Floor Statements

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

Mr. Speaker, before I begin, I would ask unanimous consent for an additional 30 minutes of debate on this bill for debate purposes only, equally divided between the majority and the minority. So, the minority would get 15 extra minutes, and the majority would get 15 extra minutes.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this piece of legislation. I want to start by the simple statement that the House of Representatives, which is the body closest to the people of the United States, is considering a bill that wasn't written apparently until this morning. There hasn't been a committee hearing on the issue. There hasn't been a committee markup or a subcommittee markup. We could not even get the text from the committee of jurisdiction's majority counsel last

evening at approximately 7:30 because they didn't have it. Apparently, the text that was prepared in the middle of the night was changed some time early this morning at the request of unidentified parties.

In an economy where we're paying some of the highest gasoline prices in the world, and certainly the highest gasoline prices the United States has ever paid in terms of absolute dollars, where our truckers are paying $5 for diesel and our airlines are hemorrhaging cash because of their fuel costs, we are now bringing to the floor a piece of legislation that nobody has really seen or vetted.

I think that is absolutely unacceptable, terrible public policy and a travesty on the process of the House of Representatives. I can't object more strongly to the process that even the majority counsel on the committee of jurisdiction didn't have the text last evening. So on process grounds alone, we ought to reject this legislation.

Now let's talk about the policy. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve was established in 1975 as a consequence of the Arab oil embargo by OPEC against the United States of America where there was a conscience effort to prevent oil supplies from coming to this country. President Ford signed the SPR Act into law in December of 1975. It authorized 1 billion barrels of oil to be put into a Strategic Petroleum Reserve. And that oil was only to be used in the event of a severe supply interruption that would result in severe economic harm to this country as a result of a Presidential declaration of emergency. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, as established, was not intended to be used in a manipulative way to control or affect prices.

Now we haven't had any hearings, we haven't had a law that has changed the use of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. What we have before us is a piece of legislation that was put together by unknown parties. I could give some pretty good guesses about who some of those parties are. But officially I don't know who they are. It's on the floor. It allows 70 million barrels of oil to be released from the reserve. But not just any 70 million barrels. It allows the sweet light crude, which is the best oil in the reserve, to be released with apparently the intent to lower prices.

Now, the problem on policy grounds with this particular SPR release is that it also requires that that oil has to be replaced beginning no later than 6 months and within 5 years with heavy crude, which is some of the worst oil in the world. Do you know who has the heavy crude available today? Saudi Arabia. So we're going to sell oil, the light sweet crude, out of the reserve--right now, up to 70 million barrels-- and we're going to replace it theoretically over time with heavy crude that is not nearly as easy to refine and not nearly as amenable to the various product differentials as the sweet light crude is, and the only place to get it is Saudi Arabia, which is, as we know, in the Middle East, one of the most unstable regions of the world.

So what we are really doing, apparently, is helping out our Saudi friends to make sure that the crude oil that they can't sell on the world market right now because it's too heavy and there's not a market, we will buy it and put it in the reserve, and we will use up the best oil in our reserve for some short-term price fix here in the U.S. market.

Well, what kind of a price impact will we get, Mr. Speaker? We have got a supply-demand problem in the world oil markets. We are using about 85 million barrels a day. And there is only about 85 to 86 million barrels a day of production available on the world market. If you put up to 2 to 3 million barrels a day of this oil on the market and sustain it, you probably will have a temporary price decrease. If you can get the supply-demand equation up to a 2 or 3 percent differential, I would say that oil prices will come down temporarily. But since we're only selling 70 million barrels, if we sold 3 million barrels, you can pump about 4 million barrels a day out of the reserve. So let's say we pumped it out at maximum. That would give us about 17 days of oil. So for 17 days, you might see a price decline. But on the 18th day, when there is no more oil to come out of the reserve, what is going to happen? You have not created new supply in the world. The price is going to shoot back up. Speculators are going to step back in, and the reserve is going to be 70 million barrels less.

I mean if this isn't a cynical political ploy to hopefully lower oil prices for the next 2 months before the election, then I have never seen one. We ought to vote against this. If you want to have a real debate on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, if you really want to change the purpose for which it was intended, let's go through the committee system. Let's hold hearings. Let's have a give and take. Maybe we can come up with a way to use the SPR somewhat differently than what it was intended to be used. But unless you're willing to change the current Federal law on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, bringing up this piece of legislation is just a political sham to, A, maybe show the country that something is being done; B, help the Saudi oil ministry who can't sell their heavy crude on the market today; and, C, maybe get the price down for the next couple of months to help our majority friends in the upcoming election.

I can't more strongly emphasize that we ought to vote against it on not only procedural grounds but also on policy grounds. The SPR was intended to be a buffer if we have a severe supply interruption that would harm the U.S. economy in a significant way. We don't have that today. We have high energy prices in America and high gasoline prices in America because we are not producing energy in America that we could produce.

Let's bring an OCS drilling bill, an ANWR bill, a shale bill and a coal-to-liquids bill. Bring those bills to the floor, Mr. Speaker, and actually show the world that America will develop its own energy resources. If we do that, you're going to see the speculators get out of the market. And you're going to see that as the supply goes up and we hold demand constant, then you're going to see the price go down. And that will be permanent and productive for the American economy.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished minority leader from the great State of Ohio (Mr. Boehner).

Mr. Speaker, before I yield to our distinguished whip, I would again like to ask unanimous consent for an additional 30 minutes evenly divided between the majority and the minority for debate purposes only on this pending legislation.

May I inquire how much time remains on each side.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished whip from the Show-Me State of Missouri (Mr. Blunt).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to a distinguished member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Rogers).

Mr. Speaker, at this time I want to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Westmoreland).

Mr. Speaker, once again I am going to ask unanimous consent for an additional 30 minutes for debate purposes only, equally divided between the majority and minority. I still have at least six speakers.

Thirty minutes total, 15 minutes each side.

I guess that's a start. So we have an additional 15 minutes.

Well, we are increasing the supply of time. I will take 15 minutes right now.

I thank my colleague from Georgia for his courtesy.

I would like to yield 2 minutes to the distinguished member of the Ways and Means Committee, from the great State of Texas, the MVP Republican of last week's thrilling 11-10 baseball victory, Mr. Brady.

I yield the gentleman 30 additional seconds.

Mr. Speaker, I am going to recognize myself for 2 minutes.

I want to respond to what my good friend from Illinois just said. He is absolutely right that in July of 2005 we put an Energy Policy Act on the floor of this body. I would like to point out that that was a conference report that every relevant committee in the House of Representatives had had hearings and open markups on; we had a full conference with the Senate that was open, that the ranking member on the Democratic side at the time which was in the minority, Mr. Dingell, signed the conference report. The ranking member in the Senate, Mr. Bingaman of New Mexico voted for the conference report.

And I said on the House floor when that conference report passed that it was an excellent bill for stationary energy, but it was not an excellent bill on mobility energy because we did not have in that report to drill in ANWR. We did not have in that bill to drill and explore in the Outer Continental Shelf, for the simple reason we didn't have the votes, primarily in the other body, to put those things in the bill.

But the conference report that was voted on was bipartisan, it went through the regular process, it was not done the night before or the morning of and put on the floor under a suspension rule. And where it was, what was in the bill was good and is working today.

But I said on the floor at the time, you can go back and look at it in the Congressional Record, on mobility energy, it was not as good as I think it should have been because simply we didn't have the votes.

Today, the American people support drilling in ANWR. Today, the American people want to drill in the OCS, or at least explore what is in there, and we can't get those bills to the floor, Mr. Speaker.

So I would ask that, at some point in time, after these political shams are concluded, we put some of those bills on the floor and see where the votes are. I think there is a bipartisan majority for those bills right now on the floor of this House.

I would like to yield 2 minutes to the distinguished ranking member of the Energy and Air Quality Subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Mr. Upton of Michigan.

Mr. Speaker, I want to yield 2 minutes to a distinguished member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Mr. Terry of Nebraska.

Mr. Speaker, can I inquire as to the time remaining on each side.

Mr. Speaker, could I ask unanimous consent for 10 additional minutes equally divided between the majority and minority? That would give me enough time to take the three remaining speakers that I have. It would be 5 minutes for the majority and 5 additional minutes for the minority.

I would yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Lungren).

Mr. Speaker, I'm going to yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn), a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Mr. Speaker, is the gentleman from Georgia prepared to close?

I have one unanimous consent request, and then I'm prepared to close.

I yield to the distinguished gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays) for a unanimous consent request.

(Mr. SHAYS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I have how much time?

I yield myself 3\1/2\ minutes.

First, Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend from Georgia for yielding 3 minutes of his time. I sincerely appreciate it.

I want to point out some of the fallacies in the debate as quickly as I can.

The first fallacy is that nothing that we do in terms of developing domestic energy supplies in the United States is going to take effect for 10 years. That's poppycock. We can convert coal to liquids within the next 2 years. We can be drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, if it's allowed, within the next year. We can be doing major pilot projects on our shale oil resources within the next year. We can be drilling in parts of Federal lands that are currently snafued because of Federal permitting within the next year. Those are all things that can be done very quickly.

Even up in ANWR, it's not going to take 10 years if we give the green light to drill and develop ANWR. It will definitely take more than 2 to 3 years, but you could have production in ANWR, I'm told, within 5 years.

The thing that we have got to do in this country if we're going to bring energy prices down and keep them down is change the fundamental difference between supply and demand in the world oil market. You have got 85 million barrels of oil we're using worldwide, and we've got approximately 86 million barrels of oil that's available. That less than 1 percent supply margin is what brings these high prices.

A gimmick like we have today where we take some oil out of the SPR for 60 days and then hopefully put it in within the next 6 years is not going to change that fundamental. If it has a temporary supply price decrease, that's a positive. I'll admit that.

But if it has, it's only temporary because you are not changing the fundamental supply-demand equation on the world oil market.

So what Republicans are saying is, let's have a strategic plan. Perhaps releasing some oil from the SPR is part of that plan, perhaps. That's what hearings are about. That's what a regular order process in the committee system would be about. So we're not saying that we never want to release any oil from the SPR, but we are saying it ought to be a part of a strategic plan, and part of that strategic plan has got to be to develop domestic American energy resources.

And Speaker Pelosi, for some reason, is adamantly afraid of that kind of a bill coming to the floor. I don't care if it's a Gene Green bill, a John Dingell bill, a Rick Boucher bill, a Steny Hoyer bill; but let a bill come up that's got some real domestic energy supply in it and have an honest debate, and let's see where the votes are. Let's don't have an energy gimmick of the week.

That's what this is. It's the latest energy gimmick of the week, and if it has a positive effect--and I say that as an if--it will be temporary because if you take 70 million barrels--and oh, by the way, I want to give a hint to my friends on the majority side who drafted the bill. You've got a drafting error in the bill. It won't do what you think it will do, but I will let you find it. If it were to become law, which it won't, but if it were, it won't put 70 million barrels of oil on the market. So you find the mistake. You developed it in the midnight. You find the mistake.

With that, vote ``no'' on the bill, and let's bring a rational, long- term, strategic plan to the floor in the next 2 weeks.

Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. Speaker, last Thursday evening, at Nationals Stadium, we had the 47th Annual Congressional Baseball Game. The true winners of the game were the Washington Literacy Council and the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Washington, D.C. area.

In terms of the score on the field, in the most thrilling game that I have been associated with in the last 21 years that I have played, coached or managed, in the bottom of the seventh with the bases loaded and one out and the Democrats leading 10-9, Connie Mack hit a dart back to the pitcher, Mr. Baca, who threw home for a force out making two outs. And then unfortunately for my friends on the Democratic side, the catcher overthrew the first baseman allowing two runs to score, the winning run by the speedy Adam Putnam of Florida for a thrilling 11-10 victory. Our MVP on the Republican side was Kevin Brady of The Woodlands, Texas.

The class of 1996, which includes Kevin Brady, MVP; Kenny Hulshof, who was our first baseman, Chip Pickering; the third baseman; Jeff Flake, center fielder; Virgil Goode, right fielder; Tom Davis, one of our tricaptains; Pete Sessions, our third-base coach; and Sam Graves who was a pinch runner and hitter, those players in the 12 years that they have played in the game have an 11-1 record, which I think is amazing.

I want to thank Speaker Nancy Pelosi for attending the game, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer for attending the game, and I want to thank my good friend, Mike Doyle, for his excellent job of managing. It can truly be said that this year, the Democrats had victory in their grasp and took pity on us and allowed us to win one more time.

I will be happy to yield.

Thank you.

I will say, Mr. Speaker, that with our retirements, I am now open, assuming I am the manager, I would love to have some new blood. If there are some Democrats who didn't get playing time, if you want to switch parties, we are open for business. And to Tom Cole at the NRCC, please, please recruit us some new flat bellies.

Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.R. 6515. The bill was introduced yesterday. It is on the floor today. That is pretty fast work. No hearings, no committee process. It is primarily a restatement of existing Federal law with a couple of exceptions. It does have a prohibition of any oil that is found in Alaska going anywhere but the lower 48. Chairman Rahall and I had a little debate about that on the House floor earlier this week. I certainly don't have any opposition. It is somewhat meaningless because oil is fungible and it can go wherever it needs to go; but if that is the price we have to pay to get more oil drilled and produced in Alaska, I am actually for that section of the bill.

Having said that, this bill is counterproductive if we really want to find new oil and gas because it doesn't open up any new areas.

If you only allow drilling where we have already been allowed to drill, for example, in the great State of Texas that I represent, we have drilled over 2 million oil wells since 1901. The probability of finding a major new oil field in Texas today is much closer to zero than it is to 100 percent, because we have already drilled so many wells.

Eighty-five percent of the Outer Continental Shelf of the United States of America is off-limits. This bill does nothing about that. It says, let's expedite leasing in the Alaska Naval Petroleum Reserve. Fine, but we can already drill for oil in the Alaska Naval Petroleum Reserve.

What about ANWR? ANPR is to the west of Prudhoe Bay. ANWR is to the east. We think there are 10 billion barrels of oil in a 2,000-acre section of ANWR, 10 billion barrels. Drill 10 wells, and you get 1 billion barrels a well.

If we drill on an expedited basis in ANPR, certainly there is oil to be found there, but we can already drill there, and it won't get 1 billion barrels per well.

I urge a ``no'' vote on this legislation.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to yield 15 minutes of the 30 minutes that I control to the ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee, Mr. McCrery of Louisiana.

Madam Speaker, I rise in support of the President's veto. I know that's not a popular position to take on this floor since only 59 Members of this body supported the President when the vote was to pass the bill a month or so ago, but I think the position that I take is the right position on policy.

The bill before us, if the veto is not sustained, would delay--and I'm being charitable to use that verb--the reform of competitive bidding for durable medical equipment. It would delay that for 18 months, which in all probability would kill a program that would save billions and billions of dollars if implemented.

We have over 300 successful bidders for durable medical equipment that are not now going to be able to provide that. We have a program that, according to the Government Accountability Office, 10 percent of all the expenditures are for fraud, and we're going to perpetuate that program. The bill before us delays the reform of competitive bidding. I think that's a mistake.

The bill before us does prevent a, I believe, 10 percent cut going into effect for our physicians, and that's a good thing. I don't think any Member of this body wants our physicians that provide services for our Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries to have to take a payment cut. So that is the one socially redeeming value of this bill. But it doesn't permanently fix the system, it simply delays the cut for another year. And next year it will be 20 percent, I think 20.7 percent. So there is no long-term fix for that, it's another kick-the- can-down-the-road for one more year.

There are some changes in the way pharmacies are reimbursed or are paid for or priced for their prescription drugs, a reform called Average Manufacturing Price, which I think is a good reform. We have had some consultations with the pharmaceutical community and the pharmaceutical manufacturers about how to actually calculate that price, but that reform replaced the system that was ridden with inequity and subject to quite a bit of gamesmanship. The bill before us would revert, as I understand it, back to the old system, which I think is a mistake.

So I know it's not politically popular to say we ought to stand on principle and do the right thing, but that's the position that I'm taking. I think that's the position the President is taking. So when the vote comes, I would hope that people would look at the underlying issues and vote to sustain the President's position on this, which is the position that's the best public policy for all Americans.

I haven't talked about Medicare Advantage. My good friend from Louisiana I think will make those points, but it's obvious that this bill significantly impacts, in a negative way, Medicare Advantage, which is a program that 10 million of our senior citizens have chosen to participate in to receive their Medicare benefits.

With that, Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished minority whip, Mr. Blunt of Missouri.

Madam Speaker, I want to yield 3 minutes to a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Rogers).

Madam Speaker, I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Madam Speaker, could I inquire as to the time remaining on the four sides.

Madam Speaker, I don't have any speakers at this time, so I will reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, the Energy and Commerce Republicans are prepared to close.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time to close, and I believe I have 7 minutes, although I don't believe I will take 7 minutes.

Madam Speaker, I want to try to at least let the American people know what is going on here this afternoon.

I think everybody on both sides of the aisle are for our health care providers. We want our doctors to be fairly reimbursed. We want our hospitals to be fairly reimbursed. We want our pharmacists to be fairly reimbursed. We want our durable medical equipment suppliers to be fairly reimbursed. We want our Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries and recipients to get quality health care and have the minimum copayments and out-of-pocket expenses necessary for those services. So we have 435 votes for good health care policy in America.

The bill before us is not a good government bill. It is an accountability avoidance bill, in my opinion. It is hard to read exactly what CBO scores this bill, but on subtitle D, provisions relating to part C, section 161, it says, phaseout of indirect medical education, that scores over 5 years a saving of $12.5 billion and over 10 years, $47.5 billion. That's a cut.

Now I am told, I can't prove it, but I am told that $20 billion to $25 billion of that is coming directly out of Medicare Advantage. Those are reimbursement cuts to the 10 million seniors who have chosen Medicare Advantage.

Now the statement has been made on the floor that we are overpaying Medicare Advantage. What happens when there is an overpayment is that 75 percent of that overpayment goes back into the benefit pool for the Medicare beneficiaries that choose that option, and 25 percent goes to the U.S. Treasury. It doesn't go to the insurance companies.

Seventy-five percent of an overpayment is reinvested in benefits for Medicare Advantage beneficiaries, and 25 percent goes as a savings to the taxpayers who are providing the funds. That sounds to me like a pretty good deal.

Now let's talk about the physicians. One of the few good things in the bill is that we are going to delay the physician reimbursement cut of 10 percent that was effective this year. It would have been effective July 1, I believe. That's a good thing.

But is there a reform in this package that sets a different formula for next year and the next year and the next year? No. Were there discussions on a bipartisan basis about that? No. Has any effort that I am aware of really been made to fix that program, to fix that fee schedule? No.

So what happens on the floor next year? We have a 20 percent cut that will go into effect if we don't do something between now and July of next year. That's not good government.

That's, as I said, accountability avoidance.

Let's talk about the pharmaceutical system. There is a good thing in this bill, I have to be honest about that. The prompt pay is a good thing. I support that. But the delay of the average manufacturing price reform is a bad thing. Is a bad thing.

Now I admit there are some problems with average manufacturing price, about definitions of what's included in the cost and what kinds of costs are included, but that's a technical detail that could be worked out. But to delay a true reform that tries to reimburse pharmacists for the true cost of the drugs, to me, is another avoidance in accountability.

Then let's talk about durable medical equipment. GAO says that 10 percent of everything that we pay for durable medical equipment through Medicare is fraud. What we do is delay for 18 months the competitive bidding system that we have been working on for over 10 years. Now it should tell us something that the industry apparently signed off on an across-the-board cut of about 10 percent in order to avoid competitive bidding.

That would tell me that we are overpaying right now for durable medical equipment and oxygen supplies, at least that much, if they are willing to accept an across-the-board cut instead of competitive bidding. The 300 suppliers that won the competitive bidding contracts, they are just out on a limb now. They probably have lawsuit remedies that will cost the taxpayer billions and billions of dollars more. So all we are doing is delaying the reforms that we have worked so hard in the past to implement for 1 year. For 1 year.

Now I understand the politics of that. Any time you tell a constituency, we're going to give you more money this year, that's probably a good thing politically. As I said at the start, I'm friends with the physicians in my district, I'm friends with the pharmacists in my district, I'm friends with the durable medical suppliers in my district, and they're good people. They're trying to provide good services.

But to simply delay some of these reforms for 1 year or 18 months at the costs that are going to be incurred, as I said at the start of my closing remarks, that's not good government, that's accountability avoidance.

I am very happy to support the President's veto. If by some stroke of good public policy we did sustain the veto, we would be happy to work with my friends on both sides of the aisle and in the other body to come up with some true reform, some true changes in public policy that were permanent and would fix this problem, because, mark my words, if we don't sustain the veto, we will be back here next year, and we will probably be doing the same thing that we are doing today.

That's not good government. I hope we will vote to sustain the President's veto.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

We are going to do something a little bit differently this evening on the House floor. We have a 1-hour Special Order of the minority and a 1-hour Special Order of the majority. The minority leader and the Speaker have agreed to combine those two Special Orders so that both sides can participate in the debate about energy policy. I will be leading the minority side, and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr.

Altmire) is going to be leading the majority side.

In the first hour, it is my understanding that I will control time for both sides, and in the second hour, the gentleman from Pennsylvania will control the time for both sides. We are going to try to operate in such a fashion of cooperation which, I think, will be refreshing in this Chamber so that both sides end up, at the end of the 2-hour period, with equal amounts of time.

In Special Orders, you don't yield for specific amounts of time, so what we're going to attempt to do, between looking at the two clocks that are publicly visible and between the staff members who have clocks, is to make sure that we balance the time out.

So, before we get started in the actual substantive debate, I'd be happy to yield to my good friend from Pennsylvania for whatever introductory remarks he wishes to make about the procedure.

I thank my friend from Pennsylvania.

I am going to yield myself such time as I may consume.

Well, Mr. Speaker, we have before us, as we have this debate on the floor of the House of Representatives, a very serious situation. We have energy prices worldwide, certainly, but in the United States of America, specifically, we have energy prices that have gone up quite a bit in the last several years.

If you will look here, you will see that, in February of 2007, as to the price of unleaded gasoline at the pump, the national average was $2.30 a gallon. By the end of June of this year, it was at $4.07. The numbers that were given to me this afternoon when I got off the airplane show that, today, it closed at $4.11 a gallon for gasoline, which is a record. For diesel, it's about $4.82 a gallon.

If you will look at natural gas prices, which are used both in industry and to heat our homes in the winter and to cook our food year round, in February of last year, for 1,000 cubic feet of natural gas, it was $6.60. By June, it was up to, which was the average nationally, $10.21. We expect that, by this fall, the average national price is going to be $12 for 1,000 cubic feet.

Now, if we sit here in the United States and do nothing, these prices are going to stay where they are and are going to go higher. The good news is that we have more domestic energy resources in this country than in any other country in the world.

To just give a comparison, on this chart here, the purple and the green and the blue are the amount of oil imports on an average basis per day that we're importing from three of our largest sources of imports. You can see that, from Nigeria, we're getting approximately 1 million barrels a day, from Venezuela, about 1,250,000 barrels a day and, from Saudi Arabia, about 1,500,000 barrels a day of oil.

The orange bar, or the red bar, to the right shows the estimates from the Minerals Management Service, the most recent estimates of the amount of domestic energy supply that could be produced at today's prices and with today's technology. If we were to produce in the Outer Continental Shelf, in the areas that are currently off limits but that we think could be produced in terms of a drilling program, that, by itself, equals the amount of imports from Saudi Arabia.

If we add the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve, which we're going to talk about in some detail, that will be another approximately 750,000 to 1 million barrels a day.

And then one of the big ones that we really haven't done too much about is our shale oil reserves. We have 2 trillion barrels of shale oil in this country, and if we were to produce that, we think within the next 5 to 10 years we could have almost 2 million, maybe 3 million barrels of production just from that. Then if you add the tar sands, you add coal-to-liquids--which there's a lot of bipartisan support on the floor on both sides of the aisle--our heavy oil reserves, and then our C02 recovery with C02 injection into depleted oil fields, if you add all of those up, that's 10 million barrels a day equivalent of production that we could have in the United States of America.

Unfortunately, for most of these on the red bar, our friends on the majority side, on the Democratic side, certainly the leadership--I'm not saying that everybody on their side--but the Democratic leadership are not only opposed, but some would say adamantly opposed. And that's what this debate is going to be about this evening.

So with that as the opening statement, I would be happy to yield to the distinguished chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, the Honorable Nick Rahall of the great State of West Virginia.

If the gentleman would yield?

But this is a debate, and then I will yield to my good friend from Georgia.

First of all, I think those on the minority side would love to work with the distinguished chairman of the Natural Resources Committee if he wished to bring a bipartisan bill to the floor on permitting reform on the 68 million acres that are currently available for leasing.

I think the gentleman knows that in the Energy Policy Act that passed in 2005, we put some permit reform measures in place on a pilot program basis. And in this Congress, there have been efforts made in H.R. 6 and then also some of the appropriation riders to put some roadblocks in some of those permitting process reforms. So if that's something that we could work together with, I would be happy to do that.

The second answer I would give on the acreage that is currently under lease is some of those areas, while they are leased, they don't appear to have significant mineral production even at today's prices. And as they asked the bank robber Clyde Barrow why he robbed banks, he anecdotally is supposed to have answered, ``That's where the money is.''

Well, some of the areas that are currently not under lease is where we think the significant amounts of oil and gas are. But on the current acreage, I think we would be very willing to do an inventory bill, if the gentleman wished to work on an inventory bill. We could certainly do an expedited permit and reform bill if the gentleman and his leadership wished to do that. So there could be some agreement there.

But somewhere in there there's an option where you actually bid.

And then you have a specified amount of time in which to make improvements on the lease and determine whether it's commercial.

My understanding is it's in--various acreages are in various stages of that process. I think that's a true statement. I don't think it's all completed the entire process.

In some cases, that's a true statement. In some cases, it's not. There are areas that have been put under moratorium recently by acts of Congress that were closed to commercial production, especially in the eastern gulf of Mexico and the OCS.

They were, is my understanding. And we then put them under moratorium.

It's something we can certainly work together on.

Certainly the area that's never been leased is further behind that that has been in some stages of leasing. I will concede that point.

Again, we're very willing to work on some reforms to the current lands that are leased to expedite the permitting process and the leasing process, and hopefully those on your side would be willing to work with us to make available more lands that haven't yet been leased.

I'm not aware that we've ever said it was anti- drilling. What we've said is we want to do

more than that. But we certainly support the first steps at some pro- leasing program on the majority side. We think that's a step in the right direction.

Let me yield to my good friend from Georgia (Mr. Westmoreland) who is responsible for, or at least partly responsible for the fact that we're actually having the debate. It was his idea, and he was able to convince Speaker Pelosi and minority leader Boehner to engage in this.

I will yield him such time as he may consume.

A very complicated chart.

I would be happy to yield to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Stupak).

Low sulfur content. The sulfur content of diesel.

They've been in place, and this is a guess, but about 18 months, 2 years. Don't hold me to that specifically.

I think they're being phased in, but they were put into place several years ago. Again, I'm not an expert on when they kicked in, but it's a very low sulfur diesel content. Now we have the cleanest diesel standards in the world.

Their standards allow more sulfur content than our standards do.

You said that our inventory of finished gasoline peaked at 22 million barrels; is that correct?

Again, I could be corrected, and if we were all on the Internet, somebody could blog in and tell us because there's somebody out there that knows exactly, but we use approximately 12 million barrels of oil equivalent today for transportation purposes, which would include gasoline and diesel and I think aviation fuel. So 22 million barrels is not quite 2 days' supply.

And that sounds like a huge number.

Well, if the gentleman would yield.

The gentleman has kind of outlined the problem, but I don't think he has really quite explained it.

As he pointed out, demand for gasoline in the United States is going down--you said eight-tenths of 1 percent, I accept that as a number. In terms of barrels a day, it's about a half a million barrels a day it's gone down.

The price of raw material product has gone up, as you well know, because of all of the hearings you've done on the Oversight Subcommittee that you chair so well.

So what you've done is put our refineries in a squeeze. The price they can get in the market is going down because demand is going down, and yet the price they have to pay for the raw material is going up. So that has really squeezed their margin. And because we've developed this almost-just-in-time refinery system in the United States--again, using your numbers, even though it's at a 5-year high, and I accept that as a good number--it's really only a two or three day supply.

Sure. And then I want to yield to Dr. Gingrey of Georgia, but we'll yield to Mr. Westmoreland.

I yield to Dr. Gingrey--or I would be happy to yield to Mr. Stupak for a brief comment if he wanted to make a comment.

With that, I would like to yield to the gentleman from Georgia, Dr. Gingrey.

It's really time to let the Democrats have some time. I think it's the gentleman from New York's turn.

I yield to the gentleman from Michigan briefly and then the gentleman from New York.

Reclaiming my time, if the gentleman from Michigan can get our distinguished Speaker to put an ANWR bill on the floor and let everybody have a free vote, I think I can guarantee you that we are willing to restrict that oil and gas to be used in the Continental United States or at least Canada and the United States and Mexico, at least in the North American Continent. If you can get us to get a vote on the drilling, I would bet we can get a restriction that meets your requirement.

We will be happy to take that deal.

And now, Mr. Speaker, I want to yield to the distinguished gentleman from New York (Mr. Hall).

Let's get to that point, and we'll work. We'll talk.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield to the distinguished doctor from Georgia, Dr. Tom Price.

I think my friends on the majority need more time. I would be happy to yield to my friend from Pennsylvania.

I didn't know that we had a specific agenda, but certainly----

It's going to be energy focused. You're about to control the time; so you will be able to set that agenda. But we're willing to talk about anything.

We are willing to talk about all those subjects.

Would you like a response to some of that?

I want to make a couple of responses. First, we will talk about the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Under the current law, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve cannot be used to manipulate or impact prices. It is specifically in the law. It would take an act of Congress to change that. Under current law, the President has to find a, has to issue a finding, a national emergency on supply that affects the economy of the United States. I think as has been pointed out by Mr. Westmoreland, that would certainly be a hearing that would be worthy in the Oversight subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee, perhaps in the Natural Resources Committee that Chairman Rahall chairs. But under current law, we would not be allowed to release oil purely to help alleviate the pricing situation.

On the issue of this big oil field, I wasn't listening closely, but is the gentleman referring to the big oil find off the coast of Brazil?

There are several things about that. We're not sure that we have the technology right now to develop that field. We certainly don't have the infrastructure in place to produce it or to transport it compared to up in Alaska where ANWR is within 200 miles of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline that is currently over at half capacity and where, as Chairman Rahall pointed out, we certainly would have to go through the permitting process if we were to decide you could drill in ANWR.

But I have talked to some of the majors in this country. And they believe if we really adopted an expedited process for the permitting process, they could have production of about 300 barrels a day within 3 to 4 years, and they think they could ramp it up to about 1 million barrels a day or more within say 5 to 8 years.

So it's good news if Brazil has done what it has done. But because of where that find is and how deep the water is and some of the technological issues, it's not quite an apples-to-apples comparison.

If it's allowed, could I give a factual presentation of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve?

We have a little over 700 million barrels in the reserve. I think the average acquisition price is less than $30 a barrel. They have the capacity to produce up to 6 million barrels a day at maximum production from the reserve. That then leaves at least 2 weeks to gear up to do that. World markets today are about 85 million barrels of supply and about 84 million barrels per day of demand. To really impact the price by releasing oil from the Strategic Oil Reserve, most experts think you would have to release at least 2 million barrels per day. And at that rate, you could release it for a year approximately, and then you wouldn't have any oil.

So again, it is worthy of a hearing. But I would be very careful about changing the law to allow the SPR to be used for price alleviation. It was a bipartisan agreement in the 1970s. It requires a Presidential directive of a national emergency because of supply interruption that is of severe harm to the American economy. That is the standard for release from the SPR today.

So to have a real price impact, given that the world market in oil is fungible, you would probably have to release about 2 million barrels a day. And if you did that for the entire amount of oil, you would have not quite a year's supply.

I thought we had about 12 minutes, 12 minutes, so it's about 12-3.

Let me make a couple of comments about what my good friend Mr. Stupak just said.

First, in terms of speculation, I think that most Republicans would agree that there is some speculation in the market. I certainly believe there is. I held hearings when I was full committee chairman in the last Congress and you, Mr. Stupak, have done an excellent job in that hearing that he referred to, I think, on June 23.

Some of the things that are in his PUMP bill and some things that are in the bill that I have introduced and Chairman Dingell has introduced, we are going to have a markup in the Energy and Commerce Committee on a bipartisan basis sometime next week and hopefully come to a bipartisan agreement about what to do on speculation, putting some position limits, bringing the foreign exchanges under rules that the U.S. exchanges have to go by, creating a two-tiered system where physical traders play by a different set of rules in terms of margin requirement than people that don't take physical possession or provide for physical delivery. There are a number of issues we have agreement on, and we will be working together.

I might also point out that the gentleman's chart that shows the tracking of oil and gold, that is a, to me, a disconcerting chart, because what it shows to me--and I am not an economist--but we have taken oil from a commercial commodity that had value because of the end use that it could be put to, to a commodity that now has become a value of storage like gold. I mean, there is not a big commercial demand for gold in terms of jewelry and dental work.

Gold is basically--has historically been a hedge against inflation, and what the world financial community has decided with oil, because of the tightness of the market, since it is almost a necessity in the modern age, it, too, has now become a store of value, and it has a value applied to it above and beyond the commercial value of being used.

If we really want to do something to dampen speculation, and, again, we are going to work with Mr. Stupak on a speculation bill, we have got to fundamentally change the supply and demand tightness. Right now, world available supply is about 85 million barrels a day. World demand is about 84 million barrels a day. That supply number, that 85 million barrel a day number hasn't changed significantly in the last 3 years, because most of our major oil fields are growing older, the war in Iraq.

I could say corruption in some of the national oil companies, I won't name names, but even with these high prices, we haven't seen that supply and demand tightness go away. We have got to get either the demand down or the supply up, and, so, some of the things that the Republicans are talking about to increase domestic supply would help on the speculation side.

My final comment, before I yield back to the majority side for some time, is that in terms of the oil company profits, apparently the gentleman from New York, who is no longer on the floor, has made a big deal about how high these profits are.

Well, let me make a couple of comments. If you can't make money at $130 a barrel, you don't deserve to be in business. I mean, we would expect profits to be up when the price is up where it is. Believe it or not, there are some of these nationalized oil companies whose profits have not gone up.

Now, one can speculate as to why that is, but in the United States we have a transparent market-based system and our oil companies are not price setters, they are price takers. If the world market is $130 a barrel or $140 a barrel, our national--our private oil companies take that price. Now, the question is, how do we want them to use those profits?

Let's unlock these reserves, these domestic resources, 85 percent of the OCS has been off limits? We can't drill in Alaska where we think there is a 10 billion barrel oil field in ANWR? Let's allow our private companies to invest those profits in American-made energy.

Increase that supply demand balance so that, as the supply goes up, the price goes down.

Now, having said that, I agree with Chairman Stupak in that we need to do something on speculation. I don't agree with everything in his pump bill, but I do agree with probably 75 percent of it.

In the committee markup of the Energy and Commerce Committee that Chairman Dingell has announced to me--and I, hopefully, will publicly announce it soon if he has not already--you will see bipartisan agreement. We have to live within the market structure of the United States and the regulatory structure through the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and through the Securities & Exchange Commission. Certainly, we can do some things to do something on speculation, but if we don't change the fundamental

tightness in the supply and demand situation, all of the speculation bills in the world are not going to make that much difference.

With that, I yield back to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.

We have 6 minutes. We're going to speak for about 5 minutes, and then we'll give you a minute to close. I think there ought to be balance in terms of closing. We don't have to be exactly right in terms of time.

Before I yield to Mr. Westmoreland, let me say that we've got a factual disagreement about the Outer Continental Shelf as to what is available. This chart that's down by Mr. Westmoreland shows that 85 percent of the Outer Continental Shelf is off limits. The entire coast of the Pacific is off limits. I believe the entire Atlantic coast is off limits. The western Gulf of Mexico, where we've been drilling for 60 years, is accessible, and I think some of the eastern Gulf may be accessible. So we have a factual discrepancy that should be resolvable before we do this again because it looks to me like most of the OCS, with the exception of the western Gulf of Mexico, is simply not available because of a congressional moratorium. Now, if we can agree on a bipartisan basis to change that, then we're going to create some areas for our oil companies to invest their funds domestically.

With that, I would like to yield to Mr. Westmoreland, who is one of the godfathers of this experiment this evening.

Yes. We'll let Mr. Altmire have about 1 minute, and we'll let Dr. Burgess have the last minute.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to remember and honor a true Texas hero. Teague Fire Chief Robert Leland Knight was killed in the line of duty on July 5th. He was only 42-years-old.

Chief Knight was a member of the Teague Volunteer Fire Department for almost 20 years. He became chief in 1999.

But his involvement in the community didn't stop there. He was also a volunteer paramedic, a member of the Boggy Masonic Lodge No. 739, and active in the First United Methodist Church.

He was also a proud graduate of Texas A&M University. I am honored to call myself an Aggie, not just because it is a great institution, but because it produces great men like Chief Knight.

Friends and family will tell you his love of his community and his alma mater were only trumped by one thing--his love of family. Chief Knight was a brother, a husband and a father. He is survived by his wife Terri Jo and his children--son, Trent and daughters, Layla and Laura.

My prayers are with Chief Knight's family and the town of Teague as they struggle to overcome this great loss. I hope they are comforted by the good memories and the examples of service to others he left with them.

Thousands of volunteer first responders put their lives on the line everyday. They run into burning buildings, respond to medical emergencies, and confront criminals--not because it's their job, but because they want to make their community a better, safer place.

Chief Knight made Teague and the State of Texas a better, safer place. Even though he is now gone, I am hopeful the way he lived will inspire a new generation of community volunteers because that would be the best way to honor this heroic man.

Mr. Speaker, I would ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Camp) be allowed to control 10 minutes for debate purposes of the time that I control.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in opposition to H.R. 6331, the Medicare bill that is put before this Congress today on a suspension vote.

Somehow I missed it, but I didn't see the notice of the legislative hearing in the Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on this. I didn't see the notice of the subcommittee markup on this bill. I didn't see the full committee notice to have a markup. I didn't get any notice of the technical corrections of the bill, which we received at 10 minutes until 10 a.m. this morning.

The majority seems to be under the mistaken impression that the less input and the less Republicans know about major bills, the more likely we are to vote for them. Well, I have a news flash. When we were not a part of the process, when we don't have any input into the policy, there is over a 95 to 100 percent we are going to be ``noes'' regardless of the substance of the bill.

On this particular bill, had we had some input, we would have strongly opposed the cuts to Medicare Advantage. A large number of us would have opposed the delay in the durable medical equipment competitive bidding that's supposed to go into effect on July 1 and, under the current bill, is also delayed for 18 months. There is obviously a need to fix the current physician reimbursement system. We have been in session now in this Congress almost 18 months, perhaps longer. You would think that in that time period, there could have been some legislative hearings. There could have been some draft proposals floated. There could have been some markups and some discussion and some give and take, and we could have found a compromise that would pass on the suspension calendar. But that has not been the case, as it was not the case on the CHAMP Act that my good friend from New Jersey just referred to.

So, Mr. Speaker, on this particular piece of legislation for this morning, I would strongly urge a ``no'' vote and ask all Members of this body that believe in regular process and give and take in policy reform to vote ``no,'' and then sometime when we come back after the July 4th work period, perhaps we can work together to do what needs to be done.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to oppose H.R. 6331, the Medicare bill put before this Congress today on a suspension vote. While I a agree that we should do something to address the Medicare physician payment cut that will take affect in just a few days, I do not support cutting Medicare Advantage to pay for this short-term fix.

This legislation cuts close to $50 billion from Medicare Advantage, a program that benefits seniors in every State and a program in which our seniors are deeply satisfied. I believe people benefit when they have the kind of choices that only market competition can provide, and that certainly includes choice in health care. As we have seen with the Medicare Part D drug benefit, when an entitlement program is subjected to market forces, everyone is a winner. The taxpayer gets lower spending in an entitlement program; the beneficiary pays lower premiums and co-pays; and we get to provide broader access to affordable and accountable health care for our seniors.

Yes, it is true that this bill provides temporary relief for payment cuts for physician services for the next year or so. So I guess as

Members we can rest assured that this problem will disappear for the next 18 months.

But what else have we signed on to if we are to pass this bill today? We have signed on to massive entitlement expansion through the revisions to the low-income subsidy and Medicare savings program. We have signed on to eliminating private, fee-for-service Medicare Advantage plan options that are currently available in 48 States. We have signed on to significant cuts in payment to all Medicare Advantage plans that work with teaching hospitals across this country. And last but not least, we have signed on to a process by which our own committees are now rendered useless in this Congressional body.

Over the course of the past year, there has not been one single Medicare hearing in the Energy and Commerce Committee. Not one. I guess the doc fix is so important that it justifies taking a significant, political, and complex bill straight to the floor under a vote by suspension of the rules.

That means no consideration by the committees of jurisdiction and no amendments on the floor. For an issue that the Democrats like to consider bipartisan--avoiding a physician payment crisis--one has to ask, why not work with Republicans to enact something earlier and more meaningful?

We know why we are here today. If the Speaker is able to jam this down our throats today, we know that it will hit a brick wall in the Senate. How do we know this? Because this bill is just about like the one that recently failed in the Senate. And, the President has indicated that he will veto it, in the unlikely event that it passes both bodies.

So, we see that today's vote for a physician payment fix is merely the political exercise Republicans must endure so that Democrats may turn to their constituents when they return for the holiday next week and say, ``See, I tried to help you but those abominable old Republicans, why they just wouldn't let me. They don't even like puppies, I heard.''

This bill temporarily stops the hemorrhaging, but it does not fix the long-term problem of physician payment. And the cure is likely worse than the illness--the doc fix is at the expense of our senior who enjoy their MA benefit.

I oppose this bill. I oppose the process--no committee hearings; no committee markups; no mention of the word Medicare in our committee at all.

Last year, I decried the politics of some of debates we had, and I was told that politics is a good thing for this body. Well, we're all elected to these seats, so we know a thing or two about politics, but at some point the people who elected us expect us to quit politicking and start governing. Too often this new Democratic Majority lacks the ideas they need to govern, and so they revert to politics.

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to yield 2 minutes to a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, the gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds.

I think we are entitled to cabal about the process. We represent about 48 percent of the American people and have had absolutely no input into a multi, multibillion-dollar temporary fix. This would only go into effect for 1 year. It doesn't solve the long-term program. So I think we are entitled to a little caballing, as they said.

I want to yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ginny Brown-Waite).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, again, I have missed the legislative hearing on this issue in the last 18 months. Maybe they had it in the other body, but we haven't had it here. The actual bill that we are addressing, we got it at 10 minutes until 10 this morning. This is the same group that passed a farm bill that left out a complete title, and we are passing a 278 page bill that the original substance I think we got Friday or Monday, the technical corrected copy we got at 10 until 10.

I may be mistaken, but I believe if we had a process that worked and had enough time to think about it, if we had actually been holding hearings and substantive markups and all that is on the books of how the Congress is supposed to work, we would probably have a bill for the suspension calendar that both parties could work for. But the way our friends in the majority are operating these days, the proof is in the pudding.

I would strongly recommend a ``no'' vote, and then let's do it right. Let's do it right so we can vote for it.

Mr. Speaker, can I inquire as to the time remaining on the four sides.

Mr. Speaker, I have no other speakers, so I reserve the balance of my time and am prepared to close.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close if everybody else is prepared to close.

I yield myself the balance of my time.

We do have a serious issue here, Mr. Speaker. We have known for several years that we needed to fix the current system for physician reimbursement. We also have known that in some of the other issues that have been put into this bill, that there are areas of reform that need to be implemented. One of the things that I have worked on for over 12 years is a competitive bidding process for durable medical equipment which is supposed to go into effect July 1 of this year. The pending bill has a moratorium on that implementation I believe for 18 months, which I think is ill-advised.

But I do think that when each of us gets elected to this body, when we go out and campaign and ask for Members and voters to support us, we don't say: If you vote for me, I will go to Washington and I will make sure that I have no input into major issues, and when they are put up at the last minute I will go vote ``yes'' on the suspension calendar. That is not what we say.

This is a serious issue. There are serious issues that need to be addressed in this bill. I am not sure this bill is even a House bill. My understanding is that it is a failed version of a Senate bill that has been patched together for purposes of a vote today just in case there is not a bipartisan compromise later in the week, as Congressman McCrery spoke about earlier.

Process does count. Policies are better if there is bipartisan input and you go through the give and take of subcommittee, full committee markup where stakeholders and Congressmen and women on both sides of the aisle can be involved. That has not happened here.

Again, this is a multibillion-dollar bill. Even if it were to be passed, it only has the effect for the rest of this year and the next calendar year. It is not a permanent fix. It doesn't address long term these issues. And all of the groups that are supporting the bill today that have been enunciated by the majority, when they have been in to see me they are talking about a permanent fixes, they are not talking about a temporary quick fix, patch it, go on down the road, kick the can fixes, which is what this is if it were to be implemented.

So I really hope that we can vote against this. Since it is a suspension vote, it only needs 146 ``no'' votes and it would fail, and then we could work together to perhaps on a permanent way fix some of these in a bipartisan way. So I urge a ``no'' vote.

Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

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

(Mr. BARTON of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.R. 6346. I know it is very similar to a bill that my friend introduced a year ago, and I think we even had a vote on the House floor a year ago on the bill, but there are some changes. Let me give the process argument against it, and then I will give the policy argument against it.

The process argument against it is a bill that is introduced on one day, is voted out of the House Floor the next day. That certainly shows a speedy government, but it doesn't show due process under the normal rules of the House of Representatives.

It would be good to have a legislative hearing on the bill and to have either a subcommittee and/or, and preferably or, a full committee markup. We have a number of bills right now that have been introduced on oil speculation in the futures markets. My friend, Mr. Stupak of Michigan, has introduced a bill, I have introduced a bill. He and I and the chairman of the full committee, Mr. Dingell, are on a bill together on that issue. We had an excellent oversight hearing yesterday that Chairman Stupak chaired. We have got a commitment from Chairman Dingell that we are going to have a legislative hearing and go through regular order on the oil speculation bill. So we will have an oil speculation bill on the floor hopefully within the month that will have gone through the process, that will be bipartisan. This bill doesn't meet that test. It was introduced in its current form yesterday and we are voting on it on the floor today.

Now, as to the substance of the bill. Let me read into the record some information on prices. These are national average gasoline prices in the United States of America.

In 2006, the average retail price was $2.56 a gallon. This is the national retail price for self-serve unleaded gasoline. The average retail margin was 14 cents, and the average credit card fee was a little over 6 cents. Last year in 2007, the average retail price had gone up to $2.79. The average retail margin was still 14 cents, and the average credit card fee had gone up to 7 cents.

So far, for data that we have this year for calendar year 2008, the average retail price has jumped to $3.37. Now we know as a side note that as of today the average national retail price is a little over $4, I believe $4.07. The average retail margin has gone down to 12 cents, so we have lost 2 cents in retail margin, and the average credit card fee has gone up 8.4 cents.

So based on, such as there is, the definition of price gouging in this bill, which if you go over to page 3 of the bill, they don't directly have a definition of price gouging, but in the factors considered on page 3 of the bill it does speak about a price that grossly exceeds--we don't know what grossly means--grossly exceeds the average price at which the applicable gasoline or other petroleum distillate offered for sale during the 30 days prior to a proclamation, which is a presidential emergency proclamation, or grossly exceeds the price at which the same or similar gasoline or petroleum distillate was readily obtainable in the same period.

So to the extent we have a definition of price gouging in this bill, it is based on an average price 30 days prior or an average price in the same period.

Based on that kind of implicit definition, we don't have price gouging, as far as I can tell, going on in the United States of America today. We do have high prices. There is no question that an average national price of $4.08 a gallon for self-service unleaded is a price that we should not be having to pay right now. But the reason we have that price is not because of price gouging at retail. If the average national price is a little over $4, and that is the average, in some parts of the country I am told out in California it is up over $4.20. In my State in Texas, I did not see but I was told that in Dallas near Love Field they were having a gas price war and you could get a gallon for $3.62, which is a price that is certainly preferable to $4 or $4.50. But according to the statistics that I have, we don't have price gouging going on in the United States of America.

The second point. I am not aware of any pending State action on price gouging. And almost every State in the Union has State law that gives the State Attorney General the ability to go after price gougers within the boundaries of that State. Now, my friend from Michigan may have information about some price gouging efforts that are going on at the State level, but I don't have that information. That would indicate that we don't--again, we have high gasoline prices and high diesel prices and high fuel oil prices and high aviation fuel prices, but it is not because of retail or wholesale price gouging.

The second issue with the bill, it requires the declaration of a Presidential energy emergency. I am going to read that title or that paragraph:

The President may issue an energy emergency proclamation for any area within the jurisdiction of the United States during which the prohibition in paragraph 1 shall apply. The proclamation shall state the geographic area, the gasoline or other petroleum distillate covered, and the time period that such proclamation shall be in effect.

The bill doesn't give any definition as to why the President should declare an energy emergency, but it does say that, in order for the bill to go into effect, the President has to declare that emergency. It has the term in the bill unconscionable pricing, but again does not define it. It just says unconscionably excessive, or the seller is taking unfair advantage. It doesn't define that.

So here we have a bill that has not been through any kind of a process, no hearings. My good friend from Michigan did introduce a similar bill last year, and so it is obviously something that perhaps at the Federal level--and I say perhaps. I am not saying it should be, but I will admit that it could be addressed. We passed a price gouging bill in the last Congress in this body. It went to the other body, it went to the Senate, and was not passed over there.

So I can't say categorically that I am opposed to any price gouging legislation. But I do think, on process grounds, it ought to go through the committee system. And I think on policy grounds, this bill is undefined, it doesn't state the reasons the President should declare a national emergency, it doesn't define what unconscionably excessive is. It appears to base when you would bring a finding based on an average price that was it in a region 30 days before the current period or a price in the region in the current period that is grossly excessive. And, again, it doesn't define grossly excessive.

So Mr. Speaker, I know there is a lot of pressure on the Congress doing something. I would state we would be better served to look at the underlying fundamentals, and the underlying fundamental is pretty straightforward:

Oil is a fungible commodity. It can be produced anywhere in the world; and once it is produced, it can be shipped and refined anywhere in the world. We are currently consuming worldwide about 85 million barrels of petroleum products, and we have the capacity to produce about 86 million barrels. So we have about a 1 million barrel per day surplus production capacity. That is less than 1 percent.

Any time you get the oil markets less than 3 percent capacity in terms of surplus over the demand, you are going to have what is called a very tight market, and the prices are going to tend to spike because there is enough uncertainty in the market that people will bid up, not necessarily in the United States, but in China and India and the developing countries where demand is high and increasing, they will bid these high prices to get that marginal barrel of oil.

What we need to do in this Congress on this floor is bring to the floor bills that address the fundamental supply situation. The United States of America is a treasure house of energy resources. We have 2 trillion barrels of shale oil reserves. We have a 300-year supply of coal that we can convert to liquids. We have hundreds of billions of barrels potentially of oil reserves that are off-limits in the Outer Continental Shelf and in the State of Alaska and on the Federal lands and the lower 48 that we have put off-limits from drilling.

Only 6 percent of the Federal lands in the United States have been made available for leasing under current law. We need to unlock our treasure house. We need to at least start the process of letting there be an opportunity to increase American made energy for America's families. And if we do that, we won't need to depend on false remedies like price gouging legislation. We can bring to the floor bills that increase our supply. And as our supply increases, the price we have to pay will go down, will change domestically and in the world the fundamental supply/demand equation. That is why we have high prices. We are not meeting the demand for energy in the United States from American-made energy, but we could do a lot better.

So I have great respect for my friend from Michigan. I understand it is difficult to focus on the long term in the mid-term strategy. But bringing bills like this to the floor, they may be politically satisfying, but they do not do anything to address the underlying problems. So I would hope that we would vote against this legislation, and then work together on substantive issues that will address the supply and demand inequality.

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

I would like my good friend, Mr. Markey, to stay at the microphone and let's have a little colloquy, if he is willing.

I recognize myself for 1 minute just to make an observation.

I don't know, Mr. Speaker, that this is a totally true story, so that's why I needed Mr. Markey's input. But I am told when he was a young man, he sold ice cream cones and Popsicles outside of Fenway Park. I am also told that he bought or purchased those ice cream cones and Popsicles at a very low price, and he tended to mark the price to market in a somewhat monopolistic fashion. And so depending on how hot the day was and how heated the Red Sox nation was, he was known to price those Popsicles in a way that maximized his profit.

Now my question, if he is willing to answer it, would he consider what he did selling Popsicles and ice cream cones outside of Fenway Park as a young lad, would he consider that unconscionably excessive price gouging, or would he consider that simply being a capitalistic entrepreneur?

I continue to yield myself such time as I may consume.

I am happy to yield to my friend to give us an explanation of his pricing scheme selling ice cream cones at Fenway Park.

Reclaiming my time, it seems to me that given the circumlocutory answer that I got from my friend from Massachusetts, that he did tend to price somewhat above the market, and he seems to at the time take glee in it.

The statute of limitations under the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has expired.

Mr. Speaker, if it is still my time, I want to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling).

I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, could I inquire as to the time remaining on each side.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time because I only have one more speaker who is not on the floor.

Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve.

I continue to reserve.

Well, Mr. Speaker, let me just simply say in closing that with regards to the last speaker's comment about the futures market, I tend to agree there may be something that we need to look at. That's why I'm on a bill with Mr. Stupak and Mr. Dingell to look at the futures market. But on page 3 of this bill, there is a line that specifically excludes the futures market from the jurisdiction of the bill that's before us.

We have a Federal price gouging bill on the floor right now that deals with retail and wholesale price gouging when there is absolutely no evidence of States' attorneys general conducting prosecutions of price gouging anywhere in this country. And as I pointed out in my opening statement, the average retail price for gasoline is up while retail margins are down, refineries margins are down.

Retail prices are up because the wholesale price of crude oil is up over $130 a barrel. We're not doing anything in this bill to address that fundamental supply problem. We are a treasure house of energy resources here in the United States. We could produce more American energy for America's families and factories.

You know, a price gouging bill when you don't have any real evidence of price gouging and where the States that think there's price gouging going on in their States have legislation to deal with that seems to me to be superfluous and symbolic.

So I would ask for a ``no'' vote on this legislation, and let's work together on issues that would fundamentally address the supply and balance and bring prices down.

With that, I yield back.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 5669, the ``Poison Center Support, Enhancement, and Awareness Act of 2008.'' I would like to thank my friend from New York, Mr. Towns, and, my friend from Nebraska, Mr. Terry, for introducing this important legislation, and I want to thank Chairman Dingell and Subcommittee Chairman Pallone for working in a bipartisan manner as we moved this bill through the Energy and Commerce Committee.

As our primary defense against injury and death from poisoning, poison centers are a vital part of our healthcare system in the United States. Few people realize that poisoning is the second most common form of unintentional death in the United States. In 2005, there were over 26,000 deaths in the United States caused by the ingestion of poisons that resulted from approximately 5 million incidents of poison exposure. And without question, the number of deaths and debilitating injuries resulting from poisoning would be significantly higher if it weren't for the strong network of poison centers we already have, and with passage of the legislation before us today, I am confident that we can make a great program even better.

Again, I thank my colleagues for their efforts on this bipartisan bill.

Mr. Speaker, the bill before us today, H.R. 3058, represents a thinly veiled attempt to create a partisan fight over a nonpartisan issue. For several years now, Members from both sides of the aisle have struggled to find a way to pay for the reauthorization of the Secure Rural Schools program.

We have found such a compromise in Congressman Walden's substitute to H.R. 3058. But that is not what we are voting on today.

The Walden compromise that has been approved by the stakeholder organizations contains reauthorization of both Payments in Lieu of Taxes and the Secure Rural Schools program which are so vital for people whose counties are majority owned by the Federal Government, and thus don't have the property tax base to support education. But that is not the bill we are voting on today.

The proposed Walden compromise addresses our growing energy crisis by expanding state control and protection of the outer continental shelf, and by producing new energy in the deep ocean. It provides funding for front-end engineering and design grants for coal-to-liquids, oil shale, tar sands, carbon sequestration, and enhanced oil recovery.

Congressman Walden's compromise proposal contains provisions that have been previously debated on this floor, passed by this body, and approved by the administration. But that is not the bill we are voting on today.

The bill we are voting on today breaks contracts that were negotiated in good faith between the previous administration and American energy providers. The bill we are voting on today has prompted a veto threat, and will probably not even make it through the House today. If the majority wants to make this a partisan vote, so be it. That is their prerogative. But let me make one thing clear; the superintendents of Groveton, Crockett, Latexo, Grapeland, Lovelady, and Kennard Independent School Districts do not care about partisanship. The reality of what we are doing today is that these, and thousands of other school administrators, are going to have to cut jobs and programs as they see their revenues shrink drastically. All for the sake of making a political statement.

When Congress decided to take land out of the tax base of thousands of rural counties in order to create our National Forest System, we made a promise to help cover the cost of education. We have a chance to fulfill this promise by taking up the Walden compromise for Secure Rural Schools and PILT reauthorization. I urge my colleagues to vote no on the political stab before us today, and I urge majority to bring to the floor Congressman Walden's proposal as soon as possible. Our rural communities depend on it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I appreciate the gentleman from Ohio's insightful comments.

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

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

I thank the gentleman from Round Rock.

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

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

Dr. Gingrey.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I thank the distinguished ranking member of the Budget Committee.

Before I speak in favor of the Ryan motion to instruct conferees on the budget, let me give you a post-SPR suspension update. The price of oil went up $1.73 on the mercantile market yesterday after we voted to suspend shipments into the SPR. At some point in time I sure hope it does come down and we'll work together, hopefully, in a bipartisan basis to bring oil and energy prices down. But our symbolic vote yesterday had the opposite effect of what it was intended because prices went up.

Let me speak now in favor of this motion to instruct. I would point all the Members in the body to the quote above the Speaker's rostrum by Daniel Webster. It says, the very first part of that quote, ``Let us develop the resources of our land.'' And this motion to instruct is a direct descendant of that sentiment.

We are not helpless, we are not hopeless in this country in terms of energy. If we will develop the resources of our land, we could, in all probability, within 5, maybe 6, 7 years, double the amount of oil or oil equivalent that we're producing right now in the United States.

We're currently producing somewhere between 6 and 7, maybe a little over 7 million barrels. As Congressman Young has just pointed out, if we were to drill in ANWR, it would start out with a production capacity, in all likelihood, of about 300,000 barrels a day. And in the optimum case, it could be ramped up to about 2 million barrels a day within 5 or 6 years.

We have over a million barrels a day of production off the coast of California. We have 2 trillion barrels of oil equivalent in the shale oil deposits in Wyoming and Colorado.

We haven't even inventoried what is off the coast of the east coast of the United States. We have the Chinese drilling between Cuba and Florida, and yet we're not allowed, because of moratoria, to drill there.

So we're not hopeless. We can also develop our coal resources. Congressman Shimkus has a bill on coal-to-liquids that is very helpful, and yet we stand here and refuse to adopt any supply-side policies at all as prices go higher and higher and higher.

If you live in an urban area where you don't depend on an automobile, you may not feel those high prices. But if you live in a suburban or rural area, well, you have to drive to work and drive to shop. If you work for a trucking company, if you work for an airline company and you see the price of diesel and the price of aviation fuel go higher and higher and higher, you feel it. It's not an academic exercise.

This motion to instruct simply says let's have some domestic development of our resources. Let's try to bring those prices down not with just the conservation component, but with the supply component. And with world markets where they are today, production of oil is somewhere around 85 million barrels a day. The consumption of oil is somewhere around 85 million barrels a day. The demand for oil in the United States in the last 2 months in a row has gone down, but the demand for oil in the rest of the world has gone up. And it's gone up more in the rest of the world than it's gone down here in the United States.

But if we were to be producing another 1 million, 2 million, 3 million barrels of oil a day in the United States, that would create a cushion that would take some of the heat out of the market and the price would go down.

I can't imagine any Member of this body that doesn't have a constituency that's concerned about higher food prices, higher energy prices, and higher prices of living.

Let's vote for the motion to instruct and try to get a supply component to our energy policy.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the bill and recognize myself for such time as I may consume.

(Mr. BARTON of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, let me say at the beginning that I speak for myself, I don't necessarily speak for the House Republican leadership. I have asked if we had a minority position on the bill, and as of 30 minutes ago we did not. So I am speaking for myself as the ranking member of the committee of jurisdiction, the Energy and Commerce Committee.

And let me say at the beginning that I think it is good to have a piece of energy legislation on the floor at this point in time. I think the American people are fed up with high gasoline prices, they're fed up with increasing imports, they're fed up with rising food prices that are caused, at least in part, by higher energy prices. So I think it's a good thing that we are beginning to debate energy legislation on the floor of the House of Representatives. I think it is a good thing that the chairman of the committee with primary jurisdiction, my good friend, John Dingell, is leading that debate on the majority side.

Having said that, I don't think it's a good thing that we bring a bill on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to the floor with no process at all. Chairman Dingell and Subcommittee Chairman Boucher and I have spoken informally in the last 2 weeks about doing something on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. And I am very open to having a full vetting of the issue of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

I am fully supportive of the underlying policy in this bill, which is to suspend taking shipments into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve when oil prices are at record levels. I am not supportive of doing that in a way that there is absolutely no input from the minority side. We've had no legislative hearing, no committee hearing, no markup, no nothing. We were notified late yesterday afternoon that the bill would be on the floor this morning, and as far as I can tell the bill wasn't printed until some time this morning. So one reason I'm opposed to the bill is because of process.

Now I want to talk about the substance of the bill. Again, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve was created in the 1970s in response to a coordinated Arab Oil Embargo against the United States of America when shipments of oil were suspended by the OPEC cartel for political reasons. We created the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. And my guess is, although I wasn't in Congress at that time, that John Dingell, who was a member of the committee--I don't believe he was chairman in the seventies--probably had a very positive influence on creating the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It was a good idea then and it's a good idea now. So that's a good thing.

Now, we have been filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve since the late seventies. Most of the oil was put in under President Reagan's tenure from 1980 to 1988, but even since then we have continued to fill the Reserve. There have been little appropriated funds appropriated to fill it, and in the last 5 or 6 years most of the increase has been by taking what this bill would suspend, which is the royalty-in-kind oil, and putting that into the Reserve. Royalty-in-kind oil is oil that, instead of the oil companies that produce on Federal lands and the Federal OCS, instead of giving money to the Federal Government and to the taxpayer, they give royalty-in-kind oil. And that right now is about 62,000 barrels a day. So it is not a bad idea to suspend taking the royalty-in-kind oil.

Where I have a policy difference with this bill is that the bill is either silent or ambiguous on what happens to the royalties that continue to accrue. The fact that you're not taking oil doesn't mean that the Federal Government doesn't have a royalty that should be paid.

So one of the questions I would have is, do we receive the money, which 62,000 barrels of oil at $120 a barrel is, over the life of this bill, over a billion dollars. What happens to that billion dollars? Does it just go to the general revenue? Does it just go to the general treasury?

If I were drafting the bill, I would direct that some of that royalty, in terms of cash, go into a LIHEAP fund for low-income heating and cooling assistance. I would direct that some of the funds go into a reserve to buy oil for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve when oil falls below the target price in this bill, which I believe is $75 a barrel. I would direct that some of the funds go to an alternative energy fund. Those are things that we would have discussed in committee. Those were the things that we would have had amendments on. And those are the things that we're not allowed to do because this bill is being considered under suspension.

As Chairman Dingell has pointed out, the fact that we're not going to take royalty-in-kind oil and put it in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is probably not going to affect the price much on the world market. I think we would have as much impact on prices, if that's our goal, if all the Members on both sides of the aisle went out on the steps of the Capitol and we all clapped our hands three times and said, ``Down prices. Down prices. Down prices.'' That would probably have as much impact as passing this bill. It would be a lot more fun, too. We would all get a little exercise. And it would be a pretty good photo op, the united Congress, you know, dictating that oil prices go down. But it would have about the same impact that this bill does.

So, Mr. Speaker, again, I don't quarrel with the fact that we are directing to suspend shipments of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. We need to do a lot more than that, however, if we really want to bring oil prices down. And even in doing something on the SPR, I think we should go through committee, we should have a legislative hearing, we should have a markup, and we should really rethink the strategy of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

In the 1970s, the oil markets and the U.S. economy were significantly different than they are today. And the size of the Reserve, the uses of the Reserve are at least subject to a real debate today. And what we're getting is a bill that apparently was drafted in Majority Leader Hoyer's office late last night or early this morning that several Members have put their names on. And we're on a suspension calendar that we have no ability to amend it or do anything about it except vote ``yes'' or ``no,'' so I'm going to encourage Members to vote ``no.'' If we were somehow to get 146 ``no'' votes, then we could have the debate and have the markup process that I've asked about and we could come back next week sometime and do it the right way.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.R. 6022, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve Fill Suspension and Consumer Protection Act of 2008. I am opposed to this bill for two reasons: process and substance.

First, let's talk about process: I found out that this bill was going to be on the floor today less than 24 hours ago. I am the ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over energy in general and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, SPR, in particular. While there has been a lot of talk and press recently about the SPR, it has not been the subject of any committee briefings, hearings, or markups at all. I am not even aware of any discussions about this SPR bill at the staff level, except for Chairman Dingell's staff notifying my staff yesterday afternoon that this bill would be on the suspension calendar today.

And now we are on the suspension calendar, where we get an up or down vote, with no chance for any amendments. It seems that, once again, the majority leadership of the House is shamelessly dictating the legislative process of the House in a way that demeans the jurisdiction of the Energy & Commerce Committee in order to make us vote on a bill before Memorial Day so the Democrats can send out press releases about how they are addressing the Pelosi Premium.

Which leads me to my second point--the substance of this bill. When it comes to dealing with high energy prices, there are two groups in Congress. Those who want to say they are doing something, and those who want to do something. Today's bill is for those who want to say they are doing something.

This bill tells the President, as long as oil prices stay above $75 a barrel, to quit filling the SPR for the rest of calendar year 2008, but do it in a way that does not affect current contracts. So, if this bill is signed into law, the real world effect will be to prevent about 11.4 million barrels of oil from going into the SPR between August 1 and December 31 of this year--or about 76 thousand barrels a day for the rest of the year.

Will this help with gas prices? We could probably have more effect on lowering gas prices if we stood on the steps of the Capitol and clapped our hands three times and shouted, ``Lower, lower, lower.'' It certainly won't do anything for prices for Memorial Day weekend because it will not start having any effect until August 1st. If the Majority wanted to have an immediate effect, they should have considered a provision to direct the Department of Energy to sell the SPR oil it is currently receiving into the open market.

The title of this bill also indicates that it somehow protects consumers, but I cannot find anything in the bill that actually does that. The bill says to quit filling the SPR which would happen in August, but the bill is silent about a number of things: What happens to the Royalty-in-Kind oil that the Departments of Interior and Energy are currently getting? Do these departments sell it? Do the lessees sell it and give the proceeds to the Departments? I assume the lessees still owe the government the royalty payments, so I assume any cash would go into the general treasury. How does this help protect consumers?

A better way to protect consumers, or at least help consumers by offsetting the current record energy prices would have been to do something useful with the revenue generated with the SPR oil. Perhaps we could have dedicated a portion of it to low income heating assistance. Or perhaps we could have dedicated a portion of it to developing alternative energy sources. Or, we even could have reserved a portion of it to start replenishing the SPR again sometime in the future when oil prices are not at $125 a barrel.

But, since we had no process for this bill, we will never know what could have been. We're faced with an up or down vote, with no chance to discuss the policy of either this bill, or the policy of the SPR generally.

I, for one, am in favor of having a policy discussion on the entire Strategic Petroleum Reserve. I think the circumstances of today's energy markets are much different than they were when we created the SPR, and therefore I think it would be a good idea to have a policy debate about the future of the SPR. Ultimately I may end up wanting to continue to have a billion barrel SPR, but I think the policy discussion would be a good thing to have. Unfortunately, the process for this bill does not foster such a debate.

So where does this leave those of who want to not just say we're doing something about energy costs, but actually want to do something?

In 1985 we produced 9 million barrels of oil per day and imported another 3 million per day. Since 1995 we've cut our domestic production in half and tripled our imports. Why? Because we continue to lock up our domestic resources, particularly in Alaska and in the OCS.

Two of the most unstable foreign sources of oil today are Nigeria and Venezuela. That instability is a big factor in high oil prices because of the risk of supply cut-off. ANWR alone could be replacing all our imports from Venezuela or all our imports from Nigeria and only use a few thousand acres of a vast tundra.

Better legislation comes from the deliberative process, a process that's inclusive. No sooner will this bill become law than people will be either calling for its repeal or wondering why we bothered at all. But that was true of the 2007 no-energy bill, as well.

Let's go back to Committee and do the job we are capable of doing with SPR. Let it do some good for somebody. And let's let Congress turn to the real energy issue facing this country, domestic production.

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

Mr. Speaker, if it's possible, I'd like to enter into a dialogue with any of the three sponsors of the bill. Mr. Markey is on the floor. Mr. Lampson is on the floor. Mr. Welch is on the floor. I'd like to ask them some questions if one of them would like to try to respond on my time. I'm not going to use their time. So Mr. Markey, Mr. Welch or Mr. Lampson. I just want to ask some questions about the bill to the main sponsors.

My question, Mr. Speaker, and this is on my time, if either of those three gentlemen would like to respond. I'm not trying to be cute. I'm way too old to be cute.

The bill is silent on whether or not the money that is the equivalent cash of the royalty in kind to oil is what's done with it. So my first question I would like one of the sponsors to answer is, instead of getting 62,000 barrels of oil a day, if this bill becomes law, does the general treasury get the equivalent of 62,000 barrels of oil times whatever the market price of oil that day is, which right now is over $120 a barrel? Is that revenue generated, and does it come to the Federal treasury, or do the oil companies keep it? That's my first question.

I would be happy to yield to my good friend from Massachusetts.

It goes back to the general Treasury. All right.

And my next question is the bill's effective date is upon termination of the contract. I think it goes into effect on July 31 and it runs through December 31 of 2008; is that correct?

What happens after December 31, 2008?

My next question is, if this bill were to become law, does the Secretary of Energy or the Secretary of the Interior have any discretion about accepting royalty in kind to oil or the cash equivalent, or is it a flat suspension with no exceptions?

I thank my good friend from Massachusetts for those answers.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am going to recognize Mr. Shimkus, a member of the committee.

But before I do that, I just want the record to show that the last day that I was chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, the price of gasoline in my district was $2 a gallon.

Mr. Speaker, I recognize the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Shimkus) for 3 minutes, a member of the committee.

(Mr. SHIMKUS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I am going to yield myself 1 minute.

I want to just comment on what I think is the goal of the legislation, and that would be to lower prices for the American consumer. At least I think that is what I think the goal is.

Having said that, 62,000 barrels a day in an 85-million-barrel-a-day oil market is about one twelve hundredth of 1 percent. So if you assume that oil markets are linear, the additional 62,000 barrels on an 85- million-barrel-per-day oil market is going to lower the price perhaps two cents. Maybe.

Again, if we just go outside and clap our hands, we would probably have a 2 percent chance of lowering the price of oil by two cents a barrel. Just by clapping our hands. So I don't think this bill does anything except show the American people that we want to do something, but we still don't know exactly what it is we can do that makes any sense.

And I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself 1 additional minute.

I would like to ask the speaker who just spoke if he can show me the economic study by Goldman Sachs that says that suspending shipments is going to lower prices 25 cents a gallon. It won't even lower prices a penny a barrel. Is there a study?

I believe that there is no study. And I guarantee you, this just won't lower prices 25 cents.

I would be happy to yield to my good friend from Texas.

I sure hope so.

I yield myself 30 additional seconds just to respond to my good friend, Mr. Lampson.

I do not oppose suspension of oil shipments into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. But to say that that, by itself, is going to lower prices 25 cents a gallon in an 85-million-barrel-a-day oil market is ludicrous.

I sure hope that there is additional legislation besides this feel- good legislation. I hope it is bipartisan. I hope it is substantive. And I hope it has a supply component to it.

I want to yield 2 minutes to the distinguished Congressman from the great State of Connecticut (Mr. Shays).

Mr. Speaker, could I inquire how much time is remaining in the debate?

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds.

To the extent we have an historical record on what this would do, on April 25, 2006, President Bush announced suspension of 67,000-barrels- a-day acquisition for the SPR for the summer driving season. The day before he made that announcement, the price of oil was $70.19. The day he made the announcement, it fell to $67.43 per barrel. And the day after he made the announcement, it went back up to $71.71 per barrel, which was a net increase of 62 cents a barrel. So to say that this is going to lower the price based on the historical record would be inaccurate.

Mr. Speaker, how much time do I have remaining?

I am going to yield myself 1 minute.

I want my friends on the majority side to listen, because at the end of this, I am going to ask for a unanimous consent request. And this is language that we have shared with the majority staff.

I am going to offer a unanimous consent request that at the end of the bill, insert the following new section:

Section 3. Use of Funds.

The Secretary of the Interior shall transfer to the Secretary of Energy an amount equal to the value of the petroleum that would have been deposited in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve from royalty-in-kind payments but for the suspension required under section 2(a)(1). Such amount shall be available for obligation by the Secretary of Energy without further appropriation as follows:

(1) 50 percent shall be retained for future acquisition of petroleum products for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve during any period when the price of oil is less than $75 per barrel.

(2) 25 percent shall be transferred to the Secretary of Health and Human Services as an additional amount for use in carrying out the Low- Income Home Energy Assistance Act of 1981.

(3) 25 percent shall be available for use by the Secretary of Energy to carry out alternative energy projects the Secretary is authorized by law to carry out.

Mr. Speaker, I would ask unanimous consent that this be added to the bill. And if it is, I will vote for the bill.

Mr. Speaker, it's a unanimous consent request, and the body can work its will by unanimous consent at any time.

Mr. Speaker, I am not asking that we withdraw the bill. I am just asking unanimous consent to add this to the bill, and we shared the language with the majority staff.

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

Parliamentary Inquiry

Mr. Speaker, how much time do I have remaining?

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to reiterate once more, I am not opposed to the generic policy of suspending shipments in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. I am opposed to doing it with no input from the minority and absolutely no process and no alternatives made in order to amend the specific language, which we just tried to do, which wasn't allowed.

I do hope that this is the start of a serious effort to look at our strategic energy policy for this country. But for this bill, I would ask for a ``no'' vote.