Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Jeff Muhs, a science fellow in my office, be granted the privilege of the floor during the pendency of the energy.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Washington for her contribution to the debate today and for her contribution to the debate in our committee process.

While it may seem like ``inside baseball'' to those outside the Senate, the process here is very important. We don't get anywhere unless we have some sort of consensus. That is the way this body operates. So far, over the last several years, we have not had a consensus on energy. I thought the Senator from Washington, at the close of our committee markup proceedings a couple of weeks ago, made a very important comment. She said this was a clean energy bill, but she said it also was a clean process. She was referring to the fact that both Senator Domenici, the Republican chairman, and Senator Bingaman, the Democratic ranking member on the committee, have been working together to try to identify areas of consensus.

Senator Domenici literally set out on that by going from office to office on the Democratic side and on the Republican side to see what he could do. We all had our say. We didn't all get our way in those proceedings, but we had long hearings on gas, we had long hearings on coal, and we had much discussion of renewable energy. In the end, we reported to this body a piece of legislation with a vote of 21 to 1. There was only one dissenting vote.

The Senator from Washington made an important contribution to that discussion, as she did today, with her discussion of biodiesel, which is a promising renewable fuel. It is in its infancy. We don't know how far it will go. Biodiesel has only contributed about 2 percent of all of the fuel we use in the United States today. We have to always remember what a huge economy we have and how long and how much it takes to turn it around. But she offered an amendment that the committee adopted and which was included in the bill now before us. It has as part of the mandate for use of renewable fuels biodiesel.

The Senate, by a large vote a few minutes ago included, I believe, an 8 billion gallon standard for renewable fuels. So she made an important contribution. And the spirit of our discussion so far has been that we recognize the urgency of the issue we are talking about, which is blue- collar workers, homeowners, keeping jobs from moving overseas, and that this is serious business and we need to get it right.

I will make some observations about the Senator's amendment. There will be three observations. One is I respectfully suggest she has the wrong goal for the near term. Two, I suggest the bill we have before us actually presents an excellent, balanced approach toward what we need to do. Three, I will reemphasize the importance of not just reducing our dependence on oil, the growth of our dependence on oil in the United States--that is the goal, I believe--but lowering the price of natural gas for the benefit of blue-collar workers, homeowners, and farmers. That is the point.

The Senator talked about President Kennedy and probably the most celebrated goal of the last 100 years--certainly one of the most celebrated in our history, and very much in keeping with the American spirit and character. We are always setting high goals, such as ``anything is possible'' and ``all men are created equal'' and ``we will pay any price and bear any burden to defend freedom.'' A lot of our politics is about the disappointment of not reaching those goals. In fact, most of American history is the story of setting high goals, missing them, being disappointed, and recommitting ourselves to the goals. But the goals we remember and the leaders we remember are the ones who have challenged us within some reason. We used to have a wonderful citizen of Tennessee named Chet Atkins, who played the guitar. He may have been the best guitar player in the world. He always said: In this life, you have to be mighty careful where you aim, because you are likely to get there.

I don't think we would have remembered President Kennedy as well if he had said in 1960 that we need to put a man on Mars by 1970, or a man on Jupiter by 1970. President Kennedy didn't say that. That would have been far outside of our reach. Our scientists knew that, but it was within our reach to go to the Moon. He said that and challenged us, and we figured out the details of doing it.

I suggest the goal of the Senator from Washington would be like putting a man on Mars. It is out on another planet, it is somewhere out there. It might be the right goal one day, but we have to go to the Moon before we go to Mars. I suggest her goal is the wrong goal. The Senator suggests that the United States, over the next 20 years, reduce its dependence on foreign oil by 40 percent. That sounds pretty good, like going to Mars might have sounded pretty good in 1960, but we would never have gotten there. Let me try to put her goal in perspective.

She says get rid of 7.6. We use about 20 million barrels of oil a day in the United States. It supplies about 40 percent of all of our energy. The Energy Committee, including the Senator from Washington, considered all of this, and we came to a consensus that we should look for wherever the Moon might be in this goal. And we said: Let's save 1 million a day. Let's ask the President to save 1 million a day by the year 2015, 1 million of that 20 million.

That million is a pretty big number. Drilling for oil in ANWR, which we argued so heavily in this body, would produce about 1 million barrels of oil a day. If I am not mistaken, if we were to adopt the CAFE standards legislation that Senator Cantwell herself suggested in earlier debates, that would have saved about 1 million barrels of oil a day. But she is saying 7.6 million barrels of oil a day over the next 20 years.

I agree it might be possible to go higher than 1 million barrels of oil a

day. Senator Johnson and I introduced the National Gas Price Reduction Act of 2005 earlier this year. We had in that an oil savings amendment of 1.75 million barrels of oil a day.

All these amendments direct the President to figure out a plan for doing this and then to implement it. These are not just idle suggestions.

I think there is a consensus in this body, certainly on this side and that side of the aisle, and I might say, as Senator Bingaman mentioned, we did not really vote Republican and Democrat in our committee hearings. We had a lot of votes, but they generally split on our individual views and regions, not whether we are a Republican or a Democrat. I think there is still a consensus here. Of course, we want to reduce the growth of our dependence on oil, but to say our goal should be to reduce by 40 percent in 20 years our reliance on oil is somewhere out on another planet, not within our reach.

Many of us have been reading very carefully the National Commission on Energy Policy report called ``Ending the Energy Stalemate, A Bipartisan Strategy to Meet America's Energy Challenges,'' that includes within it a broad variety of people--Mr. Holdren, Bill Reilly, Mr. Rowe from Exelon Corporation, a representative from the United Steelworkers. We all read it, and I suppose we all like the parts we agree with and try to agree with some things that may have changed our mind. Here is what this commission report, which is an excellent report, says about oil:

Over the last 30 years, the United States has sought to

improve oil security by promoting a greater diversity of

world oil suppliers, reducing domestic consumption through a

substantial increase in new passenger fuel economy between

1975 and 1987, and creating the largest dedicated strategic

petroleum reserve in the world. Due to these policies and as

a result of structural shifts, the U.S. economy today is less

oil-intensive and therefore less vulnerable to oil price

shocks than it was in 1970. The fact that oil imports have

nonetheless steadily increased since that time suggests that

calls for energy independence--while rhetorically seductive--

represent the wrong focus for the U.S. energy policy.

To try to get another example of the practical effect of the amendment of the Senator from Washington, we asked the Energy Department to take a look at it. Here is what they said. Remember, the Cantwell energy security amendment calls for a 7.64-million-barrel-per- day reduction in oil consumption over the next 20 years. EIA, the Energy Information Administration, which looks at all these things, estimated that by a combination of policies outside the transportation sector, the upper limit of what we could do in this country would be 2 to 3 million barrels of oil per day.

So we take out 2 or 3 million barrels of oil a day and let's say that leaves 4.5 million barrels oil per day. The Cantwell amendment would require the President to, therefore, impose on the transportation sector of our economy this achievement, and here is what it would translate to in terms of a CAFE standard miles per gallon. It would require a 78.6-mile-per-gallon CAFE standard. That is a 185-percent increase over today's standard. And it would require 60.8 miles per gallon for light trucks. That is a 174-percent increase.

I submit that is putting a man on Mars instead of a man on the Moon. That is somewhere off on another planet and not anything that we could reasonably do. The effect of enforcing that on the American economy would be to destroy jobs and raise fuel prices and raise expectations and disappoint the people who sent us here.

I much prefer the approach the committee bill takes that came out of the committee 21 to 1, with a very broad consensus. I will admit, we all recognized, when that came out, that we would reserve for debate on the floor some of the more contentious issues, such as MTBE, global warming, CAFE standards, and the size of the oil savings amendment, about which we are talking today.

We said 1 million a day. That is what the committee could agree on. I and Senator Johnson thought 1.75. Senator Cantwell is at 7.6, and that is the wrong goal.

What would the right goal be? The right goal is to say, of course, we want to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. It makes no sense whatsoever for us to rely for so much of our oil on an area of the world where men and women are getting blown up every day, including a great many Americans. It makes no sense whatsoever.

So our goal should be this: Putting us on the path to a steady supply of low-cost, adequate, American-produced clean energy--low-cost, adequate supply of American-produced clean energy. As we do that, we reduce our reliance on all oil. We reduce our reliance on oil not just from around the world but from this country.

Here would be some of the things that are already underway in this bill. As I mentioned, we just adopted an 8-billion-gallon requirement for renewable fuels. Personally, I think that is a little high. That is stretching the limit. I believe the House of Representatives is at 5. Remember, only at 2 percent of all of our energy is renewable fuels. So we have done that.

We have in our bill which is before the Senate research for biofuels, about which the Senator from Washington talks. They are very important, but they are minuscule at this time. We have a way to go. There are some associated waste problems that occur with them, and there are production problems about which we have to think. To produce large- scale biodiesel fuel requires large areas of land. We have to think about that as well. Clearly, we should do it in this bill, which supports research for that.

If we are really serious about reducing our demand for overseas oil, then we should start with efficiency and conservation in the United States, both of oil and natural gas because they often come together. And so the provisions in this legislation, twice as strong as last year's Energy bill, provide for efficiency and conservation standards for such items as appliance efficiency standards. It would avoid building 45 natural gas powerplants of 500 megawatts each and save billions of dollars.

This legislation also includes a 4-year national consumer education program which, when used in California, helped produce a 10-percent cut in peak demand. This is natural gas we are talking about. But we are talking about conserving energy, and oil and gas often are found together.

If we were to add a provision, as I tried to do in the committee, and as I would welcome the Senator from Washington helping me do on the floor as we debate this bill, to encourage utilities to use first the electricity most efficiently produced from natural gas, we could save and conserve even more. Add that to the oil savings amendment of 1 million barrels of oil per day, which is in our legislation, which is about the same as the amount of oil produced onshore in the State of Texas, and then add on top of the provisions that are in the Finance Committee's mark that would continue the deduction for American consumers to purchase hybrid, and I would hope advanced diesel vehicles as well, that saves oil, that gives an incentive, that helps to change the market in a very promising way without a mandate. If we include the provision that is also in this legislation that supports discouraging large trucks from running their motors all night long so they can have their air-conditioning on and their TV on and their appliances on, one may think that is a small potatoes item, but it is actually a big potatoes item. Big trucks are a big part of our energy use in the United States. They are a big part of our air pollution in the United States. When we encourage them to plug into a battery instead of leaving their trucks on, we are using less oil. All of this is a well- balanced approach.

So it is my respectful suggestion that we remember President Kennedy for saying, Let us go to the Moon. We would not remember him as well if he had said, Let us put a man on Mars in 1970. I believe the committee approach is the right goal and is the right balance and much more realistic than the goal of the Senator from Washington State which, according to the Energy Department, would produce a CAFE standard of 78 miles per gallon for cars and 60.8 miles per gallon for light trucks.

I conclude by making a general remark about natural gas and other aspects of how we ought to be producing energy in this country. One important part of it is American-produced. That is what the Senator from Washington

is emphasizing with her amendment. Another important part is low cost. Another important part is reliable and adequate supply.

We use 25 percent of all the energy in the world in the United States of America. We spend $2,500 per person on it. Another important part is clean air. This is not the clean air debate, but it is the debate that will solve the clean air problem, in my opinion, because clean air and clean energy are so intricately related.

The legislation that is before this Senate begins with conservation and efficiency. That reduces our demand for oil, as well as natural gas, and helps to lower prices at least of natural gas. It goes next to increasing supply of natural gas, and I would say oil.

Listening to the Senator from Washington, she is saying we need to reduce our demand for oil from overseas, and since it is unrealistic to think we could save this much oil in that 20-year period of time, that would suggest to me that she would be advocating a big increase in supply of oil as well as natural gas from domestic sources in the United States.

In the legislation that Senator Johnson and I offered, we recommended that. It recommended that we look onshore and offshore for new supplies of natural gas as well as oil in the Rocky Mountain area and offshore. Well, that has been greeted with a very cold gaze by many Members of this body, including some who have created objections to unanimous consent agreements just to stop us from even considering increasing our exploration for drilling the large amount of oil and gas that we have just offshore, even though we could put the rigs far out to sea where no one could see them.

It would seem to me as we are talking about oil savings, if we want to keep prices down in the United States and keep jobs here, we need to talk about oil and gas supply at the same time coming from the United States. I did not hear very much about that.

We also need to hear more about LNG. I am speaking now of natural gas, which is an essential part of this debate. Many in the Senate often talk about gasoline prices. The truth is, as the Senator from Washington accurately observed, there is a huge demand for oil. Prices are going to stay up for the foreseeable future, that is the truth about it in terms of gasoline, and we need to learn to reduce our use of the oil. The one thing we can do is lower the cost of natural gas, which is a big part of this bill. That affects millions of blue-collar workers, millions of farmers, and tens of millions of homeowners.

We have gone from having the lowest priced natural gas to the highest price natural gas, and this is outsourcing jobs, putting farmers out of business, and making home heating and cooling prices too high.

If we are going to reduce the price and conservation does not do it, the next best step is to import some from overseas. That goes directly in the face of what the Senator is talking about to reduce our supply of natural gas. If we do not import liquefied natural gas from overseas, we are going to be exporting jobs from America to overseas. So we can either import natural gas or export American jobs. We have to be realistic in the near term in what we have to do.

I would hope that we could drill offshore and drill in the United States and use the extensive amounts of natural gas we have and bring down the price that way. But if we are not going to do it that way we are going to have to bring it in from overseas at least for a while until we have an alternative form of energy.

When we talk about alternative forms of energy, we often go to the renewable fuels, and I will talk about those more in a moment. I am just as excited about those as anybody. We have in Memphis a Sharp plan, for example, that produces solar energy. They have exciting new technologies. In the Oakridge National Laboratory we have a whole division on renewable energy and renewable fuels. They have exciting new technologies in solar. That is only 2 percent of our energy and 2 percent of our fuels. We have to be realistic about where we are going from there.

Where are we going to get the energy we need that will create this adequate supply of American-produced clean energy? After conservation, after new supply, we have to come to nuclear power. I suggest if we want to talk about American independence, we talk about nuclear power, that we do what France is doing. They are 80 percent nuclear power. We should do what Japan is doing. They are adding a nuclear powerplant every year. We invented the technology. We have used it without incident for more than half a century in our Navy. We produce 20 percent of our electricity today from nuclear power and 70 percent of our carbon-free electricity comes from nuclear power.

So if we really want American-produced energy, we need to build advanced nuclear powerplants so that we can have them at a cost that makes us less reliant on oil and gas from overseas.

Waiting in the wings and right behind nuclear power is coal gasification and carbon sequestration. I see the Senator from North Dakota on the Senate floor. He has been a leader in that area for a long time. He talks about it a lot and talks about it clearly. That technology is not completely with us yet. We know how to do coal gasification; that is, turn coal into gas and then gas into electricity. That gets rid of mercury, nitrogen, and hydrogen by and large. It still leaves carbon in the air, but there is a technology called carbon sequestration. We are a few years away from that, but if we accelerate research on carbon sequestration that would be a good goal.

Then we can burn the coal we have in the United States, and we have a 400- or 500-year supply of it. We are the Saudi Arabia of coal. Conservation plus our own supply of natural gas, plus nuclear power, plus coal gasification and carbon sequestration would fuel this great big economy.

One might ask, what does that have to do with automobiles? Well, hopefully, by that time we will also have invested a lot of money in research and development--not just for nuclear power, not just for carbon sequestration, but also for hydrogen, which the Senator from North Dakota is a leading spokesman for, and for fusion. When we get to hydrogen and these hybrid cars that we see being driven around America today--a gasoline engine with an electric engine, that is called a hybrid--when that hybrid becomes an electric engine and a hydrogen engine, then we have to have some way to make that hydrogen. We are either going to import oil and gas from overseas as we are doing it now, we are going to supply it from our own reserves, we are going to conserve enough, we are going to make it from nuclear, or we are going to make it from coal gasification.

I am glad we are having a debate about American energy independence. Just as President Kennedy is remembered for having the right goal by saying, Let us put a man on the Moon, and not for picking an unrealistic goal in 1960 and saying, Let us put a man on Mars in 1970, let's be realistic. Our bill stretches our country, causes us to aim differently, and if adopted will transform the way we produce electricity and will increase our independence on foreign sources of gas and oil.

One last thought about renewable fuels, before I finish. We need to keep that in perspective. If we were a small country, we might be able to rely on renewable fuels or renewable energy, but we are not. We are a country that uses 25 percent of all the energy in the world. Stretch as we might, for the foreseeable future we are going to have to rely on conservation, on our own supplies of oil and gas, and, yes, on some oil and gas from around the world. Then we are going to have to invest in an incredibly aggressive way in advanced nuclear technology and advanced coal gasification and carbon sequestration technology if we are going to have a reliable, low-cost power of American-produced clean energy.

I hope the Senate will prefer the committee report which was adopted by 21 to 1, that includes a balanced approach to the right goal. I would say it is more in keeping with President Kennedy's ``man on the Moon'' goal. This is a ``man or woman on Mars'' goal, and maybe we will get there one day, but it is unrealistic today. It would be disruptive of jobs if you set a 78 mile per gallon CAFE standard for cars, a 185- percent increase; a 60 mile per gallon standard for trucks, light trucks, a 174-percent increase. I hope we will stick

with the consensus that passed 21 to 1, and one day we might also reach this goal.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Idaho for his leadership and work on this issue.

I note the Senator from Florida is here. I will make my remarks on the bill if he has time for me to do that. A lot of hard work has gone into it.

I like the title the Senator from Idaho suggested, ``American Clean Energy Act.'' I hope to explain why.

Let me step back a little bit and try to put what we are debating in some context. September 11 was a terrible surprise for this country. But we now know it shouldn't have been. During the 1980s and the 1990s terrorists attacked American interests around the world. If we had paid more attention then, we might not have been surprised on September 11, 2001.

The next big surprise to the United States will be to our pocketbooks, to our ability to keep our jobs, and our high standard of living in a more competitive world marketplace. We can avoid this surprise if we pay attention to the warning signs. Many of these warning signs have to do with energy. Suddenly, instead of the lowest natural gas prices in the industrialized world, we have in our country the highest natural gas prices in the industrialized world. Gasoline prices at the pump are at record levels. China and India are increasing their demand for energy and their purchases of oil reserves to supply it, which drives prices up. Because of high natural gas prices, manufacturing and chemical jobs are moving overseas, farmers are taking a pay cut, and consumers are paying too much to heat and cool their homes.

We can avoid this next big surprise, a surprise to our pocketbooks, by enacting, as the Senator from Idaho called it, an American Clean Energy Act that does the following things: First, lowers the price of natural gas to American consumers. The price of natural gas to American consumers is at about $7 a unit. Our economy was built on natural gas that cost $2 or $3 a unit. If you work at Eastman Chemical in eastern Tennessee, an area which has thousands of chemical jobs where blue- collar workers and white-collar workers have had good wages for a long time, this causes a massive problem because natural gas is the raw material producing chemicals. If natural gas can be purchased overseas at one-half, 60 percent, or 70 percent of the cost here, and if natural gas is 40 percent of the cost of producing the chemical, where do you suppose the 1 million blue-collar chemical industry jobs are going to be 10 years from now? Not in Kingsport, TN. Not around this country.

First we need to lower the price of natural gas for blue-collar workers. We need to lower it for farmers who are paying expensive amounts for fertilizer. We need to lower it for homeowners.

Second, we need to help to increase the supply of oil worldwide and reduce the growth of our dependence on oil. The Senator from North Dakota mentioned earlier we need to get over our addiction to foreign oil. It would be nice if we could just forget it, but we are not going to be able to forget it. What we need to do, realistically, is to increase the supply of oil worldwide because China and India and Brazil and Singapore and Malaysia all look over here and see we have 5 percent of the people, a third of the money, and we are consuming 25 percent of the energy. They want some of the action, too. So they are buying up oil reserves and keeping their smart people home and creating a demand that raises our prices. And for the foreseeable future we will have to depend upon some foreign oil. But we need to begin to reduce the growth of our dependence on oil. This bill does that.

Third, we need to move our country toward a more reliable supply of low cost, American-produced energy, especially nuclear power, which produces 70 percent of all of the carbon-free energy produced in the United States today. Let me repeat that: Nuclear power, a technology we invented in the United States, produces 20 percent of our electricity, but produces 70 percent of all of the carbon-free energy we have in the United States today.

Coal gasification and carbon sequestration are such long words that it took me a long time to figure out what we were talking about. We are talking about taking coal--which we have a 400-year supply of in this country--turning it into gas, and then making electricity out of the gas.

For States such as Ohio, where the Presiding Officer is from, or Tennessee, where I am from, and where we struggle with air pollution problems, it gets rid of the sulfur air pollution problems and gets rid of nitrogen and mercury and just leaves carbon. If we can advance our research and development for carbon sequestration--that is, capturing that carbon and putting it in the ground--then we will have for ourselves and for the world a transformed way of producing electricity that will provide a low-cost, reliable supply of American-produced clean energy in the amounts we need.

Finally, we need to produce energy in a way that as much as possible clears our air of sulfur, of nitrogen, of mercury, and of carbon. This should all add up to an American Clean Energy Act of 2005, legislation that puts our country on the path toward an adequate, low-cost supply of reliable, American-produced clean energy.

To accomplish this goal we must have aggressive changes in policy-- and many of those are in this legislation as it is reported to this committee--aggressive energy efficiency and conservation, aggressively transforming the way we produce electricity, such as advanced nuclear or coal gasification and carbon sequestration, aggressively researching for new domestic supplies of energy, aggressively importing for the time being liquefied natural gas and aggressive research and development into new forms of energy.

I believe we were fortunate we could not pass an energy bill last year because circumstances have changed, and they have made this a better piece of legislation more likely to reach the broad goals I just mentioned. Specifically, high natural gas and oil prices this year make the situation more urgent.

Next, because of this urgency, perhaps we better understand the threat to our jobs from the growing demand for energy in India and China and other parts of the world. Next, because of the time we have spent in hearings and debates--and Senator Craig and I and Senator Martinez and Democrat members, Senator Domenici, Senator Bingaman, we have had long hearings on coal, long hearings on nuclear, long hearings on gas--we have a better understanding of the new technology and what the emerging consensus is in this country, especially regarding nuclear and coal gasification and carbon sequestration.

I think, in our committee, we have a near consensus about the direction in which we ought to go on this very new way of going. That is an important development. We also see more clearly

the essential relationship between a clean Energy bill, which this is, and clean air legislation. So we come to the floor for debate not only with a better clean Energy bill, but, as Senator Cantwell from Washington said at the end of our marking up of the committee bill, with a cleaner process.

Everyone on the committee has had his or her say. Now, not all of us got our way, but all of us had our say. And we had many votes. As Senator Bingaman said, they were almost never party-line votes. But they reflected the different opinions and different regions of the members of the committee. As a result, we come to this floor with only one dissenting vote in the committee of 22.

This bipartisanship, which has been mentioned many times, is the result of a lot of hard work and patience by the chairman and ranking member of our committee, Senator Domenici and Senator Bingaman. They have shown patience, they have shown tolerance, they have swallowed hard sometimes, and they deserve a lot of thanks for this legislation. They have led us down a very good path.

Now we have a chance to make the bill even stronger. The Finance Committee will recommend to us later this week tax incentives to further our goals. We will debate those. Then there are some important issues to be resolved about which we have some very different opinions, such as the Senator from North Dakota said we need to get rid of our addiction to foreign oil. Some people like CAFE standard increases. Some people like, as I do, incentives for hybrid cars, the efficient dispatch of natural gas; meaning encouraging States to send out of the most efficient natural gas plants, first, the gas we use. The committee did not adopt that, but I still think it is a good idea. We may hear from it again, maybe in an amended form.

A proposed renewable portfolio standard: The Senator from New Mexico, Senator Bingaman, may propose that or others may. He thinks it is a good idea. I think it is a bad idea. I think it is a tax on lots of people around our country who will not be building windmills and who do not need to pay higher taxes. They cannot afford it. I think it is an unnecessary Federal rule, when we have 17 States which, in their own ways, already have renewable portfolio standards. But we will have a chance to debate that and vote on it and come to a conclusion.

We will be talking about carbon and global warming. There are a great many ideas afloat within this Senate about that. I think it is fair to say there is a growing consensus about needing to produce carbon-free or low-carbon energy. There is not a consensus yet on what to mandate or what to order. There is a debate about the proper allocation of resources to encourage renewable energy. Renewable fuel is about 2 percent of all the fuel we use in the United States. Renewable energy, other than hydro dams--water over dams--is about 2 percent of all that we use. It is not going to be that much more. So we need to make sure that, within the renewable fuels, we equitably allocate the dollars that are spent as between geothermal and solar, for example, or solar and wind, for example, and that we make sure we are spending scarce dollars for programs and policies and incentives that will produce the largest amount of carbon-free or low-carbon energy.

So I am confident we can deal with these issues and create an even stronger bill as we go to conference with the House of Representatives.

It is fashionable and correct to say these days that to help us get a bill through our committee to meet our energy needs, we need every kind of energy. I suppose if somebody proposed subsidizing building bonfires in the front yard to heat our house, we would probably put it in just to get a consensus in trying to move it all the way through.

But it is also correct, and I believe more important, especially when we are challenged, as we are today, economically, to say we need priorities. So let me say, briefly, after participating in these 2 years of discussions and hearings, what this one Senator believes our priorities ought to be if we really want to have an adequate, reliable supply of American-produced clean energy so we can keep our jobs and our high standard of living and a more competitive world marketplace.

First, energy efficiency and conservation. Coming from the Republican side of the aisle, someone might say: That sounds a little odd. Maybe you don't really mean that. Maybe you are just saying that to make Democrats feel better. No. Energy efficiency and conservation is the best strategy for immediately moderating natural gas prices and stabilizing longer term markets. In other words, if we really want to lower the price of natural gas from $7, the place to start is conservation and energy efficiency. It will do it quicker and faster than anything else.

For example, the appliance efficiency standards in this legislation, which are twice as strong as last year's bill, should avoid the building of 45 natural gas powerplants of 500 megawatts each and will save consumers and businesses more than $57 billion through 2030, according to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. So 45 natural gas powerplants avoided.

The legislation also includes a 4-year national consumer education program that, when used in California, helped produce a 10-percent cut in peak demand, the equivalent of power produced by another 11 500- megawatt powerplants. If we were to strengthen the bill by adding a provision to encourage utilities to use first the electricity most efficiently produced from natural gas, we could save even more.

The oil savings amendment in this legislation will encourage the savings of 1 million barrels of oil per day--per day--by the year 2015, about the amount of energy produced by the projected drilling in ANWR. It is also about the same amount of oil produced in onshore drilling in the State of Texas. It is my hope that the tax incentive provisions recommended by the Finance Committee will include the proposal of the National Commission on Energy Policy, which Senator Bingaman has talked about, to encourage the purchase of hybrid and advanced low diesel vehicles with a $2,000 tax deduction, as well as tax incentives to encourage the retooling of plants in the United States to build those vehicles, which would add another 39,000 auto manufacturing jobs.

In other words, we do not want to create an incentive to build hybrid vehicles and have them all built in Japan. We would like to have those 39,000 manufacturing jobs in Minnesota and Tennessee and other States.

A second priority would be increased supply of domestic natural gas. The next section of this legislation that would have the most immediate impact on natural gas prices is the section streamlining the permitting of facilities for bringing liquefied natural gas, LNG, from overseas to the United States. It gives the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, FERC, we call it, the authority for siting and regulating these liquefied natural gas terminals.

It preserves States' authorities under the Coastal Zone Management Act and other acts. This would make it easier to import, for the time being, LNG from overseas, which is then added to our pipelines. To do this, requires large terminals in which to temporarily store the gas. We only have four such terminals. There are nearly three dozen applications pending for more terminals--some onshore, some offshore-- but the application process is laborious. This legislation accelerates the decisionmaking process, while preserving a proper amount of input from local governments about the location of these terminals.

In addition, I believe it is time to explore, where appropriate, more of the vast natural gas reserves that we have offshore. This can be done in ways that do not harm the coastlines or the landscapes. Drilling rigs can be put far offshore so they cannot be seen. States can be given the option of deciding whether they will permit such drilling and, in the process, collect some of the revenues.

I see the Senator from Florida waiting to speak. I saw his map a little earlier, and I know he is likely to talk about this subject. My feeling about this is that if Virginia or North Carolina or Florida agree that they would like to put oil and gas rigs so far offshore they cannot see them, and use some of those revenues to build up their universities or lower their property taxes, I think they should be able to. But if the State of North Carolina

or Florida does not want to see those things and does not want them at all, I think they should have that option as well. Those are a number of things that would increase the supply of natural gas.

After conservation, after increased supply of LNG and domestic gas, my third priority would be a new generation of nuclear power. This legislation needs to include $2 billion for research and development and loan guarantees to help start at least two new advanced technology nuclear powerplants. The Senator from Idaho is a leader in this work. So are both Senators from New Mexico. After conservation and increased supplies of natural gas, expanding and building new nuclear powerplants stands virtually alone as America's best option for an immediate, substantial, and reliable supply of American-produced clean energy.

Why is that? One hundred and three nuclear powerplants today produce 20 percent of America's energy, almost 70 percent of our carbon-free electricity. This is a technology we invented. Since the 1950s, the U.S. Navy has operated dozens of reactors--does so today--without ever a single incident, regularly docking at ports on our coasts. France is today 80 percent powered by nuclear power. Japan is adding a nuclear powerplant a year. Yet the Tennessee Valley Authority's Browns Ferry plant is the first substantial nuclear startup since the 1970s.

If we are talking about carbon-free electricity, nuclear power is already 70 percent of our carbon-free electricity. In an economy this big, after we get through with conservation, after we import more LNG, nuclear power stands alone as our best option to have large amounts of carbon-free electricity, and we need to get on with it.

Fourth, waiting in the wings is coal gasification and carbon sequestration. It is often said that America is the Saudi Arabia of coal. We have a 500-year supply. Some say 400; some say 500. We have a lot. We have the technology to turn the coal into the gas and then burn the gas to make electricity in a way that eliminates most of the nitrogen, sulfur, and mercury. That would put every county in Tennessee in compliance with Federal clean air standards. The Smoky Mountains would still be smoky, but they wouldn't be smoggy. It would clean the air.

We are on the edge of being able also to recapture the carbon produced in this process and store it underground. If we can add this clean coal process to nuclear power, one, we will lower natural gas prices for farmers, homeowners, and blue-collar workers because it will not be as necessary to use natural gas to make electricity; and, two, we will have an adequate supply of low-cost, carbon-free energy that is much less dependent on foreign sources.

If we want to do as the Senator from North Dakota indicated earlier-- get rid of our addiction to foreign oil--we know the way to do it. A lot of the provisions are in this bill: First, conservation and efficiency; second, increased supplies of natural gas, which is clean; third, nuclear power; and fourth, coal gasification and sequestration. If we did that, we would transform the way we produce energy, and we would have a true American clean energy bill.

Coal gasification and carbon sequestration would clean the air of major pollutants and, importantly, show the rest of the world how to do it. A point I learned not long ago was that some of the major environmental groups support a coal strategy to clean the air. Because if the United States perfects coal gasification and sequestration, then China and India and Singapore and others will do it. If we do not, they will go ahead building conventional coal plants which are dirtier. If we are really interested in clean air, in carbon-free air around the world, this is the strategy we will follow.

It is my hope that the loan guarantees and tax incentives in this legislation will include $2 billion in tax incentives for the deployment of six coal gasification plants by 2013 and loan guarantees for industrial site commercial applications. For carbon capturing sequestration from coal plants, we need $1.5 billion in research to demonstrate commercial-scale carbon recapture and geologic sequestration at a variety of sites. Substantially, these provisions are in the legislation Senator Johnson of South Dakota and I offered which we called the Lower Natural Gas Prices Reduction Act of 2005, and many of the provisions are in this bill.

I have a couple of more priorities, and then I will be glad to yield the floor. I see others waiting.

Fifth, research and development--if we are to transform the way we make electricity, we have to accelerate research and development of these projects. Developing advanced nuclear reactors with a lower construction cost should be the first priority, if we really want carbon-free electricity. Next should come demonstration projects for large-scale carbon sequestration because if it succeeds, it could transform clean energy not just here but everywhere. Accelerated research into hydrogen production, as Senators Dorgan, Akaka, and others have advocated, should come next, keeping in mind that it is several years down the road. It will require nuclear or coal or natural gas powerplants to produce the hydrogen. Then for the longer term should come fusion.

Finally, a word on renewable fuels and energy as a final priority. About 2 percent of fuel for our vehicles is renewable fuel, chiefly from corn-based ethanol. About 2 percent of our electricity is produced by nonhydro renewable energy, chiefly biomass, which we burn, wind, solar, and geothermal, hot air coming out of the ground. Our objective should be to encourage R&D and breakthroughs that help these small numbers become bigger so that renewables make greater contributions. This legislation includes authority for such research. For example, new advances in solar technology suggest that solar shingles on house tops and businesses may have significant potential.

It is important to make our financial subsidy for these renewable sources equitable among themselves. For example, the renewable production tax credit in the Federal Tax Code today has already committed billions over the next 5 years--I believe the accurate figure is about $2 billion for the next 5 years--almost all to wind power, almost nothing to solar. That is not right. We should have advances in solar. And to the extent we want to put money behind renewable energy, solar and geothermal, as well as wind, should have an opportunity to succeed. Hopefully, this legislation will correct that by creating a new investment tax credit for solar energy such as the one Senator Johnson and I introduced earlier this year which would make it available to homes and businesses and would cost $380 million over 5 years.

We also need to make sure that these tax dollars are spent for renewables to help launch new technologies, not permanently subsidize them, and that the amount of money spent bears some relationship to our total energy. For example, extending the production tax credit for 3 more years, as it is written, would mean taxpayers would be spending a total of about $3 billion over the next 5 years building huge windmills that when the wind blows provide little more than 1 percent of our electricity needs.

By comparison to that $3 billion over 5 years, the Budget Committee has told us we can only spend $11 billion on the entire Energy bill. I would suggest we seriously consider instead of allocating $3 billion to windmills, we might spend $500 million to extend the $2,000 tax deduction for the purchase of a million new hybrid and advanced diesel vehicles, provide $750 million for retooling the plants in which to make the vehicles and make sure they are here in the United States. That is 39,000 new auto manufacturing jobs, according to the National Commission on Energy Policy. We might provide a half a billion dollars for carbon sequestration demonstrations, and we might have $1.25 billion left over to launch advanced nuclear reactors and a new generation of clean coal gasification plants.

There are many ways to add up these dollars. We need to make sure the numbers I am talking about are exactly right. But basically that is $3 billion for windmills. I am suggesting we might be able to spend it more effectively if we really want carbon-free electricity.

These are one Senator's priorities for producing an American Clean Energy Act of 2005. Only steps like these will produce adequate conservation and an adequate supply of reliable, low-cost,

American-produced clean energy. Only steps like these will lower natural gas prices, which we can and must do, reduce the growth of our dependence on oil, and save the United States from the next big surprise, the surprise to our pocketbooks if we fail to prepare for the oncoming energy crisis.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, this past February, I introduced the resolution celebrating Black History Month that follows these remarks. Thirty five other Senators have joined me in this effort. I offered this resolution in the spirit of my late friend Alex Haley, who lived his life by the words ``Find the Good and Praise It''. These six words are etched on his tombstone in the front yard of his grandparents' home in Henning, TN. When Alex was a boy, he would sit on the front porch steps of that home on summer evenings listening to his great aunts rock in their chairs and tell the stories that eventually became Roots, the story of the struggle for freedom and equality.

It is in that spirit that the Black History Month resolution honors the contributions of African Americans throughout our history, recommits the United States Senate to the goals of liberty and equal opportunity for every American, condemns the horrors of slavery, lynching, segregation, and other instances in which our country has failed to measure up to its noble goals, and pledges to work to improve educational, health, and job opportunities for African Americans and for all Americans.

African Americans were brought forcibly to these shores in the 17th century. From that dark beginning, however, these men and women and their descendants have overcome great obstacles. They continue to do so, and have taken a prominent place among the many people of diverse backgrounds who have come together here to form a single nation. African Americans have made and continue to make significant contributions to the economic, educational, political, artistic, literary, scientific, and technological advancement of the United States of America.

Black History Month, and this discussion in the Senate today, offer an opportunity to remind ourselves that the United States of America is a work in progress. Ours is the story of a people establishing high ideals, and then struggling to reach them, often falling short, rarely achieving them, but always recommitting ourselves to trying again. This is why we continue to say that anything is possible in America, that no child shall be left behind, and that we will pay any price to defend freedom, although we well know that we will never quite reach such lofty ideals.

Perhaps the most ambitious of our goals is the proposition, expressed in the Declaration of Independence, that ``all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. . . . .'' Our most conspicuous failure to reach this goal is the treatment of African Americans. Slavery, lynching, and segregation are all disgraceful examples of times when this Nation failed African Americans, when we failed to live up to our own promise of that fundamental truth that all men are created equal.

However, for almost every time that we have failed, we have then struggled to come to terms with the disappointment of that failure and recommitted ourselves to trying again. Where there once was slavery, we enacted the 13th and 14th amendments abolishing slavery and declaring equal protection under the law for all races. After segregation, came Brown v. Board of Education and the Voting Rights Act. There are so many moments like these in our history. We should celebrate these moments, but we should not stop there. We celebrate and remember our history so that we can learn its lessons and apply them today. Today's wrongs are begging for attention. African Americans in this country face significant and often crippling disparities in education, health care, quality of life, and other areas where the Federal Government can play a role.

There are different ways to acknowledge those times when Americans have failed to live up to our lofty goals. The Senators from Louisiana and Virginia, who are also co-sponsors of our Black History Month resolution, have chosen to apologize for the actions of some earlier Senators as a way of expressing their revulsion to lynching. I also condemn lynching, and this Black History Month resolution condemns lynching. But, rather than begin to catalog and apologize for all those times that some Americans have failed to reach our goals, I prefer to look ahead. I prefer to look to correct current injustices rather than to look to the past. Maya Angelou once wrote, ``History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.''

There is no resolution of apology that we can pass today that will teach one more child to read, prevent one more case of AIDS, or stop one more violent crime. The best way for the United States Senate to condemn lynching is to get to work on legislation that would offer African Americans and other Americans better access to good schools, quality health care and decent jobs. By joining together in our Black History Month resolution, 35 members of this body commit ourselves to do just that, to find more ways to look to the future, and to continue to contribute to this work in progress that is the United States of America.

I don't know what my friend Alex Haley would say about this Senate resolution or that Senate resolution. But I do know how he celebrated Black History Month. He told wonderful stories about African Americans and other Americans who believed in the struggle for freedom and the struggle for equality; he minced no words in describing the terrible injustices they overcame. He said to children that they were living in a wonderful country of great goals, and that while many in the past often had failed to reach those goals, that we Americans always recommit ourselves to keep trying.

Mr. President, in order to protect our Nation's most scenic areas, Senator Warner, the senior Senator from Virginia, and I are today introducing a revised version of the Environmentally Responsible Windpower Act of 2005. It will be introduced in the House of Representatives by Congressman John Duncan, a Republican, who is chairman of the Water Resources Subcommittee, and by Representative Bart Gordon, a Democrat, who is the ranking Democrat on the Science and Technology Committee.

Senator Warner and I have listened to our colleagues, and we have made several changes in our initial bill to simplify it and to make it the kind of bill we hope all Senators will think makes good sense. What we have done is to simplify the local notification procedures and to more precisely protect scenic areas of the country without impacting the entire coastline. We have also removed a provision regarding military bases that was in our bill since that can be addressed in other legislation.

Our revised bill would do three things:

No. 1, to protect America's most scenic treasures, such as the Grand Canyon, the Statue of Liberty, and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and deny Federal subsidies for giant wind turbines within 20 miles of any national park, national military park, national seashore, national lakeshore, or 20 World Heritage sites in the United States.

No. 2, to protect our most pristine coastlines, it would deny Federal subsidies for wind turbines less than 20 miles offshore, which is the horizon of a national seashore, a national lakeshore, or a National Wildlife Refuge.

No. 3, to enhance local control, which most of us believe in, it would give communities a 180-day timeout period from when a wind project is filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in which to review local zoning laws related to the placement of these giant wind turbines.

This legislation is necessary because my research suggests that if the present policies are continued we will spend over the next 5 years nearly $4.5 billion to subsidize windmills. Because of those large subsidies, the number of the giant wind turbines in the United States is expected to grow from 6,700 today to 40,000, or even double that number in 20 years according to estimates by the Department of Energy and the Union of Concerned Scientists.

These wind turbines are not your grandmother's windmills, gently pumping water from the farm well. Here is just one example, which my colleagues from Alabama and South Carolina will especially appreciate. The University of Tennessee has the second largest football stadium in America, seating 107,000 people. The Senator from Alabama and I sat there while Auburn University beat the tar out of the University of Tennessee last year. I ask him to imagine that just one of these giant wind turbines would fit into that stadium. It would rise to more than twice the height of the highest skybox.

Its rotor blades would stretch almost from 10-yard line to 10-yard line. And on a clear night, its flashing red lights could be seen for 20 miles. Usually, these wind turbines are located in wind farms containing 20 or more, but the number can be more than 100. They work best, of course, where the wind blows best which, in our part of the country, is along scenic coastlines or scenic ridgetops.

Now, reasonable Members of this body may disagree about the cost, effectiveness, and appropriateness of such wind turbines. We can have that debate at another time. But at least we ought to be able to agree not to subsidize building them in places that damage our most scenic areas and coastlines.

Since wind turbines of this giant size are such a relatively new phenomenon, it fits our American traditions to give local communities time to stop and think about their most appropriate location.

In conclusion, Mr. President, let me emphasize that our legislation does not prohibit the building of a single wind turbine. It only denies a Federal taxpayer subsidy in highly scenic areas. And it ensures local governments have the time to review wind turbine proposals.

This revised version does not give local authorities any power they do not already have. It simply gives them a little time to act.

We intend to offer our legislation as an amendment when the full Senate debates the Energy bill next week, and we hope our colleagues will join us in this effort to ensure the Federal Government does not provide tax incentives that ruin the beauty of our most pristine and scenic areas around our country.

Egypt has its pyramids, Italy has its art, England has its history, and the United States has the great American outdoors. We should prize that and protect it where we can. One way to do that is to make sure when we look at the Statue of Liberty, when we look at the Great Smoky Mountains, when we look at the Grand Canyon, we do not have giant windmills, twice as tall as Neyland Stadium, with flashing red lights, in between us and that landscape.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the text of the legislation which Senator Warner and I are introducing, a copy of the attachment which includes the approximately 200 highly scenic sites that could be protected by the Environmentally Responsible Windpower Act of 2005, and two editorials from Tennessee newspapers-- one from the Chattanooga Times Free Press and one from the Knoxville News Sentinel--which comment on the previous legislation we introduced.

Mr. President, in order to protect our Nation's most scenic areas, Senator Warner, the senior Senator from Virginia, and I are today introducing a revised version of the Environmentally Responsible Windpower Act of 2005. It will be introduced in the House of Representatives by Congressman John Duncan, a Republican, who is chairman of the Water Resources Subcommittee, and by Representative Bart Gordon, a Democrat, who is the ranking Democrat on the Science and Technology Committee.

Senator Warner and I have listened to our colleagues, and we have made several changes in our initial bill to simplify it and to make it the kind of bill we hope all Senators will think makes good sense. What we have done is to simplify the local notification procedures and to more precisely protect scenic areas of the country without impacting the entire coastline. We have also removed a provision regarding military bases that was in our bill since that can be addressed in other legislation.

Our revised bill would do three things:

No. 1, to protect America's most scenic treasures, such as the Grand Canyon, the Statue of Liberty, and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and deny Federal subsidies for giant wind turbines within 20 miles of any national park, national military park, national seashore, national lakeshore, or 20 World Heritage sites in the United States.

No. 2, to protect our most pristine coastlines, it would deny Federal subsidies for wind turbines less than 20 miles offshore, which is the horizon of a national seashore, a national lakeshore, or a National Wildlife Refuge.

No. 3, to enhance local control, which most of us believe in, it would give communities a 180-day timeout period from when a wind project is filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in which to review local zoning laws related to the placement of these giant wind turbines.

This legislation is necessary because my research suggests that if the present policies are continued we will spend over the next 5 years nearly $4.5 billion to subsidize windmills. Because of those large subsidies, the number of the giant wind turbines in the United States is expected to grow from 6,700 today to 40,000, or even double that number in 20 years according to estimates by the Department of Energy and the Union of Concerned Scientists.

These wind turbines are not your grandmother's windmills, gently pumping water from the farm well. Here is just one example, which my colleagues from Alabama and South Carolina will especially appreciate. The University of Tennessee has the second largest football stadium in America, seating 107,000 people. The Senator from Alabama and I sat there while Auburn University beat the tar out of the University of Tennessee last year. I ask him to imagine that just one of these giant wind turbines would fit into that stadium. It would rise to more than twice the height of the highest skybox.

Its rotor blades would stretch almost from 10-yard line to 10-yard line. And on a clear night, its flashing red lights could be seen for 20 miles. Usually, these wind turbines are located in wind farms containing 20 or more, but the number can be more than 100. They work best, of course, where the wind blows best which, in our part of the country, is along scenic coastlines or scenic ridgetops.

Now, reasonable Members of this body may disagree about the cost, effectiveness, and appropriateness of such wind turbines. We can have that debate at another time. But at least we ought to be able to agree not to subsidize building them in places that damage our most scenic areas and coastlines.

Since wind turbines of this giant size are such a relatively new phenomenon, it fits our American traditions to give local communities time to stop and think about their most appropriate location.

In conclusion, Mr. President, let me emphasize that our legislation does not prohibit the building of a single wind turbine. It only denies a Federal taxpayer subsidy in highly scenic areas. And it ensures local governments have the time to review wind turbine proposals.

This revised version does not give local authorities any power they do not already have. It simply gives them a little time to act.

We intend to offer our legislation as an amendment when the full Senate debates the Energy bill next week, and we hope our colleagues will join us in this effort to ensure the Federal Government does not provide tax incentives that ruin the beauty of our most pristine and scenic areas around our country.

Egypt has its pyramids, Italy has its art, England has its history, and the United States has the great American outdoors. We should prize that and protect it where we can. One way to do that is to make sure when we look at the Statue of Liberty, when we look at the Great Smoky Mountains, when we look at the Grand Canyon, we do not have giant windmills, twice as tall as Neyland Stadium, with flashing red lights, in between us and that landscape.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the text of the legislation which Senator Warner and I are introducing, a copy of the attachment which includes the approximately 200 highly scenic sites that could be protected by the Environmentally Responsible Windpower Act of 2005, and two editorials from Tennessee newspapers-- one from the Chattanooga Times Free Press and one from the Knoxville News Sentinel--which comment on the previous legislation we introduced.

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

Mr. President, I would like to say a few words about the nomination of John Bolton. The Presiding Officer is a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, and we spent a good deal of time listening to testimony on the President's nomination of Mr. Bolton to be Permanent Representative at the United Nations.

On the face of it, he is as well qualified for this position as any person who has ever been nominated for the position. He has a distinguished background, confirmed by this body, I believe, four times, 4 years ago as Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security. He was Assistant Secretary for International Organizations under the first President Bush, for whom I served. He was assistant to Attorney General of the Department of Justice in the late 1980s. That would be during the Reagan administration. That is a big job. I believe he was the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. He was Assistant Administrator for Program Policy Coordination for USAID in 1982 and 1983. He was general counsel for the U.S. Agency for International Development.

He has the kind of academic record all of us would like to have: summa cum laude from Yale, a JDL from Yale Law School.

He comes from an enormously distinguished background. As has often been pointed out on this floor and in committee hearings, he has some solid accomplishments, including leading the American efforts to repeal the resolution at the United Nations which equated Zionism with racism and his work with the liberation of Kuwait in 1991 through the U.N. Security Council. When former U.S. Secretary of State Jim Baker was asked to help the United Nations in its work in western Sahara, Secretary Baker, who is known for choosing exceptionally talented people to work with him, asked John

Bolton to work with him in the western Sahara in the 1990s pro bono. He designed the current administration's proliferation security initiative under which more than 60 nations now share intelligence and take action to stop the transfer of dangerous weapons.

So I was not one bit surprised when Mr. Bolton made an impressive appearance before the Foreign Relations Committee on the first day of our testimony. He demonstrated command of the issues facing the United Nations. He got a lot of intense questioning, as he should from Senators, for such an important position. The questioning lasted for more than 7 hours. He was calm and collected. He answered the questions with great skill and accuracy, I thought, and he focused on the need for reform of the United Nations.

He brought with him for that testimony strong support of former Secretaries of State Jim Baker, Larry Eagleberger, Al Hague, Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, and endorsements from more than 50 former ambassadors. I was with one of those ambassadors a few weeks ago, a man very well known in this body, a former Senator and majority leader, Howard Baker. Howard Baker has just returned from 4 years as Ambassador to Japan. He did a tremendous job there, as everyone expected him to, but he remarked to me privately and said I was free to say it publicly--in fact, he volunteered the information--about how he had dealt with Secretary Bolton during those 4 years in Tokyo, these last 4 years, from time to time, and how impressed he was with him and how much he enjoyed working with him. He liked him. He said he spoke frankly, and Senator Baker said he thought John Bolton would make a good ambassador to the United Nations.

The second day of hearings that the Presiding Officer and I were privileged to be a part of was a little different. I was, frankly, disappointed by what I heard. One of the witnesses was called forward, the former Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Research, and he presented evidence about how John Bolton had, in his words, chewed out intelligence analysts in the State Department.

Mr. Ford was mad about that. He didn't like the fact that Mr. Bolton had chewed out people on down the line and he came to us and told us so. He was a convincing witness. He was believable because he didn't overstate his case and the information he gave us was information I would rather not have known about the next ambassador to the United Nations. I am sure Mr. Bolton was disappointed, perhaps even embarrassed to hear it.

But Mr. Ford did not say, in the case that we were talking about, that Mr. Bolton was misusing or compromising intelligence. In fact, Mr. Ford himself said, ``In this particular case''--the one Mr. Ford was led to complain about, ``there wasn't politicization of the intelligence.'' Mr. Ford was very clear on that point in his testimony to the committee.

In other interviews conducted by our Foreign Relations Committee staff since that time, another issue was raised about a disagreement about intelligence. One of Mr. Bolton's subordinates who was on detail from the CIA sent a report to the Deputy Secretary of State for review and was unhappy that another bureau had put a memo on top of that report that said the report was incorrect. That certainly sounds like a lot of inside baseball to people outside of Washington, and it sounds like a simple disagreement to me, a disagreement over intelligence that is quite common, from what even Mr. Ford said. In this case, there is no evidence Mr. Bolton was even aware of the dispute. So, again, no evidence of politicization of intelligence. Rather, it appeared that different staff members were arguing for their own point of view, which should not surprise anyone around here.

There have been a variety of other charges and suggestions. Mr. Bolton has had the pleasure that many Presidential nominees had. I was once a Presidential nominee and went through a confirmation process when the Senate was in the hands of the Democrats. So they made sure that everything about me was pretty well known and explained. They took time to do it. I was as polite and happy as I could be. No one enjoys all of that, but it serves its purpose, and it served its purpose with Mr. Bolton as well.

In the end, it is my judgment, after attending the hearings, reading the testimony, conferring with others who have known Mr. Bolton over time, that only one charge against John Bolton appears to have any substance. John Bolton has been rude to staff members who are below him in the bureaucracy. As I said, I imagine he is embarrassed by that. I didn't like to hear it. Perhaps he deserves to be embarrassed by those charges and perhaps he has even learned a lesson. But what I heard hasn't changed my vote, even though it might change Mr. Bolton's ways of dealing with people with whom he works.

How significant is such a charge, that he was rude to people in the bureaucracy? As has been mentioned by many others in this body, if that were the standard for remaining in the Senate we would all have a hard time getting a quorum. There are regularly occasions when busy Senators eager to make their own point are brusque--with staff members, even shout at colleagues. In fact, the shouting was so loud in one business meeting of our Foreign Relations Committee by some of the Senators I could barely hear the charges against Mr. Bolton.

That is not attractive. I do not endorse it. It has even caused me to think back about times that I may have become angry or brusque or impatient or startled in dealing with a staff member or another person, and I have always regretted it when I have and it has made me redouble my efforts to make sure I swallow my pride more quickly and think about what I say and not do that anymore. It is not good conduct. It is not good business. But just how significant is this?

Here is what former Secretary of State Larry Eagleburger had to say about it a couple of weeks ago in the Washington Post. This deserves special attention.

Larry Eagleburger was Secretary of State for the first President Bush. But, in a way, he was more than that. Larry Eagleburger had 27 years in the Foreign Service. We hear a lot of times that a football player is a football player's player, or a man is a man's man, or a woman is a woman's woman. Larry Eagleburger is a Foreign Service Officer's Secretary of State. He had and has enormous respect from those men and women who put their lives on the line daily around the world and in the United States in support of our diplomacy, our foreign policy, and our country.

Here is what Larry Eagleburger had to say about John Bolton in an op- ed in the Washington Post:

``As to the charge that Bolton has been tough on

superordinates,'' Secretary Eagleburger said, ``I can say

that only in more than a decade of association with him in

the State Department I never saw or heard anything to support

such a charge, nor do I see anything wrong with challenging

intelligence analysts on their findings. They can, as recent

history demonstrates, make mistakes. And they must be

prepared to defend their findings under intense questioning.

If John pushed too hard or dressed down subordinates, he

deserves criticism but it hardly merits a vote against

confirmation when balanced against his many

accomplishments.''

That is Larry Eagleburger, the Foreign Service officer's Secretary of State.

Where Larry Eagleburger comes down is where I come down. I believe the benefit of hearing Mr. Ford's testimony may prove to be a little bit of a lesson to Mr. Bolton, and a reminder to the rest of us, us Senators, of how unattractive it is to shout at an associate or unnecessarily dress down a staff member.

I agree with Secretary Eagleburger. John Bolton has a distinguished background and record. He has dedicated himself to improving our country's foreign policy. His action toward subordinates might have been inappropriate. Perhaps he has learned a lesson. But it doesn't cause me to change my vote. I am glad to support him.

This is a critical time for the United Nations. Even the Secretary General acknowledges it is in need of reform. Billions of dollars filtered from the U.N. coffers to Saddam Hussein's pockets in the oil- for-food scandal. Top human rights abusers such as Sudan and Zimbabwe sit on the Human Rights Commission. United Nations peacekeepers in Africa have been found to rape and pillage.

The United Nations has many important roles in the world. I am glad we have them. I want it to work. The President is right in his thinking that we need to take action to help the United Nations reform itself and that a frank-talking, experienced diplomat named John Bolton is an excellent candidate for that commission.

I am pleased to support this nomination. I hope my colleagues will do the same.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for up to 15 minutes.

Mr. President, I take a few minutes to speak about natural gas prices, the prices at the pump, blue-collar workers, farmers, and homeowners.

The reason I do that is because the Senate Energy Committee earlier today did a good piece of work that I hope the American people understand.

By a virtually unanimous vote, 21 to 1, the committee, after 5 months of work, reported to this body what I hope will be called the Clean Energy Act of 2005.

I suppose people outside of the Senate get tired of hearing Senators compliment one another, but I do that today because this would not have happened had it not been for the leadership of Chairman Pete Domenici, the Republican chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and the ranking Democrat, Jeff Bingaman.

We tried to do this in the last session of Congress in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. We were not able to pass an energy bill to give this country a comprehensive energy policy. Senator Domenici deliberately set out to do things different in this session of Congress. He sat down with Senator Bingaman and the Democratic staff and pledged to work with them, to share everything with them. Senator Domenici visited every member of the committee, Republican and Democrat. We worked together on a variety of major hearings and roundtables. The coal roundtable lasted 3 or 4 hours; one on natural gas lasted 3 or 4 hours. He encouraged a variety of committee members to become involved.

On the Subcommittee on Energy, which I chair, he encouraged me to go ahead and, working with Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota from across the aisle, we came up with a Natural Gas Price Reduction Act of 2005 into which we put ideas to bring down the $7 natural gas price we have today, which is the highest natural gas price in the world. Senator Domenici and Senator Bingaman did their best to come up with aggressive ideas.

Sometimes when Members set out to compromise and work together, we end up with nothing because the easiest way to compromise is to do nothing. We can all agree on doing nothing and then we will not have a bold bill. But we are almost fortunate this did not pass last year because this is a more urgent time. The natural gas prices are $7, the highest in the industrial world. We have gone from the lowest in the industrial world to the highest in the industrial world. Prices at the pump are high. We have a million blue-collar manufacturing jobs in the chemical industry alone that will go overseas if we do not find some way to deal with this.

September 11 was a big surprise to our country. Our next big surprise is going to be to our pocketbooks if we do not figure out how to deal with the price of energy. We must figure out how to have a low-cost, adequate, reliable supply of clean energy that is increasingly produced in the United States of America and not overseas. That is our goal.

What is exceptional about this bill, in my view, is that it attacks the problem in a much more comprehensive way than other versions of the bill have. It begins with aggressive conservation. For example, the appliance efficiency standards, which are in this year's bill, are about double the effectiveness of those that were in last year's bill. What does that mean? It simply means that by some estimates these standards could save at peak demand the equivalent of 45 500-megawatt powerplants. If we save building 45 gas powerplants, we decrease the building of natural gas and we tend to lower the price.

There are a good many other examples of aggressive conservation. The second thing the bill does is to begin to change the way we produce electricity. This country produces about 25 percent of all the energy in the world. We use it here. We have 5 to 6 percent of the American people and we produce 25 percent of the energy. Where does that electricity come from? It comes primarily from what we call nonrenewables. It comes from, first, coal; natural gas, second; and nuclear, third. That is 91 percent of it. Now, another 7 percent comes from dams from hydropower and about 2 percent comes from renewable power, which is windmills, solar, biomass, and geothermal.

If we are in competition with China and India for jobs, and an important part of every farm, every manufacturing plant, every home, is the provision of reliable, low-cost, adequate supply of energy, as a practical matter for the next 20 years, most of that will have to come from nuclear power, from coal, and from gas and conservation. That is where it has to come.

Of course, we want to do more with other kinds of energy. For example, I hope the tax committee, when it reports its part of this bill, does something about solar power. We have a renewable tax credit in the law today that does not do much for solar. It encourages powerplants that produce electricity from sun. We almost don't have any of those. What we use solar for is, we put shingles on roofs. We need to give incentives to individual owners to do more of that. That's why I proposed an investment tax credit so individual owners can take advantage of it.

We can do more research and development in biomass and more research and development in geothermal. Even if we do all that we can do for the so-called renewable energies, in the next 20 years--and there is some disagreement about this--in my view, we will still be producing about 95 percent of our power--certainly not less than 90 percent of our power--from nuclear power, from coal, from gas, and hydro.

Now, how many more dams are going to be built in the United States? It is limited. In fact, this bill addresses relicensing of hydro dams. There are a good number of those in Oregon where the Presiding Officer comes from. By the year 2018, according to the National Hydropower Association, there will be 30,000 MW of hydropower plants that need to be relicensed. That's half of the hydropower in the United States. This landmark, bipartisan agreement on hydro relicensing is both urgent and meaningful.

So if one puts all of that aside, if we want to compete for our jobs with people from around the world and if the price of energy is a big part of it, what do we have to do? Nuclear, coal and gas.

Over the last 10 years, almost all of the new powerplants in America that make electricity have been built from natural gas. Now, how wise is that? Here we are with $7 a unit natural gas, the highest price in the industrialized world, our chemical companies, our blue-collar companies using this, some of them as a raw material--Dow Chemical estimates that 40 percent of the cost of its production is energy. Now, if in other parts of the world natural gas is significantly lower, we will have a problem. We will have jobs moving from here to there.

We do not want to make all of our power from natural gas. We do it because we know how to do it and because it is clean. That leaves us with two sources of what we call base load energy, the two things that we must find a way to use and use in a clean way if we want to have a low-cost supply of American-produced energy. One of those is nuclear, and one of those is coal.

Nuclear power is a technology that we invented in the United States, the peaceful uses of the atom. We figured out how to do that in the 1950s. One of the remarkable technological stories in the United States is our Navy and its nuclear-powered vessels. I suppose it is a classified matter exactly how many we have, but we have dozens of them. Some of them have small reactors. Some of them have a couple of big reactors on them.

Since the 1950s, there has never been one single nuclear reactor accident in the U.S. Navy, not one. They are underwater. When they are above water,

they dock at ports all around the United States, and we use them. In our country today, 20 percent of all of our electricity and 70 percent of our carbon-free electricity is produced by nuclear energy. Yet we have not built a nuclear powerplant in the United States since the 1970s, not one new one. How wise is that?

Other countries in the world are. Eighty percent of France's electricity is now produced by nuclear power. Japan, ravaged by nuclear weapons in World War II, relies on nuclear power. They build one or two new plants a year.

We are in competition to keep jobs here. We want clean power. We increasingly want carbon-free power. If 70 percent of our carbon-free electricity is nuclear, then what is keeping us from going ahead? This bill will help us move ahead because it makes it easier for investors to build nuclear powerplants that are safe.

Senator Domenici has come up with an imaginative loan guarantee program that would help launch an entire new generation of nuclear powerplants. Senator Craig, Senator Domenici, and Senator Bingaman have come up with a program that will be based in Idaho for advanced research on how we build lower cost, more effective nuclear powerplants for our country. There is a growing consensus, especially as the Kyoto Treaty and the need to be concerned about global warming persuades more and more people of the importance of capturing carbon, that nuclear power for the next 15 or 20 years is the only logical first step to having a low-cost, adequate, reliable supply of American-produced clean energy. Britain recently has been coming to the same conclusion that nuclear is a necessity for a carbon-free emissions future.

What is the other step? The other step is coal. We instinctively think coal is dirty and it is a source of a lot of problems because of the pollution it causes.

I live 2 miles away from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It is the most polluted national park in America. The Knoxville area where I live is one of the most polluted parts of our country. Why is that? There is too much sulphur, too much nitrogen, and too much mercury in the air. Much of that comes from coal-fired powerplants, not just from the Tennessee Valley Authority, which has a number of them in the area, but from all over America. The wind blows the air in, and it backs up against the Great Smoky Mountains, which are the highest mountains in the East, and we breathe the dirty air. So any energy bill has to be a clean energy bill so we can solve our air pollution problems.

There is an even larger issue with coal-fired powerplants. India and China, with their huge economies, a couple of billion more people, are going to be building hundreds of powerplants in the next few years. The conventional coal plant is what many of those plants will be. If India, China, Malaysia, Brazil, and the rest of the world build only conventional coal plants, it will not matter very much what our clean air policies are in the United States because they will produce so many pollutants around the world that when the wind blows them around the world and over the air in the United States, we will suffer from that. So if we solve the problem of how to burn coal in a clean way, then the rest of the world is likely to pick up our innovation and solve their problem because they do not want to have polluted air, either.

So how do we do that? Well, there seems to be a way to do it. We call it coal gasification. There are several technologies. I like to call it clean coal gas because that makes it a little easier to talk about.

The New York Times business section had an excellent article on this on Sunday that Senator Domenici gave to all of us. It talked about this idea of taking coal, turning it into gas, and then burning the gas. That solves a great amount of the pollution. It solves the sulphur, the nitrogen, and the mercury part of the pollution, but it does not solve the carbon part.

Then what we need to try to do is to advance the technology of capturing and sequestering the carbon--in other words, getting rid of the carbon. If we are ever able to do that, we could burn coal as cleanly as we can burn gas, capture the carbon and put it in the ground, and we would never have to worry about the Kyoto Treaty. We would never have to worry about the McCain-Lieberman bill or the Carper-Chafee-Gregg-Alexander bill or caps on carbon because we would not be producing carbon. We would be producing it and recapturing it. Nuclear power is free of it, and clean coal gasification with carbon sequestration captures it and gets rid of it.

The other thing is that we are the Saudi Arabia of coal. We have a 500-year supply of it. So if we can move ahead with nuclear and clean coal gas, we can lower the price of natural gas, and we can have more American-produced energy.

So this legislation begins with aggressive conservation. As I said, the appliance efficiency standards alone would save the building of forty-five 500-megawatt gas plants, but then it begins to change the way we make electricity by research and development in advanced nuclear technology, by the loan guarantee support which could be for nuclear plants of that kind. It also has loan guarantees that I hope would help launch a half dozen coal gasification powerplants and a half dozen coal gasification plants at industrial sites. It also has research and development support for carbon sequestration and for other technologies that hold promise.

We still have some issues to work on. We began with what we could agree on, worked 5 months on it under the leadership of Senators Domenici and Bingaman, and reserved a few issues to the floor. Senator Domenici announced that we will be coming to the Senate floor shortly after the recess, in a completely different spirit than last year, with all of us hoping to get a result. We will then put that bill with the House bill and present to this country a clean energy act of 2005 that will lower natural gas prices, begin to produce more American energy at home, include more aggressive conservation, change the way we make electricity, and focus especially on advanced technologies for nuclear, coal gasification, and the supply of gas.

In the short term, we are going to have to bring more gas in from around the world in liquefied natural gas. I'm pleased that the committee adopted the ideas I and Senator Johnson had on LNG siting in the energy bill.

There is one other area I want to mention without dwelling on it too much. One of the things I hope happens as we debate this bill is that it doesn't change from a national energy policy into a national windmill policy. I say that because one of the issues we have pushed out to be debated on the floor is something called a renewable portfolio standard, renewable energy. That all sounds very good. The proposal was, let's make 10 percent of all of our electricity by the year 2025 from renewable energies. That sounds good, too.

The problem is, I don't think it will work because all we are talking about is geothermal--that is hot water from the ground--solar, which our incentives today don't help much, and biomass, which is burning wood chips and other such technologies. According to a Department of Energy analysis, even if we had such a requirement of all our electric companies that they produce 10 percent of their energy from renewable fuels, they couldn't do it. They could only get to 5 percent due to the way the Bingaman price caps are structured. So what utilities would do realistically is buy credits in a complicated scheme which would then raise the price of our electricity. We should be in the business of lowering energy prices, not raising them for nothing.

The other concern I have is that a renewable portfolio standard is really a wind standard because geothermal and solar and biomass will only increase it a tiny bit. This information I have is from an analysis that the Energy Information Agency did on Bingman's bill shows clearly that the impact of a Bingaman RPS is growing windpower. The only way to go forward is with windmills. So the effect of continuing the current policy is to take this country from about 6,700 windmills to 40, 60, 80,000, depending on estimates that you believe. My point is not to make a big discussion about the windmills themselves. I don't like to see them. I think most people don't. The Governor of Kansas has put a moratorium on some windmills, as has the Governor of New Jersey, and so have communities in

many parts of America, such as Vermont and Wisconsin. I asked the Tennessee Valley Authority to put a 2-year moratorium on new wind power on Tennessee until we could assess the damage it might cause to our tourism industry and to our electric rates and to our view of the mountains.

People think of windmills and think those are nice. Grandma had one on her farm. It was by the well. My grandparents did. But these aren't your grandmother's windmills.

We have the second largest football stadium in the United States in Knoxville, TN. We call it Neyland Stadium. One hundred seven thousand people can sit there, and it has sky boxes that go up as high as you can see. Just one of these windmills would fit into Neyland Stadium. The rotor blades would extend from the 10-yard line to the 10-yard line. The top of the windmill would go twice as high as the sky boxes or more. And on a clear night you could see the red lights 25 miles away. There are significant problems with this power. It only works 25 to 40 percent of the time. You don't get rid of any nuclear or coal plants when you have the windmills because you still need the power. You can't store the energy for your lights or your computer and all the things you use electricity for going all the time. So there are many problems.

But here is the biggest problem, the one I want to mention today. I will just leave it for the members of the Finance Committee upon which the Presiding Officer serves and others. This Energy bill will have three parts to it. It will have some things from the Energy Committee which we have finished today. It will have a contribution from the Finance Committee, which will come in June, and it will have a contribution from the Environment and Public Works Committee, which will also come in June. We will put all those parts together.

We are told that this whole bill, when it is put together, can't cost, our Budget Committee says, more than $11 billion. The President hopes we won't spend more than $8 billion. But the production tax credit in the current policy provides $3.9 billion over 5 years, almost all of which will go to windmills unless we change the policy.

In other words, if we have $11 billion to spend and we spend $3 billion on ethanol or renewable fuel, we will only have $8 billion left to spend on everything else, and nearly 3.5 to 4 of it will go for windmills. That is what I mean by a national windmill policy.

My hope is that my colleagues will take a fresh look at our tax credit for renewable fuels and make sure that we use it wisely because that is a lot of money to create the largest amount of carbon-free clean energy.

Here are some of the suggestions for better use: For example, $1.5 billion for consumer incentives for 300,000 hybrid and advanced diesel vehicles. That would give 300,000 Americans a $2,000 deduction to purchase a hybrid car or an advanced diesel vehicle. Those operate about 40 percent more efficiently than conventional cars. That saves a lot of energy. For $750 million, we could give manufacturing incentives for building those hybrid cars and advanced vehicles in the United States. Unfortunately, as it stands now, we aren't doing that. They would all be built overseas because most of the good hybrid technology has been invented overseas and is being rented to the United States. That would be 39,000 jobs in the United States.

I have with me a copy of the National Commission on Energy Policy which recommends both of these ideas, the $2,000 tax deduction and the incentive for manufacturing of hybrid cars. That would be a wise way to spend money for clean carbon-free energy.

There are many more good ideas: $2 billion in tax incentives for energy-efficient appliances and buildings, suggested by Senators Snowe and Feinstein. Senator Johnson and I had suggested $2 billion for tax incentives to commercialize coal gasification for powerplants and $300 million to make more effective support of another renewable energy, solar energy, which has basically no support the way our laws are written today.

The National Commission on Energy Policy has several other recommendations: Build in tax incentives to commercialize carbon capture and geologic sequestration in a wide array of industries. As soon as we figure out how to capture carbon, we can use coal gasification in a big way to reduce dependence on foreign energy and to lower the cost of natural gas.

They also recommend $2 billion in tax incentives for nuclear deployment, $1.5 billion for biodiesel and nonpetroleum low-carbon fuels. I have suggested those in the order in which I like them.

I am not a member of the Finance Committee so I won't have a chance to be a part of that discussion in that committee. My point is simply that if we have $8 billion to spend or $11 billion to spend, we may have already spent a couple of billion in what we are doing with renewable fuel, then we have a lot more good ways to spend money in support of carbon-free energy than we have money for. I respectfully suggest that if we are spending most of $3.7 billion over the next 5 years as a national windmill policy and not a national energy policy, that ought to be reasonably adjusted.

Let me not emphasize the disputes that we have yet to come. I am here today to say, particularly, after a time in the Senate when people who watch us must wonder if we are speaking to each other, the answer is, yes, we are. We have been meeting for 5 months on this Energy bill. We have been working together, as Senator Bingaman said today. I don't remember a party-line vote in the 5 months. We had some close votes, but it wasn't Republican versus Democrat. It was just different ones of us with different opinions. And there must have been half the committee there today when Senators Domenici and Bingaman announced the results at a press conference.

So I honor them for their leadership. I think the American people are proud of Domenici and Bingaman as Senators. New Mexico ought to be proud. It has both of them from the same State. Even though we have CAFE standards still to debate, MTBE still to debate, we have some final work to do on how do we site terminals for liquefied natural gas, further increasing the supply of natural gas, and we will be debating the so-called renewable portfolio standard for how many windmills we should have--all that will be sometime in June. That is what we are supposed to do as Senators.

That is why we are here, to take both sides of this issue and see if we can come to a good result. So far, I think we have.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record following my speech the article on coal gasification from the New York Times business section on Sunday; a letter I wrote to the directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority, asking them to put a 2-year moratorium on wind power until we had an opportunity--we in Congress and local officials--to consider the effect of these large wind farms on our tourism industry, on our view of the mountains, on our gas prices; and finally, an article from the Guardian Unlimited, which is an interesting discussion of what is going on in Great Britain, as they consider how to meet the Kyoto standard for carbon-free electricity production, and how many of the people who formerly had favored large windmills are concluding they don't want them destroying the rural areas of Britain, and they are looking at nuclear power in a fresh way which, as I mentioned, is the way we in the United States today produce 70 percent of our carbon-free electricity.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Rexon Ryu with Senator Hagel's staff be granted the privilege of the floor during today's session.

Mr. President, I cosponsor 1107, the Head Start Improvements for School Readiness Act, a bill to reauthorize Head Start. I join my colleagues Senators Enzi, Kennedy, and Dodd in support of this legislation.

I would like to see Head Start expanded and serve more children but first we must ensure that this program is accountable, financially solvent, and meeting the purpose for which it was intended.

This bill strengthens the Head Start program, making four key improvements by:

No. 1, establishing 200 Centers of Excellence that would serve as model Head Start programs across the country;

No. 2, providing that grantees shall re-compete to receive grants every 5 years to help ensure a constant, high level of quality;

No. 3, clearly defining ``deficiency'' so that local Head Start providers know the standards by which they will be held accountable; and

No. 4, providing clear authority to the governing boards to administer--and be held accountable for--local Head Start programs while ensuring policy councils, on which parents sit, continue to play an important advisory role.

Head Start has been one of our country's most successful and popular social programs. That is because it is based upon the principle of equal opportunity, which is at the core of the American character. Americans uniquely believe that each of us has the right to begin at the same starting line and that, if we do, anything is possible for anyone one of us.

We also understand that some of us need help getting to that starting line. Most Federal funding for social programs is based upon this understanding of equal opportunity. Head Start began

in 1965 to make it more likely that disadvantaged children would successfully arrive at one of the most important of our starting lines: the beginning of school.

Head Start over the years has served hundreds of thousands of our most at-risk children. The program has grown and changed. It has been subjected to debates and studies touting its successes and decrying its deficiencies. But Head Start has stood the test of time because it is so very important.

We have made great progress in what we know about the early growth and development of young children since Head Start began in 1965. At that time very few professionals had studied early childhood education. Even fewer had designed programs specifically for children in poverty with their many challenges.

The origins of Head Start come from an understanding that success for these children was not only about education. The program was designed to be certain these children were healthy, got their immunizations, were fed hot meals, and--of crucial importance--that their parents were deeply involved in the program.

From the beginning comprehensive services and parent and community involvement were essential parts of good Head Start programs. And that is still true today. In the early days, teacher training and curriculum were seen as less important. But we now know a great deal more about brain development and how children learn from birth.

Today young children are expected to learn more and be able to do more in order to succeed in school. Public schools offer kindergarten in response to these changes. And 40 States now offer early childhood programs.

As we reauthorize the Head Start program, it is important to recognize its importance and commit to making it stronger. But we must also recognize that the program is not fulfilling its promise. Head Start is not meeting its purpose of serving our children who are most at risk when dollars are being squandered by those people who have been charged with providing this service. Current practices do not meet my personal standard for managing and running a program.

This bill attempts to address this issue by holding up successful local programs so that others may follow their example and by clarifying lines of accountability so that any corrupt practices may be rooted out. The bill would create a way for States to help strengthen and coordinate Head Start, but would continue to send Federal funds directly to nearly 1,700 grantees that provide services in over 29,000 Head Start centers that serve just over 900,000 disadvantaged children.

First, the bill authorizes the Secretary of HHS to create a nationwide network of 200 Centers of Excellence in Early Childhood built around exemplary Head Start programs. These Centers of Excellence would be nominated by governors. Each Center of Excellence would receive a Federal bonus grant of at least $200,000 in each of 5 years, in addition to its base funding.

The Centers of Excellence bonus grants will be used for centers:

No. 1, to work in their community to model the best of what Head Start can do for at-risk children and families, including getting those children ready for school and ready for academic success;

No. 2, to coordinate all early childhood services in their community;

No. 3, to offer training and support to all professionals working with at-risk children;

No. 4, to track these families and ensure seamless continuity of services from prenatal to age 8;

No. 5, to become models of excellence by all performance measures and be willing to be held accountable for good outcomes for our most disadvantaged children; and

No. 6. to have the flexibility to serve additional Head Start or Early Head Start children or provide more full-day services to better meet the needs of working parents.

While Head Start centers are uneven in performance, they have generally excelled in two areas critical to success in caring for and educating children--developing community support and encouraging parental involvement. Alex Haley, the author of Roots, lived by these six words, ``Find the good and praise it.'' For me that was an invaluable lesson. That's what I hope these centers will do.

In addition to providing for the establishment of Centers of Excellence to highlight and encourage better practices among local Head Start programs, the bill establishes three new methods for ensuring accountability in the management and running of the programs.

First, it provides that grantees shall re-compete for grants every 5 years. This ensures that, after 5 years, their program is still meeting its standards. I recognize that consistency is very important for the Head Start programs, especially for the children served by these grants. Many Head Start grantees are doing a very good job administering their grants, and I hope this reapplication process will highlight their success. To help streamline the process for successful programs, grantees that have not been found deficient nor to have had an area of noncompliance left unresolved for more than 120 days will receive a priority designation during the re-competition process.

Second, the bill for the first time defines what makes a local program ``deficient.'' This will provide clarity for Head Start grantees so that they know the precise standards to which they will be held. Under the bill, a program may be deemed deficient if it is found to threaten the health, safety, or civil rights of children or staff, deny parents the exercise of their full roles and responsibilities, misuse funds, lose its legal status or financial viability, or violates other standards specified in the bill.

Finally, the bill makes clear that the Governing Board shall be the body that is charged with running local programs and which will be held accountable for those programs. During our hearing on April 5, we learned from Mayor Wharton of Shelby County, TN, and other witnesses, that the dual governance structure between the governing board and the policy council was inadequate and neither body had decision-making authority. This bill gives governing boards direct authority--and holds them accountable--while ensuring that policy councils, on which parents sit, continue to play an important advisory role in the running of local Head Start programs.

My mother taught me the importance of preschool education. When I was growing up, she ran a kindergarten in a converted garage in our backyard in Maryville, TN. She helped our community appreciate the value of a good preschool program. I have remembered both lessons in working with my colleagues to fashion this proposal to bring out the best in Head Start.

I hope that my colleagues will join me in advancing this critical legislation to ensure the Head Start program meets its full potential.

Mr. President, I would like to take a moment to remind my colleagues across the aisle just what the Constitution has to say about the confirmation of judges.

In a recent speech on the filibuster of President Bush's judicial nominees, I cited the actions of Senator Byrd when he was majority leader in 1979 as justification for the proposed constitutional option. However, the historical precedent for the actions the Minority is forcing the majority to take goes much further back than even the tenure of the Senator from West Virginia.

The Senate has the power to confirm or deny the President's judicial nominees because the Constitution explicitly grants us that power. Article II, section 2 reads:

He [the president] shall nominate, and, by and with the

advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors,

other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme

Court, and all other officers of the United States, whose

appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, which

shall be established by law.

The President gets to nominate a judge, but only with the consent of the Senate is that judge actually appointed to serve.

The Constitution is not totally clear on the surface as to what should constitute ``advice and consent'' by the Senate. But, fortunately, our Founding Fathers provided us with not just a Constitution but with a whole raft of writings that help us understand just what they were thinking when they drafted it. Those records confirm, I believe, that they were not concerned with a clash between political parties when they wrote the Constitution, but with the balance of power between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches.

The history of the ``advice and consent'' clause suggests that the Founders were uncomfortable with either branch completely controlling the nomination of judges. As a result, they found a compromise that sought to prevent either the executive or the legislative branch from dominating the nomination process.

In the Constitutional Convention of 1787, there was lengthy discussion about who should appoint judges to the bench--the executive or the legislative branch.

After extensive debate, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention rejected the possibility that the power to elect judges would reside exclusively with one body or another. On June 5, 1787, the Records of the Federal Convention record James Madison's thoughts on the issue:

Mr. Madison disliked the election of the Judges by the

Legislature or any numerous body. Besides the danger of

intrigue and partiality, many of the members were not judges

of the requisite qualifications. . . . On the other hand he

was not satisfied with referring the appointment to the

Executive.

Madison and others were concerned that vesting the sole power of appointment in the executive would lead to bias and favoritism.

In the end, the Framers of the Constitution arrived at the language I just read. Should there be any doubt as to what was intended, Alexander Hamilton and others provided us with the Federalist papers. In Federalist 76, Hamilton discusses the nominations clause:

. . . his [referring to the president] nomination may be

overruled: this it certainly may, yet it can only be to make

a place for another nomination by himself. The person

ultimately selected must be the object of his preference. . .

.

Let me emphasize that--Hamilton says the person elected is ultimately the object of the president's preference. That suggests to me that it is not up to the Senate to demand that nominees be withdrawn and that others be nominated in accordance with the leadership in the Senate or the home State senators of the nominee. It sounds to me like the Framers intended for the president to choose and then the Senate to either reject or accept the nominee.

However, I would argue that we don't even need to look to Hamilton to decide that the eventual appointee should be the object of the president's preference. Look where the power to nominate and appoint is placed in the Constitution--in article II, which sets out the powers of the President--not Congress.

In Federalist 76, Hamilton goes on to describe the role of the Senate:

To what purpose then require the cooperation of the Senate?

I answer, that the necessity of their concurrence would have

a powerful, though, in general, a silent operation. It would

be an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the

President, and would tend greatly to prevent the appointment

of unfit characters from State prejudice, from family

connection, from personal attachment, or from a view to

popularity.

Nowhere in that description of the Senate's role does it suggest that the Senate is supposed to reject nominations based on judges' views of the issues. It suggests that we are here to prevent the president from appointing only nominees from Texas, from appointing only friends or campaign contributors, or from otherwise abusing this power. It does not suggest that we should go through a lengthy process of trying to anticipate how a particular judge would rule on all future cases that may come before him or her.

In fact, given that it was the intent of the Founders to create an appointments process that would allow for the appointment of judges who could serve as a check on the other two branches, I think they would be appalled to think that the Senate might be prepared to block any judges that will not rule on abortion or gay marriage or the reinsertion of a feeding tube in the way the Senate happens to favor at any one time. That sounds to me like anything but an independent judiciary branch. What's next? Will senators ask judges how they will rule on pending bills and support only those judges who will uphold the laws passed by this body?

The role of the Senate having been established, I also want to address the mechanism by which we confirm these judges.

The issue before us centers around whether the Constitution requires a simple majority or a supermajority to confirm judicial nominations. Once again, an analysis of the history suggests that it was the intention of the Framers to provide for only a simple majority of the Senate to confirm nominees.

Look at the language of all of article II, section 2. In the clause immediately before the nominations clause, the Constitution specifically calls for two-thirds of the Senate to concur. In the nominations clause, there is no such provision.

I don't believe that this is an inadvertent omission. During the drafting of the Constitution, Roger Sherman of Connecticut argued at great length for the insertion of a comma instead of a semicolon at one point to make a section on Congressional powers crystal clear. I find it hard to believe that in the meantime the Framers deliberately left this section vague.

In fact, the debate around this section of the bill suggests that there was a specific discussion about how many Senate votes would be required to confirm judges. On July 18, 1787, James Madison proposed a plan that would allow judges to be confirmed with only one-third of the Senate. The record of the debate states that Madison felt that such a requirement would ``unite the advantage of responsibility in the

Executive with the security afforded in the second branch against any incautious or corrupt nomination by the Executive.''

So that sounds to me like the Framers viewed the role of the Senate in such a way as to consider the possibility that even less than a majority could be required to confirm a judge--because the Senate was there as backstop to prevent the appointment of political cronies and unfit characters. That is a far cry from the role my colleagues across the aisle would like for us to play today--that of co-equal to the president in the process and capable of demanding nominees that would rule in favor of their positions.

Madison's language was not adopted, but the language that was adopted certainly cannot be read to require a supermajority. You don't have to just accept my interpretation of this language. Shortly after the Constitutional Convention, Justice Joseph Story--appointed to the Supreme Court by President James Madison--wrote his Commentaries on the Constitution and stated explicitly:

The president is to nominate, and thereby has the sole

power to select for office; but his nomination cannot confer

office, unless approved by a majority of the Senate.

Judges are to be confirmed by a majority vote. That is the bottom line. That decision was made long before the first Senate was gaveled into session and before any thought was given to rules of procedure and filibusters.

You will hear during this debate ominous warnings from my colleagues across the aisle about ``the tyranny of the majority.'' You will hear that the Founders intended for the Senate to protect the rights of the minority. You will hear that our Founders created the Senate as a check on the popular whim of the day, as a place to slow down legislation and ensure that only the very best laws are passed. This is true. George Washington is said to have said of the Senate that ``we pour legislation into the senatorial saucer to cool it.''

But the Founders did not create the Senate to give a minority of Senators the power to stop the President from appointing judges. Quite the opposite. As I have outlined, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, two of the greatest minds that helped design our Constitution, put it down in writing for us that judges are to be confirmed by a majority vote.

So it is not a new idea for the majority in the Senate to believe they should have the power to confirm the president's nominees. It is a very old idea that dates back to the founding of our country.

It is a new idea, however, that a minority should have the power to deny the President's choice. The minority used the filibuster rule in the Senate 10 times in the last Congress to create this new idea that 40 percent should be able to thwart the will of both the President and the majority. It is time for us to restore the Senate to the operation envisioned by the Founding Fathers more than 200 years ago that the President's judicial nominees should be able to be confirmed by majority vote.

Mr. President, 2 years ago, my first speech as a Member of the Senate was on the topic of judges. I have spoken many times since then on this same subject. I would like to not talk about it again--other than to discuss the merits of a particular judge before having an up-or-down vote on confirmation.

That is the way we have functioned in the past, it is the way the Founders meant for us to operate, and it is the way the American people should demand their elected representatives work together.

Today I am introducing legislation to address an important statement on what it means to be a citizen of the United States: the Oath of Allegiance, to which all new citizens swear in court when they are naturalized.

In the last session of Congress, I introduced legislation to enshrine the Oath of Allegiance in law. I was joined in that effort by 34 colleagues, including the Senator from New York, Mr.

Schumer, as the lead cosponsor. That legislation was introduced, in part, in response to reports that the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, or BCIS, an agency of the Department of Homeland Security, may have been planning to change the Oath of Allegiance that immigrants take to become a citizen of this nation. Other Senators and I felt the proposed language, as reported in the press, would have weakened the Oath.

Today, I introduce a bill that puts forward a compromise that I hope everyone can support. I am again grateful to be joined in this effort by the senior Senator from New York. This bill introduces a modified Oath of Allegiance that is just as strong as the current one, but that uses more modem language.

I was surprise to learn that Congress has never voted on the content of this Oath. We have left it to Federal regulators. That's not how we treat other symbols of our Nation or other statements on what it means to be an American.

For example, the American Flag, with its 50 stars--one for each State--and 13 stripes for the original colonies, cannot be altered by Federal regulation. The only way a star gets added is when Congress acts to admit a new state. And we've never changed the 13 stripes since the flag was first adopted in 1777.

The Pledge of Alliance, which we repeat each morning in the United States Senate, can't be altered by Federal regulation. The Pledge is a statement of some of the values of the American Creed: ``one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.'' What if a Federal agency decided we should take out justice, just saying ``with liberty for all''? It can't happen: because the Pledge can only be altered by Act of Congress, as it last was in 1954 when the phrase ``under God'' was added.

The National Motto ``In God We Trust,'' which appears on all our coins and dollar bills, can't be altered by Federal regulation. It is a fundamental statement of the religious character of the American people--even though we don't permit and don't want the establishment of state religion. The Treasury Department can't decide to leave the motto off the next dollar bill it prints because the motto was adopted by Congress--at first in 1864 to be printed on the 2-cent piece, an later as the official National Motto in 1956.

Our National Anthem, the Star Spangled Banner, can't be changed by Federal regulation. It, too, is a statement of our values, declaring our country ``the land of the free and the home of the brave.'' If a government agency decided it preferred America the Beautiful, or the Battle Hymn of the Republic, or God Bless America, all of which are great songs, the agency would have to ask Congress to act. Why? Because the Star Spangled Banner was named our National Anthem by law in 1931.

Likewise, the Oath of Allegiance should not be altered lightly--by a government agency, without public comment, and without approval from Congress. Of the five symbols and statements I've described--the Flag, the Anthem, the Pledge, the Motto, and the Oath, only the Oath of Allegiance is legally binding on those who take it. New citizens must take it, and they must sign it.

On September 11, 2003, when I spoke about my legislation, I said:

To be clear, I have no objection to others proposing

modifications to the Oath of Allegiance that we use today. .

. . perhaps ways can be found to make it even stronger.

Still, let's make sure any changes have the support of the

people as represented by Congress. The Oath of Allegiance is

a statement of the commitments required of new citizens.

Current citizens, through their elected representatives,

ought to have a say as to what those commitments are. That's

a lesson in democracy. A legally binding statement on

American citizenship ought to reflect American values,

including democracy.

It is in that spirit that I offer this compromise language that prescribes an updated but very strong Oath of Allegiance. This is the right way to go forward in considering any changes, and, I hope, will allow us to finally enshrine this statement of what it means to be an American in law.

Today I am introducing legislation to address an important statement on what it means to be a citizen of the United States: the Oath of Allegiance, to which all new citizens swear in court when they are naturalized.

In the last session of Congress, I introduced legislation to enshrine the Oath of Allegiance in law. I was joined in that effort by 34 colleagues, including the Senator from New York, Mr.

Schumer, as the lead cosponsor. That legislation was introduced, in part, in response to reports that the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, or BCIS, an agency of the Department of Homeland Security, may have been planning to change the Oath of Allegiance that immigrants take to become a citizen of this nation. Other Senators and I felt the proposed language, as reported in the press, would have weakened the Oath.

Today, I introduce a bill that puts forward a compromise that I hope everyone can support. I am again grateful to be joined in this effort by the senior Senator from New York. This bill introduces a modified Oath of Allegiance that is just as strong as the current one, but that uses more modem language.

I was surprise to learn that Congress has never voted on the content of this Oath. We have left it to Federal regulators. That's not how we treat other symbols of our Nation or other statements on what it means to be an American.

For example, the American Flag, with its 50 stars--one for each State--and 13 stripes for the original colonies, cannot be altered by Federal regulation. The only way a star gets added is when Congress acts to admit a new state. And we've never changed the 13 stripes since the flag was first adopted in 1777.

The Pledge of Alliance, which we repeat each morning in the United States Senate, can't be altered by Federal regulation. The Pledge is a statement of some of the values of the American Creed: ``one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.'' What if a Federal agency decided we should take out justice, just saying ``with liberty for all''? It can't happen: because the Pledge can only be altered by Act of Congress, as it last was in 1954 when the phrase ``under God'' was added.

The National Motto ``In God We Trust,'' which appears on all our coins and dollar bills, can't be altered by Federal regulation. It is a fundamental statement of the religious character of the American people--even though we don't permit and don't want the establishment of state religion. The Treasury Department can't decide to leave the motto off the next dollar bill it prints because the motto was adopted by Congress--at first in 1864 to be printed on the 2-cent piece, an later as the official National Motto in 1956.

Our National Anthem, the Star Spangled Banner, can't be changed by Federal regulation. It, too, is a statement of our values, declaring our country ``the land of the free and the home of the brave.'' If a government agency decided it preferred America the Beautiful, or the Battle Hymn of the Republic, or God Bless America, all of which are great songs, the agency would have to ask Congress to act. Why? Because the Star Spangled Banner was named our National Anthem by law in 1931.

Likewise, the Oath of Allegiance should not be altered lightly--by a government agency, without public comment, and without approval from Congress. Of the five symbols and statements I've described--the Flag, the Anthem, the Pledge, the Motto, and the Oath, only the Oath of Allegiance is legally binding on those who take it. New citizens must take it, and they must sign it.

On September 11, 2003, when I spoke about my legislation, I said:

To be clear, I have no objection to others proposing

modifications to the Oath of Allegiance that we use today. .

. . perhaps ways can be found to make it even stronger.

Still, let's make sure any changes have the support of the

people as represented by Congress. The Oath of Allegiance is

a statement of the commitments required of new citizens.

Current citizens, through their elected representatives,

ought to have a say as to what those commitments are. That's

a lesson in democracy. A legally binding statement on

American citizenship ought to reflect American values,

including democracy.

It is in that spirit that I offer this compromise language that prescribes an updated but very strong Oath of Allegiance. This is the right way to go forward in considering any changes, and, I hope, will allow us to finally enshrine this statement of what it means to be an American in law.

Mr. President, the matter of giving the President an up-or-down vote on his judicial nominees or, more accurately, giving the country an opportunity for any President to have what every President has always had, a chance for the full Senate to have an up- or-down vote on his nominees, is a matter of great importance to our country. It is not the only business before the Senate. I would like to speak for a few minutes about natural gas prices and prices at the pump and how, at a time when China and India are buying up oil reserves around the world, we make sure that we have plenty of energy.

We spend, in this country, about $2,500 per person on energy per year. We are about to have a big debate and discussion in the Senate about how much we spend on energy in the future. The Senator from Louisiana was here a few minutes ago. She made an excellent address. She summed up some of what happened today in the Senate Energy Committee. It was a very good meeting. At one time, virtually every member of the Senate Energy Committee was present, even though the purpose of the meeting was simply for us to make opening statements and to take initial action on a few relatively noncontroversial matters. That is because all of us understand how important it is.

It is also because Chairman Domenici and Ranking Member Bingaman, who are from New Mexico, have worked unusually hard in creating a framework so that we could have a significant piece of legislation. To those outside the Senate, that may sound like a lot of ``inside baseball,'' but it is not. It is crucially important for the Republican majority to have listened, as Senator Domenici and the rest of us have over the last several months, to the views and attitudes of the Democratic minority and vice versa.

What is happening in the Energy Committee is no accident. Senator Domenici, at the beginning of the year, told the Republican members of the committee that as he looked back over the last session of Congress and saw our failure as a Congress to grapple with this question of high prices at the gas pump, high prices for natural gas, which are driving manufacturing jobs overseas, which are raising costs for farmers, which are making it hard to heat and cool our homes, he decided he wanted to operate in a little bit different way. So we have. In a way, it is a good thing that we didn't pass an energy bill last year because this one ought to be a lot better, a lot more aggressive, and a lot bolder.

The situation is more urgent. We have a better bipartisan framework, and we have learned a lot in the last year. Senator Domenici and Senator Bingaman have cochaired large conferences on coal and natural gas, so Senators themselves and key staff members could learn about the newest technologies and could understand the facts about what are a very complex set of considerations so we are better prepared.

I especially compliment the Senator from Louisiana. She mentioned the Americans Outdoors Act that she and I introduced together again yesterday. We introduced it in the last session of Congress. She has worked on major parts of it for the last 6 years. But basically it picks up a principle that was a part of President Reagan's Commission on Americans Outdoors which I chaired 20 years ago. It sought to create a steady stream of reliable funding for conservation purposes, specifically the Land and Water Conservation Fund, for city parks, for wildlife, for enjoyment by soccer players, by duck hunters, by walkers, by most Americans.

The idea is, if we are going to drill for gas and oil and use up some of our assets, we ought to take a part of that and use it and put it back as an asset. If there is an environmental burden, there ought to be an environmental benefit. That is a very simple idea.

She and I call it a ``conservation royalty,'' and it is our hope to persuade a majority of the Senate, which we believe is conservation minded, that a majority of Americans--and we know there is a conservation majority in the United States--want us to help them have more places to enjoy themselves outdoors.

I look forward to working with her on that and the conservation royalty.

Mr. President, let me put the meeting Senator Domenici chaired in the Energy Committee in this context. A couple weeks ago, I had a private letter from GEN Carl Steiner. He is a real American hero. He was head of the special forces, a very brave man. He wrote to remind me that September 11 was a big surprise, but it should not have been. During the 1980s and 1990s, there were terrorist attacks on American interests around the world and in our country itself. If we had paid attention, General Steiner reminded me, we would not have been surprised on 9/11.

The next big surprise in this country will be to our pocketbooks. But it doesn't have to happen. If we pay attention, we already know we have the highest natural gas prices in the industrialized world. Three or 4 years ago, we had the lowest natural gas prices in the industrialized world. Today we have the highest. We know gas at the pump is at record levels for our country. We know China and India are increasing their demand for energy. We know that because of high prices, manufacturing jobs are moving overseas, farmers are taking a pay cut, and consumers are paying too much to heat and cool their homes.

We can avoid this next big surprise--the one to our pocketbooks--by passing an energy bill in the next few weeks that lowers prices, cleans the air, and reduces dependence upon foreign oil. To keep our standard of living, our goal must be to aggressively conserve and to aggressively produce an adequate, reliable supply of low-cost, American-produced, clean energy.

Some may say, why the emphasis on clean energy? Isn't that over in the clean air debate in the Environment and Public Works Committee? Well, yes, it is, jurisdictionwise. They may have jurisdiction on clean air. That is the problem. But the Energy bill has the solution to the clean air problem. We are not going to have clean air just by passing a bunch of caps on things. We are going to have it by transforming the way we produce energy in this country.

Senator Bingaman and Senator Domenici, as I mentioned earlier, have worked hard to produce a bipartisan framework to accomplish the goal I just described. But the danger is still that we will be too timid and we will compromise our differences and produce a bill that doesn't do much. That is why Senator Johnson and I introduced the bipartisan Natural Gas Price Reduction Act of 2005 a few weeks ago. According to a preliminary analysis by the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, our act would yield four times the natural gas savings or production of last year's energy bill. In other words, our bill would make up seven of the eight TFC of America's projected shortfall in natural gas by 2020. That is one way to lower natural gas prices.

I suggested this morning--and some members of the committee seemed to respond well to the idea--that we think of this legislation we are beginning to work on in the Senate as the ``clean energy act of 2005.'' Along with some of my colleagues, I support legislation to reduce carbon and other pollutants in our air. But none of these caps on pollution will do the job. None will produce an adequate supply of low- cost, reliable, American-produced, clean energy. The only way to do that is, first, aggressive conservation and, secondly, to aggressively transform the way we produce energy.

In writing our bill, we have to keep in mind what the Finance Committee of the Senate will do with the tax part of this bill. Some of this Energy bill will be in the Environment and Public Works Committee, some of it is in our Energy Committee, and some of it is in the Finance Committee--the tax part. So it all eventually will come together to the floor, where I am sure there will be even more amendments.

But the reason--in our deliberations this week and next week in the Energy Committee we have to keep in mind what the Finance Committee is doing--is we have limited resources. This is not going to be a $30 billion bill. Our Budget Committee says the Energy bill will be an $11 billion bill over the next 5 years. That is what it will cost in direct spending and tax credits. The administration hopes it will be even smaller--an $8 billion bill. We won't lower prices if we spend our money on more tax credits to oil companies, and we will not lower prices if we continue current policies and spend $3.7 billion over the next 5 years, or nearly one-third of what the administration wants us to spend, on building giant windmills that produce puny amounts of high-cost, unreliable power, and destroy the landscape. We don't need a national windmill policy; we need a national clean energy policy.

It is important for us to know what the tax committee is doing because it is important for us to know, as I mentioned, that, for example, if the tax committee continues its production tax credit for so-called renewable energy--$3.7 billion over the next 5 years of the $8 billion or $11 billion we have is gone, and we don't have it to build clean coal gas plants, for credits for hybrid cars, for credits for new nuclear--the things that will make a difference for us. Of that $3.7 billion, 70 percent of it will be spent on windmills. So current policies would say, if we have $8 billion or $11 billion to spend--the total we have to spend on energy--we would spend a large part on these giant windmills, which raise prices, only work 20, 25, or 30 percent of the time, are being abandoned in many countries that started using them, and absolutely destroy the American landscape, because they are 100 yards tall, wider than jumbo jets, make noise up to a half a mile away.

Here are some of the specific steps I believe we should take to conserve and transform production. Many of these proposals are in the Alexander-Johnson legislation we introduced a few weeks ago. Several have been incorporated in Chairman Domenici's draft before our committee. Here are a few examples in the areas of conservation, first, and in the area of transforming production:

In conservation, consumer education. A 4-year national consumer education program to reduce the demand for energy, tailored after the successful California program, could avoid energy consumption of about 20 powerplants over 4 years.

Efficiency standards. Higher appliance and equipment standards for natural gas efficiency could save the equivalent of 24 1,000-megawatt powerplants by 2020.

Cogeneration. Regulatory relief enabling manufacturers to more easily produce their own power and steam from a single source would save money and energy and reduce pollutants.

Efficient electricity generation. Incentives to encourage utilities to utilize their natural gas plants based on efficiency--we call that efficient dispatch--to increase their efficiency as much as 40 percent. In plain English, there are old natural gas plants and there are new natural gas plants. The new ones use a lot less natural gas than the old ones to produce the same amount of power. Using gas from the new ones first would save a lot of gas.

Oil savings. Last session of Congress, the Congress adopted a plan Senator Landrieu and I recommended to direct the administration to come up with a plan that would reduce by 1 million barrels per day by 2015 our use of gasoline.

Senator Johnson and I in our legislation suggest the administration adopt a plan to reduce gasoline use by 1.75 million barrels per day. This would save enough gasoline to equal twice the anticipated production from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

And finally, in terms of conservation, another important idea is support for hybrid and advanced diesel vehicles. Most of this will have to come from the Finance Committee. But the National Commission on Energy Policy, which a lot of us have been reading, both Democrats and Republicans, ``A Bipartisan Strategy to Meet America's Challenges,'' has a number of excellent ideas in it.

One of them is $1.5 billion over 5 years in manufacturer and consumer incentives for domestic production and purchase of efficient hybrid electric and advanced diesel vehicles. Hybrid vehicles use about 60 percent of the gasoline conventional vehicles use. The Commission wisely suggested that we have some loan guarantees or tax credits. We might do the loan guarantees in our own legislation in the Energy Committee to help make sure those hybrid vehicles and clean diesel vehicles are built in the United States.

The other area in which we need to move boldly, and I hope we will, is in transforming the way we produce energy. At the head of the list has to be nuclear power. There is a lot of talk in this body about global warming and carbon. Mr. President, 70 percent of the carbon-free energy we produce in the United States comes from nuclear power. Again, Seventy percent of the carbon-free energy we produce in the United States comes from nuclear power. And in the next 5, 10, 15 years, if we are serious about global warming, reducing the amount of carbon in the air and setting an example for the rest of the world to do the same, we will appropriate at least $2 billion for research and development and loan guarantees to help start at least two new advanced technology plants.

We have not built a new nuclear powerplant in America since the 1970s. TVA, the Tennessee Valley Authority, fortunately, is reopening Browns Ferry, one of its plants. This will basically be a new plant. Yet France produces 80 percent of its power using nuclear energy. Japan builds a new nuclear powerplant every year. Our Navy operates 70, 80, 90 nuclear vessels. I guess the number is classified; I do not know the exact number. They have never had one single, not one single accident with those reactors since the

1950s. Yet here we are, the most scientifically advanced nation in the world, worried about air pollution, worried about the need for low- cost, reliable supply of power, many are worried about global warming and carbon in the air, and we have not built a new nuclear powerplant since the 1970s. We should start.

The second best hope for transforming our way of producing a low- cost, reliable supply of American-produced energy is coal. We need a national coal gasification strategy. Again, both Democratic and Republican Members have been studying this very carefully. I suggest $2 billion in loan guarantees for the deployment of six coal gasification plants by 2013 and $2 billion for industrial applications of coal gasification.

Clean coal gasification, very simply, is taking coal, of which we have plenty, hundreds of years of supply, and turning it into gas and making electricity from it, either in freestanding powerplants or letting industries do that to produce their own power as, for example, Eastman does in Kingsport, TN.

Next we should focus on carbon capture and sequestration from coal plants. Coal gasification eliminates most of the problems we have with mercury, nitrogen, and sulfur, but it still produces carbon. If we could find a way to capture that carbon and put it away somewhere, sequester it, we would have created right there, in addition to nuclear power, a way to have a fairly permanent supply of low-cost, reliable, adequate American-produced energy.

That technology is not mature yet, but we need a research program to demonstrate commercial scale carbon capture and geological sequestration at a variety of sites as well as research to reduce capital costs of processes to sequester carbon. That is also one of the recommendations of the National Commission on Energy Policy.

As many leading environmental groups have pointed out, coal gasification and carbon capture is the best strategy for the rest of the world. Even if we clean up our air, even if somehow we limit our production of carbon, if China, India, and Brazil build hundreds and hundreds of dirty coal plants around the world, it will not matter what we do because the air goes around the world, and we will end up breathing it, too.

So it is urgent that we move ahead with advanced nuclear technology and with advanced coal gasification and carbon capture and sequestration, not just for us, but in hopes that the rest of the world will adopt our technology and, therefore, make our air safer and cleaner and make us less dependent on foreign oil.

We need to increase our supply of domestic natural gas, and there are specific ways in the Alexander-Johnson legislation to do that. I hope the Senate bill adopts those ideas.

No. 1, we should provide the Department of Interior with the legal authority to issue ``natural gas only'' leases. Some of the oil companies are saying, ``What do you do if you find oil?'' We are not the experts; they are. If the State of Virginia or North Carolina, or some other State prefers to look for natural gas, I would like for them to have that option, and today the Secretary does not have that option.

No. 2, we should instruct the Department of Interior to draw the State boundary according to established international law between Alabama and Florida regarding lease 181 and lease portions of it not in Florida by December 31, 2007.

That may sound very technical, but here is what that means. The Secretary should draw the State line out into the water, which should have been done years ago. The part that is in Florida can't be drilled on because of the moratorium. The part that is in Alabama could be. Some estimates say 20 percent of the natural gas that is produced in the Gulf of Mexico over the next several years could come from that new part of lease 181 in Alabama. That would lower natural gas prices.

Finally, it allows States to selectively waive the Federal moratoria on offshore production and collect significant revenues from such production.

If Tennessee had a coastline--I know Georgia does--but if Tennessee had one, here is what I would do. I would put some gas rigs so far out in the ocean that nobody could see them. I would take that money and I would put it in an endowment of Tennessee colleges and universities so they would be the best funded and gradually the best colleges and universities in America. Second, I would take the rest of the money and I would lower taxes.

That would be a pretty good platform for a Governor. I wish I could do it in Tennessee, but maybe a Governor of New Jersey or Georgia or Florida or Virginia will want to do that. I think they should have that option.

Finally--I said finally, but one other thing on domestic natural gas. We should take part of these revenues from offshore drilling and create a conservation royalty. That royalty would be equally shared by all the States in the Land and Water Conservation Fund and wildlife grants. We should take that money and invest it in conservation so an environmental burden becomes an environmental benefit.

There are a couple of other things I would specifically like to mention. We are going to have to temporarily increase the foreign supply of natural gas. We have no option if we want lower natural gas prices. We do that by streamlining the permitting of facilities for bringing LNG from overseas to the United States. We need to give the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission exclusive authority for siting and regulating LNG terminals while still preserving States' authorities under the Coastal Zone Management Act, Clean Water Act, and the Clean Air Act. Renewable power is an important part of what we ought to do. Regarding solar power, the production tax credit now in the law for solar power really isn't enough to make solar power a viable option. We should increase that over the next several years. We should adopt the work that many Democrats, and President Bush, and many Republicans have worked on to encourage hydrogen fuel cell initiatives.

We should require that FERC grant or deny a terminal pipeline application within 1 year. We should clarify the permitting processes for pipelines and natural gas storage facilities.

These are specific steps. They are aggressive steps. But they are the kind of steps we need to take.

I make these remarks, as I said at the beginning, because Senator Domenici and Senator Bingaman, both of whom have been here for a long time, have worked pretty hard to give us a chance to have the right kind of clean energy bill. I believe the American people expect us in the Senate to know that natural gas prices are driving jobs overseas and are raising prices for farmers. They expect us to know they are having a hard time affording the cost of gasoline. They expect us to take steps to do something about it. Only the steps like the ones I have mentioned will create a true Clean Energy Act of 2005. Only steps like these will produce adequate conservation and adequate supply of reliable, low-cost, American-produced, clean energy. Only steps like these will lower prices and save the United States from the next big surprise: The surprise to our pocketbooks because we failed to prepare for the oncoming energy crisis.

Mr. President, I am here today to introduce, along with the Senator from Virginia, Mr. Warner, the Environmentally Responsible Wind Power Act of 2005.

The legislation that Senator Warner and I offer provides for local authorities to be notified and have a role in the approval of the signing of tens of thousand of massive wind turbines that will be built in America under current policies. It also ensures that the Federal Government does not subsidize the building of these windmills, which are usually taller than a football field is long, within 20 miles of a military base or a highly scenic location, such as a national park or offshore.

Senator Warner and I introduce our legislation today because next week the Senate Energy Committee is scheduled to begin markup on one of the most important pieces of legislation in this session, an energy bill. The Energy Committee's work, combined with the work of the Environment and Public Works Committee, which the distinguished occupant of the chair chairs, and the Finance Committee should this year produce a Clean Energy bill that will, over time, lower prices of natural gas and oil and reduce our dependence on overseas oil. This will be legislation for American blue-collar workers, for farmers, and for homeowners. It is urgently needed.

Natural gas prices are the highest in the industrialized world. Gasoline prices are at record levels. We cannot keep our jobs and our standard of living if we do not put in place policies that will provide our country with new steps toward conservation and an adequate supply of low-cost, reliable, clean American produced energy. Senator Warner and I both intend to be in the middle of this discussion. He is a senior member of the Environment and Public Works committee. I am chairman of the Energy Subcommittee.

I am grateful for, and I am greatly encouraged by, the leadership of the Energy Committee chairman Senator Domenici, and the ranking Democrat, Senator Bingaman, and the committee staff who have worked especially hard to create a framework for a more aggressive bipartisan piece of legislation than we were able to produce last year.

One part of our energy debate will be about wind power, which is the subject of the legislation that Senator Warner and I offer today. We are introducing this because several of our colleagues have proposed something called a renewable portfolio standard, or RPS, which would require power companies to produce 10 percent of all their electricity from renewable sources by 2025. These renewable sources are wind, hydro, solar, geothermal, and biomass. Today, these renewable sources produce about 9 percent of U.S. electricity needs.

This RPS is not to be confused with the renewable fuel standard which is a different sort of requirement, one that gasoline contain a certain percentage of ethanol. That matter is the subject for the jurisdiction of another committee. A renewable fuel standard is entirely different from a renewable portfolio standard and may well be part of the final legislation.

It is important for our colleagues to know that a renewable portfolio standard, or RPS, is all about wind. There are limited opportunities to build new dams today in order to expand hydropower, and hydro produces 7 of the 9 percent of renewable power that we have in America today. Of the remaining 2 percent of our electricity that is produced by other renewable sources, current subsidies are not enough to increase solar power by very much.

More research and development is needed to make biomass more efficient, and there is a limited amount of geothermal power that is drawing power from water that is heated underground, which leaves wind power. Experts agree that the bottom line is that a requirement that electric companies produce 10 percent of their electricity from renewable energy, if it could be achieved at all, would mean about 70 percent of the increase would come from wind. In other words, we would go from producing about 1 percent of America's electricity from wind to about 7 or 8 percent.

Testimony before our Energy Committee and most other sources suggest that to produce this much wind energy in the United States could require building more than 100,000 new massive wind turbines. We have less than 7,000 such windmills in the United States today, with the largest number in Texas and California. Testimony before our committee also indicated that even without the RPS, if Congress continues its generous subsidy for wind production for the next 10 years-- it will guarantee that we have these 100,000 windmills or more by the year 2025. According to the Treasury Department, this wind subsidy, if renewed each year for the next 5 years, would reimburse wind investors for 25 percent of the cost of wind production and cost taxpayers $3.7 billion over those 5 years.

I'm told that General Electric Wind, one of the largest manufacturers of wind turbines, has experienced a 500-percent growth in its wind business this year due to the renewal of the wind production tax credit last year.

I want to make sure my colleagues know that there are serious questions about how much relying on wind power will raise the cost of electricity, questions about whether there are better ways to spend $3.7 billion in support of clean energy, and questions about whether wind even produces the amount of energy that it is claimed to produce.

My studies suggest that at a time when America needs large amounts of low-cost reliable power, wind produces puny amounts of high-cost unreliable power. We need lower prices. Wind power production raises prices. We will have an opportunity in our debates and further hearings to examine these questions.

The legislation Senator Warner and I offer today is about a different question: the siting or location of 100,000 of these massive machines. Now, the idea of windmills conjures up pleasant images in Tennessee and, I am sure, in Oklahoma, of Holland and tulips, images of rural America with windmill blades turning slowly, pumping water at the farm well.

My grandparents had such a windmill at their well pump. That was back before rural electrification. The windmills we are talking about today are not our grandmother's windmills. Each one of these windmills is typically 100 yards tall, two stories taller than the Statue of Liberty, taller than a football field is long. These windmills are wider than a 747 jumbo jet. Their rotor blades turn at 100 miles per hour. These towers and their flashing red lights can be seen from more than 25 miles away. Their noise can be heard for up to a half a mile away. It is a thumping and swishing sound. It has been described by residents who are unhappy with the noise as sounding like a brick wrapped in a towel tumbling in a clothes dryer on a perpetual basis.

These windmills produce very little power since, of course, they only operate when the wind blows enough or when it does not blow too much. So they are usually placed in large wind farms covering huge amounts of land.

This is an example of what they look like. In comparison, we often worry about offshore drilling for oil and gas. In fact, Senator Johnson and I have introduced legislation that would permit States to expand the use of offshore oil and gas. Offshore oil and gas rigs can be placed far out to sea, where nobody on shore can see them. Compare that with the power produced by today's massive wind turbines. It would take 46 square miles of these windmills spread across the landscape to equal one oil or gas rig that one could not see.

As an example, the Congress ordered electric companies to build 10 percent of their power from renewable energy which, as we have said, has to be mostly wind. If we renew the current subsidy each year, by the year 2025 my State of Tennessee would have about 1,700 of these windmills, which would cover land almost two times the size of the city of Knoxville, TN. If Virginia, Senator Warner's State, were to produce 10 percent of its power from wind by 2025 and the subsidies continue, it would probably need more than 1,700 windmills. These windmills would take up enough land to equal the land mass of three cities the size of Richmond, VA. In North Carolina, to supply 10 percent of the electricity from wind, it would take almost the land mass of the Research Triangle, the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area. According to testimony before our committee, in Tennessee and Virginia these windmills would work best and perhaps work only at all along the ridge tops.

So this is what things might be looking like. This is a picture of the Grand Canyon in the West, but we can imagine what it might look like in the East. If our present policies on wind are continued, we could expect to see hundreds

of football-field sized towers as wide as jumbo jets with flashing red lights atop the Blue Ridges of Virginia, above the Shenandoah Valley, along the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, on top of Signal Mountain, on top of Lookout Mountain and Roan Mountain in Tennessee, and down the Tennessee River gorge which the city of Chattanooga has just spent 25 years protecting, and now it calls itself the scenic city.

I hope we decide there are better ways to provide clean energy than to spend $3.7 billion of taxpayer dollars over the next 5 years on windmills. I hope we decide we need a real national energy policy instead of a national windmill policy. I hope we decide there are better and cheaper ways to discuss carbon. At least there are some important questions we need to answer.

What will this number of windmills do to our tourism industry? Will 10 million visitors who come a year to enjoy the Great Smoky Mountains really want to come to see ridge tops with flashing red lights and 100- yard tall windmills? What happens to electric rates when the Federal subsidy disappears in a few years? Who will take down these massive structures if we decide we do not like them or if they do not work? Who is making the money on all of this, and why are some European countries who pioneered wind farms now slowing down or even stopping their construction in some places?

Clearly, there are likely to be more sensible ways to provide clean energy than spending $3.7 billion of taxpayer money over the next 5 years to destroy the American landscape. For example, $3.7 billion would provide enough money to give 185,000 Americans a $2,000 subsidy to buy a hybrid or a clean diesel vehicle, which would be about double the number of hybrid cars expected to be sold in the United States during this year. Hybrid cars burn about 60 percent of the amount of gasoline that conventional cars burn. Or $3.7 billion would provide enough money for loan guarantees to help launch a dozen new clean coal gasification plants and help transform the marketplace with new technology for clean American-produced energy that would lower natural gas prices and reduce our dependence on foreign oil. For $3.7 billion, we could provide loan guarantees for at least half a dozen new technology nuclear powerplants and have a billion dollars left over for research and development on the recapture of carbon that might be produced by coal plants or to encourage conservation prices.

Just by way of comparison, a nuclear powerplant such as the Tennessee Valley Authority's Sequoayah nuclear plant would produce about the same amount of energy as the windmills, which a renewable portfolio standard and the tax subsidy would build in Tennessee. The electricity would be available even when the wind was not blowing. So while we are debating the wisdom of wind policies over the next several weeks, these massive turbines are being built across America, 6,700 of them so far, 29 of them in Tennessee.

The Tennessee Valley Authority recently announced it had signed a 20- year contract with a group of investors from Chicago to build 18 huge windmills atop a 3,300-foot ridge on Buffalo Mountain in east Tennessee. So the purpose of our legislation being offered today is to give citizens the opportunity to have some say in where these massive structures are located in their communities and to make sure that the Congress does not subsidize the destruction of the American landscape near our national parks or other highly scenic areas or build such tall structures dangerously close to our military bases.

First, the bill ensures that local authorities are notified and have a role in the approval of new windmills to be built in their areas of jurisdiction. This means that at the same time a proposed windmill is filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, FERC would notify the local authority with zoning jurisdiction. Under this bill, within 120 days, local authorities may support or oppose the project. If they support it, the windmill may qualify for FERC marketbased rates--that means allowed to charge wholesale prices--and may be exempt from a series of regulations that restrict the operations of public utilities. If local authorities oppose the windmill, it may still go forward but subject to regulations--we call them PUCHA--and unable to charge wholesale rates or issue a qualified rate schedule. If no action is taken by the local authority, the FERC process would proceed as though the authority were in support.

I believe it is crucial that local authorities have a chance to consider the impact of such massive new structures before dozens or hundreds of them begin to be built in their communities. In many other instances involving the location of facilities generating power, State and local governments have developed laws giving citizens an opportunity to comment or even stop the location of facilities they do not want. Our legislation gives communities that do not have such laws the chance to do just that, and then this legislation sunsets or expires in 7 years.

The second thing our legislation would do is provide protection to highly scenic areas and at military bases. I do not think we want to see hundreds of windmills in the Grand Canyon or just outside the Grand Canyon or in the foothills of the Great Smokies or when we go to see the Grand Tetons. There are plenty of places we do not want to see that. This makes sure it does not happen. It does so by eliminating tax subsidies for any windmills within 20 miles of a world heritage area, which includes many national parks, and within 20 miles of military bases or offshore.

Under the bill, placement of a windmill within 20 miles of such a site shall also require the completion of an environmental impact statement. Further, any windmill that is to be constructed within 20 miles of a neighboring State's border may be vetoed by that neighboring State. In other words, if the neighboring State can see it and does not want it, they can veto it.

I used the same kind of analogy when I introduced legislation to allow offshore drilling since offshore drilling can be put so far off sight that one does not need to see it. If Virginia wants to do it and North Carolina can see it and they do not like it, they can veto it. I believe the same thing should apply to these massive windmills.

I believe that during our debates, we will find that there are better ways to produce a low-cost reliable supply of American energy than by spending $3.7 billion over the next 5 years, requiring power companies to produce energy from giant windmills that raise electric rates, only work when the wind blows, and destroy the American landscape.

The legislation that Senator Johnson and I have introduced, the Natural Gas Price Reduction Act of 2005, includes support for aggressive conservation, new clean coal gas plants, new supplies of domestic natural gas, and, for the time being, easier import of liquefied natural gas. We did this because natural gas is at $7 a unit around the world, and that needs to change. In the USA, it is the highest priced gas anywhere in the industrial world. The chemical plants in Oklahoma, Colorado and Tennessee will find it likely that they will be moving their jobs to other parts of the world where the price of natural gas is not so high.

(Mr. ALLARD assumed the Chair.)

I believe there is an important place in our energy bill for renewable fuels such as ethanol, and I believe there is an important place for renewable energy sources. For example, the legislation Senator Johnson and I introduced a few weeks ago would increase from 10 percent to 30 percent the tax credit for commercial investments in solar technology that generates electricity, heats or cools a structure, uses fiber optics, and illuminates a building or provides solar process heat. It provides a similar 30-percent tax credit for a solar system that heats a home. But it is important to keep in mind that, aside from wind, renewable energy can only provide about 3 percent of America's total energy needs over the next 20 years. I am excluding from that, also, hydro.

In the United States of America, the wholesale destruction of the American landscape is not an incidental concern. The great American outdoors is an essential part of the American character. Italy has its art, Egypt has its pyramids, England has its history, and we have the great American outdoors. In fact, the song ``America the Beautiful'' was written in Colorado, the State of the Presiding Officer. We care about that.

In my home County of Blount County, TN, my father and lots of other people worked at the Alcoa plant for many years to save money and buy a home. Where did they want to buy a home? They wanted to buy a home on streets that were named Mountain View, or Scenic Drive, because they loved to look at the Great Smoky Mountains.

While we debate the merits of so much subsidy and reliance on wind power, we should at the same time protect our national parks, our shorelines, and our other highly scenic areas. And we should give American citizens the opportunity to protect their communities and landscapes before it is too late.

I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I am here today to introduce, along with the Senator from Virginia, Mr. Warner, the Environmentally Responsible Wind Power Act of 2005.

The legislation that Senator Warner and I offer provides for local authorities to be notified and have a role in the approval of the signing of tens of thousand of massive wind turbines that will be built in America under current policies. It also ensures that the Federal Government does not subsidize the building of these windmills, which are usually taller than a football field is long, within 20 miles of a military base or a highly scenic location, such as a national park or offshore.

Senator Warner and I introduce our legislation today because next week the Senate Energy Committee is scheduled to begin markup on one of the most important pieces of legislation in this session, an energy bill. The Energy Committee's work, combined with the work of the Environment and Public Works Committee, which the distinguished occupant of the chair chairs, and the Finance Committee should this year produce a Clean Energy bill that will, over time, lower prices of natural gas and oil and reduce our dependence on overseas oil. This will be legislation for American blue-collar workers, for farmers, and for homeowners. It is urgently needed.

Natural gas prices are the highest in the industrialized world. Gasoline prices are at record levels. We cannot keep our jobs and our standard of living if we do not put in place policies that will provide our country with new steps toward conservation and an adequate supply of low-cost, reliable, clean American produced energy. Senator Warner and I both intend to be in the middle of this discussion. He is a senior member of the Environment and Public Works committee. I am chairman of the Energy Subcommittee.

I am grateful for, and I am greatly encouraged by, the leadership of the Energy Committee chairman Senator Domenici, and the ranking Democrat, Senator Bingaman, and the committee staff who have worked especially hard to create a framework for a more aggressive bipartisan piece of legislation than we were able to produce last year.

One part of our energy debate will be about wind power, which is the subject of the legislation that Senator Warner and I offer today. We are introducing this because several of our colleagues have proposed something called a renewable portfolio standard, or RPS, which would require power companies to produce 10 percent of all their electricity from renewable sources by 2025. These renewable sources are wind, hydro, solar, geothermal, and biomass. Today, these renewable sources produce about 9 percent of U.S. electricity needs.

This RPS is not to be confused with the renewable fuel standard which is a different sort of requirement, one that gasoline contain a certain percentage of ethanol. That matter is the subject for the jurisdiction of another committee. A renewable fuel standard is entirely different from a renewable portfolio standard and may well be part of the final legislation.

It is important for our colleagues to know that a renewable portfolio standard, or RPS, is all about wind. There are limited opportunities to build new dams today in order to expand hydropower, and hydro produces 7 of the 9 percent of renewable power that we have in America today. Of the remaining 2 percent of our electricity that is produced by other renewable sources, current subsidies are not enough to increase solar power by very much.

More research and development is needed to make biomass more efficient, and there is a limited amount of geothermal power that is drawing power from water that is heated underground, which leaves wind power. Experts agree that the bottom line is that a requirement that electric companies produce 10 percent of their electricity from renewable energy, if it could be achieved at all, would mean about 70 percent of the increase would come from wind. In other words, we would go from producing about 1 percent of America's electricity from wind to about 7 or 8 percent.

Testimony before our Energy Committee and most other sources suggest that to produce this much wind energy in the United States could require building more than 100,000 new massive wind turbines. We have less than 7,000 such windmills in the United States today, with the largest number in Texas and California. Testimony before our committee also indicated that even without the RPS, if Congress continues its generous subsidy for wind production for the next 10 years-- it will guarantee that we have these 100,000 windmills or more by the year 2025. According to the Treasury Department, this wind subsidy, if renewed each year for the next 5 years, would reimburse wind investors for 25 percent of the cost of wind production and cost taxpayers $3.7 billion over those 5 years.

I'm told that General Electric Wind, one of the largest manufacturers of wind turbines, has experienced a 500-percent growth in its wind business this year due to the renewal of the wind production tax credit last year.

I want to make sure my colleagues know that there are serious questions about how much relying on wind power will raise the cost of electricity, questions about whether there are better ways to spend $3.7 billion in support of clean energy, and questions about whether wind even produces the amount of energy that it is claimed to produce.

My studies suggest that at a time when America needs large amounts of low-cost reliable power, wind produces puny amounts of high-cost unreliable power. We need lower prices. Wind power production raises prices. We will have an opportunity in our debates and further hearings to examine these questions.

The legislation Senator Warner and I offer today is about a different question: the siting or location of 100,000 of these massive machines. Now, the idea of windmills conjures up pleasant images in Tennessee and, I am sure, in Oklahoma, of Holland and tulips, images of rural America with windmill blades turning slowly, pumping water at the farm well.

My grandparents had such a windmill at their well pump. That was back before rural electrification. The windmills we are talking about today are not our grandmother's windmills. Each one of these windmills is typically 100 yards tall, two stories taller than the Statue of Liberty, taller than a football field is long. These windmills are wider than a 747 jumbo jet. Their rotor blades turn at 100 miles per hour. These towers and their flashing red lights can be seen from more than 25 miles away. Their noise can be heard for up to a half a mile away. It is a thumping and swishing sound. It has been described by residents who are unhappy with the noise as sounding like a brick wrapped in a towel tumbling in a clothes dryer on a perpetual basis.

These windmills produce very little power since, of course, they only operate when the wind blows enough or when it does not blow too much. So they are usually placed in large wind farms covering huge amounts of land.

This is an example of what they look like. In comparison, we often worry about offshore drilling for oil and gas. In fact, Senator Johnson and I have introduced legislation that would permit States to expand the use of offshore oil and gas. Offshore oil and gas rigs can be placed far out to sea, where nobody on shore can see them. Compare that with the power produced by today's massive wind turbines. It would take 46 square miles of these windmills spread across the landscape to equal one oil or gas rig that one could not see.

As an example, the Congress ordered electric companies to build 10 percent of their power from renewable energy which, as we have said, has to be mostly wind. If we renew the current subsidy each year, by the year 2025 my State of Tennessee would have about 1,700 of these windmills, which would cover land almost two times the size of the city of Knoxville, TN. If Virginia, Senator Warner's State, were to produce 10 percent of its power from wind by 2025 and the subsidies continue, it would probably need more than 1,700 windmills. These windmills would take up enough land to equal the land mass of three cities the size of Richmond, VA. In North Carolina, to supply 10 percent of the electricity from wind, it would take almost the land mass of the Research Triangle, the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area. According to testimony before our committee, in Tennessee and Virginia these windmills would work best and perhaps work only at all along the ridge tops.

So this is what things might be looking like. This is a picture of the Grand Canyon in the West, but we can imagine what it might look like in the East. If our present policies on wind are continued, we could expect to see hundreds

of football-field sized towers as wide as jumbo jets with flashing red lights atop the Blue Ridges of Virginia, above the Shenandoah Valley, along the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, on top of Signal Mountain, on top of Lookout Mountain and Roan Mountain in Tennessee, and down the Tennessee River gorge which the city of Chattanooga has just spent 25 years protecting, and now it calls itself the scenic city.

I hope we decide there are better ways to provide clean energy than to spend $3.7 billion of taxpayer dollars over the next 5 years on windmills. I hope we decide we need a real national energy policy instead of a national windmill policy. I hope we decide there are better and cheaper ways to discuss carbon. At least there are some important questions we need to answer.

What will this number of windmills do to our tourism industry? Will 10 million visitors who come a year to enjoy the Great Smoky Mountains really want to come to see ridge tops with flashing red lights and 100- yard tall windmills? What happens to electric rates when the Federal subsidy disappears in a few years? Who will take down these massive structures if we decide we do not like them or if they do not work? Who is making the money on all of this, and why are some European countries who pioneered wind farms now slowing down or even stopping their construction in some places?

Clearly, there are likely to be more sensible ways to provide clean energy than spending $3.7 billion of taxpayer money over the next 5 years to destroy the American landscape. For example, $3.7 billion would provide enough money to give 185,000 Americans a $2,000 subsidy to buy a hybrid or a clean diesel vehicle, which would be about double the number of hybrid cars expected to be sold in the United States during this year. Hybrid cars burn about 60 percent of the amount of gasoline that conventional cars burn. Or $3.7 billion would provide enough money for loan guarantees to help launch a dozen new clean coal gasification plants and help transform the marketplace with new technology for clean American-produced energy that would lower natural gas prices and reduce our dependence on foreign oil. For $3.7 billion, we could provide loan guarantees for at least half a dozen new technology nuclear powerplants and have a billion dollars left over for research and development on the recapture of carbon that might be produced by coal plants or to encourage conservation prices.

Just by way of comparison, a nuclear powerplant such as the Tennessee Valley Authority's Sequoayah nuclear plant would produce about the same amount of energy as the windmills, which a renewable portfolio standard and the tax subsidy would build in Tennessee. The electricity would be available even when the wind was not blowing. So while we are debating the wisdom of wind policies over the next several weeks, these massive turbines are being built across America, 6,700 of them so far, 29 of them in Tennessee.

The Tennessee Valley Authority recently announced it had signed a 20- year contract with a group of investors from Chicago to build 18 huge windmills atop a 3,300-foot ridge on Buffalo Mountain in east Tennessee. So the purpose of our legislation being offered today is to give citizens the opportunity to have some say in where these massive structures are located in their communities and to make sure that the Congress does not subsidize the destruction of the American landscape near our national parks or other highly scenic areas or build such tall structures dangerously close to our military bases.

First, the bill ensures that local authorities are notified and have a role in the approval of new windmills to be built in their areas of jurisdiction. This means that at the same time a proposed windmill is filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, FERC would notify the local authority with zoning jurisdiction. Under this bill, within 120 days, local authorities may support or oppose the project. If they support it, the windmill may qualify for FERC marketbased rates--that means allowed to charge wholesale prices--and may be exempt from a series of regulations that restrict the operations of public utilities. If local authorities oppose the windmill, it may still go forward but subject to regulations--we call them PUCHA--and unable to charge wholesale rates or issue a qualified rate schedule. If no action is taken by the local authority, the FERC process would proceed as though the authority were in support.

I believe it is crucial that local authorities have a chance to consider the impact of such massive new structures before dozens or hundreds of them begin to be built in their communities. In many other instances involving the location of facilities generating power, State and local governments have developed laws giving citizens an opportunity to comment or even stop the location of facilities they do not want. Our legislation gives communities that do not have such laws the chance to do just that, and then this legislation sunsets or expires in 7 years.

The second thing our legislation would do is provide protection to highly scenic areas and at military bases. I do not think we want to see hundreds of windmills in the Grand Canyon or just outside the Grand Canyon or in the foothills of the Great Smokies or when we go to see the Grand Tetons. There are plenty of places we do not want to see that. This makes sure it does not happen. It does so by eliminating tax subsidies for any windmills within 20 miles of a world heritage area, which includes many national parks, and within 20 miles of military bases or offshore.

Under the bill, placement of a windmill within 20 miles of such a site shall also require the completion of an environmental impact statement. Further, any windmill that is to be constructed within 20 miles of a neighboring State's border may be vetoed by that neighboring State. In other words, if the neighboring State can see it and does not want it, they can veto it.

I used the same kind of analogy when I introduced legislation to allow offshore drilling since offshore drilling can be put so far off sight that one does not need to see it. If Virginia wants to do it and North Carolina can see it and they do not like it, they can veto it. I believe the same thing should apply to these massive windmills.

I believe that during our debates, we will find that there are better ways to produce a low-cost reliable supply of American energy than by spending $3.7 billion over the next 5 years, requiring power companies to produce energy from giant windmills that raise electric rates, only work when the wind blows, and destroy the American landscape.

The legislation that Senator Johnson and I have introduced, the Natural Gas Price Reduction Act of 2005, includes support for aggressive conservation, new clean coal gas plants, new supplies of domestic natural gas, and, for the time being, easier import of liquefied natural gas. We did this because natural gas is at $7 a unit around the world, and that needs to change. In the USA, it is the highest priced gas anywhere in the industrial world. The chemical plants in Oklahoma, Colorado and Tennessee will find it likely that they will be moving their jobs to other parts of the world where the price of natural gas is not so high.

(Mr. ALLARD assumed the Chair.)

I believe there is an important place in our energy bill for renewable fuels such as ethanol, and I believe there is an important place for renewable energy sources. For example, the legislation Senator Johnson and I introduced a few weeks ago would increase from 10 percent to 30 percent the tax credit for commercial investments in solar technology that generates electricity, heats or cools a structure, uses fiber optics, and illuminates a building or provides solar process heat. It provides a similar 30-percent tax credit for a solar system that heats a home. But it is important to keep in mind that, aside from wind, renewable energy can only provide about 3 percent of America's total energy needs over the next 20 years. I am excluding from that, also, hydro.

In the United States of America, the wholesale destruction of the American landscape is not an incidental concern. The great American outdoors is an essential part of the American character. Italy has its art, Egypt has its pyramids, England has its history, and we have the great American outdoors. In fact, the song ``America the Beautiful'' was written in Colorado, the State of the Presiding Officer. We care about that.

In my home County of Blount County, TN, my father and lots of other people worked at the Alcoa plant for many years to save money and buy a home. Where did they want to buy a home? They wanted to buy a home on streets that were named Mountain View, or Scenic Drive, because they loved to look at the Great Smoky Mountains.

While we debate the merits of so much subsidy and reliance on wind power, we should at the same time protect our national parks, our shorelines, and our other highly scenic areas. And we should give American citizens the opportunity to protect their communities and landscapes before it is too late.

I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.