fill up their truck now can be as much as $1,000. They are not able to change their freight rates to adjust as quickly to the high cost of energy, and they simply have to--this is the term--``eat it.'' Well, they cannot afford to eat it. Oftentimes, those trucks are simply turning off their motors and sitting idle.

So the impact of energy costs on our economy can be dramatic. I came to the floor yesterday to talk about it and to say that, in large part, the American consumer, in their frustration, is saying: Whom do we blame? I don't think they have to look any further than the U.S. Congress and the failure of this Congress--the House and Senate--over the last 20 years to do the things that were necessary to continue production, to ensure refinery capacity, to ensure exploration and the development of reserves, while we were doing all of the other things in conservation, in CAFE standards, assuring that we had a new form of transportation energy. But, no, we have failed to do the right things, and as a result of that, the American consumer is, in fact, paying a great deal for our failure.

What do we do to change that? Instead of just wringing our hands, there are all kinds of ideas out there about changing it.

Some would suggest that you just tax the big oil companies; if you just tax those big oil companies and put that money somewhere else, that will solve the problem. There is an old adage in economics that is quite simple: You usually get less of that which you tax. In other words, the higher you tax something, the less you are going to get from it. Do you want to, by taxation, nationalize America's independent oil companies? Is that a way to get production and more oil and gas at the pump? Remember, there are not any gas lines out there today. There aren't the kinds of lines we saw in the 1970s during the last energy crisis. There is supply. It is the cost of supply that we are frustrated about and the impact that cost is having on our economy.

Here is one of the problems we have. I talked about a Congress that failed, a public policy that failed, a policy that failed to continue to produce as demand went dramatically up--not just in this country but around the world.

The blue line on this chart is the supply line. As you can see, in the 1990s it peaked and it began to drop. That is, of course, U.S. production versus U.S. consumption. In other words, as a nation we began to produce less and less crude oil into our refineries.

Today, we are near 60 percent dependent upon other sources of energy, from outside our country, to come into our refineries and to go out of the gas pump to the consumer. In fact, you can see that the red line-- demand--has gone up dramatically as our economy continued to grow over the years, as more people were driving cars, and as more cars consumed more gas.

The only way you are going to keep price down is when the supply line and the demand line are somewhat in concert, somewhat tracking each other. That simply stopped in the 1950s, as we began to grow increasingly dependent upon foreign nations.

We passed the Energy Policy Act of 2005, but it wasn't really directed at transportation fuels. Last year, we added to that and we began to address transportation fuels. We brought ethanol into the market by subsidizing that and allowing our farmers, and those who take corn from them, to produce ethanol to become increasingly effective in the market. That is working to some degree. In fact, it is estimated today that 20 cents would be put on the price of gas at the pump if

it wasn't for national and rural ethanol production. Now, it has caused other problems. Some would argue that it has caused problems in the food chain, and it probably has. I think the marketplace will work that out. So there are things we have been doing.

But I think, most importantly, it is the things we have not done. It is the failure of our country to recognize the increased dependency we were developing from other countries around the world. I think that has become one of our greater frustrations. While you have some on the campaign trail today talking about taxing the big oil companies, the big oil companies don't own the oil. It is the cartels. It is the nations. It is not oil companies, it is oil countries that we have to worry about today.

I didn't coin the phrase, but I use the phrase quite often, ``petro- nationalism.'' If I am a country and I am small but I am sitting on a pool of oil, I become rich overnight. The reason I become rich overnight is because Americans will come and buy my oil. If I want to form a cartel and I want to control the supply of that oil, then they will pay even more for it because Americans quit producing for themselves.

Here is a statistic that I find fascinating, and some have said that if we don't stop this in the near future, we will spend our Nation into poverty as we spend all of this money on oil. We are now spending well over $1 billion a day outside our country to buy oil. That is a phenomenal figure. Our neighbors to the north, we send them $280 million a day; to Saudi Arabia, we send $190 million a day; to Venezuela and Dictator Chavez, we send $160 million; to Nigeria, we send $140 million; to Algeria, we send $70 million. Do Venezuela and Nigeria and Algeria have our best interests in mind? I don't believe so. They have their own interests in mind. We are literally making them wealthy because we are buying their oil.

Many of us talk about energy independence, and last year when we passed that legislation I was talking about, the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, we did some very good things in it. As I said, we looked at increasing production by conservation, by CAFE standards, and by renewable fuels standards. We said to the automobile industry: You have to design cars that burn less, and in doing that, we will improve our overall position on dependency by dropping it significantly by 2030. But it takes a long time to redesign a car, make it efficient, produce it, and then sell it into the market.

Those are the realities of a problem where you cannot just fix this tomorrow. We cannot just change the price of gas at the pump tomorrow because we cannot fix the underlying problems instantly. But as I said earlier, if Congress is at fault, the problem in this, then Congress ought to be doing more about it. And it is not just wringing your hands and wanting to tax. It is doing things that get us back into production while we learn to conserve, while we have cleaner automobiles, while we look at alternative fuel sources, while we get more hybrid cars and electric plug-in cars in the market. That is all coming, but that is 10 years, 15 years, and 20 years out.

What do we do in the interim? I believe there is something we can do, and we ought to do. In America today and in our territorial waters we are sitting still on a lot of oil, a dramatic amount of oil. Some would argue under old U.S. Geological Survey analysis that we are sitting on at least 100 billion barrels of oil. If we are sitting on it, why aren't we using it? Once again, the politics of Congress and the politics of States enter into the debate.

A couple of years ago, I began to talk about an issue I called the no zone. What was I talking about at the time? I was talking about that area of the United States and Outer Continental Shelf of waters that we knew had large volumes of oil. But California said no. We said no in Alaska. We have said no off the east coast. We have said no around Florida. Because we have said no, the American consumer today is paying the highest price for gasoline ever. That is a fact. It is a simple reality. Our dependency on foreign nations grew. As I just expressed, over 60 percent of our oil is coming from outside the continental United States when we know there is a significant amount of oil outside the continent.

When I introduced this chart a couple of years ago and I began to talk about the no zone and there were a few folks wringing their hands, we went to work. We went to work and we looked at oil sales in the gulf and the development in the Outer Continental Shelf in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Thanks to our effort, we did something. The American consumer needs to know we went into lease sale 181 off the coast of Florida. We looked at and found a tremendous amount of capability there and we began to develop it and we are developing it today. We have allowed other lease sales to occur. That is tremendously important. We are beginning to tap some of that oil supply that we know is out there and about which we ought to be doing more. That is what I think is important, and that is on what I think we ought to be focused.

To sit and wring our hands and tell the American people there is nothing we can do, and all we are going to do is go out and tax and tax, which will not produce--we ought to be talking about production. The legislation I have introduced today talks about production. It talks about production in a positive way.

I mentioned a few moments ago the action we took last year in lease sale 181. We were successful in bringing Florida along in their cooperation and understanding, which was phenomenally important.

We know there are millions of barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of gas out there. What is most significant about oil development in this region is that the infrastructure is in place. What do I mean? Refineries, pipelines, capacity. We don't have to wait 5, 6, and 7 years just to build the infrastructure. It is there, and the oil is under it. That is why we did lease sale 181. But there is a lot more we can and should do. That is why the legislation I have introduced today does just that. It doesn't start drilling, but it says a couple of things that are quite simple.

As we have heard others talk about the fact we are putting money into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve at this time, we are buying oil off the market and putting it underground in the salt domes in the South for a time of necessity, I suggest we stop doing that for the time being, and I suggest we take that money we are using for those purposes and we modernize our inventory of our known reserves, our unknown reserves, and our capacity because the true SPR--SPR means Strategic Petroleum Reserve--the greatest reserve in the world is to know what we have, where it is, and how we can access it. That is one of the most important things we can do for the consumers of America today.

I know it frustrated some of my Floridian friends when I talked about our inability because of policy to allow our companies to go in to the northern area off Cuba and drill because Cuba was allowing other countries to come in and develop. Just 90 miles--45 miles until you hit the zone--90 miles off our coast on the extreme of the Florida Keys there are foreign nations drilling oil today. India is there, and India has now discovered oil. China is there, and China has now discovered oil. We are not there today because our policy is 45 years old and still says: No, no, Americans cannot get involved with Cuba, even though we believe Cuba has phenomenal potential oil reserves. Shame on us.

America, listen up: It is Government policy today in large part that has caused you the pain at the pump, and it is very important that Government act today to reduce that pain.

The legislation I am offering would create an inventory that would do just that. It would allow us to know what our reserves are.

We have moratoriums off the coast of Florida, and yet we know there are huge oil reserves out there. Why are we not doing something about it? Well, it is local politics. It is national politics. It is green politics. It is politics. That is why we have the price of oil we have today, nothing more and nothing less but politics, and our economy is growing more fragile by the moment because of it.

Is it demagogic to say that? I don't think so. I don't think so at all. I pulled out the sign, the no zone. The no is a result of politics, whether it is the politics of the State of Florida or the

politics of the State of California or whether it is the national politics of this Senate that will not allow for us to drill for the reserves in what is known as ANWR, the Alaskan national wildlife area, where we know there is phenomenal abundance.

It was all done, all of this no, this political no was all done in the name of the environment. There was some reason at the time these old ideas were put in place. We had the oil spills off the coast of Santa Barbara, and as a result of that, Americans were concerned. So California said no more drilling there, and then we followed up.

A few years ago, we had a great national tragedy in the gulf area of our country. That tragedy was called Katrina. She came rolling up and through the gulf. We know what she did in New Orleans. She did something else nobody wants to talk about today. She knocked offline hundreds of oil wells that were producing out in the gulf--knocked them off. She even set some of the drilling rigs adrift. But not a drop of oil was spilled. Why? Because modern technology today and American know-how and a concern for protecting our environment has produced one of the cleanest deepwater oil drilling industries in the world. We are producing in this area of the gulf off the coast of Texas, off the coast of Louisiana, off the coast of Mississippi, and with 181, we just brought into or soon will be bringing into production off the coast of Alabama. Why not off the coast of Florida? Why not off the coast of California? Why not off the coast of the Carolinas, Virginia, and on up where we believe there is significant gas and oil reserves?

It is old politics of the past that is caught in the ghosts of Santa Barbara of decades ago. Yet our technology today will take us there, but our politics will not take us there. That is why I have introduced the legislation I have. The least we can do is inventory with modern technology to know where our oil is.

I notice the president of Shell said in a press release the other day: If Americans sent a message to the world that we were going to start drilling our own reserves and bringing them into production, the price of gas at the pump would drop dramatically, 25 or 30 cents a gallon or more. That is significant stuff, both short term and long term, to the economy of this country.

I say to my colleagues, I say to our country, and I say to our consumers: Is it a time to act? You bet it is a time to act. While some suggest we tax the big boys out of existence, we do not produce anything by doing that, while we can create all kinds of other structures. Do we produce more, do we build refinery capacity, and do we assure the American public while we are transitioning into hybrid cars and electric cars and hydrogen cars and all of those kinds of activities that we support and are doing research and development on today that they will still have an abundant supply of energy? That is our job. That is the job we failed in doing over the last good number of years, and that is the job we ought to stop and start over and do it right and reward the States that are the boundary States to the production of the Outer Continental Shelf.

We have huge oil reserves in this country, and yet we are letting the rest of the world have our wealth. Why not keep our wealth in this country by the development of these reserves?

The first step is the legislation I have introduced today. Let's at least in the next few years do the inventory, the modern, sophisticated seismographic inventory that USGS can do to let us know how much is out there because what we know today is simply old stuff. Those efforts were done years ago. Already out at the edge of this green line in the deepest waters in the gulf under the newest drilling technologies, we are finding phenomenal oil that just a few years ago we did not even know we could get to. We are getting to it. We are producing it. It is clean, and it is environmentally sound. We ought to be doing that everywhere else.

I have joined my colleague from Louisiana who just came to the floor, who introduced legislation that says when oil gets to $125 a barrel, we ought to give the States the option to allow the development of the Outer Continental Shelf off their State. You darn bet we ought to, and those States ought to be rewarded for it.

There is so much this country can continue to do instead of standing still and wringing our hands and trying to blame somebody else for our failure over the last 20 years to continue to allow this great country to produce for its consumers.

I will be happy to yield to the senior Senator from Virginia.

Mr. President, I thank the senior Senator from Virginia. He is absolutely right. When I think oil, I think gas because, obviously, in lease sale 181 and in other areas where there is gas, there is oftentimes oil, and oftentimes where there is gas, there is no oil. We believe that to be the case off the coast of Virginia.

The Senator from Virginia has been a leader, without doubt, in that very kind of effort to allow at least the seismographic effort, the exploration that would determine for us the kinds of reserves we have and may have for the future.

I thank the Senator from Virginia for his leadership in this area.

Without question it is there today, and we know that. We are the leaders of clean drilling in deep water for the world, no question.

I will be happy to yield to the Senator from Florida.

I am more than happy to.

I do recognize that. I do appreciate what our military has said.

I also understand a few years ago we took offline a naval training area in Vieques. Why? It was no longer a popular thing to do.

If there is oil under this area--and we believe there is--and it is a training area, why couldn't we train here? Or why couldn't we train over here? The reality is, what is at this time more valuable?

It is very easy to say don't do it. Or is it possible to say can we do both? There are a good many experts and professionals in the field who said that. We can have a military training area, and guess what we also can do. We can pull the oil out from under. How do you do it? Quite simply. You put a location, a location and you slant drill thousands of feet and you do not have to pepper the area with all kinds of drilling rigs.

Today's technology is amazing. It is politically comfortable, I appreciate that, and I understand the State's politics and I do not deny that--but this is not the oil of the State of Florida. This is the oil of the citizens of our country. It is the politics of Florida today that deny us the oil, not the politics of America. So it is a simple question: Should we inventory it? Should we know what it is? And should we, under modern technology, reward the State of Florida for the potential benefit?

It is ironic we did not move at all to stop drilling 45 miles off the Florida coast. We could even take a 45-mile zone here, or more, consistent with what is going on in Florida today and still protect this.

But the Senator is right. It is a military area. Guess what. I am kind of a modern guy. I believe in technology taking us where we can go and having the best of both worlds. But right now the American consumer has the worst of the world we have created for them--a scarcity of a supply that is driving costs and impacting our economy in a significant way.

I suggest the legislation I have introduced, while it will not impact the State of Florida, will give us a base and an understanding and knowledge of what we have as a reserve. We are spending millions of dollars a day to buy oil and put it in the ground when, in fact, we ought to spend a few million dollars and find out about all the oil we already have.

Mr. President, during consideration of the reauthorization of the FAA, a great deal of conversation has gone on on this floor about energy and the cost of energy. It is appropriate that we talk about it at a time when our airlines are struggling and we are attempting to reauthorize FAA. Part of the reason our airlines are struggling is the unprecedented aviation fuel prices. It is only one of the many reasons they are having difficulty today, but clearly the doubling of their costs are putting at risk their corporate structure and their ability to serve an American public.

But it is not just the airlines that are at risk. Every American consumer and every business is finding the tremendous increase in the cost of energy a significant problem. For example, just a few minutes ago, my BlackBerry buzzed. My wife Suzanne is out in Boise, ID. I got an e-mail about the temperature, which is 31 degrees in Boise this morning. At the bottom of the e-mail, she said regular gas just hit $3.53 a gallon. That is a lot of money. Now, that is not as much as others are paying across our Nation, but when an Idahoan fills their tank and they go from community to community, oftentimes they drive hundreds of miles--not just a few miles but literally hundreds of miles. Idaho is a great big Western State. Our distance is oftentimes a significant part of our commerce and our ability to conduct economic activity, and fuel prices have always been significant and important.

Idaho is also a large agricultural State. The cost of the production of foods today has gone up dramatically because of the cost of diesel, if you will, the cost of fertilizer, and all of those components that go into the production of food and the transporting of the food.

Part of the reason food is going up on the retail shelf of the supermarket today is the cost of getting it there, let alone the cost of producing and refining it. Many truckers are saying that just to fill up their truck now can be as much as $1,000. They are not able to change their freight rates to adjust as quickly to the high cost of energy, and they simply have to--this is the term--``eat it.'' Well, they cannot afford to eat it. Oftentimes, those trucks are simply turning off their motors and sitting idle.

So the impact of energy costs on our economy can be dramatic. I came to the floor yesterday to talk about it and to say that, in large part, the American consumer, in their frustration, is saying: Whom do we blame? I don't think they have to look any further than the U.S. Congress and the failure of this Congress--the House and Senate--over the last 20 years to do the things that were necessary to continue production, to ensure refinery capacity, to ensure exploration and the development of reserves, while we were doing all of the other things in conservation, in CAFE standards, assuring that we had a new form of transportation energy. But, no, we have failed to do the right things, and as a result of that, the American consumer is, in fact, paying a great deal for our failure.

What do we do to change that? Instead of just wringing our hands, there are all kinds of ideas out there about changing it.

Some would suggest that you just tax the big oil companies; if you just tax those big oil companies and put that money somewhere else, that will solve the problem. There is an old adage in economics that is quite simple: You usually get less of that which you tax. In other words, the higher you tax something, the less you are going to get from it. Do you want to, by taxation, nationalize America's independent oil companies? Is that a way to get production and more oil and gas at the pump? Remember, there are not any gas lines out there today. There aren't the kinds of lines we saw in the 1970s during the last energy crisis. There is supply. It is the cost of supply that we are frustrated about and the impact that cost is having on our economy.

Here is one of the problems we have. I talked about a Congress that failed, a public policy that failed, a policy that failed to continue to produce as demand went dramatically up--not just in this country but around the world.

The blue line on this chart is the supply line. As you can see, in the 1990s it peaked and it began to drop. That is, of course, U.S. production versus U.S. consumption. In other words, as a nation we began to produce less and less crude oil into our refineries.

Today, we are near 60 percent dependent upon other sources of energy, from outside our country, to come into our refineries and to go out of the gas pump to the consumer. In fact, you can see that the red line-- demand--has gone up dramatically as our economy continued to grow over the years, as more people were driving cars, and as more cars consumed more gas.

The only way you are going to keep price down is when the supply line and the demand line are somewhat in concert, somewhat tracking each other. That simply stopped in the 1950s, as we began to grow increasingly dependent upon foreign nations.

We passed the Energy Policy Act of 2005, but it wasn't really directed at transportation fuels. Last year, we added to that and we began to address transportation fuels. We brought ethanol into the market by subsidizing that and allowing our farmers, and those who take corn from them, to produce ethanol to become increasingly effective in the market. That is working to some degree. In fact, it is estimated today that 20 cents would be put on the price of gas at the pump if

it wasn't for national and rural ethanol production. Now, it has caused other problems. Some would argue that it has caused problems in the food chain, and it probably has. I think the marketplace will work that out. So there are things we have been doing.

But I think, most importantly, it is the things we have not done. It is the failure of our country to recognize the increased dependency we were developing from other countries around the world. I think that has become one of our greater frustrations. While you have some on the campaign trail today talking about taxing the big oil companies, the big oil companies don't own the oil. It is the cartels. It is the nations. It is not oil companies, it is oil countries that we have to worry about today.

I didn't coin the phrase, but I use the phrase quite often, ``petro- nationalism.'' If I am a country and I am small but I am sitting on a pool of oil, I become rich overnight. The reason I become rich overnight is because Americans will come and buy my oil. If I want to form a cartel and I want to control the supply of that oil, then they will pay even more for it because Americans quit producing for themselves.

Here is a statistic that I find fascinating, and some have said that if we don't stop this in the near future, we will spend our Nation into poverty as we spend all of this money on oil. We are now spending well over $1 billion a day outside our country to buy oil. That is a phenomenal figure. Our neighbors to the north, we send them $280 million a day; to Saudi Arabia, we send $190 million a day; to Venezuela and Dictator Chavez, we send $160 million; to Nigeria, we send $140 million; to Algeria, we send $70 million. Do Venezuela and Nigeria and Algeria have our best interests in mind? I don't believe so. They have their own interests in mind. We are literally making them wealthy because we are buying their oil.

Many of us talk about energy independence, and last year when we passed that legislation I was talking about, the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, we did some very good things in it. As I said, we looked at increasing production by conservation, by CAFE standards, and by renewable fuels standards. We said to the automobile industry: You have to design cars that burn less, and in doing that, we will improve our overall position on dependency by dropping it significantly by 2030. But it takes a long time to redesign a car, make it efficient, produce it, and then sell it into the market.

Those are the realities of a problem where you cannot just fix this tomorrow. We cannot just change the price of gas at the pump tomorrow because we cannot fix the underlying problems instantly. But as I said earlier, if Congress is at fault, the problem in this, then Congress ought to be doing more about it. And it is not just wringing your hands and wanting to tax. It is doing things that get us back into production while we learn to conserve, while we have cleaner automobiles, while we look at alternative fuel sources, while we get more hybrid cars and electric plug-in cars in the market. That is all coming, but that is 10 years, 15 years, and 20 years out.

What do we do in the interim? I believe there is something we can do, and we ought to do. In America today and in our territorial waters we are sitting still on a lot of oil, a dramatic amount of oil. Some would argue under old U.S. Geological Survey analysis that we are sitting on at least 100 billion barrels of oil. If we are sitting on it, why aren't we using it? Once again, the politics of Congress and the politics of States enter into the debate.

A couple of years ago, I began to talk about an issue I called the no zone. What was I talking about at the time? I was talking about that area of the United States and Outer Continental Shelf of waters that we knew had large volumes of oil. But California said no. We said no in Alaska. We have said no off the east coast. We have said no around Florida. Because we have said no, the American consumer today is paying the highest price for gasoline ever. That is a fact. It is a simple reality. Our dependency on foreign nations grew. As I just expressed, over 60 percent of our oil is coming from outside the continental United States when we know there is a significant amount of oil outside the continent.

When I introduced this chart a couple of years ago and I began to talk about the no zone and there were a few folks wringing their hands, we went to work. We went to work and we looked at oil sales in the gulf and the development in the Outer Continental Shelf in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Thanks to our effort, we did something. The American consumer needs to know we went into lease sale 181 off the coast of Florida. We looked at and found a tremendous amount of capability there and we began to develop it and we are developing it today. We have allowed other lease sales to occur. That is tremendously important. We are beginning to tap some of that oil supply that we know is out there and about which we ought to be doing more. That is what I think is important, and that is on what I think we ought to be focused.

To sit and wring our hands and tell the American people there is nothing we can do, and all we are going to do is go out and tax and tax, which will not produce--we ought to be talking about production. The legislation I have introduced today talks about production. It talks about production in a positive way.

I mentioned a few moments ago the action we took last year in lease sale 181. We were successful in bringing Florida along in their cooperation and understanding, which was phenomenally important.

We know there are millions of barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of gas out there. What is most significant about oil development in this region is that the infrastructure is in place. What do I mean? Refineries, pipelines, capacity. We don't have to wait 5, 6, and 7 years just to build the infrastructure. It is there, and the oil is under it. That is why we did lease sale 181. But there is a lot more we can and should do. That is why the legislation I have introduced today does just that. It doesn't start drilling, but it says a couple of things that are quite simple.

As we have heard others talk about the fact we are putting money into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve at this time, we are buying oil off the market and putting it underground in the salt domes in the South for a time of necessity, I suggest we stop doing that for the time being, and I suggest we take that money we are using for those purposes and we modernize our inventory of our known reserves, our unknown reserves, and our capacity because the true SPR--SPR means Strategic Petroleum Reserve--the greatest reserve in the world is to know what we have, where it is, and how we can access it. That is one of the most important things we can do for the consumers of America today.

I know it frustrated some of my Floridian friends when I talked about our inability because of policy to allow our companies to go in to the northern area off Cuba and drill because Cuba was allowing other countries to come in and develop. Just 90 miles--45 miles until you hit the zone--90 miles off our coast on the extreme of the Florida Keys there are foreign nations drilling oil today. India is there, and India has now discovered oil. China is there, and China has now discovered oil. We are not there today because our policy is 45 years old and still says: No, no, Americans cannot get involved with Cuba, even though we believe Cuba has phenomenal potential oil reserves. Shame on us.

America, listen up: It is Government policy today in large part that has caused you the pain at the pump, and it is very important that Government act today to reduce that pain.

The legislation I am offering would create an inventory that would do just that. It would allow us to know what our reserves are.

We have moratoriums off the coast of Florida, and yet we know there are huge oil reserves out there. Why are we not doing something about it? Well, it is local politics. It is national politics. It is green politics. It is politics. That is why we have the price of oil we have today, nothing more and nothing less but politics, and our economy is growing more fragile by the moment because of it.

Is it demagogic to say that? I don't think so. I don't think so at all. I pulled out the sign, the no zone. The no is a result of politics, whether it is the politics of the State of Florida or the

politics of the State of California or whether it is the national politics of this Senate that will not allow for us to drill for the reserves in what is known as ANWR, the Alaskan national wildlife area, where we know there is phenomenal abundance.

It was all done, all of this no, this political no was all done in the name of the environment. There was some reason at the time these old ideas were put in place. We had the oil spills off the coast of Santa Barbara, and as a result of that, Americans were concerned. So California said no more drilling there, and then we followed up.

A few years ago, we had a great national tragedy in the gulf area of our country. That tragedy was called Katrina. She came rolling up and through the gulf. We know what she did in New Orleans. She did something else nobody wants to talk about today. She knocked offline hundreds of oil wells that were producing out in the gulf--knocked them off. She even set some of the drilling rigs adrift. But not a drop of oil was spilled. Why? Because modern technology today and American know-how and a concern for protecting our environment has produced one of the cleanest deepwater oil drilling industries in the world. We are producing in this area of the gulf off the coast of Texas, off the coast of Louisiana, off the coast of Mississippi, and with 181, we just brought into or soon will be bringing into production off the coast of Alabama. Why not off the coast of Florida? Why not off the coast of California? Why not off the coast of the Carolinas, Virginia, and on up where we believe there is significant gas and oil reserves?

It is old politics of the past that is caught in the ghosts of Santa Barbara of decades ago. Yet our technology today will take us there, but our politics will not take us there. That is why I have introduced the legislation I have. The least we can do is inventory with modern technology to know where our oil is.

I notice the president of Shell said in a press release the other day: If Americans sent a message to the world that we were going to start drilling our own reserves and bringing them into production, the price of gas at the pump would drop dramatically, 25 or 30 cents a gallon or more. That is significant stuff, both short term and long term, to the economy of this country.

I say to my colleagues, I say to our country, and I say to our consumers: Is it a time to act? You bet it is a time to act. While some suggest we tax the big boys out of existence, we do not produce anything by doing that, while we can create all kinds of other structures. Do we produce more, do we build refinery capacity, and do we assure the American public while we are transitioning into hybrid cars and electric cars and hydrogen cars and all of those kinds of activities that we support and are doing research and development on today that they will still have an abundant supply of energy? That is our job. That is the job we failed in doing over the last good number of years, and that is the job we ought to stop and start over and do it right and reward the States that are the boundary States to the production of the Outer Continental Shelf.

We have huge oil reserves in this country, and yet we are letting the rest of the world have our wealth. Why not keep our wealth in this country by the development of these reserves?

The first step is the legislation I have introduced today. Let's at least in the next few years do the inventory, the modern, sophisticated seismographic inventory that USGS can do to let us know how much is out there because what we know today is simply old stuff. Those efforts were done years ago. Already out at the edge of this green line in the deepest waters in the gulf under the newest drilling technologies, we are finding phenomenal oil that just a few years ago we did not even know we could get to. We are getting to it. We are producing it. It is clean, and it is environmentally sound. We ought to be doing that everywhere else.

I have joined my colleague from Louisiana who just came to the floor, who introduced legislation that says when oil gets to $125 a barrel, we ought to give the States the option to allow the development of the Outer Continental Shelf off their State. You darn bet we ought to, and those States ought to be rewarded for it.

There is so much this country can continue to do instead of standing still and wringing our hands and trying to blame somebody else for our failure over the last 20 years to continue to allow this great country to produce for its consumers.

I will be happy to yield to the senior Senator from Virginia.

Mr. President, I thank the senior Senator from Virginia. He is absolutely right. When I think oil, I think gas because, obviously, in lease sale 181 and in other areas where there is gas, there is oftentimes oil, and oftentimes where there is gas, there is no oil. We believe that to be the case off the coast of Virginia.

The Senator from Virginia has been a leader, without doubt, in that very kind of effort to allow at least the seismographic effort, the exploration that would determine for us the kinds of reserves we have and may have for the future.

I thank the Senator from Virginia for his leadership in this area.

Without question it is there today, and we know that. We are the leaders of clean drilling in deep water for the world, no question.

I will be happy to yield to the Senator from Florida.

I am more than happy to.

I do recognize that. I do appreciate what our military has said.

I also understand a few years ago we took offline a naval training area in Vieques. Why? It was no longer a popular thing to do.

If there is oil under this area--and we believe there is--and it is a training area, why couldn't we train here? Or why couldn't we train over here? The reality is, what is at this time more valuable?

It is very easy to say don't do it. Or is it possible to say can we do both? There are a good many experts and professionals in the field who said that. We can have a military training area, and guess what we also can do. We can pull the oil out from under. How do you do it? Quite simply. You put a location, a location and you slant drill thousands of feet and you do not have to pepper the area with all kinds of drilling rigs.

Today's technology is amazing. It is politically comfortable, I appreciate that, and I understand the State's politics and I do not deny that--but this is not the oil of the State of Florida. This is the oil of the citizens of our country. It is the politics of Florida today that deny us the oil, not the politics of America. So it is a simple question: Should we inventory it? Should we know what it is? And should we, under modern technology, reward the State of Florida for the potential benefit?

It is ironic we did not move at all to stop drilling 45 miles off the Florida coast. We could even take a 45-mile zone here, or more, consistent with what is going on in Florida today and still protect this.

But the Senator is right. It is a military area. Guess what. I am kind of a modern guy. I believe in technology taking us where we can go and having the best of both worlds. But right now the American consumer has the worst of the world we have created for them--a scarcity of a supply that is driving costs and impacting our economy in a significant way.

I suggest the legislation I have introduced, while it will not impact the State of Florida, will give us a base and an understanding and knowledge of what we have as a reserve. We are spending millions of dollars a day to buy oil and put it in the ground when, in fact, we ought to spend a few million dollars and find out about all the oil we already have.