Floor Statements

Mr. President, today I joined as a cosponsor of two bills to protect children: S. 1738, the Combating Child Exploitation Act; and S. 519, the Securing Adolescents from Exploitation-Online-- SAFE--Act.

I am cosponsoring S. 1738 to signal my support for this bipartisan effort to create a nationwide network of highly trained law enforcement experts to track down and prosecute child predators who exploit children, but it is my hope that Congress would enact the modified version of this legislation that was included in bills separately introduced by the majority leader--S. 3297--and Senator Coburn--S. 3344.

Unfortunately, both bills have been held up by partisan gridlock despite widespread support on both sides of the aisle. In fact, the House version of the SAFE Act--H.R. 3791--passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 409-2 in December 2007. That is why I believe that both bills H.R. 3791 and the modified version of S. 1738 could pass by unanimous consent if they were called up and passed together.

It is time to stop playing politics, bring these bills to the Senate floor and let the Senate approve them. Child exploitation is too important a problem to get caught up in partisan politics. I urge the majority leader to call up and pass these two bills without delay, and without either being attached to other legislation that could prevent them from becoming law.

I can't think of a more bipartisan step for the Senate to take this month than ending this impasse and passing these two worthwhile bills to protect children.

Mr. President, would the Chair let me know when 9 minutes has elapsed.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Texas for his wise comments. As usual, he is right on the mark. I want to talk about the same subject, which is on the mind of almost every Tennessean I saw in the last 5 weeks, and I am sure it is on the

minds of most Americans. During this work period, all during August and part of September, in Tennessee, I did what I imagine most of us from the Senate did. In my case, I visited a producer in Knoxville who delivers tomatoes and vegetables to schools and restaurants. He was talking about the triple whammy that high energy prices cause when they have to pay extra for fuel to bring them to Knoxville, and pay extra to deliver them; and then the farmer, in the first place, had to pay extra to grow them because of energy costs. For the trucking company in Jackson, TN, and the food banks in Nashville and Memphis, it is all the same story about how high energy prices are hurting people and affecting the lives of Tennesseans.

I wasn't surprised to find that Tennesseans and most Americans know there is no silver bullet and they know we cannot solve this problem tomorrow. But they expect us to start today, not tomorrow, to deal with the problem. That is why last May I went to Oak Ridge, TN, to say what I thought we ought to do about high energy prices. I proposed a new Manhattan project for clean energy independence. I said, to begin with, we should do the things we know how to do, and that is to drill offshore environmentally for oil and gas that we know we have and that we can use to increase our supply and reduce the price at home. That is in the case of transportation, primarily.

In the case of electricity, we should pursue much more aggressively the technology we invented, which is nuclear power. It is only 20 percent of our electricity, but if you care about global warming and clean air, it is 70 percent of our clean electricity. My proposal was that we borrow a page from history, from World War II, when President Roosevelt created a secret plan to build a bomb before Germany did, because if Germany got the bomb, it would have blackmailed the United States and the world. We succeeded due to that Presidential leadership, by the congressional leadership, and by drafting companies, literally, into the Manhattan project, by recruiting the best scientists in the world, by stating a clear objective and using American know-how to do it. I suggested we should do that same thing--maybe seven mini- Manhattan projects with seven grand challenges:

No. 1. We should make electric cars and trucks commonplace. That is getting to be a little more accepted. I talked to the head of the Austin, TX, utility district. He said they have a million cars in his district--and light trucks--that he guesses maybe 10 percent of them could be run by electricity instead of gasoline within 5 years, and maybe half of them within 15 to 20 years. That is 120 million vehicles if that percentage applied to the whole country. I asked how many more powerplants would you have to build so half of your cars and light trucks could be run on electricity instead of gasoline. ``Zero'' is the answer, because if you plug in at night, his utilities, and the Tennessee Valley Authority, and most utilities have plenty of excess electricity unused at night that they can sell to us at cheaper rates to plug our cars and trucks into. So that is one way to use less gas and oil--by using more electric cars. So over 5 years we should make that commonplace.

A second grand challenge that I offered was to make carbon capture-- the capturing of carbon out of coal plants--a reality within 5 years. We talk a lot about this, taking carbon out of coal plants' pollution-- that produces about half of our electricity--and make it a reality. We have not done it yet. We do it a few places by putting carbon back down into the ground for oil. But over 5 years, if we made a crash program out of it, as we did with the Manhattan project, we might find a way to get rid of that carbon, help global warming, use the powerplants, which is homegrown electricity, and it would set an example for China, India, and other places that are building dirty coal plants that will affect our air as well.

Third, making solar power cost competitive with fossil fuels. Wind is useful in some places, and it has a subsidy. More widespread and promising is solar power. Solar thermal powerplants are solving the problem we have with wind, which is that we cannot store electricity made from it yet. It blows when it wants to. With these solar thermal plants, they make steam, which can be put in the ground and use it when needed to create electricity.

Fourth, safely reprocess and store nuclear waste. We should do that.

Fifth, make advanced biofuels cost competitive with gasoline. There is a limit to what we can do with corn to make fuel, but there are plenty of crops, such as switchgrass, which, with further research on a crash program, we could use less gas and oil.

Sixth, we should make new buildings green buildings. Over the next 30 years, we should make new buildings green buildings.

Finally, participate in the international research for fusion. I know that is a long shot. But the United States should participate in trying to recreate on Earth the way the Sun creates energy.

If we had a new Manhattan project for clean energy independence that began by doing what we already know how to do--drill offshore, create more nuclear power, and do the seven things I mentioned--that would be the kind of policy we should adopt and people would respect us for. But what happened? We didn't take it up. When we left in August, despite the fact that, according to surveys by Dave Winston, 81 percent of the American people agree with the idea of a new Manhattan project for clean energy independence, we were still arguing about whether we ought to be discussing high gasoline prices.

Unfortunately, the Democratic leader didn't want to allow us to bring up legislation that we wanted to bring up, which would find more American energy. Apparently, that has changed a little bit, and I am glad to see that. We may have some choices this month.

The question is: What can we do in the next 3 weeks? We are having an energy summit on Friday. That is good. The Democratic and Republican leader and the Democratic and Republican head of the Energy Committee will organize it. It would have been better if we had it in June or July. But that is good. Apparently, we will have legislation to consider, perhaps from the House, and perhaps Senator Bingaman will have legislation. And there is the legislation that the group called the Gang of 10, 16, or 20, a group working in a bipartisan way to solve the problem, is working on. We Republicans offered the Gas Price Reduction Act, which includes drilling offshore, encouraging electric cars, dealing with speculation and oil shale in the Western States. That would be a start.

As the Senator from Texas said, we have to deal with the question in the appropriations process that has restricted all these years our ability to drill offshore. You see, we stick it in the appropriations bill every year and say you cannot drill offshore. So we are going to have to deal with that by the end of the month. The responsible way to do that is to bring it up and vote on it. Let everybody stand up and say whether they think it is a good idea to give every single American State the opportunity to drill for oil and gas at least 50 miles offshore, and for that State to keep 37.5 percent of the proceeds. If I were the Governor of a State with a coastline, which I am not, I would be doing that quickly and using those revenues for higher education, keeping taxes down, and improving the environment.

At the very least, we should make certain in these next 3 weeks that we do job one, which is, to me, making sure that we drill offshore to produce American energy. That would keep $50 billion or $60 billion more at home and send a signal that the third largest producer of oil in the world is willing to produce, and it would at least get us started down the road to finding more American oil and using less foreign oil.

I ask unanimous consent that my remarks in Oak Ridge in May about a new Manhattan project for energy independence be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I had a brief question for the Republican leader.

Nearly 2 weeks ago, when the Democratic leader brought the speculation Energy bill to the floor, isn't it true that we met and said we look forward to a balanced debate where we can get a result, and we believe in the law of supply, as well as demand, and, therefore, we think we should come up with a proposal for finding more and using less?

On the finding more side, which we talked a lot about today, we had offshore drilling and oil shale, which would produce over time about 3 million barrels a day. We talked about nuclear power for more American energy.

But we have even more on the demand side, on the using less side. In our case, the idea was, was it not, to create an environment in the United States where, as rapidly as possible, we could encourage the use of plug-in electric cars. Is there not much support on the other side of the aisle for that?

So my question to the leader is: Why is it that when Republicans, nearly 2 weeks ago, suggested a proposal for finding more that would produce 3 million more barrels a day, eventually--that is a third more production--and using less that would save 4 million barrels a day, which together would have cut in half, over time, our imported oil--why is it we have been unable, for the last 2 weeks nearly, to actually begin to debate and adopt such amendments and produce a bill that would send a signal to the world that the United States of America is taking an action to find more oil and to use less oil, which would bring down the price of gasoline? Why have we not been able to do that?

Madam President, I thank the leader.

Mr. President, I wonder if I might ask, through the Chair, the Senator from Maryland if I might speak after the Senator from New Mexico.

I thank the Chair.

Thank you. I can wait until there is available time.

Mr. President, do I understand I have up to 30 minutes?

I thank the Chair. I ask unanimous consent that I may bring demonstrative evidence on the floor and use it during my remarks.

Mr. President, in case anyone is wondering, these boxes, which are nearly as tall as I am, are the rules and regulations that our 6,000 colleges and universities must comply with in order to receive students who have a Federal grant or loan. As I will make clear in my remarks, my primary objection to the legislation I am about to address is that the legislation doubles the size of this stack of boxes. My fear is we are undermining the quality of American higher education. The greatest threat, I believe, to American higher education is not underfunding, it is overregulation.

Before I say that, let me first say a word, as has been said before, about Senator Kennedy, Senator Enzi, and Senator Mikulski. While they have, among themselves, different philosophical views, I regard each of them as institutions whom I greatly admire. In other words, they like to work within this body across party lines to get a result. I thank both Senator Enzi and Senator Mikulski for the courtesy accorded me in the development of this result. And as every other Member of this body does, I greatly admire Senator Kennedy for his tenacity and his commitment to education. Obviously, we wish he were here tonight to join us.

Because I admire Senator Kennedy and Senator Mikulski and Senator Enzi does not mean I have to admire the particular result of this work. After 4 years, the Senate has spewed forth a well-intentioned contraption of unnecessary rules and regulations that waste time and money that ought to be spent on students and improving quality. It confirms my belief that the greatest threat to the quality of American higher education is not underfunding, it is overregulation.

Current Federal rules for the 6,000 higher education institutions that accept students with Federal grants or loans fill a stack of boxes that is nearly as tall as I am. The former President of Stanford, Gerhard Casper, estimated

that it cost these institutions from Harvard to the Nashville Auto Diesel College 7 cents of each federal dollar to do all the busy work to fill out these regulations.

The legislation which we are considering tonight doubles those rules and regulations with 24 new categories and 100 new reporting requirements. These new requirements include a total of 54 so-called college watch lists which I believe will be too confusing for families to understand, and complicated rules involving textbooks which only will prove that Members of Congress have no idea about how faculty members prepare their courses.

Most of these complications of rules, graduation rates in 48 different categories, disaggregation of student reporting dates by 14 racial, ethnic, and income subgroups, employment of graduates of institutions will leave college administrators scratching their heads and create thousands of new jobs for people who know how to fill out forms.

All of this will be put on the Web, I suppose, and most of it will be sent to Washington, DC, for someone to read. Having once been the Secretary of Education myself, I do not know who will read all these new regulations and all these new reports, and I don't know what they would do about them if they did read them.

The American higher education system is far from perfect, but it is one thing in our country that works and it works well. It is our secret weapon in maintaining our brain power advantage so we can keep our higher standard of living and keep our jobs from going overseas.

The United States not only has the best colleges and universities in the world, it has almost all of the best colleges and universities in the world. Some are big, some are small, some are public, some are private, some are profit, some are nonprofit. They are community colleges, historically Black colleges and church-affiliated institutions.

Tuitions range from $50,000 a year at some private institutions to an average of $6,200 a year for 4-year public institutions, to $2,400 for community colleges. In Tennessee, some cities are even making community college free.

Their foremost advantage, the advantage of all these 6,000 institutions, is that in a rapidly changing world, these 6,000 autonomous institutions are flexible and able to meet the needs of their student customers.

Federal support for higher education goes almost all to these students. It does not go to the institutions. A little of it does, but almost all of it goes to the students who then choose the schools, forcing the institutions to compete, stay flexible and meet real needs. That is the precisely opposite way we fund kindergarten through the 12th grade. We give the money to elementary and secondary institutions, tending to freeze them into whatever they have been doing for the last 50 years.

We can compare the success of our higher education system with the lack of success of our K through 12 system and wonder whether the reason might not be that in higher education, we focus on autonomy, choice, and competition.

Generous research dollars in higher education are for the most part competitively awarded, which also helps to keep the institutions on their toes.

The rest of the world is busy trying to emulate the American system of higher education, which means other countries are creating more autonomy, more choices, and more competition. Yet here we are in the Senate today cluttering up our secret weapon with the same bureaucratic nonsense that has stifled excellence in universities in other parts of the world and will do it here if these trends are not reversed.

There is a great deal of beating of breasts about how much good this bill does to address the problem of college costs. It is ironic that the same legislation would add to tuition costs by imposing unnecessary regulations. And it is especially ironic that the very Members of Congress who are complaining the most about rising tuition costs fail to see that at least for public institutions, which about 70 percent of our students attend, Members of Congress are the cause of the rising costs. This is why it is true that State support for higher education has been low during this decade.

Between 2000 and 2006, State spending for higher education increased by only 17 percent, while tuition at public institutions during that time was up 63 percent. It is also true that the reason tuition costs are up is that State spending is down.

But what Members of Congress seem to be missing is that the principal reason State support of higher education is down is because Congress has mandated that States pay so much for programs such as Medicaid or fail to meet their commitments to programs like the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, IDEA. When the Governors and legislatures are through paying for the mandates for Medicaid or to make up the lack of the Federal Government's commitment to IDEA, there is very little left for higher education.

When Federal requirements for Medicaid dictate that State spending for Medicaid goes up 7 or 8 percent a year when the overall State budget is only going up 3 or 4 percent a year, the money has to come from somewhere. States have to balance their budgets, and in State after State, the money has been coming from higher education. That was true in Tennessee during the 1980s, when I was the Governor, and it is even more true today.

During the 1980s, my major goal was to try to help us to spend at least 50 percent of our State tax dollar on education. My major adversary was Federal Medicaid. While I ultimately did succeed in getting to 50 cents, I had to squeeze it and push it and try to control it, and still it grew faster than everything else in the State budget. I was able to do that then because Medicaid and other health services were only about 15 cents of the State tax dollar. But by this decade, 2003 and 2004, the number was 40 percent of the State tax dollars in Tennessee went to education, not 50, and 31 cents went to Medicaid and health services. I am confident most of the cutting came out of higher education, which resulted in most of the tuition increases so the universities could operate and pay their bills.

I would respectfully suggest that we in Congress need to start along two completely different tracks if we want to retain the autonomy, competition, and choice that has led to quality and access to American higher education. First, we need to deregulate, not overregulate higher education. Cut this stack of rules and regulations in half and use the time and the money for students and for academic excellence.

Second, we need to stop loading State budgets with so many unfunded Federal mandates. For example, if Congress were to fully fund IDEA, the program for students with disabilities, at 40 percent of its cost, which is what Congress said it would do in the 1970s, that would add $250 million to Tennessee's revenue stream. I am sure much of this would go straight to higher education, whose annual budget is about $1.2 billion.

More importantly, we need to give States more flexibility in dealing with Medicaid costs and give them an opportunity to take steps to make it easier to free themselves from outdated Federal Court consent decrees, which restrict the ability of Governors and legislators to direct money to higher education priorities. Then, of course, there is the REAL ID, another $4 billion in unfunded mandates for the States, and out of which pot do you think the States might take that? Higher education would be my guess. Most Governors and legislators can point to many more unfunded Federal mandates.

These two steps are the best way to drive down college costs and to maintain academic excellence.

There are major accomplishments in this bill, some of which I have worked on and of which I am proud. They include simplifying the Federal student aid form and allowing year-round Pell grants for students making progress toward a degree. There is a new compliance calendar, which the Secretary of Education will be required to develop, that will set forth all of the reports and the disclosures required under the Higher Education Act. I am proud to say I suggested that. In other words, the new Secretary of Education will have to make a calendar listing every single report that has to be complied with, so the small Catholic college in Baltimore might not have to hire three more people in to go through this growing stack of requirements.

I authored the restrictions prohibiting the Secretary of Education from regulating student learning standards or requiring accreditors to adopt specific measures of learning assessment, which would have been additional federalizing of our 6,000 autonomous institutions.

There is an accountability research grant in this bill to focus attention on institutions making progress in measuring student achievement and asking the advisory committee, which has already done such good work in simplifying the student application form, to review this stack of growing Federal regulations. I also sponsored the new discretionary grant program for Teach for America.

All these actions in this bill are for the good, as is the increase in the availability of Pell grants for students who need help attending college. But I cannot support a piece of legislation that so undermines the excellence in higher education that comes from institutional autonomy.

I would like to offer a few letters and statements, and I ask unanimous consent they be printed in the Record following my remarks.

Mr. President, the first of these is a release today from the National Governors Association, which points out that Governors are responsible for making funding decisions that serve the best interests of all citizens. The Governors, in their release, say:

Maintenance of effort undermines governors' authority and

guarantees students and their families will be writing larger

not smaller tuition checks in the future. This is not the

answer to affordable higher education. Governors oppose the

higher education bill because of the negative impacts of the

maintenance of effort and implore Congress to vote against

it.

We had a vote on stripping out the maintenance-of-effort bill, but I lost that by one vote in the conference committee. Basically, what it says is that Members of the Senate and the House will substitute their judgment for that of Governors and State legislators. My suggestion was that if we are going to pass a bill and take credit for requiring States to spend more money on higher education, whether or not they have other priorities, then we might as well also go back down to our State capitals and join in the pain and suggest to the Governors whom to lay off or what school to close or what mental hospital to limit or what tax to raise because of our requirement about higher education maintenance of effort.

The second letter I would like to include in the Record comes from the commissioner of the Department of Finance and Administration in Nashville. Our Democratic Governor, Phil Bredesen, who has done a great many good things for higher education during his 6 years, is in the midst of a budget crisis. He is reacting to the very idea that during the midst of that, when he is laying off employees and making cuts in virtually every program, that we would take it upon ourselves to say that if he doesn't increase funding for higher education, we are going to cut his Federal funding. All when we ourselves are one of the reasons he is having a hard time funding higher education, because of all our unfunded mandates.

The third letter I would like to include is from the chancellor of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, one of our most distinguished research universities and one of which I am proud to be an alumnus. It is a well-modulated letter, as you would expect from the chancellor of Vanderbilt. The letter argues very eloquently why the autonomy, competition, and choice that characterizes excellence in higher education is so important and so fragile and needs to be respected by us as we pass higher education bills, rather than to use a blunderbuss and start stacking boxes and boxes of regulations on institutions such as Vanderbilt.

Why do we think we can do a better job in the Senate making Vanderbilt University a better university by complying with all this stuff, when it takes money that might be used to educate the students and improve academic excellence? They already have deans, vice chancellors, provosts, chancellors, and a board of trustees. If they are a public institution, they have a Governor, they have a higher education commission. They have plenty of overseers. They do not need us.

Two other letters, one from the president of Duke University, office of the president, Richard Brodhead, an equally thoughtful letter about the Federal role in higher education. I might say that North Carolina has done one of the best jobs of any State in accountability for higher education.

No one is doubting we need accountability for the money the Federal Government spends. As I mentioned earlier, the dollars we spend for research, tens of millions a year, are made accountable by being competitively granted, for the most part. The dollars we spend for colleges and universities don't go to the colleges and universities, they go to the students, and the students choose the school. If they do not like the school or the cost of the school, they may go to another school. Each of those schools has to be accredited before the student can choose the school. That has been a marvelous system for helping to give autonomous institutions the freedom to be good, while at the same time allowing for accountability for the money we spend.

Finally, two letters that were written to Senator Isakson of Georgia. One is from the president of the University of Georgia, Mike Adams, who was president of two other colleges before he was president of the University of Georgia. A distinguished educator. Georgia, of course, is one of our distinguished public universities in America.

Finally, a letter from the President of Emory University, James Wagner, and the president of Georgia Tech, Gary Schuster, to Senator Isakson, making the same objections.

As I said at the beginning, I admire my colleagues, I admire their 4 years of hard work, and I admire their commitment to a result. My hope would be we could go on two different tracks from here. One would be to look for ways to deregulate higher education, not add regulations to it. Realize that in America, where we are worrying that this might work or that might work, our system of higher education, with all its warts, is the best in the world. The rest of the world is trying to emulate it. Its greatest threat, in terms of its quality, is overregulation, not underfunding.

That leads me to the second track we go on. I hope we will be careful as Members of Congress that if we have a great idea for States, that we don't pass it and send them the bill. Because I know from having been Governor and having been president of a university and having been Secretary of Education, and seeing it in different areas. As a Governor making up a budget, it's pretty well set that you start with K-12. That is pretty well set. He then goes to prisons, and that is probably in the courts. Then he does mental health. That might be in the courts too. Then he or she goes to highways, and that comes from the gas tax. Then they are pretty well down to the choice between Medicaid and higher education. I can guarantee you that if we continue to increase requirements for funding of higher education at the State level, at the rate of 7, 8 or 9 percent a year, when State budgets are only going up 2 or 3 or 4 percent a year, we will significantly reduce the quality of our State universities and colleges. We will significantly increase the tuition costs that we say in this bill we would like to lower.

Exhibit 1

National Governors Association Statement on Higher Education Bill

governors Say Inclusion of Maintenance of Effort Will Raise Tuition for

Students

Washington.--The National Governors Association released

the following statement regarding the impending vote on the

Higher Education Reauthorization bill:

``The nation's governors are committed to providing

students in their states with affordable access to higher

education and agree that the reauthorization of the Higher

Education bill is a priority. However, inclusion of the

Maintenance of Effort (MOE) provision in the bill has

negative implications for states; therefore governors oppose

the passage of the conference report with this provision.

``Governors must balance their budgets in both good and bad

economic times. This mandate means that states will be unable

to make major increases or invest one-time surpluses in

higher education during good times because they will be

penalized if forced to reduce spending during difficult

times. In the end, this will increase the cost of college for

students and their families.

``Governors are responsible for making funding decisions

that serve the best interest

of all their citizens. MOE undermines governors' authority

and guarantees that students and their families will be

writing larger, not smaller, tuition checks in the future.

This is not the answer to affordable higher education.

Governors oppose the higher education bill because of the

negative impacts of the maintenance of effort and implore

Congress to vote against it.''

I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, may I have 60 seconds to respond?

I am sorry.

If I may just acknowledge the remarks of the Senator, I feel the same way about working with her. I am delighted we will be working together to take a look at the rules and regulations that we impose from here in Congress to make sure they are useful and needed. The natural thing here is to add. It is also very natural for us to have good ideas, but we might discover that the dean or the provost or the Governor or somebody else might have a good idea as well.

This is one of those issues that has no partisan attribute whatsoever. As far as I am concerned, the Republicans are as bad as the Democrats on unfunded Federal mandates and unnecessary regulations. I look forward to an opportunity to work with the Senator from Maryland to see if we can identify a process that makes certain that institutions are accountable for the Federal dollars, but at the same time we leave them free to be excellent in their own autonomous ways.

I would say that the Senator from New Mexico knows the answer to that.

And, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from New Mexico be allowed to proceed through our remaining time in a colloquy.

So the answer is no, to the Senator from New Mexico, and I think it is important to go back to when we first started talking about this matter.

I think it might be useful to the people who are watching the Senate and wondering how we do things--maybe they have been watching C-SPAN and thinking: Well, these Senators sure know how to make a lot of fine speeches. And that is what we have been doing for the last 10 days, making speeches. But we haven't been doing anything more. But that isn't what we have wanted to do or what we do want to do now. What we want is a serious debate on legislation to lower gas prices that looks at ways to find more and use less.

The Senator from New Mexico is exactly right. We understand high gasoline prices are the product of a law we learned in economics 101. I don't know how the Senator from New Mexico did in economics 101. I imagine pretty well because he is one of our most intelligent Senators. But economics 101 says the price of a commodity, such as oil--or it might be hay or wheat or anything else--is determined by the supply as well as the demand. So what we said in our Republican caucus was that we wanted a balanced approach; that we wanted to increase the supply-- ``find more''--and we wanted to reduce the demand--``use less.''

So if I may say just for a moment, we do talk a lot about finding more.

Because that has become the issue between the two sides, really. We want to do both, and many of them don't. They want to use less, and we want to use less. But it is hard getting many of our Democratic friends to agree that even in the next 30 or 40 years we will need to use significant amounts of new American energy if we want to keep our lights on and drive our cars and heat our houses and have good jobs. It is hard for them to agree with that.

But let me be very precise about our using less. Our ``finding more'' idea was really offshore drilling and oil shale, and our ``using less'' was plug-in electric vehicles. T. Boone Pickens thinks he has a pretty good plan, and he has bought a lot of television time to advertise it, and it is pretty simple: natural gas and windmills. Ours is about as simple: offshore drilling, oil shale, and plug-in cars and trucks.

But let's talk about the ``use less'' part. That will do more for us than the ``find more'' part will. That is the Republican proposal.

We import, I believe, Senator Domenici, about 12 or 13 million barrels of oil a day. We use about 20 million barrels a day, or a quarter of all the oil in the world. So if we could find a way to use less, as well as find more, we could affect the price.

I had a visit just this afternoon from the utility manager in Austin, TX, and we talked about plug-in electric vehicles--our way of using less. What I am trying to do is make the point that there is not anybody over here on this side of the aisle who just wants to drill alone. We know we have to use less.

Now, why do we say plug-in cars and trucks? When I first started talking about that, people thought I had been out in the sun too long. I was far from the first to talk about it. Senator Hatch has introduced legislation on this issue, and it has been supported by a number of Democratic Senators as well. The director of the Austin, TX, utility started talking about it with me earlier today, and here is what he says can happen.

In Austin, TX, they have about 1 million cars and light trucks in his utility district. His judgment is that they can get up to about 10 percent of those cars--100,000--on electricity, where you just plug them in at night at home, within about 5 to 8 years without much trouble. He believes it is a reasonable goal in Austin, TX, to get half of those million cars and trucks on electricity in 10 to 15 years.

Now, Senator Domenici, if we could help the United States take half of our 240 million cars and plug them in instead of filling them up with gas, we could cut our import of foreign oil by 4 million barrels a day and stop sending money overseas. And that is our way of using less. So we want to use less.

We have other ways to do that as well. The problem is, we can't persuade our friends on the other side of the aisle to find more because when we say offshore drilling, they say: No, we can't. If we say oil shale, they say: No, we can't. Even if we say nuclear power for plugging in our cars and trucks with clean energy, they say: Sorry, not a proponent of that.

So the answer to your question is, no, we are not just for more drilling--we are all for the demand side and using less. We know that makes a difference. We would just like to have a debate and a bill about both, and we are for both. Unfortunately, our friends on the other side are not. It seems to me they are kind of repealing the supply half of the law of supply and demand.

Then there is the other half of the cars and trucks that are presumably still running on gas.

The Senator from New Mexico is right, and you are not the only one who thinks that. I picked up the New York Times a couple of days ago, and in their editorial--and they do not always agree with the Republican side of the aisle, I will have to concede--but they basically said the speculation bill is not a solution to high gas prices. Warren Buffett, who is a pretty good observer of the American economy, has said it is not speculation, it is supply and demand.

I know for people who may be watching the Senate, they may ask: What are you hung about up about in the Senate? Why don't you work across party lines and come up with some good ideas about supply and some good ideas about demand and put them in a piece of legislation and vote on it and go home and you will have taken a big step in the right direction?

We have said that is what we want to do: oil shale, offshore drilling, and plug-in cars.

The problem is, we haven't been able to do that because the Democratic leader, for some reason, is reluctant to do the supply part of supply and demand.

I would say to the Senator from New Mexico, that is 1 million barrels a day using less. What we are saying, with plug-in cars and trucks, we can cut out another 4 million barrels a day over a few years. But if we use offshore drilling and oil shale, we can add 3 million. So we can reduce by one-third our imported oil and change the price of gasoline. And I would say to the Senator from New Mexico that some people say: Well, changing the price is way off in the future. I thought that today's price is based upon the expected supply.

And the expected demand. From the day the world thought that we might increase that by a few million barrels a day, or reduce that by a few million barrels a day, the prices started going down. Am I wrong about that?

The Senator says we could have done that in maybe a week.

We could have agreed to a large number of amendments and said: Let's have an hour on each amendment and let's have a vote, and we might win some or lose some. But may I remind the Senator that Senator Reid brought this to the floor nearly 2 weeks ago. Could we not have started on that day to have amendments from the Republicans and amendments from the Democrats, limiting debate to 1-hour per amendment with all amendments germane to energy? Wouldn't that be a normal way for the Senate to work?

That is the single most important step Congress could take to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, according to experts at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Congress did that last year.

It seems as if our job, Senator, the way I always remembered it, was to look ahead 5 or 10 years.

What if President Kennedy said we can't go to the Moon because it might take 10 years or Benjamin Franklin said we can't have a republic because it might take 50 years? And we also said--you just said it: From the day we pass legislation that includes oil shale, offshore drilling, plug-in cars and trucks--from the day we do that, then the buyers and sellers of oil say: It looks as if there is going to be a larger supply and less demand, and maybe we will pay a little less for oil.

And there has been a remarkable change today just because of that legislation 4 years ago.

For nuclear powerplants.

It is the only source of large, dependable amounts of energy with no carbon, no sulphur, no mercury, no nitrogen. It is our cleanest. And as the price of coal goes up and natural gas goes up, it is the least expensive of our reliable forms of energy.

Madam President, how much time do we have remaining?

Let me ask the Senator from New Mexico on our last minute and 7 seconds, one of the descriptions I like is his description of how we need to produce more American energy as our bridge to the future when we will have a different kind of energy.

Ten to fifteen years, half of them.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my colleagues and I be allowed to speak in a colloquy in the 30 minutes we have been allocated.

I thank the Presiding Officer.

Mr. President, $4 gasoline is the subject before the Senate. It has been the subject before the Senate since the week before last. I am very encouraged that yesterday the majority leader indicated we might be able to move from talking to acting; in other words, to begin to offer amendments, debate on those amendments, and come to a result which would help lower gasoline prices.

Each week, for the last several weeks, I have been reading to the Senate e-mails and letters I have received from Tennesseans who have been hurt by the high price of gasoline.

For example, Jason from Friendsville, TN, which is a Quaker town near where I live, is a firefighter with the Blount County Fire Department. He says that currently five of their stations have only one person in them. They rely on volunteers for the rest of their support, but since gasoline is so high, response from volunteers has been very small, and they have to allow other jurisdictions to respond. He is not sure how he is going to be able to keep driving across town to help other people when he can barely help himself.

Gina from Elizabethton is a single mother who is spending about $65 each week to drive to and from work. She can barely afford groceries because everything is so expensive. She says they have been living on noodles to get by. She is very concerned that Congress and the President are doing a lot of talking but not doing anything about the problem, and she says, ``This country is in such a mess.''

William of Riceville is on disability and his wife is unable to work due to health problems. Rising gas prices have made them choose between driving to the doctor or paying for their medicine.

Tina from Nashville is a single mother struggling to support her daughter. They can't even afford to go out to the movies on the weekend, she says, because gas and food prices have risen so much. She says that right now she is spending about $200 each month on gas and prices keep going up, but her paycheck isn't going up at all.

Judy from Joelton is a 61-year-old grandmother struggling to support her daughter and granddaughter who live with her. The gas to take her granddaughter to kindergarten is costing $115 each month, and they are struggling to keep her in school. Judy says she is scared for her family. She has never seen it this difficult to get by.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that following my remarks, these letters and e-mails from constituents in Tennessee be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, as I mentioned earlier, the Senate could have, since the week before last, been bringing up amendments from the Democratic side and the Republican side with proposals for dealing with $4 gasoline. Hopefully, the majority leader and the Republican leader are coming to a conclusion today which will permit us to start doing that. We don't expect every amendment we offer to be adopted, but we do represent millions of people who want us to try to solve the problem.

We have before this Senate a very specific proposal for bringing down the price of gasoline. It is based upon the law of supply and demand: finding more and using less. Now, on this side of the aisle, we usually instinctively talk about finding more; that is, offshore drilling and oil shale, but it is also important to emphasize that part of our plan is using less.

The United States of America uses 25 percent of all the oil in the world. The fastest way for us to bring down the price of $4 gasoline, if it depends upon finding more--supply--and using less--demand--is to use less. What is the most promising way to reduce, by a large amount, the amount of oil we use? Give Big Oil some competition. We believe it is plug-in electric cars and trucks. There are a great many Democrats who believe the same thing. That is part of our plan. That is what we would like to have had on this floor for the last 10 days to discuss.

The bottom line is this: major auto companies--Ford, General Motors, Nissan, Toyota--have told us that in 2010, they will begin selling to us cars and trucks that can be plugged into our wall sockets at home and filled for 60 cents or so instead of filled with gasoline for $80 or so.

Now, most of these cars and trucks will be hybrids; in other words, they will have a gasoline engine and they will have an electric engine. Because there are new, more powerful batteries, these cars will be able to go, in effect, about 100 miles per gallon. These are not being produced by the Government; these are being produced by the car people, so they are coming.

In addition to that, we have plenty of electricity. We see a lot on television from Mr. Boone Pickens, who has a plan, and it would require building a lot of new, large wind turbines for electricity, which might be a good plan. Our plan doesn't require building anything for electricity because we already have it. About half our electricity at night is idle. We are not using it for anything. We are asleep. Our lights are off. Computers are down. We are not using a lot of our electricity, so we can plug in our cars at night--the electricity would be cheap--run our cars on electricity instead of oil, and here would be the result: We would be trading, car by car, foreign oil for unused electric capacity.

Ninety-eight percent of our transportation is oil. Two percent of our electricity is oil. Half our electricity at night is not being used. So we could begin, year by year, gradually converting cars and trucks to electricity, instead of gasoline made from oil. If we converted the whole fleet of cars and light trucks, that would take many years and probably we would never convert them all, but if we did, we would get rid of 10 million of the 13 million barrels of imported oil we have today. Or, if we converted half the fleet--which is a realistic assumption over a number of years--we would reduce by 40 percent our imported oil and cut by 25 percent our total oil consumption.

So plug-in cars, which the car companies are making and which we would like to create the environment to support, are coming, and we have the electricity. In other words, the cars are coming, we have the electricity; all we need is the cord, and that is the most promising way to reduce oil.

I see the Senator from Texas is here. The use less part is something that both sides of the aisle probably can agree on, although I don't know why we haven't been fashioning a program over the last 10 days to do that. We could have been debating whether to have tax credits, whether to have advanced battery research, but we haven't. Where we get stuck is over whether we need more supply.

Our formula is pretty simple: Offshore drilling, oil shale, and plug- in cars and trucks. I say to the Senator from Texas, it seems that whenever we get to the question of needing more American energy, that is where we have a difference of opinion with the other side of the aisle.

I think the Senator is exactly right. In the newspapers today and yesterday was the story of how in India they are introducing a new car which will be sold for $2,500. Now, there are more than a billion people in India. They have a middle class that is bigger than the whole population of the United States of America. When suddenly tens of millions of people in India begin to drive cars that are powered by gasoline, what happens to the demand for oil in that country? The demand goes up, and if the supply doesn't go up, too, the price goes up.

We have the same thing in China. There is a story in the Washington Post today, which is part of a series, about how the Chinese, actually, for status purposes, like driving Hummers. They like big cars. Here we Americans are going to small cars and the Chinese are going to big cars and there are a lot of them as well. We know the demand for oil and gasoline is going up around the world, and we are in the world market. So for the foreseeable future, as we move to a different kind of economy--a different kind of energy picture--we are going to need at least as much oil as we have today.

I say to the Senator, I think the question is: Are we going to be sending $600 billion or $700 billion overseas to buy it, or are we going to be paying ourselves to use it during the next 10, 20, 30 years while we are moving to a different type of energy environment?

Not only do I agree with the Senator from Texas, but so does Jason from Friendsville, TN, and Gina from Elizabethton and William from Riceville and Tina from Nashville. Tennesseans want us focused on $4 gasoline. I think the Senator is being generous when he says our position is that the Senate should stay on $4 gasoline until we are finished.

Our position is we wish to get on it. We have been talking about it. We have a right to talk, but until the majority leader creates an environment so we can begin to offer amendments we can then vote on and come to a result on, we cannot act as a Senate. To his credit, yesterday he made such a proposal. I understand he is talking about it with the Republican leader. But we could have been doing this ever since a week ago Friday.

I say to the Senator from Texas, sometimes I hear people say, well, it won't do much good to drill offshore. The debate will probably be between some senators who will say let's do a little more drilling where we already allow ourselves to drill, in the 15 percent, and those of us who will say let's give States the option to drill 50 miles offshore in the 85 percent of the Outer Continental Shelf, where we can't drill today. By most conservative estimates, that will create over time about a million barrels of oil a day. Some say that is not very much in the whole world, but I think of it this way: Every million barrels of oil we produce here at $130 a barrel is 1 million times $130 we are not sending over there to somebody else. If the third largest producer, the United States, adds 1 million barrels a day to its supply, that is a significant addition on the supply side. So it seems to me that our contribution, in terms of offshore drilling, both would reduce our dependence upon foreign oil, keeping money in this country, and make a contribution to the supply side, which helps bring down the price in the world.

The answer is yes. I appreciate the Senator's question very much. His figure of about 3 million barrels a day is realistic. He mentioned ANWR, the area in Alaska, which is actually the most readily available to us. The history on that is going back to 1980, when President Carter agreed that 17 million or so acres would be put in the Arctic Refuge and off limits to any sort of drilling, but that 1\1/2\ million could be drilled. When they were finished drilling, they would go into the refuge. So that has been in place for a long time. There is a pipeline there. Also, one well is there. So that oil would be coming quickly. There is infrastructure around many of the areas where we would do offshore drilling in the United States. But the answer is yes to the Senator's question. If the United States added 3 million barrels to our production, that would be more than a third of an increase in the production capacity of the third largest producer in the world. What if we heard that Saudi Arabia was going to increase production by a third? The effect on buyers and sellers of oil would be immediate. Martin Feldstein, a former chairman of President Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers, pointed out that today's price of oil depends upon the expected supply and demand of oil. So if we elect, as the U.S. Government, to say we are going to significantly increase our supply by a third, and we are going to reduce our use of oil by about a third, over time, from the day we announced that new energy policy, I believe it begins to stabilize and drive down the price of oil.

I see the Senator from Arizona here. The issue often comes up about what role speculation has in all of this. Of course, that is what buyers and sellers of oil do. They are guessing: Will the price go up or go down?

My view always has been that the way you deal with speculation is increase the supply or reduce the demand, because the expected future price, supply, and future demand affects today's price.

The Senator from Arizona is an expert on taxation and financial matters. I wonder what his view is on the effect of speculation on today's oil prices.

Mr. President, how much time do we have remaining?

If supply and demand is the major way to deal with speculation, I believe the Republican legislation, the Gas Price Reduction Act, has in it a couple of legislative suggestions for how we might appropriately deal with speculation, without interfering with supply and demand. The Senator from Texas helped to author that piece of legislation.

Yes.

I thank the Senator from Arizona. That is a fair characterization. Unless we include new American sources of energy, our electric prices are going up, gasoline prices are going up, and our jobs are going overseas. We need both--to find more and use less--and we need to do it now. The $4 gasoline price we are suffering from today is the first recognition that in addition to losing less we have to use more new American energy. For us, that includes offshore drilling, oil shale, as well as plug-in cars and trucks.

We should work across party lines to find more American energy, use less, and that would bring down prices.

I thank the Senators from Arizona and Texas who yielded.

Exhibit 1

To: Alexander, Senator (Alexander)

Subject: Gas Prices

Hello My Name is Jason from Friendsville, TN. I am a

Firefighter with the Blount County Fire Department. If you

dont know we only have 1 man at 5 of our stations we have 7

stations and the rest of the time we depend on volunteers to

respond to our emergency and help us, and for the full timers

that is a great chunk of our yearly income is running calls

on our day off. Because of gas prices our response to some of

the emergencies has been very small we have been calling on

other departments for help and that ties up their resources

should they have an emergency in their jurisdiction. I know

they say supply and demand but it is almost like a monopoly

they can charge whatever and we have to pay. Someone has to

go help put the fire out how much profit do you need to make

to live comfortably. I am not sure but just because you say

oil is up is no reason for you to raise prices to keep your

income the same while ours greatly decreases. I heard our

president say we have to stop our dependency on oil and then

! he gets on a jet a jumbo jet with some guide planes and

flies all over the place to accomplish nothing but say they

have us over a barrel and it is our fault, and then gets on

that same jet and flies home to Texas for a day or two to

help relieve the stress. I am not saying he has done a

horrible job I just think he is failing us greatly in this

regard. The gas prices are killng a family of 5 who lives off

of a fireman's income and a wife's who does medical billing I

am not sure how long I can drive across town to help someone

when I can't help myself. The emergency would have to be in

my back yard if this keeps up.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Alaska.

I ask unanimous consent, if it has not been asked already, that we conduct the next 30 minutes as in a colloquy.

Mr. President, a week ago yesterday the Democratic leader brought to the floor an energy bill. It was limited to speculation. But we welcomed that, we on the Republican side. I think the American people welcomed it, because the most important issue facing our country is $4 gasoline.

We are sending billions of dollars overseas to people, many of whom are trying to kill us by bankrolling terrorists. We are emptying our pockets to buy gasoline. I have e-mails and letters, as all Senators do--in my case from Tennesseans--from Marines who come home and do not have the money to take a family vacation, and from moms who are losing their jobs because they cannot afford to commute.

So we welcomed the Democratic leader's bringing to the floor a week from yesterday the speculation bill. What we want to do in this 30 minutes is let the American people know what we could have accomplished in this last week if only the Democratic leader would have allowed a full and open debate on gas prices, including proposals to both find more and use less.

You hear a lot of words here on the floor. I couldn't believe what I was hearing a few minutes ago. I thought I must be in the United Nations without translators, because, I mean, what the Democratic leader says he said is not what any of us heard him say.

What we heard him say, when we asked to say: Let us bring up gas prices, let us talk about the real problems, let us talk about speculation, let us talk about supply, let us talk about demand, let us debate, let us vote, we have said: Let's come to some agreement about a number of amendments on each side. Limit them to energy, limit the amount of time, vote on them, see if we can take a serious step toward dealing with $4 gasoline.

What we have said is we want to find more and use less. Now, why do we say that? Because the whole problem of $4 gasoline boils down to a couple of things: the expected increased demand for gasoline worldwide, especially in places like China and India where people are becoming richer and driving more cars; and the decreased supply.

The United States can make a significant contribution to both demand and supply. Finding more is the way you deal with supply; using less is the way you deal with demand. So we offered one amendment that 44 senators agreed with that said: Let us do offshore drilling for oil and gas. Now, 85

percent of the area that should be available to offshore drilling is not available because of a congressional law. We said: Let's give States the option to do that.

Secondly, we said: Let's take off the moratorium on oil shale in the western States, and proceed in an environmentally sound way to find more oil. Doing those two things over time, the Department of Interior has said, would increase by one-third United States oil production.

On the other side, we said: Let's use less by making commonplace plug-in electric cars and trucks. We have 240 million cars and trucks in America. We use gasoline to run almost all of them. That comes from oil. If we instead began to use electricity to run those cars and trucks, we could cut in half the amount of oil we import and we could do it without building any new powerplants because we have so much electricity available at night when we are asleep. The powerplants rev down and they have got a lot of unused electricity. So you could literally, with a plug-in electric car, plug it in at night for 60 cents--that is your fill-up--and drive 30 or 40 miles on your electric battery before the gasoline engine kicks in, in your hybrid car.

This is no far-fetched idea. Nissan, General Motors, Ford, Toyota-- all will have these cars on the markets. Half of our electric power is unused at night. So we have got the cars coming, we have got the power, all we need is the cord. In the Congress we have substantial agreement across party lines to do that.

We have a variety of other ideas that could help us find more and use less. For example, we would like to make it easier for more nuclear powerplants. But on the other side they say no.

But what we are trying to say is, Mr. Democratic Leader, let us come to the floor and do what we could have been doing for the last 8 days and try to fashion a serious effort at lowering gasoline prices. Start saying yes, we can, instead of no, we cannot.

I see the Senator from Alaska here, who is one of the ranking Senators on the Energy Committee and one of the most knowledgeable on this issue. I would ask her: What do you think we might have accomplished in these last 8 days, and what could we still accomplish?

I thank the Senator. I see the Senator from South Dakota. No one more vigorously advocates for the type alternative energy that the Senator from Alaska was talking about funding research for. The Senator from Alaska talked about the importance of research for advanced biofuels such as cellulosic ethanol. I have heard you talk about that before. It is a very promising area in addition to the ethanol we already produce.

How much time do we have remaining?

Would the Chair please let me know when 5 minutes remains.

The Senator from Utah is here. He has served in the Senate for a while. We only have about 10 more minutes, and several colleagues are here who would like to speak. Doesn't the Senator from Utah think it is a great disappointment that we have not been able, instead of just talking about gas prices, to do something about gas prices? Can he help some of us who have been here a little less longer in the Senate understand how that could have happened?

I thank the Senator.

The Senator from Wyoming is here. He has been actively involved in a variety of energy issues and a member of the Energy Committee. He has been an active participant in the energy debate in this Chamber. Has the Senator not heard the Republican leader repeatedly say to the Democratic leader: We are ready to talk about supply and demand. We are ready to deal with, say, seven amendments from the Republican side and seven from the Democratic side and to vote on them and to have a time limited debate, and our whole purpose is a serious purpose to try to get a result; so can we not do that? Has he not heard that time and time again. And, if so, why does he suppose we are not doing that?

Is it not true that one of the leading environmental groups has said that if we can find a way to capture carbon from coal plants, that is the best long-term solution to climate change?

I assume that during the last 8 days, instead of just debating or speaking in languages that we don't seem to understand from each side, we could have actually considered an amendment to have aggressive research in carbon capture to accelerate the possibility that we could deal with climate change, clean air, energy independence, and have plenty more electricity for plug-in cars and trucks that everyone seems to favor.

Mr. President, how much time remains?

I see the Senator from Tennessee, a member of the Energy Committee. He is one of the newer Members of the Senate. He has his feet pretty firmly on the ground. I am sure he is here to try to accomplish something. I wondered if he has any reflection about these last 8 days and our ability to try to deal with the No. 1 issue facing the American people, $4 gasoline.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. President, Senator Domenici from New Mexico has served in the Senate for 36 years. He is the ranking member on the Energy Committee. I ask him, can you help us understand why, with so many Senators willing today--and for the last 8 days--to deal with this issue, we are not dealing with it? And why the Democratic leader seems to be determined to avoid doing any single thing that would produce more American energy?

Mr. President, I ask the Senator, what about the amendment by Senator Domenici to make it easier to build five or six nuclear plants a year, so we could have more clean energy; would that be in order?

Why would it not be in order?

I thank the Presiding Officer.

Mr. President, I thank my colleagues.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Alabama. The Senator from Oklahoma wishes to speak, but before that, I would like to make a unanimous consent request.

The majority leader said we could offer amendments on energy that dealt with gas prices. We said we hadn't heard that to be the case for the last 8 days, but we are eager to do that. So I would like to renew, once again, the unanimous consent request that would establish a way in which this Senate on Monday could take up $4-a-gallon gasoline, with amendments on each side of the aisle and debate them with a limited time agreement and try to come to a result on both the issues of more supply and less demand.

I ask unanimous consent that the Senate consider the pending energy speculation measure in the following manner: that the bill be subject to energy-related amendments only; provided further that the amendments be considered in an alternating manner between the two sides of the aisle.

I further ask consent that the bill remain the pending business to the exclusion of all other business other than privileged matters or items that are agreed to jointly by the two leaders.

I further ask consent that the first seven amendments to be offered on this side of the aisle by the Republican leader or his designee be the following: Outer Continental Shelf exploration plus plug-in hybrid cars; No. 2, oil shale plus conservation; No. 3, Alaska energy production plus conservation; No. 4, the Gas Price Reduction Act; No. 5, the clean nuclear energy amendment; No. 6, the coal-to-liquid energy amendment for military aviation fuel, plus the conservation provisions in that amendment; and No. 7, LIHEAP.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. President, I would like to thank the Senator for his remarks. I stayed also to hear Senator Coburn, and I am glad I did. It was an important speech for this body in a whole variety of ways.

The Senator from Alabama spoke about one of the ways, but another way is that he reminded us that we are here not to advance our own political interests. I don't think most of us feel as if we are. We come here from a variety of different directions. For most of us, it is an accident we are here. We don't take ourselves all that seriously. We know it is just a set of circumstances that put us here, and we work hard. I think most of us get up every day hoping by the end of the day that we will think of something constructive to do that will help the country. But the functioning of the Senate has failed us in our ability to do that.

I have tried to put my finger on it over the last 6 years. I am not sure I have all the answers. I came here 40 years ago, with Howard Baker, in 1967. I was very young, just out of law school, and I watched things. It is never very easy--in a big complex country like this--to resolve things, and so many of the tougher issues get thrown here. We are supposed to have big issues and fierce debates and big arguments and differences of opinion. That is what we are for. But the tradition has always been that when they come here, we not only bring them up and discuss them, but we resolve them; that we come to some conclusion. That is a part of what Senator Coburn says as well.

We are not able to do that when the structure of the Senate keeps us for 9 days, as an example, from dealing with the single most important issue facing our country--high gas prices.

Senator Coburn spoke about another equally important issue to our country--our fiscal condition in the country. So we need to think about what we need to do to change the structure of our Senate. I know many on the other side must feel the same way. I served with some of them when we were Governors and we were of different parties. I know they are well intentioned. We have our private conversations. We all express to each other our disappointment that we are not able to focus on a major issue and show respect for our opinions and then come to a result. We must do that.

Our country faces many serious challenges. The fiscal condition of our country has to be dealt with in the next 6 years. It has to be dealt with. The challenge of energy independence has to be dealt with. Our health care system has to be dealt with. We can't do that with a dysfunctional Senate. We simply can't do that. So we need to dedicate ourselves to working across party lines and to putting the country first and partisan considerations second.

I think most of us would rather do that. But there are a few here who prevent that, and perhaps we just need to overcome it. Maybe we are spending all our spare time in too many partisan meetings. Maybe we need to spend more together.

But I stayed to listen to Senator Coburn because I respect him. There are very few Senators who are more valuable in our Senate than he. He is obviously here not for some partisan purpose. He has a sense of purpose about our country and about our Senate. I commend him for it, and I am glad I had the privilege of hearing him speak this afternoon.

I thank the Chair.

How much time remains?

I ask unanimous consent to enter into a colloquy with my Republican colleagues for the 18\1/2\ minutes.

Would the Chair be so kind as to let me know when 1 minute remains?

Mr. President, the Senate just voted, because of the way Republicans voted, to stay on $4 gasoline until we can find a serious solution to this problem. This is the biggest problem facing our country. The point we are trying to make is that we think we ought to take it up, take a week, take several days, offer our ideas, and the Democratic ideas--there are many about which we agree--and see if we can make some substantial progress to finding more oil and gas and using less oil and gas, which is the way we lower price if you believe in the law of supply and demand.

What we have discovered, to our surprise--we are willing to do both, to find more and use less, but the Democratic leader, at least, is not. Whenever we say we want to use more, he says: No, we can't. More oil shale: No. More offshore drilling: No.

So what we would like to emphasize in these next few minutes is that, unlike the way the Democratic leader has characterized our proposal, we are equally interested in using less oil and finding more. After all, the United States uses 25 percent of all the oil in the world. So if we really want to reduce the demand for oil as a way of affecting price, we need to get serious about using less oil as well as finding more.

I went to Oak Ridge National Laboratory in May and suggested we need a new Manhattan Project for clean energy independence, to put us on a path, over the next 5 years, toward clean energy independence. We would start with doing the things we already know how to do, such as building more nuclear powerplants--we know how to do that--offshore drilling, for which 85 percent of the Outer Continental Shelf is now, by law, off limits.

But I mentioned, then, several things we do not know how to do. We ought to have crash programs and do them quickly. One was to make solar energy cost competitive with fossil fuels in 5 years. Another was research in advanced biofuels so we can make alternative fuels from crops we do not eat as well as crops such as corn that we do eat. That is another way to use less oil. Another is to make all new buildings green buildings. We waste a lot of energy, and much of it is in our buildings. Another goal is to make plug-in electric cars and trucks commonplace. That is another way to use less oil.

The Senator from Alabama has been an effective spokesman not only for using and finding more American energy but for using less of it. I heard him on the floor yesterday, and I would ask the Senator, isn't it true that an essential part of the Republican plan--but let's call it the American plan--for really dealing with the price of gasoline today is to deal with both supply and demand, and that we are equally interested in the demand part and using less part as we are in the supply part?

Mr. President, I say to the Senator from Alabama, I was just thinking last night, we could have been taking these amendments up since last Friday. The Democratic leader brought up his speculation bill, which is a perfectly appropriate energy bill to bring to the floor, and instead of having the Senator from Delaware come make a speech about nuclear power, he could have offered an amendment about nuclear power. So we could have already spent 1 whole week dealing with issues on the supply side and demand side that would help lower the price of gasoline and other expenses.

Mr. President, I say to the Senator from Alabama, one of the parts of the Republican proposal is to make plug-in electric cars and trucks commonplace, which sounds like a startling idea the first time you hear it, the idea that you would just take your car or your truck and plug it into the wall at home and fill it up with electricity instead of gasoline.

But the fact is, Nissan announced in Tennessee the other day that it will have a pure electric car out in about 3 years. General Motors, Toyota, Ford--they are all going to be selling these cars. We are going to have the cars. The Tennessee Valley Authority, which serves the region where we live, says it has plenty of electricity at night which it can sell at low cost. So we have the cars coming. We have the electricity. All we need is the cord.

We could use a debate and discussion on the Senate floor to help make this country a place in which plug-in electric cars and trucks would succeed. That is part of our amendment.

I ask the Senator from Alabama, don't you think there is widespread support for plug-in cars and trucks on that side and widespread support on this side? Why don't we have some amendments about that? Why aren't we allowed to do it?

Mr. President, that is exactly my view. What makes it especially appealing is that the Government is not in charge of it. The car companies are making the cars. The utilities have the electricity. It is estimated that we could electrify half of our cars and trucks in America without building a single new powerplant.

It would.

I see the Senator from South Dakota, who has been in many ways the foremost champion of renewable energy here. We often hear him say that in the Dakotas they have more opportunity for wind energy, which, to the extent we use it, would reduce the amount of oil we use if we plug in electric cars and trucks, as an example, or use biofuels that are an alternative fuel.

I wonder if the Senator from South Dakota would not agree that using less oil, giving big oil some competition, is not a big part of the Republican proposal?

Mr. President, the Senator who has helped us frame the debate has arrived on the floor, the Republican leader. I have heard him say repeatedly that we want a result. This is not a time for playing games. This is not a time for scoring points. This is a

time when Americans--South Dakotans, Alabamians, Tennesseans--we are all hurting.

I get stories from marines who do not have money for their vacation with their family after 18 months in Iraq, from moms who are losing their job because they cannot afford the commute.

We have an opportunity. We could be doing it this day. We could be debating Senator Thune's proposals on wind and renewable energy and biofuels, Senator Sessions' proposals on conservation and plug-in vehicles. Yet we are in this parliamentary procedure to block us from offering anything that has to do with finding more and using less-- except the one proposal.

I see the Republican leader in the Chamber. I wonder if he would agree with me that the American people are ready for the Senate to act and get a result on $4 gasoline, and the Republicans are at least as interested in using less oil, giving big oil some competition, as we are in finding more?

We should start today. I wonder if the Senator would agree with me. What I hope I never hear on the Senate floor again is it will take 10 years or it will take 5 years because, I wonder what we are supposed to do, not look ahead for the kind of country we want for our children?

What if President Kennedy said: I would like to go to the Moon, but it will take 10 years, so forget it. What if President Roosevelt had said: We need to build an atom bomb to win World War II, but it is going to take 3 years, so we better drop that idea. Or what if Benjamin Franklin had said: I would like to see a republic for these colonies, but it might take 50 years, so let's not do that.

Our job is to look down the road a few years and try to create a better environment for people. In addition, the price of gasoline today is based upon the expected supply and expected demand tomorrow. So if this world saw the United States of America take major steps today to change the supply and demand in the world for oil and gas, the price would be affected today, in my view.

I wonder if the Senator from South Dakota would agree that the family budget--

--that the family budget is more important than the legislative calendar, and that the family budget in America is more important than a legislative vacation, and what we ought to be doing today and over the weekend and next week is figuring out what to do about $4 gasoline by finding more and using less.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to enter into a colloquy with my Republican colleagues for the remaining 30 minutes of our time.

Madam President, if you have been watching television lately, you have seen Boone Pickens. In the Democratic caucus, you have seen Boone Pickens. In the Republican caucus, you have seen Boone Pickens. Boone Pickens has said a lot of things, but the thing he says that I think most of us agree with here is that we are in the midst of the greatest transfer of wealth in our country's history as we pay for foreign oil and that we do not need talk, we need action.

In these next few minutes, what we hope to do on the Republican side of the aisle is make absolutely clear what we are trying to achieve over the weekend and during this week.

What we see is that $4 gasoline prices are the single biggest problem facing our country. What we know is that what the people of this country want us to do is to take up this issue, give it our best ideas, vote on it, and come up with a substantial result that increases the supply of new energy and reduces the demand for energy, which is the way you change the price of energy. That should be simple enough to do, but the fact is that the Democratic

leader has had us all tied up in parliamentary knots since last Friday. We could have been doing this every single day since last Friday.

Just to give an idea of what we have in mind, we have a real solution in mind: conservation; deep-sea exploration; removing the moratorium on oil shale so that, in an environmentally safe way, we can proceed with that; Alaskan energy production; clean nuclear power; military coal-to- liquid transportation fuels; home heating oil assistance. That is just the beginning of the kind of debate we ought to be having. We could have been having it since Friday.

I see my friend from Georgia in the Chamber. He has been a leader in nuclear power. I ask the Senator from Georgia, isn't clean nuclear power essential to any supply of new American energy?

I thank the Senator from Georgia for his leadership on nuclear power. If we care about global warming in any respect, there is no way to deal with that in a generation without nuclear power, which is free of carbon, free of mercury, free of nitrogen, and free of sulfur. It is the best way we have to move ahead with that, and we should, in this debate, be thinking of ways to make it possible for this country to be building five or six new nuclear plants a year, producing more American energy.

The Senator from Georgia spoke about a plug-in electric car. I know when I first started speaking of that, some of my friends in Tennessee thought I had been out in the Sun too long. But I found out the Senator from Utah was way ahead of me. In fact, an important part of the Republican proposal--and I know on the Democratic side there are many who agree with this--is to make it commonplace in America for us to reduce the amount of oil we use by using electric cars and trucks that plug in.

As I move to the Senator from Utah, I hasten to add--I sat here last night listening to the Democratic leader characterize the Republican proposal as only drilling. I know the Democratic leader has a lot of responsibilities, and he may not have had time to read our proposal carefully. An important part of our proposal is to make it commonplace for Americans to drive plug-in cars and trucks, thereby reducing the amount of oil we use. That is the demand side of the equation. The difference between us and the Democratic leader is we understand that the law of supply and demand has both supply and demand.

I wonder if the Senator from Utah does not believe that plug-in electric cars and trucks are an important way to reduce our use of oil?

I thank the Senator from Utah for his leadership. Before I answer his question, I wish to emphasize our point here. What we are hoping to do is to show that, on the Republican side--and we believe there are many Democrats who feel this way too--we believe the solution to high gasoline prices is finding more American energy and using less. We are willing to do both. The Democratic leader is not willing to find more, for some reason.

But on Senator Hatch's point, the most promising opportunity I believe for using less oil in the near term is the plug-in hybrid car and truck by a confluence of two things: One is all the car companies you talked about who are about to produce the car. I can add to that Nissan, at the dedication of its new North American headquarters in Nashville this week, announced it intends to market a plug-in pure electric vehicle that will go 100 miles with a charge in 2010 for fleets and for individuals in 2012.

One may say: Well, where are you going to get all this electricity? We have plenty of electricity at night. In our region in Tennessee, the Tennessee Valley Authority has the equivalent of seven or eight nuclear powerplants of unused electricity at night, which could be used for plug-in cars and trucks.

So I think there will be a great many people in Tennessee and in Utah and across this country who very quickly will be plugging in at night in a wall socket and filling up, so to speak, for a dollar or two, instead of filing up for $80 at the gasoline pump.

I see the majority leader, who I think has some remarks to make. We would be glad to suspend the colloquy if he would like to do that now.

Capitol Police Officers John Gibson and Jacob Chestnut

Madam President, I thank the majority leader for his comments. The Republican Leader would want me to say, he speaks for all of us in expressing the respect for the families of the two fallen men and our appreciation to the service of all the Capitol police officers today. We will have an opportunity, within a few minutes, to honor the fallen men.

Mr. Hatch was saying, the Senator from Utah, we have impressive ways to use less oil. But we also have important ways to find more oil. One of those ways would be to use technology to turn coal into aviation fuel; a proven technology which is available, which in the past has had some challenges, but there are some new techniques. One of the Senators who is a leading advocate of coal-to-liquid technology understands it well, the Senator from Wyoming. I ask the Senator from

Wyoming: Would it not be important for our national security to at least take steps toward turning coal into liquid aviation fuel?

I thank the Senator from Wyoming for his leadership. As he speaks, it reminds me of how much I wish, instead of our being in a parliamentary position where all we can do is talk, the Democratic leader would put us in a parliamentary position where we can act. I mean, we are prepared to act. We have offered an amendment that has a series of suggestions about how to find more American energy and use less.

We may not be right in every case. But I believe the American people expect us, expect us to take up these issues and debate them and use them, whether it is plug-in electric cars, to use less oil, or, for example, I see the Senator from Alaska is here, whether it is using more of Alaskan energy.

Every time we talk about more American energy, we must think about Alaska because so much energy is there. I wonder if the Senator would not agree, that there is not one way, but a whole series of ways we might change the law to improve our country's security, improve our supply of oil and gas by using Alaskan energy?

If I may let the Senator know, we have about 3 minutes remaining and I need 1 of those to make a unanimous consent request.

Madam President, our hope today is to show the Senate that we are ready for full debate on finding more American energy and using less. That is what we should be doing. We have our proposals and would welcome debate and amendment on others.

I now ask unanimous consent that the Senate consider the pending energy speculation measure in the following manner: that the bill be subject to energy-related amendments only; provided further, that the amendments be considered in an alternating manner between the two sides of the aisle; I further ask consent that the bill remain the pending business to the exclusion of all other business, other than privileged matters or items that are agreed to jointly by the two leaders; I further ask consent that the first seven amendments to be offered on this side of the aisle by the Republican leader or his designee be the following: Outer Continental Shelf exploration plus conservation; oil shale plus conservation; Alaska energy production plus conservation; the Gas Price Reduction Act, which includes plug-in electric cars and trucks; clean nuclear energy; coal-to-liquid fuel plus conservation; and an amendment involving LIHEAP.

Madam President, is there time remaining?

Mr. President, will you let me know when I have consumed 9 minutes, please?

Thank you very much.

Mr. President, I listened to the Democratic leader discuss the legislative calendar. With respect, I believe the Democratic leadership in the Senate is approaching the crisis of $4 gasoline with all the urgency of naming a post office. It seems their idea is to talk until there is one amendment over there and one amendment over here, both of which may fail, and then go on to the next thing.

I have just come back from 4 days in Tennessee. I believe that if I walked down the street in Nashville or Maryville or Knoxville or wherever and talked to 100 people and said: What do you think we ought to be doing in the Senate? I would get the same answer. It would be this: We would like for you to go do something serious about $4 gasoline prices and we would like you to work across party lines to get it done.

We are ready to do that, we on the Republican side, and I think many Democrats are as well. Yet what the Democratic leadership did was bring up a bill on Friday that addresses oil speculation and put us in a procedural situation where all we can do is talk and talk and talk. We could have started last Friday with amendments on finding more oil and using less oil. We have 25 or 30 on this side. I will bet there are that many on the other side--I will bet there are more than that. We could be on our fifth day of debating and voting on a substantial piece of legislation to increase the supply of American energy and reduce our use of oil, which is the way to lower gasoline prices. That is what we should do today. If we do not do it today, we should do it tomorrow. We should not stop until we get it done. That is why we are here. That is what the American people expect of us.

The majority leader has brought up a bill about speculation. There is nothing wrong with that. It is his right to do that. We recognize that, because in the Republican bill we offered, we suggested we would find more oil by drilling offshore and giving States the option to do that on their shores, and by lifting the moratorium from oil shale final regulations--that would increase American production of oil by a third. That is substantial. We are the third largest producer of oil in the world. That may help affect prices. On the other side, we want to use less oil, and we would do that by making plug-in cars and trucks commonplace, cars and trucks powered by electricity, which would reduce our use of oil. If we did those three things on the find more and use less side, we could cut our use of imported oil in half over time, which would stop sending about $250 or $300 billion a year overseas to other countries, some of which are paying terrorists who are trying to kill us.

But oil speculation has its limits. Oil speculation is a part of our bill. We believe we should put 100 cops on the block. We need more cops on the block who are commodities regulators. We need to find out more about these new financial instruments and the effect they might be having on the price of oil. But you cannot deal with oil speculation unless you deal with supply and demand.

The Interagency Task Force on Commodity Markets has been studying this question for 5 years. They said today--I heard it on National Public Radio because I drove in early--their interim report on crude oil studied fundamental supply and demand factors and

the roles of various market participants, and it found that ``the fundamental supply and demand factors provide the best explanation for the recent crude oil price increases.'' That is what the Government says.

Here is what a private sector individual, who has been pretty successful, says--Warren Buffett: ``It is not speculation, it is supply and demand.''

We can deal with oil speculation. We have proposed doing that in the Gas Price Reduction Act. But saying that by passing a bill on oil speculation we deal with $4 gas would be like saying we are passing a bill on thirst without dealing with water. We have to move on to supply and demand. That is why we say we should be finding more and using less.

In Tennessee yesterday, Nissan announced that it was entering into an agreement with the State of Tennessee and the Tennessee Valley Authority to make our State hospitable for a pure electric car that Nissan intends to have on the market for fleets by 2010 and for individuals by 2012. According in Nissan's plans, the car will go 100 miles without having to be recharged. Carlos Ghosn, the president of Nissan and Renault, wants a zero emissions or an emissions-free car on the market. He wants counties and mayors who want that to be able to have it in their fleets.

That is part of the Gas Price Reduction Act proposal. We understand we have to reduce demand as well as increase supply. But the other side is stuck on using only half of the law of supply and demand. They have forgotten economics 101. We say offshore drilling. They say no, we can't. We say oil shale. They say no, we can't. We say five or six new nuclear powerplants a year so we can have clean electricity for our plug-in cars and trucks. They say no, we can't.

We say bring up gas prices and put it on the Senate floor and let's stay here until we finish. I heard all this talk about the legislative calendar. The legislative calendar isn't more important than the family budget. The legislative calendar is not more important than the family budget, and what is breaking the family budget today is gasoline prices. Four-dollar gasoline is driving up the price for fueling our cars and trucks. It is driving up the cost of food because, as we know, energy is such an important part of agriculture.

People are hurting. Every week, I am on the floor reading e-mails from Tennesseans who are canceling their vacations, losing their jobs, unable to go get medical treatment because they cannot afford the price of gasoline. What are we doing? We are talking when the Democratic leader could instantly put us into a situation where we could spend a week or 10 days considering two or three dozen good amendments, vote them up or down, and see if we could work across party lines to come to a result.

Will we solve every problem in a week's debate in a bill we pass before August? No, of course not. We really should be on the path toward clean energy independence. I suggested in May that we need a new Manhattan Project, like the one we had in World War II for the atom bomb, where we have a crash program for 5 years on the things we don't know how to do, such as make solar power competitive with fossil fuels or reprocess nuclear waste so it can be stored more easily or make more new buildings green buildings or advanced research on biofuels--crops we don't eat.

But there are some things we know how to do today. Mr. President, 85 percent of the Outer Continental Shelf, where we have the opportunity to produce oil and gas, is, by congressional action, off limits today. It was off limits according to the President's action too, but he changed the Presidential order last week. What happened? The price of oil went down. I don't know exactly to what extent the President's action had an effect on the price of oil, but I do know this: If we were to take action today on supply and demand, the price of gasoline today would stabilize and begin to go down because today's price is based upon the expected supply and demand 3 to 5 years from now. If we demonstrate in our proposal, as our proposal says, that the United States of America, which consumes 25 percent of all the energy in the world, is prepared to increase our production of oil by a third and reduce our use of oil by a sixth, that together would reduce the supply of imported oil; it would cut it in half. If we did that today, it would affect the price of oil today.

Our solution is four words: Find more, use less.

Find more, use less. We believe in both parts of the supply and demand. The other side is dancing around. I think they have badly misjudged the American people and the urgency of this question. We need to do everything we can in the next week or so to fashion a bill that takes a substantial step toward increasing the supply and reducing demand for oil--not saying no, we can't; no, we can't; no, we can't. We can say yes, we can, to finding more and using less, and the American people expect us to do that. That is why we are here. We can start today.