Repeal Big Oil Tax Subsidies Act

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to be recognized for up to 25 minutes.

I thank the Chair.

Madam President, I voted against the motion to proceed to the Menendez bill on Monday because, quite frankly, it is just a bill to continue raising gas prices. I talked for quite some time yesterday on the Senate floor about this; that by raising taxes on the oil and gas industry it sounds good to a lot of people because people do not like the oil and gas industry. They have been vilified, so everybody thinks we ought to get the oil and gas industry.

What they do not understand is--I think they understand it, but they will not admit it--that is the way to increase prices at the pump. Somebody has to pay for all that stuff. So even Senator Menendez and several Democrats have said this bill is not going to lower gas prices. It would raise gas prices. I do not think anyone who looks at it logically could come to any other conclusion.

As I discussed Monday on the Senate floor, the Democrats' plan goes against everything we know about basic economics--higher taxes limits supply. Whenever we limit supply, the price goes up. I do not think there is a person out there right now who does not remember, back in their elementary school days, the basic concept of supply and demand. We have this huge supply out there. But if we cut the supply, then the demand is going to be greater, and the prices are going to go up.

The bottom line is, President Obama and his allies do not have an answer to high gas prices. That is because high gas prices--higher prices for all the energy we use--are exactly what they want. This administration remains committed to a cap-and-trade, green agenda. It is a plan that severely restricts domestic development and drives up the price of gas and electricity.

Let me put it another way. Their policies are designed to make recoverable traditional energy more expensive so their desired green energy can compete. There is no question that is what the Obama administration has wanted.

You all remember--and we have quoted so many times on this Senate floor--that Steven Chu, the Secretary of Energy, told the Wall Street Journal: ``Somehow we have to figure out''--speaking on behalf of President Obama and the Obama administration; not so much the Democrats in the House and the Senate, but this is the Obama administration--he said: ``Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.'' Well, the levels in Europe were ranging, at that time, when he made the statement, around $8. Well, we are getting up there. He is getting his way. This is something that is happening now.

We all know the infamous quote from President Obama in 2008 when he said under his cap-and-trade plan--this is a quote now--``electricity prices would necessarily skyrocket.'' Notice the word ``necessarily.'' It is going to happen. The President had it right. The point of the cap-and-trade regulations is to make us pay more on our utility bills.

A lot of times people do not draw the connection. Energy is energy. If we raise the price of energy on utilities, on utility bills, or gas prices at the pump, it all relates to the rest. If we somehow put coal out of business so we have to use more natural gas and more gas, then that raises the price because that makes more demand for that particular product. I think most people understand that. That is very basic.

If we are serious about lowering prices at the pump, then we need to open the vast oil and gas reserves we have at home to develop. After all, CRS recently reported--this is kind of interesting because it was a CRS report; so far, I have not heard anyone counter this report--we have more recoverable

reserves of oil, gas, and coal than any country in the world--more than Saudi Arabia, more than China, more than Canada, all of them combined.

In fact, with more than 160 billion barrels of recoverable oil, we have enough to maintain America's current rate of production and replace all of our imports from the Persian Gulf for 50 years. That is just domestically what we could do. It is out there.

A lot of them try to say: Oh, no, we only have 2 percent of the reserves. I have said this so many times, and yet the other side just keeps repeating it over and over: We only have 2 percent of the reserves, and we are using some 25 percent when, in fact, they are talking about proven reserves. Proven reserves are reserves where we have drilled and proved there is oil there. Recoverable are the areas where we have not drilled yet because we have not had an opportunity.

So if we have a policy, as this administration has, not to allow us to drill for oil, then we cannot prove anything. So the 2 percent means absolutely nothing. It is totally false. The thing is they know it. The key is ``recoverable.'' We have more recoverable reserves in fossil fuels; that is, oil, gas, and coal, than any other country in the world.

But today we have awful government regulations that prevent us from accessing it, and we are the only Nation that does this. I defy anyone to tell me the name of another country that does not develop its own resources. They all do it, and we have this President saying, well, we encourage them down in Brazil and Venezuela to drill but not here.

Well, anyway, we have these reserves that we need to start doing something with. That is why I have submitted three amendments that will address President Obama's war on affordable energy. I am going to talk about them.

First of all, amendment No. 1974 is the American Jobs and Domestic Energy Production Act. In order to increase the development of our wealth of resources, I have submitted a substitute amendment to this bill that will open literally billions of barrels of oil and gas for commercial development. It is something that will actually bring down the prices, directly bring down the price of oil, of gasoline at the pump.

First, the bill opens significant portions of the Outer Continental Shelf for development. Right now, the entire east coast and west coast and much of the Gulf of Mexico are completely off-limits. For the most part, the only offshore development allowed is in the western portion of the gulf and in certain areas offshore of Alaska. But we have to keep in mind, to do this, we have to get the permits, and that is where they have dragged their feet.

My amendment would require the rest of the OCS to be leased over time. According to a recent study, these areas have at least 63 billion barrels of recoverable oil and up to 186 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Once brought fully online, this will create tens of thousands of new jobs and ultimately may bring in an additional $1.4 trillion in additional tax revenue for the government.

My amendment would also require the administration to move forward with three lease sales that were conducted by the Bush administration but were subsequently pulled by the Obama administration after taking office.

Additionally, my amendment allows ANWR on the Northern Slope of Alaska to be developed. Experts believe this area contains 16.4 billion barrels of oil and 18.2 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

I have been up there. People talk about ANWR and all this, and it is a beautiful area. They have systems now where we cannot even tell where they are developing it. I have seen polls ranging from 70 to 85 percent--and I can actually identify these polls--of the people in Alaska, they want to do it. Why are we, in our infinite wisdom in Washington, DC, telling them in Alaska they cannot go after their own oil and gas?

I think it is ludicrous. Anyway, this amendment will correct that situation.

My amendment removes also the statutory moratorium on the development of this resource, and it requires the Secretary of the Interior to begin an oil and gas leasing program in that area.

Today, oil shale--particularly that in Western States--represents some of our greatest energy potential. Just a few years ago we didn't know this. We didn't have any idea of the size of this.

Some experts believe the Western States hold as much as 1.8 trillion barrels of oil shale, of which 800 billion barrels is presently recoverable. This is simply an astonishing amount of oil, and it would do a lot to help lower the price at the pump. That is what we are talking about. Everything we have talked about on the floor in opposition to the Menendez bill is something that will lower prices of gasoline at the pump.

My bill forces the administration to release 10 research and development leases that were approved by the Bush administration but then canceled by the Obama administration.

Thereafter, the Obama administration would be forced to conduct additional oil shale leases on Federal lands. We have 93 percent of the Federal lands that are off-limits. That needs to be corrected.

Lastly, my bill reserves the right of regulating hydraulic fracturing to the States. I know a little bit about this because the first hydraulic fracturing that took place in this country was in my State of Oklahoma in 1949. Since 1949, there has not been one documented case of groundwater contamination. It has worked beautifully, I think most people agree, now that it is better regulated by the States. The States differ in the depth of their resources, what they have to do to achieve it. It has worked. The old saying is ``if it ain't broke, don't fix it.'' We have to look behind the motive of the Federal Government. This administration, if they can stop hydraulic fracturing, can stop the production of oil and gas. I believe that is their motivation. It is a State process that is successfully regulated by the States, and in 60 years there has not been one documented case of groundwater contamination.

Because States have done such a good job regulating fracking, I think they ought to continue having that exclusive right. My bill does this. It takes away the temptation of the power grab by the Federal Government to regulate this thing that doesn't need to be regulated at the Federal level, particularly when their motivation is to do away with hydraulic fracturing. If we do that and we talk about when they are trying to go after these types of formations, they cannot extract 1 foot of natural gas without using hydraulic fracturing.

That is what the bill does. It would be a big win for energy production because we all know the administration's regulations would likely prevent anybody from ever using hydraulic fracturing again. I can remember when the President was giving his speech to the Nation at the joint session. All of a sudden, people caught on that he has had this war on fossil fuels. He started saying complimentary things about good, clean natural gas. I agree. But what we didn't hear him say-- because he said it so fast toward the end of his remarks--is we have to do something about hydraulic fracturing. If we kill hydraulic fracturing, we cannot get the natural gas we are talking about.

All told, by tapping into our domestic supply of oil and gas, we could increase our economic output by trillions of dollars over the next several decades. It could increase government tax revenues by $2 trillion, and it would create hundreds and thousands of new well-paying jobs.

We have the energy resources we need, and if we develop them, it will significantly improve our economy and, there again, lower the price at the pump.

By raising taxes, as the Menendez bill would, it would only make the problem worse. I urge adoption of that amendment.

The next amendment I introduced is the Gas Regulations Act of 2012. To hold the Obama administration accountable for their role in gas prices, I am also introducing the Gas Regulations Act of 2012 as an amendment. We actually have this, and we are going to try to introduce it as a bill. This amendment would require an interagency committee to conduct a cumulative analysis on certain EPA rules and actions that impact the price of gasoline and diesel fuels.

My amendment is the companion amendment to a bill introduced last

week by House Energy and Power Subcommittee Chairman Ed Whitfield. This amendment will help us to obtain a better understanding of the costs of all these levels of regulation. I have often talked about the regulation and what the cost is. It is kind of masquerading. I will read the cost of these regulations that this administration is accountable for and that directly relate to the increased price of gas at the pump. Tier 3 motor vehicle emissions and fuel standards--that would levy a $12 billion gas tax on refiners. Who will pay for it? You will and my wife will at the pump. New source performance standards for petroleum refiners could result in billions of additional environmental and compliance costs. Again, that will be passed on to the consumer. The RFS2 standards too would force Americans to consume 21 billion gallons of expensive biofuels, such as the one the Navy procured for $26 a gallon last year, instead of paying $3.50 a gallon.

Ozone standards would result in a $676.8 billion loss in GDP. Again, these standards increase directly the price of gas at the pump. There is greenhouse gas PSD and title V permitting actions--again, another regulation. This regulation slows down the permitting process and would prevent upgrading refining capacity from coming online quickly. Again, this causes an increase in the gas price. People know pretty much the supply-and-demand argument, but they don't know what the regulations do. Anyway, this amendment No. 1963 is designed to do that.

The next one I introduced is amendment No. 1967. This is kind of called the Inhofe-Upton Energy Tax Prevention Act. Fred Upton, a Congressman, actually passed this. I have introduced this now for 3 years. We have been trying to do this.

Just yesterday, we found out President Obama fully intends to make good on his campaign promise that under his plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity prices would ``necessarily skyrocket.'' That is what we are talking about with this amendment, cap and trade. People remember that. A lot of Republicans were concerned about this issue after Kyoto, and they said let's do something about this; this idea that somehow we are going to have to reduce and regulate greenhouse gases in order to do this. They are introducing cap-and-trade bills. It goes back to the Kyoto convention in 1993, when the famous meeting was held, and Al Gore went down to try to put it together in Rio de Janeiro 20 years ago. He was going to put this together to come up with an international convention called Kyoto, and they tried to, of course, get us to pass it. We saw it would cost the American people between $300 billion and $400 billion a year, and it would treat developing countries differently, so we didn't do it.

The interesting thing about the Kyoto treaty is that the President-- then President Clinton--never submitted it for ratification in this body. After that didn't work out, they went ahead and did a second effort to do it through cap-and-trade legislation. We beat all the cap- and-trade regulations. The main reason is because it became evident the science was cooked--all put together by the United Nations. It started back in 1992. They developed something called the IPCC, which is the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change, which was designed in order to, I believe, cook the science and make people believe we are going to have to do something and that CO2 and anthropogenic gases were causing global warming.

We know what happened since that time, and with climategate, which showed they cooked the science. Consequently, we introduced this legislation. This legislation merely does one thing. It will take away the jurisdiction of the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases. My concern is this: We were able to stop all these bills from passing that would have imposed a tax increase on the American people.

To give an idea how much that $300 billion or $400 billion would mean, in Oklahoma, I keep track of the number of families who file tax returns, and I do the math. If we do the math with what it would cost for cap and trade and do the legislation they were talking about passing, which we defeated on the Senate floor, it would cost each taxpayer in Oklahoma over $3,000 a year. What would they get for that? This is interesting. Even those people out there who think I am way off base and wrong, in terms of CO2 and anthropogenic gases-- keep in mind we asked the question to President Obama's Administrator of the EPA: ``If we were to pass cap and trade, would this reduce CO2 emissions worldwide?'' She said: ``No, logically, it would not.''

This isn't where the problem is. The problem is in China and in India. Those are the places where they would have to be regulated. But they don't regulate it to the degree we would here. We can carry that one step further. If we pass cap and trade, it would have the effect of increasing anthropogenic gases worldwide, because as our manufacturing base leaves the United States and seeks energy in those areas where there are less controls, that would have the effect of not reducing but increasing emissions.

What we would attempt to do is to take away that jurisdiction. Here is the reason we want to do that. It is bad enough--when I talked about $300 billion to $400 billion it would cost to do cap and trade through legislation, if we do it through regulation, it will be a lot more for this reason: Most of the bills that were introduced, starting back in 2003, ending up with the Waxman-Markey bill, which was a couple years ago, these were bills that would regulate emitters that emitted over 100,000 tons a year. However, if we do it through regulation, it has to be under the Clean Air Act, and the Clean Air Act specifically says not those that emit 100,000 tons a year but those who emit 250 tons or more. That would be every church, every school, and every hospital in America. We cannot even approximate that cost. That is what doing cap and trade by regulation would do.

Simply put, my third and last amendment would be to do here what they have already done in the House of Representatives, which is to take away the jurisdiction from the EPA. It directly relates to the price of gas at the pump. Take these three amendments, and if the Menendez bill should get through, with these amendments we can totally stop the increase of gas at the pump because that is what we will be faced with if we adopt the Obama-Menendez amendment.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, last Wednesday, I had the privilege, as did many in this body, of attending a tribute to two former majority leaders of the Senate, Howard Baker and Bob Dole. It was a great evening. President Clinton sent a video and the Vice President attended, as did the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and all former majority leaders of the Senate, except one. It was a long evening but a good one. Along with Senator Baker was his wife former Senator Nancy Kassebaum Baker, and along with Senator Dole was his wife former Senator Elizabeth Dole. It was sponsored by the Bipartisan Policy Center. It was a reminder that while in this body we have differences, in fact, this body was created to resolve differences. People sometimes say to me: You Senators argue. That is what we are supposed to do. When they kick over to us issues that cannot be resolved other places, with respect for each other's points of view, we try to resolve them, and we often do. Well, Bob Dole and Howard Baker were among the best at working across party lines and getting results, and it was for that skill as much as for any other skill that they were honored.

I was asked to introduce a short film about Senator Baker, and I did. Senator Roberts of Kansas was asked to introduce a short film about Senator Dole, and he did. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record my remarks about Howard Baker as I introduced the film.

Mr. President, Senator Baker, recalling the story of his maiden speech, asked that his remarks be put into the Congressional Record. The story was this, which I told that night:

Senator Baker was here in 1967 and made his maiden speech at a time when his father-in-law, Everett Dirksen, was the Republican leader. I was here then, as Senator Baker's young legislative assistant, right out of law school. Senator Dirksen walked over to Senator Baker and sat down next to him after what had been a fairly long speech--maybe 45 minutes. Senator Baker looked at his father-in-law and said: Senator Dirksen, how did I do? And Senator Dirksen said to his son-in-law Howard: Maybe occasionally you should enjoy the luxury of an unexpressed thought.

So Senator Baker, recalling that advice, I assume, asked that his remarks to be delivered that night at the end of a long ceremony be placed in the Congressional Record, and so I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record Senator Baker's remarks.

Mr. President, I would like to make a few remarks on the subject we are debating here, which is energy.

Last week the majority leader said he was disappointed that we were not moving to the Ex-Im Bank and to postal reform and to cybersecurity, all of which he said are urgent national issues the citizens of the United States expect our Senate to deal with. The Republican leader said that, on our side, we are ready to deal with all three, and the Republican leader offered to join the majority leader in dealing with the Ex-Im Bank, with a few relevant amendments. That might be a pretty good way to begin our process of getting the Senate back to doing what the Senate is supposed to do, which is to bring up important pieces of legislation, allow Senators on both sides to offer their amendments, speak on them, and then vote on them. It is easier to do if the amendments are relevant to the legislation that is being offered.

So we were looking forward this week to dealing with a postal reform bill, which needs to be dealt with. We have a several-billion-dollar debt for the post office, which has been a part of our lives ever since our country was founded, and we have competing pieces of legislation on the issue, with very good Senators on both sides of the aisle ready to discuss it. Yet, suddenly the majority leader changed his mind, which he has a right to do, and instead, he brought up legislation repealing six tax provisions for five oil companies--provisions that, for the most part, are tax provisions that are similar to those available to most other companies in America.

Why would the majority leader do that? Well, in the Senate it is not considered to be good form to inquire into the motivation of other Senators, and I won't do that, but I will read a paragraph or two from The National Journal this week that speculated on what might have happened this past Monday evening. I quote:

The Senate holds a procedural vote this evening on

legislation sponsored by Senator Menendez of New Jersey that

would repeal tax incentives for the country's biggest oil

companies. It won't pass, but it will create a platform for

Democrats to try to reclaim the debate on gas prices. Indeed,

a memo circulated over the weekend by John Podesta, president

of the liberal Center for American Progress, and Democratic

pollster Geoff Garin, notes that the vote ``offers a huge

opportunity for progressives to frame energy policy through

the gas price debate.'' Democrats will use familiar tactics

of linking high gas prices to Big Oil, and Big Oil to

Republicans, with the aim of attacking GOP presidential

candidates and of putting three vulnerable Republican

Senators up for reelection--Scott Brown of Massachusetts,

Richard Lugar of Indiana and Dean Heller of Nevada--in tough

spots.

That is the end of the speculation from the National Journal.

Now, maybe that was the reason the majority leader decided to bring this up, but clearly we are spending a whole week on a political exercise. If this is true--that it is being brought up to frame an issue to put Republican Senators who may be running for reelection in a difficult spot--well, then the Republicans must not think so because we all voted to bring it up. So instead of doing cybersecurity or postal reform, we are spending a whole week on something we all know is not going to pass and is a misuse of the time of the Senate. It would be much better if we were using the time on those other issues.

But as long as we are discussing lowering gasoline and fuel prices, I have a suggestion to make. Here is a plan to lower fuel prices: Double energy research. And here is a way to pay for it without adding to the Federal debt: Stop wasteful, long-term subsidies that are exclusively or mostly for both Big Oil and Big Wind.

Look at shale gas. The Senator from Oklahoma was talking about shale gas, which is being produced thanks to new technology found through energy research. This is a remarkable development in our country. But, as Daniel Yergin, the leading expert on energy, reports in his new book ``The Quest,'' the innovation on this began over 20 years ago, some of it from the private sector, some from government funding. Basically we found a way to find natural gas and oil through a process called hydraulic fracking. It is possible all around the world. I was in Australia in January, and they are doing it and selling it to China. The remarkable difference for the United States is not just that we suddenly have a lot more natural gas but that it is cheap gasoline. Instead of being $15 a unit, which it was when we passed the last Energy bill in 2005, it is $2 a unit or $3 a unit.

More than that, while Australians are selling their gas to China and paying the world price at home for their own natural gas, in the United States it appears likely we will be able to buy our gas at a U.S. price rather than a world price. What does that mean? That means that natural gas in Europe and in Asia is going to be worth four to five times what natural gas is here. So chemical companies that were thinking about moving overseas 5 years ago in order to be able to buy cheap natural gas for their feedstock, their raw materials, are staying here, expanding here, thinking about moving back. Older people who need to heat and cool their homes can use natural gas at a cheaper price. Manufacturing companies that are adding up the costs to make a decision on whether to put a plant in Mexico or some other place in the United States can put cheap energy in there with the natural gas. For the foreseeable future, it appears that natural gas in Europe and Asia is going to be four or five times what it is in the United States, giving us a tremendous advantage.

So energy research, both in the government and in the private sector, has given the United States the advantage that, if truth be told, has been our advantage ever since World War II. The principal reason we have produced 25 percent of all the money in the world is because of the innovation, technology, and research that have come since World War II, and it is hard to think of an important advance in biological or physical sciences without support from government research. So shale gas is one example of that.

So shale gas is one example of that. Here is another example: I drive an all-electric Nissan LEAF and pay about $3 for the electricity to travel 100 miles--better than spending an equivalent $20 on gasoline. Researchers at battery maker Envia have invented a way to double the density of lithium ion batteries, hastening the arrival of the $20,000 electric cars that travel 300 miles per charge. That research is permitting us, in the case of shale gas, to find more American energy and in the case of electric batteries, to use less of it.

That is why I argue that the United States should launch a series of mini Manhattan Projects with the same focus and determination of the original World War II Manhattan Project, this time with the goal of finding more energy and finding ways to use less of it.

The United States has a resource no other country has--dozens of major research universities and 17 national laboratories that can advance research on cheaper solar, better batteries, recapturing carbon from coal plants, biofuels from crops we don't eat, better ways to dispose of nuclear fuel, offshore winds, green buildings, and even fusion. To pay for doubling the $5 billion the United States now spends on energy research, Congress should end current tax breaks that are exclusively or mostly for both Big Oil and Big Wind and of every $3 saved, use $1 for more research and $2 to reduce the Federal debt.

For all we hear about Big Oil--and we hear a lot about it--you may be surprised to learn that special tax breaks for Big Wind are even greater. During the 5 years between 2009 and 2013, Federal taxpayer subsidies for wind power developers equaled $14 billion, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation and the U.S. Department of Treasury.

Here, I am only counting the production tax credit and the cash grants that the 2009 stimulus law offered to wind developers in lieu of the tax credit. An analysis of that stimulus cash grant program, which this legislation offered here would extend, found that 64 percent of the 50 highest dollar grants awarded--or about $2.7 billion in subsidies--went to projects that had begun construction before the stimulus measures started. Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, told Greenwire:

It's essentially funding economic activity that would have

occurred. So it's just a pure subsidy.

It sounds like, in the President's budget, Big Oil receives multiple tax subsidies that are exclusively for Big Oil. Doing away with them, they say, would save about $4.7 billion next year or about $22 billion to $24 billion over 5 years. So far, it sounds as though Big Oil with $22 billion is bigger with its subsidies than Big Wind with only $14 billion. But here is the catch: Many of these subsidies the President is attacking oil companies for receiving are regular tax provisions that are the same or similar to tax provisions that are available to hundreds, even thousands of companies in America. For example, Xerox, Microsoft, and Caterpillar all benefit from tax provisions such as the manufacturing tax credit, amortization or depreciation of used equipment that the President is counting as Big Oil subsidies. And of course wind energy companies also benefit from many of these same provisions, but the production tax credit that benefits mostly wind is in addition to the regular Tax Code provisions that benefit many companies. So the only way to make a fair comparison is to look at subsidies that mostly benefit only oil or mostly benefit only wind, and by that measure, Big Wind gets more tax breaks than Big Oil.

So the bill proposed by the Senator from New Jersey that is limited to just five big oil companies is limited to them even though many of the tax breaks they receive are the same or similar to tax breaks many other companies receive. This bill also extends many tax breaks, including the wind production tax credit and the 1603 grant program for renewable energy, which mostly benefits wind.

Two weeks ago, during the debate on the Transportation bill, the Senate wisely refused to extend the 20-year-old

temporary production tax credit which mostly benefits wind. That was the correct decision. We should allow this tax provision to expire. Congress made a much more difficult decision last year to allow the ethanol tax credit to expire, and we should hold our ground and do the same thing for the wind production tax credit.

There are three reasons Big Wind subsidies should go the way of the $5 billion annual ethanol subsidy. First, we can't afford it. The Federal Government borrows 40 cents of every dollar we spend.

It can't justify such a subsidy, especially for what the U.S. Energy Secretary calls a mature technology. According to a 2008 Energy Information Agency report, Big Wind received in subsidies 25 times as much per megawatt hour as all other forms of electricity production combined.

Second, wind turbines produce a relatively puny amount of unreliable, expensive energy. Wind produces about 2.3 percent of all of our electricity. A better alternative is clean natural gas. An even better alternative is cleaner nuclear power. Nuclear power reactors power our Navy and produce 70 percent of our pollution-free electricity. Using windmills to power a country that uses one-fourth of the world's electricity would be the energy equivalent of going to war in sailboats.

The Tennessee Valley Authority has erected 18 massive wind turbines on 3,300-foot Buffalo Mountain outside Knoxville. Other than deface the landscape and waste ratepayer dollars, the turbines have done little. The wind there blows 19 percent of the time, usually at night when we don't need it, and its unused electricity production cannot be stored.

Finally, there is the question of whether, in the name of saving the environment, wind turbines are destroying the environment. These are not your grandma's windmills. They are taller than the Statue of Liberty. Their blades are as long as a football field, and their blinking lights can be seen for 20 miles. In Nashville, Vanderbilt and the Metro water system is about to erect a small wind turbine as tall as the Parthenon replica we have in Nashville. It would take 1.1 million of these eyesores to equal the production of TVA's new Watts Bar 2 nuclear reactor. Building that many turbines would cost 15 times the cost of the nuclear reactor, and you would still need the nuclear plant for when the wind doesn't blow.

When wind advocate T. Boone Pickens was asked whether he would put turbines on his Texas ranch, he answered, ``No. They're ugly.''

Birds must think of turbines as Cuisinarts in the sky. Eagle killing has become so commonplace that the U.S. Department of the Interior has set up a process to grant licenses for eagle takings, sort of a hunting license. A new documentary, ``Windfall,'' chronicles the despair of upstate New York residents debating whether to build giant turbines in their town.

So I ask the question: If wind has all these drawbacks, is a mature technology, and receives subsidies greater than any other form of energy per unit of actual energy produced, why are we subsidizing it with billions of dollars and why are we not including it in this debate? Why are we talking about Big Oil subsidies and not Big Wind subsidies?

Our energy policies should be, first, to double the $5 billion Federal energy research budget we now have and focus it on new forms of cheap, clean, reliable energy. I am talking about the 500-mile battery for electric cars; commercial uses of carbon captured from coal plants; solar power installed at less than $1 per watt; or offshore wind turbines. That would be research.

Second, we should strictly limit a handful of jumpstart research and development projects to take new technologies from the R&D phase to the commercial phase. I am thinking here of projects such as ARPA E, modeled after the defense department's DARPA agency that led to the Internet, to the stealth, and to other remarkable technologies; or the 5-year program for small modular nuclear reactors; or incentives for the first 200,000 electric vehicles purchased in America. These are a strictly limited number of jumpstart R&D projects.

Third, we should end wasteful, long-term, special tax breaks, such as those for Big Oil and those for Big Wind. I am talking about the tax breaks that are exclusively mostly for Big Oil and Big Wind and not similar to what other industries receive. These savings from those subsidies should be used to double clean energy research and to reduce our Federal debt.

But that is not what this bill does. This bill ends subsidies for five companies that many other companies receive, and it extends subsidies for a few companies that other industries don't get.

This debate isn't even about an energy plan, which is what we should be debating when gas is around $4 a gallon right now.

Here is a very specific plan: Increase energy research--double it--to find more American oil and more American natural gas and more American alternative forms of energy, and increase energy research to find ways to use less of that energy. I have highlighted the best ways to use less, and I have highlighted a way to pay for it.

I thank the President and I yield the floor.

What is the parliamentary situation at this time?

I am confused a little bit because didn't the minority get extra time? Did they not get extra time?

Well, I would ask consent that I have an additional 5 minutes on the 16.

So, Madam President, I think it is very important that we understand what we are trying to do here.

The Senator from Alaska said it has been a good debate. Yes, it has been a good debate, but let me tell you what is not good. What is not good is that Big Oil is getting corporate welfare. Big Oil is ripping us off at the pump. They never had greater profits. We are being asked to sacrifice and pay more at the pump because of instability in the world, because of problems with the refineries, even though we have never drilled as much as we are drilling now. Big Oil exports our oil now. We have never had as many exports as we have now.

Big Oil gets billions of dollars of subsidies, so big that I would tell you, $2 billion a year in U.S. tax breaks. Let me tell you, to explain how that compares to something we do that is very near and dear to my heart and to every mother and father, grandma, grandpa, or aunt and uncle, we put about $1 billion a year into afterschool programs, and we have millions of children waiting--$1 billion a year on afterschool programs while we give away $2 billion a year to the most, shall we say, successful companies in America.

I want to show you what I am talking about because I don't want people to think this is rhetoric. These are the facts. When my Republican colleagues come on the floor and defend these profits, let's talk about what they are.

Now, remember, we have been in a deep recession for several years now. Remember that President Obama and we had to confront the loss of 800,000 jobs a month. Now, thank goodness, he has turned it around--we have turned it around. It is still not good enough but we were in the worst situation. During that time, small businesses went out of business. People lost their homes. If it were not for the leadership of the President, we would have lost the auto industry in America. Thank you, Mr. President, for saving the auto industry in America. Thank you for that. I was proud to vote for that even though I had a lot of problems with the auto industry not moving quickly enough to fuel efficient cars. Now they are doing a great job with it.

During that time when Americans were suffering, we were bleeding all these jobs and even now, just getting back on our feet, what has happened to Big Oil while they have raised our prices at the pump? In 2009, all the five oil companies made $64 billion. In 2010, Big Oil made $76 billion, and in 2011 they made a whopping $137 billion. So they went from $64 billion in 2009 to $137 billion in 2011, and my Republican colleagues are crying bitter tears for them. Oh, let's keep giving them that $2 billion a year.

Why would we do that when we are sacrificing and our constituents are paying more at the pump and Big Oil is profiting from it? There is no reason for this kind of increase at the pump. There is no reason for it. Look at what is going on here. If they made the normal profits, we could have some relief at the pump. But, oh, no. So now the Republicans are going to reward them by allowing them to keep these subsidies.

That started a long time ago. That started in the 1980s, most of it, because we wanted to help them get moving. How much more do they have to earn before we say they can get off corporate welfare? You talk about welfare queens, here it is. And my Republican friends defend giving these people, who have ripped us off at the pump, billions of dollars of subsidies.

They are exporting the oil they recover here. They will not keep it in the country. We had a proposal for the XL Pipeline to keep the oil in the country. My friends on the other side of the aisle voted against it. They don't care, they just want these companies to have their way, to do with it what they want.

If they want to send our oil to China, fine, that is what they want. But they also want to keep their subsidies. It is not right. I want to see these subsidies done with and I want to see us invest in alternatives to these big oil companies that hold us by the throat. I want to have alternatives.

I have been all over this country looking at the alternatives we are developing now. We know, for example, in Brazil they use sugar cane to create their gasoline and they are completely free from imported oil. That is the kind of thing we need to do. I am fortunate that I drive a hybrid vehicle and I get 50 miles to the gallon, so I don't go in for gas that often. But when you go in there, it is a shock. We want to have cars--let them be big cars. If people need that for their families, I understand it. I have grandkids. I know what it is to put your grandkids in a small car. It is hard. We need to have larger cars. They need to be fuel efficient. We are going to get there. We are getting there already.

Isn't it better to take that money away from people who are ripping us off at the pump, away from the corporate welfare queens here, and put it into alternatives so our people are no longer victims to their prices? That is the fight we are having. That is the debate we are having.

On the other side they say drill, baby, drill. You know what, I am for drilling where it makes sense. Do you know how many acres the oil companies are holding now that they have not drilled upon? It is pretty amazing. My friends say open the Arctic to drilling--a precious environment, God-given, placed in a refuge by I believe it was Dwight Eisenhower. They want to go in there and ravage it. Why don't they drill on their nonproducing acres? It looks like 75 million nonproducing acres, onshore and offshore, on which they hold leases.

Oh, no, that is not good enough for them. They are only drilling on 25 percent of the leases they hold, of the acreage they hold in those leases. How about ``use it or lose it,'' instead of ``drill, baby, drill''? Drill, baby, drill in here. Don't go into the coast of California where they want to go, or Washington, or Oregon, where we have fishing, tourism, recreation.

There are so many people here to whom I listen who make the arguments for the oil companies. I am so tired of it. How about speaking up for the American people who are getting brutalized at the pump? How about speaking up for the people who make their living off of a beautiful, pristine environment?

Oh, by the way, many jobs in my State, over 400,000 jobs, are related to a pristine coastline, and they don't care about that on the other side. They want to open it, push these people out of the way and create a few jobs--because there are far fewer jobs created from drilling. As President Obama has said many times, and the other side gets rankled: We only have 2 percent of the world's proven oil reserves and we use about 20 percent of the energy. You do the math, as the President said. You could drill in your grandmother's bathtub, you could drill in the Great Lakes, you could drill anywhere you want--you are not going to find enough oil.

So let's get off foreign oil, let's tell the oil companies to drill, baby, drill where they have the acres and let's look at these prices and let's understand--we will look at it again--the profits of Big Oil. They are crying all the way to the bank, as my dad used to say.

Look at this. In the height of the recession they are making record profits and crying to keep their subsidies and my Republican friends are crying right along: Oh, here, have a tissue. We are so sorry for you, even though we have to turn away millions of children from afterschool programs because we do not have more than $1 billion to spend on it. They are giving away $2 billion a year. That is just one example.

I hope we vote for the Menendez bill. I hope we vote tomorrow on that, to stop the filibuster, to vote it up or down. What a message of hope it will send to the American people, that we are willing to stand up to the biggest powers that be, that we are willing to fight for the average American, that we are not in the pockets of Big Oil. You don't need to give American taxpayer dollars to Big Oil. It is absolutely ridiculous. We don't have to allow them to drill in pristine areas when they will not even drill in areas that they have had under lease for years. And let's stop them from exporting the oil. We need it. Let's keep it here.

By the way, if they keep on ripping us off like this and getting rewarded for it from my Republican friends, let's release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and let's increase the supply and let's see prices go down.

Let's look at the CEOs of Big Oil for a minute, these poor guys who are fighting for the subsidies. Let's look at them. CEOs for the big five made more than $14.5 million in total compensation in 2010. This is it, average compensation. That is 307 times the average salary of a firefighter; that is 273 times the average salary of a teacher; that is 263 times the average salary of a policeman; that is 218 times the average salary of a nurse. But they need subsidies for their companies and they need to rip us off at the pump so they can make a little more money--$14.5 million isn't enough for a poor oil company executive. Give me a break. And stop giving them a break because they don't need this break.

We have an opportunity to stand for what is right and I hope we take it. Right now we want alternatives to Big Oil. We want competition for Big Oil. We want to be able to become energy independent. So let's stop these taxpayer handouts. The oil companies do not need them. Let's start investing in America's energy future which, by the way, that kind of investment creates many jobs at a time that we need to do that.

Health Care

I want to switch topics here for the remainder of my time and talk a minute about health care and then close with a little bit about the highway bill over in the House and the struggle over there to get their work done.

I ask how many minutes I have left.

Will the Chair advise me when I have 2 minutes remaining.

Madam President, we all are watching what the Supreme Court is going to do in terms of the health care bill they have before them. What I want to do today is completely stay away from that argument and talk about what the health care bill is doing now, right now as we speak, because people tend to get involved in mandates, and if it is constitutional, and how does it work and so on. I want to talk about what the Obama health care plan is doing for my people at home, your people back home, and the people of this country right now.

As we stand here today, over 5 million seniors have saved more than $3 billion on their prescription drugs. The way it worked before this bill was passed, you would use up a certain amount of money and then you would fall into this coverage gap that they call a doughnut hole, and just when you are at your sickest point, you get no help. A lot of our seniors were not taking their medicines at that critical point because they could not afford the full cost; they were cutting the pills in half and praying. It was a sad situation. Because of health care reform, we have these seniors being able to keep their medications flowing. Last year in my State, 300,000 seniors were able to save $171 million in their costs.

Let's look at that again. As a result of Obama health care, which I proudly supported, already 5 million senior citizens are able to afford their prescription drugs--your mother, your father, your grandma, your grandpa. That is important. What is going to happen to these people if this whole thing gets overturned? They will get sick and they will not have those medications.

In addition, what else is happening--2.5 million young Americans are now covered because they can stay on their parents' health plan until they turn 26. Without this law, when you graduated from college you were out of luck, and you had to find your own health care. The Obama plan said you should be able to stay on your parents' health plan until you turn 26. I cannot tell you how many people have written to me to thank me for that.

So over there in the Supreme Court they are talking about legalese, and I appreciate that. They are talking about severability, and they are talking about a lot of interesting things. One thing I want to talk about is what is going to happen to 5 million senior citizens who are able to stay on their medication as a result of the Obama health plan.

What is going to happen to the 2.5 million Americans who are young who can stay on their parents' plan until they are 26 if something happens over there across the street in terms of this legal case? In California 335,000 Californians have benefited from that young person being able to stay on their parents' insurance provision.

What is going to happen to 54 million Americans who now have access to free preventive care, such as screenings for colon cancer, mammograms, and flu shots? This is new, folks. Before we didn't get free prevention. We had to pay a copayment. I have to tell you, as I lived my life and I have seen the tragedy of cancer, I have learned very clearly that if you take care of yourself and have mammograms and colon cancer screenings, your life can be saved.

What is going to happen to 54 million Americans who have that preventive care now if the Supreme Court strikes it down? Out of that 54 million, 6 million Californians have gotten these screenings and vaccinations. I will close with health care on this story.

I don't know how many people realize this, but before the Obama health care plan there were caps on insurance policies. Maybe they were a million-dollar cap or a half-million-dollar cap. Before I had different insurance, I had a cap on my husband's policy. What happened at that time is, if you used up enough health care, you were finished at a certain point.

I want to tell you the story of Julie Walters of Nevato, CA. She wrote to me last year about her 3-year-old daughter Violet who suffers from a severe form of epilepsy. She wrote that Violet could hit her lifetime limit in 5 years. So here is a little baby who is reaching her lifetime limit, and her mom wrote:

A lifetime limit on insurance is a limit on Violet's

lifetime, and that is immoral.

Because of health care reform, there is no longer a lifetime limit. So I wanted to point this out and so many other things that are totally essential to our people that are at stake across the street.

Surface Transportation Act

In closing, before we reach our full time, I want to call on the House to take up and pass the Senate Transportation bill. There are 3 million jobs at risk. They cannot get their act together. Allow a vote on the bipartisan Transportation bill and then leave for your vacation. But don't just give us these extensions which are, frankly, death by 1,000 cuts. We already know of six or seven States--including those in the Northeast--that are laying people off because they don't have certainty with the Transportation bill.

So I thank you very much. I thank the chairman of the Judiciary Committee for allowing me to finish.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I rise today to talk about the changes the affordable care act is making to the way care is delivered in our health care system. This is a topic that has not received much public attention. Instead, the public debate has largely focused on contentious flashpoints such as the individual mandate or preposterous false claims about death panels or rationing or socialized medicine.

While these contentious debates have raged on, there has been a quiet, steady, and important effort made by the health care industry, by State and local leaders, and by the Obama administration to improve our model of health care delivery. Progress made on these efforts is steadily transforming the care that is delivered under our health care system, from care that is disorganized and fragmented and often riddled with error, to care that is coordinated, efficient, and the high quality Americans deserve. By improving the quality of care and our health outcomes, these delivery system reforms promise to significantly reduce health care costs. Care gets better, costs go down, a true win- win.

I came to the floor today to release a report on health care delivery system reform and on the administration's progress implementing these provisions of the affordable care act. I undertook this project with the support and assistance of Chairman Harkin and Senator Mikulski, both strong advocates and experienced legislators on the types of reforms that are highlighted in the report.

The report makes the case for the reforms our country urgently needs in order to tackle our health care cost problem. My report defines five priority areas of health care delivery system reform: payment reform, quality improvement, primary and preventive care, administrative costs, and health information infrastructure. It outlines the potential cost savings in each area.

It also highlights successes across the country from leading private health providers such as Geisinger Health Systems in Pennsylvania, Intermountain Healthcare in Utah, and the Marshfield Clinic in Wisconsin, to the State of Vermont's Blueprint for Health, to several examples in my home State of Rhode Island, which has shown great leadership. We have much to learn from these efforts, and the affordable care act gives us the tools to support this type of reform across the country.

The problem is our health care delivery system remains clumsy and wasteful. We spend more than 18 percent of America's gross domestic product on our health care system every year. To put that into context, the highest any other industrialized country spends is approximately 12 percent of gross domestic product on health care. Eighteen percent United States of America; least efficient other industrialized country in the world, 12 percent. Huge room for improvement. In a nutshell, we overspend and underachieve.

The President's Council of Economic Advisers estimated that over $700 billion a year can be saved without compromising health outcomes. The Institutes of Medicine put the savings from these kinds of reforms at $765 billion a year. The New England Health Care Institute projected $850 billion in savings annually, and the Lewin Group and former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill have estimated the savings at $1 trillion a year. Whichever is accurate, this is clearly an enormous opportunity and it is right before us. We can achieve better results for American patients and families, and spend less to do it.

As I said, the solutions fall into five priority areas: payment reform, primary and preventive care, measuring and reporting quality, administrative simplification, and health information infrastructure. These solutions do not cut benefits; they do not increase premiums. Instead, they realign incentives to reduce or get rid of overpriced or unnecessary services, inefficiently delivered care, excessive administrative costs, and missed prevention opportunities.

In this report, we outline actual savings and care improvements that can be found in each priority area. For example, payment reform refers to the new payment reform models that pay doctors more for getting better results, as opposed to ordering more procedures.

In 2010, Blue Shield of California collaborated with Hill Physicians Medical Group and Catholic Healthcare West, California's largest hospital chain, on a pilot program for the California Public Employees Retirement System. The pilot program focused on improved coordination of care by sharing clinical and case management information across medical facilities and among physicians.

In its first year, the Blue Shield pilot program reported impressive results: Readmissions were reduced by 15 percent; hospital days were reduced by 15 percent; inpatient stays of 20 or more days were reduced by 50 percent, cut in half--all saving millions of dollars.

In primary and preventive care--as a country, we don't devote nearly enough resources to primary care and prevention. Only 6 percent to 8 percent of health care spending goes to primary care, to your regular doctor appointments. That is less than the percentage that goes in private insurance to insurance company overhead.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to give an example: When colorectal cancer is found early and treated, the 5- year survival

rate is 90 percent. But screening rates for colorectal cancer are low. The National Health Interview Survey found that in 2005, only half the population aged 50 and older received recommended screening for colon cancer. The American Cancer Society has found that increased colorectal screening in the pre-Medicare population could save lives and reduce subsequent Medicare treatment costs by $15 billion over 11 years.

On measuring and reporting quality, we don't do this anywhere near well enough. Nearly 1 in every 20 hospitalized patients in the United States gets a hospital-acquired infection. This is very expensive and it is preventable. A hospital-acquired infection should be a never event. Yet it costs our health care system approximately $2.5 billion a year in harmful costs we could avoid.

Administrative simplification. The proportion of the U.S. health care dollar that is lost to administration has always been high relative to our peer countries. The cost of administration by insurance companies is not only high itself, but it creates a shadow cost imposed on providers who have to fight back against the insurance company claims denial apparatus, and that cost is probably even higher.

A study published in Health Affairs documented that physicians spent on average 142 hours annually interacting with health plans, totaling nearly 7 percent of total health care costs. That is just the physician's time. That doesn't count all the nonphysician office staff dedicated to administration and chasing the insurance companies.

Last, health and information technology. Health information technology is the essential underlying framework for health care delivery system reform. It is the foundation on which other delivery system reforms can be built. In 2000, the Institute of Medicine estimated the number of deaths resulting from medical error as high as 98,000 American deaths annually. The most common cause of those preventable injuries and deaths in hospitals was medication errors, which can be reduced dramatically through the adoption of computerized physician order entry systems--health information technology.

The reform areas my report discusses synchronize with one another, and there is a growing national movement of providers and payers and States that recognize their critical importance. Focusing on quality rather than quantity and focusing on efficiency rather than volume will better serve not only their patients but their bottom line.

The report I am releasing today looks at 45 provisions in the affordable care act that promote these delivery system reforms. From the discussion one would not know that virtually one-third of the affordable care act was about these delivery system reforms because they have been noncontroversial, but they are in there and they are important.

The report also assesses the administration's progress in implementing them. We found that the administration has already implemented 25 provisions fully and made significant progress on two others. The complexity and sheer number of reforms included in the law make this accomplishment in a relatively short period of time noteworthy.

In addition to the hurdles presented by our fragmented health care system, there has been resistance in Congress to the administration's implementation efforts that has also created barriers. For the 20 delivery system provisions that have not yet been implemented, lack of congressional funding is a significant factor in delaying their forward progress.

In these reform provisions, the affordable care act is supporting and building upon the efforts undertaken by the private sector by realigning incentives in the health care system to support private sector efforts. A broad array of pilot and demonstration programs has been launched, from which best practices will be deployed nationwide. The process to get to a more sustainable path will be one of, as CBO Director Elmendorf said, ``experimentation and learning. It will be a process of innovation.''

The affordable care act improves the conditions that allow that innovation to take place, and it has the mechanisms needed to propagate those reforms widely throughout the system as quickly as possible once they are proven effective.

American ingenuity can overcome our toughest challenges, not through command and control but through dynamic, flexible, and persistent experimentation, learning, and innovation. We are at a fork in the road on our health care future. One path we could travel is to protect the dysfunctional status quo and cut benefits to pay for the waste. That is the way a lot of my colleagues want to go.

The other way is to shift incentives so that we innovate toward better, safer health care--which costs less. We as Americans need to trust that the path of innovation and experimentation is the right one and not give up on these efforts.

Last year, George Halvorson, who is the CEO of Kaiser Permanente and knows a little something about health care, said it this way:

There are people right now who want to cut benefits and

ration care and have that be the avenue to cost reduction in

this country and that is wrong. It's so wrong it's almost

criminal.

He continued:

It's an inept way of thinking about health care.

The affordable care act has the tools that enable providers to focus on quality rather than quantity, efficiency rather than volume, and patients rather than their bottom line, to avoid the inept way of thinking about health care.

As I close, let me say that throughout the process of writing this report I found one thing to be glaringly absent; that is, a cost savings goal set by the administration for us to reach toward on these delivery system reform provisions.

In 1961, President Kennedy declared that within 10 years the United States would put a man on the Moon and return him safely. This message was clear, it was direct, and it created accountability. As a result, a vast mobilization of private and public resources occurred to collaborate in innovative ways to achieve the President's purpose.

While the issue facing our country in health care is different, the urgency and the need to mobilize the public and private sectors toward improving quality and reducing cost is the same. So I challenge the administration to set a cost-savings target for delivery system reform. A cost-savings target will focus, guide, and spur the administration's efforts in a manner that vague intentions to bend the health care cost curve will never do. It also will provide a measurable goal by which we can evaluate our progress.

A clear and public goal will help make this vision of our health care system a reality. It will drive forward progress, and it will generate momentum to achieve that goal.

I urge the administration: Set a goal you are prepared to be accountable to meet.

When President Kennedy announced in September of 1962 that America would strive to put a man on the Moon, he said:

We choose to go to the moon in this decade . . . not

because [it is] easy, but because [it is] hard, because that

goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our

energies and skills, because that challenge is one we are

willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one

which we intend to win.

We need to face the challenge posed by the rising health care costs in our system. We need to recognize we cannot postpone finding a solution. We can win this challenge, we can drive our system toward a sustainable path of higher quality care and improved outcomes, and we can do so by setting clear goals and supporting the measures in the affordable care act that propel us in that direction.

I yield the floor.

I wonder if the Senator would yield for a question.

Setting aside the questions that this raises about the House's ability to govern, which I think are raised by this issue but focusing on this highway question, it is now the end of March. If we go 90 days, 30 days takes us through the end of April, 30 more days takes us through the end of May, and 30 more days takes us through the end of June. There is a seasonal component to getting this work done, is there not? What is the effect of our entire highway, road, and bridge industry having no certainty about what their funding is going to be until practically the Fourth of July

with the construction season then underway?

Mr. President, a couple weeks ago, and just now my colleague, the Senator from Tennessee, has been speaking on the Senate floor in opposition to the wind energy production tax credit.

Obviously, I have great respect for Senator Alexander. A person who has been in the Cabinet, a person who has been Governor of their State, a person who has been president of a university, and probably a lot of other important positions, can't help but be respected as a very important Senator and a very knowledgeable Senator. While I differ with him greatly on this issue, I will continue to respect him.

The greatness of this body allows for debate and disagreeing points of view to be heard. I disagree strongly with my colleague. It might be natural for me to do that because I have championed the wind energy tax credit as a way to provide a level playing field for a very clean renewable resource.

As a result, wind energy has become more efficient and cost effective. The cost of wind energy has declined by 90 percent since the 1980s. Wind has accounted for 35 percent of all new American electric generation in the last 5 years. Wind already provides 20 percent of the electric generation in my State of Iowa. It supports as many as 5,000 good-paying jobs in our State.

As a result of the tax incentive, the wind energy has actually created new manufacturing jobs in the United States. Today, 60 percent of the wind turbines' value is now produced in the United States, compared with 25 percent 6 years ago. There are now 400 facilities building wind components in 43 States. That is why a bill in the House of Representatives to extend the wind energy production tax credit has 80 cosponsors, including 18 Republicans.

If we fail to extend the incentive, thousands of jobs will be lost in the wind manufacturing industry. Unemployment remains high at 8.3 percent. Why would Congress exacerbate the unemployment in our country by failing to extend this successful incentive?

The Senator from Tennessee has criticized wind turbines because he believes they are ugly and they kill birds. Well, I happen to find them majestic and awe-inspiring on the landscape.

With regard to bill-kill accusations, the Senator's claims were evaluated by Politifact, a fact-checking organization. They concluded that the estimates of birds killed by wind turbines vary widely and that there is no consensus. They do point out that the 400,000-bird estimate used by Senator Alexander is the conclusion of just one person. It is not an official U.S. Fish and Wildlife estimate. In fact, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife cites figures that are, at most, half that, if not less by much.

By comparison, 976 million birds die annually from collisions with buildings. Collisions with high-tension lines kill between 130 million and 1 billion birds. Cars kill 80 million birds each year.

The Senator from Tennessee referred many times to the wind project built in his State by the Tennessee Valley Authority. They constructed a 29-megawatt wind farm at Buffalo Mountain at a cost of $60 million. But it only generates 6 megawatts, because it generates electricity only 19 percent of the

time. The Senator criticized it as being inefficient, wasteful, and ill-advised. The TVA apparently characterizes it as a failed experiment. He blames the Federal incentive for this failed wind project. The blame is totally misplaced. I think the blame should go to the taxpayer-subsidized TVA which put windmills where there was very little wind.

We do agree that the modification made to the renewable energy incentives in the stimulus bill of 2009, specifically the creation of the 1603 cash grant program, is in fact bad policy and should not be extended. However, the production tax credit, which I first authored in 1992, provides the incentive only for electricity that is actually produced. Under the production tax credit, there is no tax benefit simply for placing the turbine in the ground. Electricity must be produced in order to get the credit.

The Senator from Tennessee went on to say that the tax incentive has encouraged developers to build wind projects in places with insufficient wind resources. The TVA project is the only one I am aware of that was built with no prospects of generating electricity. For- profit utilities have to look out for the bottom line. They are not going to make an investment if it doesn't make economic sense. A nonprofit such as TVA can fritter away money, which is what they apparently did in this wind energy project.

The Senator from Tennessee might spend a bit of time criticizing the leaders of the TVA over their poor decision to build this wind project in the first place. I am not aware of a policy forcing them to develop wind. There is no mandate that they build a wind farm there in the State of Tennessee.

Most intelligent businesses determine whether an investment makes common sense. The Tennessee Valley Authority obviously failed in that regard in relationship to this wind project. The Senator from Tennessee might use his time getting to the bottom of this leadership failure and squandered resources by the Tennessee Valley Authority.

I am also glad that he raised the issue of the Tennessee Valley Authority. Much of the criticism aimed at the wind production tax credit is that it is costly, was meant to be temporary, and that it provides a small benefit at great cost. Those same accusations could clearly be aimed at the Tennessee Valley Authority. Regardless of one's opinion of the TVA, there is no doubt--it is a big government program subsidized by all Americans that benefits just a few.

The TVA was created in 1933 to provide flood control, navigation services, and electrical power in the Tennessee Valley region. For more than 60 years, Congress appropriated funds to cover losses by the Tennessee Valley Authority.

A 2009 article published by Jim Powell of the Cato Institute noted that a study estimated the annual cost of capital subsidies exceeded $1.2 billion, including taxes that the Tennessee Valley Authority was able to avoid.

In 1997, the Heritage Foundation issued a report entitled ``Five Good Reasons to Force the TVA into Mandatory Retirement.'' This report stated:

Throughout its history, the TVA has benefited from generous

subsidies, tax breaks, and regulatory exemptions that allow

it to keep its power rates lower than the national averages.

Yet, despite its protected geographic monopoly, substantial

indirect subsidies totalling roughly $1.2 billion each year,

sweeping, across-the-board regulatory exemptions, the TVA has

managed to amass a debt of well over $27 billion and a

disturbing record of waste, mismanagement, and chronic cost

overruns.

The private nonprofit group Citizens Against Government Waste has suggested selling the TVA's electric power assets and privatizing its nonpower functions. In their 2011 list of ``Prime Cuts,'' they argued this move would save taxpayers $16.2 billion over 5 years.

Even the Congressional Budget Office listed the TVA in its March 2011 report on spending and revenue options to reduce the national debt and the annual deficit. When the Federal Government is borrowing 40 cents of every dollar we spend, perhaps the time has come to review an entity that benefits 3 percent of the population at a cost of over $1.2 billion annually. And I use that 40 cents the Federal Government is borrowing of every dollar we spend just as the Senator from Tennessee a few minutes ago used that very same figure as a rationale for eliminating certain expenditures. In this particular case, I apply it to the Congressional Budget Office recommendation of selling TVA.

Rather than blaming the tax incentives for an ill-conceived wind project, I think a review of the management and taxpayer subsidy of TVA would be more appropriate. On many occasions, the Senator from Tennessee has argued that the incentives should be repealed and the savings used to double the Federal energy research budget and to support development of new nuclear.

First, I support research efforts to develop clean energy, but I do not support imposing a tax hike on one energy industry so we can spend billions through our Federal bureaucracy. This idea is nothing more than a tax increase to pay for further Washington spending. It is this kind of activity that helped create the fiscal mess our country is in right now.

Second, I strongly support nuclear energy. In fact, I believe there are four critical elements to a comprehensive energy policy. They are drilling for domestic oil and gas, promoting renewable and alternative energy, supporting conservation and, of course, fourth, nuclear energy.

Nuclear is an emission-free resource. It certainly should play a key role in providing our Nation and economy with renewable emission-free energy. However, this discussion of wind energy versus nuclear energy should be an intellectually honest debate. The fact is, nuclear energy in the United States would not exist today--would not even be here today--without significant government support over 60 years, and development of new nuclear in the United States is unlikely to happen without even greater government intervention and subsidies.

An analysis done by the Christian Science Monitor concluded that the nuclear power industry in the United States receives about $9 billion annually in subsidies. They state that the subsidies stem from things such as Federal decommissioning, waste management policy, and research and development in the Nation's National Laboratories.

The Union of Concerned Scientists published a document in February of last year entitled ``Nuclear Power: Still Not Viable without Subsidies.'' They contend that the 50-year-old nuclear industry has benefited from 30 subsidies. The Price-Anderson insurance liability policy was enacted in 1957 as a temporary measure for an infant industry. It was recently extended until the year 2025.

The Cato Institute published an article, June 2003, entitled ``No Corporate Welfare for Nuclear Power.''

That report states:

Despite extensive and continued government assistance--

including more than $66 billion in research and development

alone--no nuclear powerplant has been ordered and built in

the United States since 1973.

But it goes further.

The decline of nuclear power is the result of several

factors: the Three Mile Island disaster heightened public

safety fears and citizen opposition to the siting of grants

in their neighborhood grew. But nuclear power was ultimately

rejected by investors because it simply does not make

economic sense. In truth, nuclear power has never made

economic sense and exists purely as a creature of government.

A more recent piece by the Cato Institute cites an economist who believes existing nuclear power subsidies are equal to one-third or more of the value of the power produced, and that they face a negative 49-percent tax rate.

There are only two new nuclear plants on the drawing board in the United States today. Both are recipients of loan guaranties provided by the Department of Energy. One is an $8.3 billion loan guaranty, and the other is $2 billion. When the Loan Guaranty Program was first created by Congress, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that ``the risk of default on such loan guaranties to be very high--well above 50 percent.'' This is the same program that backed Solyndra.

Congress originally set aside $18.5 billion for loan guaranties for nuclear. President Obama has requested tripling that amount to $54.5 billion. It is estimated that this $54 billion would help construct 12 new nuclear plants. That is about $4.5 billion each.

Congress created a production tax credit for new nuclear in the year 2005.

Now the nuclear industry is advocating a 30-percent investment tax credit for these new nuclear constructions.

They are also advocating that the production tax credit be extended to the year 2025--that is right; they are seeking to extend for another 13 years a temporary tax incentive.

Taxpayers for Common Sense, in an article published just last week, concluded:

The U.S. cannot afford to shoulder the high price tag and

long term fiscal risk. If the industry cannot figure out a

way to manage its long term risks, the taxpayer should not

step in. This is especially true when the nation is staring

into a $15 trillion chasm of debt. After more than 50 years

of subsidies and support, it's well past time for the nuclear

industry to stand on its own two feet.

I do not raise these points to undermine our nuclear industry. I am not urging my colleagues to end the entire big nuclear gravy train at this time. I support that form of energy as one component of a comprehensive energy program. I support a real, ``all-of-the-above'' approach to energy security. But a fair comparison of Federal support for wind and nuclear needs to be made. That is the point of my remarks at this time.

I say to the Senator from Tennessee, as he just spoke and as he spoke a couple of weeks ago, it is intellectually dishonest to criticize wind incentives while at the same time ignoring those subsidies for nuclear energy. The Senator from Tennessee referred to a Wall Street Journal editorial that criticized the wind energy incentive. It called into question whether wind energy could survive a market-based system.

I will eagerly await an editorial in the Wall Street Journal--which, by the way, will never appear--calling for the gravy train for big nuclear to end after nearly 60 years of Federal subsidies with no market-based timetable on the horizon.

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

Mr. President, I rise in support of S. 2204, which is my legislation to repeal Big Oil subsidies.

This bill is pretty simple. We end wasteful subsidies to the big five oil companies, and we use those proceeds to invest in clean energy, in creating jobs, and reducing the deficit. I think the American people are sick and tired of paying ridiculously high gasoline prices at the pump and then paying Big Oil again with our collective taxpayer subsidies. I think that money is better spent keeping our economy going and developing alternatives to oil that will create competition in the marketplace and help to reduce gas prices.

We are poised to waste $24 billion over the next 10 years subsidizing only five companies that are poised to make

over $1 trillion in profits--not proceeds, in profits--over the same time frame. And as we all pay more at the pump, Big Oil rakes in more money.

Exxon boasts in its Securities and Exchange Commission filings that for every $1 increase in the price of oil, their profits rise by $375 million. For every $1 the price of oil goes up, they boast in their filings that their profits--not proceeds, profits--rise by $375 million. The American driver's pain is Big Oil's profit.

What is Big Oil doing with its profits? Well, the answer is not useful. As you can see in this chart, the profits from the big five oil companies were $137 billion in 2011. That is an impressive 75-percent increase from 2010. Did they use that extra money to produce more oil, as some of my colleagues here would suggest? No, they didn't. They took your money and actually in that time frame didn't produce a drop more of oil. As you can see, despite the fact that overall U.S. production is higher now than it has been in the last 8 years, last year these five companies actually produced 4 percent less oil.

So it is fair to ask: If they did not invest to produce more oil, then what are they doing with this $137 billion in profits, this 75- percent increase in profits in 1 year? Well, they spent about $38 billion repurchasing their own stock to enrich themselves, and they spent nearly $70 million on campaign contributions and lobbying to protect their billions of dollars in subsidies. As you can see here, it was a pretty smart investment. For every $1 they spent in lobbying, they got about $30 in subsidies. One might say that is not a bad return on their investment.

So instead of giving these subsidies to Big Oil so they can enrich themselves and seek to affect and control our political system, I think we could use some of those funds to reduce the deficit. I think we can all agree we need to reduce the deficit, but there seems to be some considerable disagreement on how to do it. Last week, those on the other side of the aisle came out with what I call the Romney-Ryan budget, their proposed budget, and it would drastically cut funding for wounded soldiers, for seniors, for students, but it leaves in place these wasteful subsidies even though we have this enormous profit.

Through some political sleight of hand they defy reality when they tell us with a straight face that we have to make tough choices, and then they cut funding for wounded soldiers, for seniors, and students but won't touch the subsidies for Big Oil.

Somehow, in this Republican parallel universe, logic is turned on its head and we are asked to believe that fairness doesn't mean treating everyone equally. It means more for the very rich and more for Big Oil. But we don't live in a parallel universe. We live in the real world. Fairness means that working families should not be the only people sacrificing. And we can't lower the deficit while we give taxpayer dollars away to Big Oil companies that are making record profits and not producing more energy. It is amazing to me that anybody can come and make that argument.

What makes these subsidies even more ridiculous is that when we pressed those who have supported the industry or those who have come from the industry, everyone seems to admit that oil companies do not need these subsidies. Former President Bush, who was very good with the oil industry, said that oil companies do not need incentives to drill when oil hits $55 per barrel. Those were his remarks. Now it is over $100 a barrel. So if they didn't need incentives to drill when it was at $55 a barrel, how does anybody come to the floor and suggest they need incentives now when it is over $100 a barrel?

Then the former CEO of Shell said that subsidies are not necessary for drilling and production. That is pretty much probably clear when they are making $137 billion in that 1 year, and where they will make $1 trillion over the next decade.

Of the $24 billion we save by cutting these subsidies to the big five, we can use over $11 billion to extend a series of critically important expiring energy tax incentives. These clean energy technologies will cut demand for oil, they will drive economic growth, will create jobs, and will allow America to lead the global clean energy market.

Despite Big Oil's rhetoric--let me tell you, it is amazing. I see they are spending a lot of that money, all this money here not making oil, but they are spending it on television to scare everybody and to say that, Oh, if you take any of those subsidies away, somehow prices will rise. Well, we know that, despite Big Oil's rhetoric, cutting subsidies will not raise gas prices. We know that. Why? Because experts from the U.S. States Treasury Department, from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, and from oil executive testimony that came before the Finance Committee that I sit on, made it very clear that is not the case.

But more than that, some of the most important tax policies that will be extended in this bill will help drive down gas prices by creating competition for oil as a transportation fuel. These incentives include the one for biofuels such as cellulosic ethanol, biodiesel, also incentives for natural gas and propane used as a transportation fuel. There are also incentives for alternative fuel refueling infrastructure and for electric vehicles. Taken together, these incentives are laying the groundwork for a truly competitive market where we are not beholden to one type of fuel to power our vehicles. But the good news doesn't even end there. There are also tax incentives that will help the United States compete for the renewable industries of the 21st century.

For example, the section 1603 Treasury grant program has helped finance renewable energy projects around the country. It has leveraged over $35 billion in investments to create tens of thousands of energy projects. In my home State of New Jersey alone, 750 grants were given for solar, geothermal, landfill gas, hydropower, wind projects. These projects are worth over $350 million, creating many jobs, and will help New Jersey on energy bills for decades to come.

Another important renewable energy incentive is the production tax credit for wind. Since the last reauthorization of PTC in 2005, wind power capacity has more than tripled. But if that production tax credit is not extended, it is estimated that annual installations of wind will drop by more than 75 percent and wind-supported jobs will decline from 78,000 in 2012 to 41,000 in 2013, and total wind energy investment will drop by nearly two-thirds. So it is time to get back to reality. It is time to tell middle-class families struggling to make ends meet that fairness means everyone--everyone--pays their fair share when it comes to reduce the deficit. It means ending ridiculous taxpayer giveaways to the five most profitable companies in the world.

I cannot understand how the oil industry is spending money on radio and other forms of media to say, Oh, my God, If you take any of our subsidies away--and these aren't even all of the subsidies they have. These are just a couple, the $24 billion over 10 years. They are going to make $1 trillion over 10 years. So you are telling the American people that when you are going to make $1 trillion over 10 years, we collectively as taxpayers must still give you $24 billion or else somehow $1 trillion minus $24 billion wouldn't be enough for you in profits that you would gouge the consumer at the pump? I don't think the American people are going to accept that.

It is time for us to stop wasting taxpayer money on oil subsidies and use this money to invest in clean energy, in jobs, in lowering the deficit. All of that can be done on this opportunity when we vote in favor of moving forward on S. 2204, the Repeal Big Oil Subsidies Act. It is time to put the interests of the American people ahead of the money interests in this Congress with this vote, and then moving forward.

I hear my colleagues may very well vote for us today to have a debate--which I more than welcome. I am looking forward to it. I have got a lot more to talk about in this regard--but then won't vote at the end to repeal the subsidies. So I guess what we will hear is a chorus of voices that will speak about defending Big Oil and defending its $24 billion in subsidies, and justifying that even with $1 trillion in profits they still need to get their hands into the pockets of taxpayers and take another $24 billion in addition to what they get at the pump so they can make even more profits. And, somehow, there will be a justification to that. I hope

the American people will be watching, because that type of justification is beyond comprehension. I know it as I hear it from families in New Jersey.

I hope we will have this debate. I hope we will be able to move forward. I want to be able to talk about how I hear my colleagues talk about drill, baby, drill. Well, I was incredulously amazed that actually we are now exporting from the United States millions of gallons of gasoline and refined petroleum products every day to other places in the world. It seems to me that if we drill it here, particularly on Federal lands and water, we should keep it here because obviously the bigger the supply we have, the more we are going to create downward pressure on prices. But I think most Americans would be pretty shocked to know that we are actually exporting. They think everything that is created here is kept here, which is why I found it interesting--I keep hearing my colleagues talk about the Keystone Pipeline. Well, there are those of us who said, You know what. If you will make it with materials made in America so that we can ensure American jobs are created with it, and if you keep the energy here and not export it someplace around the world, then there are a lot of people who would say: Yes, along with the right environmental safeguards, let's consider it. But overwhelmingly that was voted against. So so much for American jobs. So much for securing American energy. Because what is the use of a pipeline to bring an energy source and then have it sent to other places in the world? That doesn't help us.

I am a big believer if we are going to drill it on Federal lands and water, we are going to keep it here, we are going to help us lower prices. I am a big believer if we are going to do something such as Keystone, let's make sure it is made with American materials and made with American hands and, at the end of the day, the energy is kept in the United States. I am a big believer in saying at a time of shared sacrifice, it is wrong to ask working families to do more and yet give the oil companies $24 billion, when they will make $1 trillion in profits. It is wrong to say to a wounded soldier we are going to cut programs in his long-term health care that will ultimately help him get back on his feet, but we are going to give Big Oil $24 billion. It is wrong to tell students who are trying to determine their future and get access to that college education and who will encumber themselves with significant costs along the way, no, they pay more, but we are going to give Big Oil $24 billion. It is wrong to tell seniors we are going to end Medicare as we know it, but we are going to give Big Oil $24 billion. That is beyond my comprehension.

I look forward to the debate because it is going to be very interesting to see some of the remarkable ways in which people are going to have to explain that. I don't think it is explainable to the American people. Tonight's vote starts a process: Which side are we on? Are we on the side of the American taxpayer or are we on the side of Big Oil? I hope an overwhelming number of our colleagues will, starting tonight and moving toward final passage, say we are on the side of the American taxpayer and the American consumer. If we do that, we can create some justice in this process. We can help create competition in the energy market to drive down prices, we can reduce the deficit by another $12 billion, and we can be a lot more fair to working families in this country. That is the choice before us. That is a choice the Senate will make in a positive way.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to engage in colloquy with a number of my colleagues for the next 30 minutes.

Madam President, I come to the floor today, as I have over the last 2 years since the health care law was passed, with a doctor's second opinion. I do that as someone who has practiced medicine and taken care of families across the country--primarily in Wyoming--for a quarter of a century, listening to them, trying to care for them, and knowing that what the American people want is the care they need, a doctor they want, at a price they can afford.

During the last 2 years since the health care law was passed, the American public has found out that now that it has passed, they get to know what is in it, they don't like what they are seeing. Instead of providing patients with the care they need from the doctor they want and at a cost they can afford, they are seeing time and time again a significant change and the promises the President has made broken.

I am here with my colleagues to talk about some of these concerns. I see the Senator from Arizona, who has heard the promises made. I know that when he goes to townhall meetings and talks to people, they have found out that the costs they were promised would go down have gone up instead. The opportunity of patients to keep the care they want and the doctor they want--they are not able to do that. Is that what the Senator from Arizona has been finding?

Yes.

I agree with my colleague from Arizona that there are a number of things that continue to drive up the cost of health care. One of the things I believe should have been included in the health care law--I would think we could actually lower the cost of care, lower unnecessary testing, and part of that--all of the studies show--is doing away with these junk lawsuits that result in significant numbers of additional expensive tests being done. It seems to me that we spend more time trying to protect the doctors than trying to help the patients.

Even in a rural State such as Wyoming--and I see my colleague from South Dakota on the floor--this is a national concern and should have been included in any health care law that was supposed to target lowering the cost. That is what the President promised in the beginning, that families would see their health care premiums go down by $2,500 per year. Instead, the premiums have gone up by about $2,100 year.

My colleague from South Carolina has cosponsored legislation to try to give States the opportunities to opt out of a number of provisions of the health care law because they are onerous as to the costs and what is happening in the States and for people at home. If you look at the President's proposals, I would think that any national health care law ought to look at certain components of things that actually bring down the cost of care. With this one-size-fits-all approach and the demand that everyone buy government-sponsored or government-approved health care insurance, the rates are going up instead.

I turn to my friend from South Carolina and ask him about that, plus the unfunded mandates that are forced on the States with Medicaid, which is a significant part of what is being discussed today in the Supreme Court.

Well, it is. And as neighboring States, South Dakota and Wyoming work closely together and are very similar. The experiences we are having in Wyoming--we now have a Republican Governor but previously had a Democratic Governor--as my colleague talked about, with the Medicaid mandates, which were called by one Governor the ``mother of all unfunded mandates,'' is that the money that has to be used for that is crowding out other things, so that is money that can't be used specifically for education. One of the worst things that is happening for education across our country is the health care law, because for every penny the State now has to add to pay for this Medicaid expansion--this unfunded mandate--and I heard the numbers from my colleague from South Dakota, and these are astronomically large numbers--those are dollars that are not going to go to the universities and the institutions of higher education, as well as our additional schools throughout the State. So all of a sudden, if you have a student in college and you see the tuition has gone up much more than you thought it should have--when you likely think it shouldn't go up at all--and you say, why is that, well, it is President Obama's health care law. That is what is happening by mandating money be spent for Medicaid. That unfunded mandate is taking dollars away from education.

This month, in March 2012, a report came out entitled ``The 2011 Actuarial Report on the Financial Outlook for Medicaid.'' The figures are astonishing on this health spending law called ``ObamaCare'' or the so-called ``Affordable Care Act.'' And by the way, just because you call it that doesn't mean it is affordable, as we see from this report. It drives up Federal Medicaid costs by hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars through 2020. It forces many more people onto the Medicaid rolls.

The President has talked so much and used interchangeably the words ``coverage and care.'' What we know is that across the country, if somebody has a Medicaid card, that does not equate necessarily to receiving care. My colleague from South Dakota talked about reimbursement rates for physicians. Medicaid, in many ways, underpays sometimes even the cost of seeing a patient, so it is harder for those patients to get seen. So I think the President has used two words interchangeably which are in no way interchangeable. Someone can have a Medicaid card but not be able to get care.

The concern is now, as my colleague from South Dakota said, $500 billion of Medicare taken out of Medicare, not to strengthen Medicare, not to increase the security for people on Medicare, not to help improve Medicare but to start a whole new government program for other people. The Medicare patients are having a harder and harder time finding a physician to care for them.

I would say the President of the United States, by using those two words interchangeably--coverage and care--has, unfortunately, misled people to think coverage equals care, and we know it does not. That is one of the concerns with the health care law, as we talked about the broken promises and the unfunded mandates sent to the States.

As I stand with my colleague from South Dakota, I assume when he goes home on weekends--and he does almost every weekend--he hears the same things I hear. When I have a townhall meeting and I ask the question: How many of you believe that under the health care law--remember, the one the President promised your insurance rates would go down $2,500 a year--how many believe that actually, because of the law, your rates are going up faster than if there hadn't been a law at all, all the hands go up. I ask: How many of you believe the quality and availability of your care is going to get worse because of this law? Again, the hands go up.

For a second, I thought maybe that was just something we saw in Wyoming and in South Dakota. But in a national poll yesterday--in the New York Times, of all places--on page A15 of yesterday's New York Times, in terms of the health care law: How will this health law affect you personally? Will this help you? Less than one in five Americans said this will help them. Twice as many said it will actually hurt them. When they asked: Will this decrease your costs, one in six said it would decrease their costs. More than half said it would increase their costs. When it asked, How about the quality of your care, only one in six said they actually expected better quality of care. Many more expected worse quality of care. So it is not just Wyoming, it is not just South Dakota. It is the entire country which is seeing this same impact.

I would ask my colleague from South Dakota, as he travels around, is this what he is seeing everywhere as well?

Mr. President, how much time remains on our side?

I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 5 minutes.

Mr. President, President Obama often boasts about oil production he really had nothing to do with. My amendments I am bringing forth today would allow him to be proud of his own record instead of his predecessors, and that is why I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate returns to consideration of S. 2204, the pending energy tax bill, that it be in order for me to offer amendments Nos. 1956 and 1957. Amendment No. 1956 would accelerate permitting of oil and gas exploration on our Federal public lands, and amendment No. 1957 would require Federal agencies to use existing environmental review documents for oil and gas permitting.

Mr. President, the reason I come to the floor today is to speak on behalf of these two amendments I have filed to S. 2204.

A few weeks ago, we learned that oil and gas production on Federal public lands and waters is down. Specifically, we learned there was a 14-percent decrease in oil production on Federal public lands and waters from 2010 to 2011 and an 11-percent decrease in gas production from 2010 to 2011.

On March 14, Bob Abbey, the Director of the Bureau of Land Management, testified about this before the Appropriations Committee. He explained that there had been ``a shift [in the oil and gas production] to private lands to the east and to the south where there is a lesser amount of Federal mineral estate.''

That is why amendment No. 1956 would accelerate permitting for oil and gas exploration on our Federal public lands, and that is why I just offered that. I took a look at the amendments and the discussion on the bill on the floor, and that is why specifically I offered an amendment that would rescind the administration's rules requiring what are called master leasing and development plans. These regulations were put into place over 2 years ago by the Secretary of the Interior. It is unclear why the Secretary issued these regulations. They add more redtape, they cause more bureaucratic delay, and they slow down American energy production. This amendment would also require the administration to set goals for oil and gas production on Federal public lands. It would ensure that the United States maintains or increases onshore oil and gas production.

I have also filed a second amendment, No. 1957, which would require Federal agencies to use existing environmental review documents for oil and gas permitting. When we take a look at this amendment, this would expedite the time it takes to prepare environmental analyses under the National Environmental Policy Act, often known as NEPA. Too often, NEPA delays onshore and offshore exploration. My amendment provides a commonsense solution. It requires agencies to use, in whole or in part, an existing environmental review document if the existing document was completed for a

permit that is substantially the same as the permit under consideration. This amendment doesn't exempt agencies from complying with NEPA, and it does not provide for categorical exclusions. It simply requires agencies to use their previous work so they don't have to reinvent the wheel.

I am disappointed that the majority continues to prevent the Senate from doing its job and that we heard an objection to these amendments. High gasoline prices are causing hardships for American families and American businesses.

My Republican colleagues and I filed a number of amendments to S. 2204. We would like to have votes on these amendments. We would like to take steps to increase American oil production. Instead, as we just saw, the majority says no. ``No'' to more American energy, they say; ``no,'' they say to jobs; and ``no,'' they say to strengthening our energy security. We can do better, and it is my hope that we will.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise to speak in support of the Repeal Big Oil Tax Subsidies Act, which I have cosponsored.

This legislation would repeal five specific tax subsidies and a royalty relief provision to the largest oil companies, which simply do not need them and which our Federal Government definitely cannot afford. And this bill would invest the savings from repealing these subsidies to extend vital clean energy incentives that have recently expired. It would also save billions of dollars in order to reduce the deficit.

This is a simple vote, really. If you are for subsidizing profitable and polluting industries and raising taxes on clean, innovative, and renewable energy companies, you should not support this bill. But if you are for fiscal responsibility, balancing the Federal budget, and investing in a cleaner energy industry that is less dependent on international oil markets and suppliers, you should vote yes.

If you are against increasing taxes on clean energy sources such as wind, solar, and energy efficiency, you should vote yes. And if you believe that we cannot afford to spend Federal dollars subsidizing an industry that needs no help, you should vote yes.

Oil prices have risen to well above $100 per barrel, and according to AAA, California currently has the highest gasoline prices of any State in the continental United States, currently at $4.30 per gallon of regular unleaded.

But these higher prices are not the result of a change in the cost of producing and refining oil.

According to a Finance Committee analysis of the SEC filings of the three largest oil companies in the United States that filed, it costs them an average of $11 to produce one barrel of oil. At today's prices that is nearly $100 in pure profit for each barrel.

The result is massive oil company profits on the backs of American consumers. Last year, the top five oil companies made more than $135 billion in profit. That is an increase of 80% over what they made in 2010.

Yet the largest oil companies are not using these profits to produce more oil. Oil production for the biggest five oil companies was down 4 percent last year.

Instead of using their enormous revenues to invest in drilling, the big five oil companies are buying back stock, issuing dividends, and lobbying governments.

For example, Shell Oil's profits increased by 54 percent between 2010 and 2011. But its production decreased by 3 percent.

And the American taxpayer is providing oil subsidies that increase profits, stock prices, and dividends--and don't produce more oil or lower gasoline prices.

U.S. taxpayers subsidize these hugely profitable oil companies to the tune of over $2 billion dollars per year, year after year.

Some Members of Congress still believe these subsidies lead to lower gas prices, despite all evidence to the contrary.

As Severin Borenstein, the codirector of University of California Center for the Study of Energy Markets, recently said:

The incremental change in production that might result from

changing oil subsidies will have no impact on world oil

prices, and therefore no impact on gasoline prices.

According to an analysis by the Congressional Research Service, repealing tax subsidies for Big Oil would not result in higher gasoline prices.

CRS concludes that because the current $100-per-barrel price of oil far exceeds the cost of production, it is unlikely that a small increase in taxes would reduce output in a manner that decreases supply resulting in higher gasoline prices.

Yet these subsidies continue.

This bill eliminates five tax subsidies that lower the tax burden for oil companies without producing a public benefit.

These changes will prevent oil companies from deducting things like payments to foreign governments and also prohibit oil companies from claiming that oil production is ``domestic manufacturing'' deserving of incentives designed to help manufacturers compete with Chinese factories.

This legislation also includes the key provisions of the Deepwater Drilling Royalty Relief Prohibition Act, a bill Senator Bill Nelson and I introduced to eliminate royalty relief that rewards dangerous oil drilling methods.

By eliminating sections 344 and 345 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 that provided mandatory royalty relief for deepwater gas and oil production on the Outer Continental Shelf, this bill will ensure that Americans receive fair value for federally owned mineral resources.

In 2005, Congress created this royalty-relief program to encourage exploration and production in the ocean's very deepest waters.

But the BP Deepwater Horizon catastrophe showed that safety and response technologies are not sufficient in deep waters to justify this incentive.

When the Deepwater Horizon well blew out, 11 people died and 17 others were injured. Oil and gas rushed into the Gulf of Mexico for 87 days.

Oil slicks spread across the Gulf of Mexico, tar balls spoiled the pristine white sand beaches of Florida, wetlands were coated with toxic sludge, and more than one-third of Federal waters in the gulf were closed to fishing.

This week, the National Academy of Sciences found that plumes of subsurface oil substantially damaged a community of deep-sea gulf corals.

Drilling in deep water presents substantially more challenges and technical difficulties than drilling in shallow water or on shore.

The ocean currents on the surface and in the water column exert torque pressure on the pipes and cables, which are longer and heavier.

The ocean pressure increases dramatically at depth, and the pressure in a well can exceed 10,000 pounds per square inch.

The volume of drilling mud and fluids is greater, and many technical procedures can only be accomplished with the use of remotely controlled robots thousands of feet below the surface.

Methane hydrate crystals form when methane gas mixes with pressurized cold ocean waters, and the likelihood of these crystals forming increases dramatically at a depth of about 400 meters.

This crystallization repeatedly impeded efforts to stop the gushing oil and was a primary reason it took so long to stop BP's Deepwater Horizon spill.

Bottom line: the risks of drilling for oil in thousands of feet of water are far higher than other oil exploration methods, and spills are both ecologically devastating and hard to stop.

American taxpayers should not forego revenue in order to incentivize this most dangerous form of offshore drilling. It is not good environmental policy, and it is not good energy policy either.

I believe that global warming is the biggest environmental crisis we face, and the biggest culprit of global warming is manmade emissions produced by the combustion of fossil fuels like oil and coal.

That is why I believe it is unconscionable that Congress allowed the taxes on renewable sources of energy to go up on December 31, while taxpayer-funded subsidies continue to finance production of fossil fuels.

I have worked with my colleagues on a number of legislative initiatives designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, increase energy efficiency, and incentivize the use of renewable energy.

One of our biggest victories has been an aggressive fuel economy law, called the Ten in Ten Fuel Economy Act, which was enacted in 2007.

In order to implement this law, the Obama administration has raised fleetwide fuel economy standards to 35.5 mpg in 2016--a 40-percent increase above today's standard. The fleetwide average will rise to 54.5 mpg by 2025.

This is important because these standards will dramatically reduce the economic burden of massive swings in the price of oil and gasoline on American families.

By 2025, the average new car will reduce what an American family spends on gasoline by $5,200 to $6,600 during the life of vehicle, and that is assuming relatively affordable gas prices in the $3 per gallon range.

If prices were to stay at today's levels, this law will save American families even more money.

The other positive development is that the domestic renewable energy industry has grown dramatically over the last few years due to the Federal incentives that are expiring and which this legislation would extend.

The Treasury Grants Program, which expired in December, has helped fund the installation of more than 22,000 renewable energy projects with a generating capacity of more than 14,000 megawatts.

The production tax credit has allowed wind power capacity to more than triple since 2005. If the production tax credit is not extended by the end of this year, Navigant Consulting estimates that annual installations of wind will drop by more than 75 percent, wind-supported jobs will decline from 78,000 in 2012 to 41,000 in 2013, and total wind investment will drop by nearly two-thirds, from $15.6 billion in 2012 to $5.5 billion in 2013.

We simply cannot afford as a nation to abandon the renewable energy industry just as it is emerging as a major force in our economy.

These are private sector jobs in a growing industry that is competing globally.

Just 2 years ago, the United States added more new capacity to produce renewable electricity than it did to produce electricity from natural gas, oil, and coal combined, for the first time. A great deal of this growth can be attributed to government renewable energy incentives. That is where public investment in energy development should go.

The Obama administration has offered up millions of acres of Federal land for oil extraction by oil companies. As a result, production on these Federal lands has increased.

In fact, of the over 12,000 permits that the Obama administration has issued since 2009, 7,000 sit idle.

But the fact is that whether or not the Federal government has opened enough land to oil drilling has almost nothing to do with gas prices, even though many politicians argue it does.

According to a statistical analysis of 36 years of monthly, inflation-adjusted gasoline prices and U.S. domestic oil production by the Associated Press released this month, ``there is no statistical correlation between how much oil comes out of U.S. wells and the price at the pump.''

The AP writes:

If more domestic oil drilling worked as politicians say,

you'd now be paying about $2 a gallon for gasoline. . . .

More oil production in the United States does not mean

consistently lower prices at the pump.

Since February 2009, U.S. oil production has increased 15 percent when seasonally adjusted. Prices in those 3 years went from $2.07 per gallon to $3.58. It was a case of drilling more and paying much more.

U.S. oil production is back to the same level it was in March 2003, when gas cost $2.10 per gallon when adjusted for inflation. But that is not what prices are now.

I don't believe oil companies need taxpayer dollars to help them out. They are already reaping record profits.

Over the last decade, the five largest oil companies have enjoyed nearly $1 trillion in profits and tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies. Yet we continue to use taxpayer dollars to add to their bottom line. This is unacceptable.

Oil reserves are a public resource. When a private company profits from those public resources, American taxpayers should receive a royalty as compensation. And when oil companies profit by charging $4 per gallon of gas, they should pay income taxes like the rest of us do instead of relying on billions of dollars of tax subsidies to avoid their obligations.

In these critical economic times, every cent of the people's money should be spent wisely.

I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.