Floor Statements

Mr. President, I come to the floor hoping that the two leaders, Senator Reid and Senator McConnell, might be close to getting an agreement that allows us to move forward on voting on the tax extenders package, including the critically important energy provisions. While we wait for that, I thought I would take an opportunity to come down and mention some of the key provisions of the bill and also to thank many people who have worked on it.

We are the cusp of breaking this logjam on clean energy tax policy and pushing the United States into more of a leadership position on clean energy technology. Getting to this point took a lot of work and dedication. Senator Reid of Nevada, obviously coming from a State that has incredible resources to participate in this, has long been an advocate of renewable energy. He instinctively understands what it is going to take for us to get off of fossil fuels and on to other alternative, more sustainable technologies. He has consistently forged a consensus on critical issues in the Senate. I know Senator Reid knows how desperately our Nation needs to get on this path toward energy independence.

I also take the opportunity to thank Senators Baucus and Grassley for their commitment and leadership. I don't think there has been a time during this whole process that these two wise leaders of the Finance Committee have waivered, and we have had many votes to try to get to this point where we are today.

I especially want to thank the Finance Committee staff: Cathy Koch, Pat Bousliman, and Mark Prater, who all worked long hours crafting the overall package. While I will not talk about the overall package, I will talk about the energy provisions. I thank them for their hard work. It takes a lot of time and energy. I also thank Senator Ensign and his staff, particularly Jason Mulvihill, who spent many hours working with my staff, Lauren Bazel and Amit Ronen, and my chief of staff Maura O'Neill. All have worked on this in a bipartisan effort to try to get this legislation across the finish line.

It is a bipartisan effort that got us here today. And I hope we will continue bipartisan efforts on many of these policies moving forward because that is what it is going to take given the structure of the Senate for us to continue to move forward on important legislation.

What are we doing in this Energy bill that is going to hopefully be before us this evening? First and foremost, we are doing several things that are new, new policies that will help our nation realize a clean energy future. First we are unleashing the power of solar energy. In 2005, we took a very important step by incenting solar energy for 2 years. Now we are doing something much more robust. We are giving an 8- year investment tax credit to the solar industry because we believe that it will unleash the potential of this unbelievable energy source for our Nation. We think that over 440,000 new jobs could be created in the solar industry just in the next 8 years. Much of that growth is coming from new concentrating solar plants, a breakthrough in technology that has great promise to provide affordable and predictable baseload power in rapidly growing parts of the Southwest. Without this bill that is going to be before us, electricity rates surely would have risen in these fast growing parts of the country, and our environment would have suffered.

Now if we pass this bill, States such as Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico not only will be able to produce emission-free solar power at a stable and affordable rate, but the industry will be a new source of manufacturing jobs for this part of our country. The new 8-year investment credit will also, I believe, unleash a similar opportunity for fuel cell technology because we are giving this nascent industry great predictability.

Second, we are jump-starting the transition to plug-in electric vehicles. This is the first time we are giving tax breaks to consumers who purchase plug-in electric cars, trucks, and SUVs. These are cars that are about to appear on the showroom floor, and may achieve 100 miles per gallon. By giving consumers up to a $7,500 tax rebate per vehicle, we can accelerate the adoption rate and the mass production and, I believe, help this game-changing technology be deployed more quickly.

This provision was part of a bill that Senator Hatch, Senator Obama, and myself began working on over a year and a half ago. We recognized that our current electricity infrastructure,

when it is matched with plug-in vehicles, could help us displace 6.5 million barrels of oil a day. That is an amount equivalent to 50 percent of our foreign oil imports.

And instead of paying $4 a gallon, as many consumers have paid in the last several months, with a plug-in electric vehicle you can fill up with electricity for the equivalent of only $1 per gallon. Wouldn't that be terrific for our consumers today?

Third, this legislation is a big step forward on giving every American the opportunity to generate their own power. With the advent of distributed generation, now individual homeowners will be able to generate their own electricity, produce their own hot water, and monitor their own energy uses and, consequently, save precious dollars.

This bill contains new incentives for residential solar, small wind turbines, and smart meters--all things that empower the consumer with the ability to control and reduce their own energy costs. For example, consumers can receive a Federal cost share of 30 percent for installing solar photovoltaic or hot water systems on their roofs, and for the first time we are eliminating the cap on residential solar tax credits. Lifting the cap will encourage residential homeowners to put on even bigger renewable solar systems, allowing them to sell clean energy back to the electricity grid used by other families.

We all know about big wind farms. We have seen pictures of them. Some of my colleagues have wind farms in their State. But for the first time, this bill provides a tax credit to homeowners who put small wind turbines onto their property, which can also generate a source of electricity in windy rural farm and ranch areas across our country.

This legislation also incorporates a credit for installing geothermal heat pumps, which is really one of the cleanest and most efficient ways to heat and cool your home. This technology uses the constant heat of the Earth to make or take away the heat in our homes, instead of burning fossil fuels into the sky.

One of the provisions I am very enthusiastic about--and I thank the chairman of the committee, Senator Baucus, for including this in the legislation--is smart metering technology. Smart metering, along with these other uses, is going to be so empowering for the consumers because smart meters are an essential component of making our electricity grid more intelligent, making it smarter about how we use electricity, making it less prone to blackouts. By putting smart meters in this tax package, hopefully the adoption rate will also pick up and be spread more quickly. Smart meters will allow for real-time pricing that will let consumers know how much energy they are consuming so that they can adjust their consumption accordingly to lower their electricity bills. The smart grid example I always like to use is to set your dishwasher to turn on at the lowest megawatt rate. Having that capability across a range of technologies could end up giving consumers significant savings.

This legislation also gives consumers access to over $10,000 in tax credits to purchase technologies that can lower their energy bills. For example, this bill allows consumers to use up to a $500 tax credit for installing energy-efficient appliances, windows, and insulation. It also provides consumers incentives for solar PV panels, solar hot water heaters, and residential wind turbines.

There is also a $300 tax incentive for the purchase of clean-burning wood stoves. In fact, I think that provision alone will give Northeast consumers an opportunity to significantly reduce their home heating bills because more efficient, new wood-burning stoves can help consumers get significant reductions to their winter heating bills by moving toward this new state-of-the-art technology, to say nothing of helping the Northeast get off of home heating oil and on to things such as wood-burning pellets, which are renewable and can be much more economical.

So there are other things in this bill about biofuels, about clean energy credits for nonprofit organizations, and I am sure my colleagues will come and talk about other things. But there is one last point I wish to make about this legislation because I really do think we are making a game-changing decision here as it relates to clean energy and our clean energy future. That is because another breakthrough in this bill is that it is the first time I know of that the Senate is voting to take away tax breaks from the oil and gas companies and reallocate those funds to renewable energy sources. This is the first time, I believe, we are truly beginning to level the playing field, taking away subsidies from those mature and profitable industries that I think have had too many subsidies for too long a time. This bill says we want our energy future to be based on more diverse and renewable energy sources that are better for our environment.

In 2005 energy bill--one of the last times Congress considered new energy tax policy--the authors chose to give two-thirds of the tax breaks to the fossil fuel and nuclear industries. This bill flips that ratio on its head. Two-thirds of the tax incentives in this package go to clean energy generation, helping consumers take more control of their own energy costs.

So we are putting our money where our mouth is. We are saying we want to invest in cleaner, more distributed generation that is domestically produced and environmentally friendly.

So I am proud of this energy package--and hopefully tonight we will get it passed--that unleashes the power of solar, that empowers consumers with incentives to reduce their energy use and to be in the production of cleaner energy themselves, for which this legislation gives up to $10,000 in tax breaks, and it certainly helps level the playing field as far as public policy by starting to incentivize clean energy over our historic dependence on fossil fuels.

I hope we can get this legislation passed because not only will it be an economic opportunity for job growth in America and for manufacturing, but it will also provide real opportunities for Americans to save real dollars on their energy bills. I hope my colleagues will join me in passing this package. I hope we can get it through the House quickly and get it signed by the President so we can get about having the energy relief America deserves.

Mr. President, I also want to highlight the additional tax relief to American families and businesses that we will provide when we finally act on the other tax extenders.

The 2-year extension of the State sales tax deduction is critical to the struggling families in my State who just can not afford to face the potential tax increase they would face if we fail to extend the deduction for State sales taxes.

I am pleased we give taxpayers certainty for 2008 and for 2009.

And I am pleased this deduction means real money for real families.

In 2006, more than 880,000 Washingtonians claimed this deduction. And 49 percent of those folks made less than $75,000.

This deduction meant an average of $600 more in the pockets of Washington State taxpayers.

This is an issue of fundamental fairness and I will continue to work to make this deduction permanent. No one should be left in the dark wondering if the deduction will be extended from year to year. They just can't afford the uncertainty.

I am also pleased to see us restore the R&D tax credit for 2008 and extend it through 2009.

This tax credit has a strong history of supporting much needed high- wage jobs in the United States.

The Information Technology Association of America estimated that if the tax credit was in place during 2008, there would have been $8.5 billion more in economic activity this year.

That is investment that Americans could have greatly benefited from. And it is economic activity we can still benefit from if we act now.

Clearly, given that our economic news only gets worse each day, we can't afford to turn away the $51 million per day in new investments that are at risk if this credit is not extended.

And this bill fulfills the promise we made to support our rural neighbors by reauthorizing our Secure Rural Schools Program and fully funding the Payments in Lieu of Taxes Program.

This will mean an influx of around $47 million a year for 4 years for some of our rural counties that have a very small tax base because Federal lands take up so much of the county.

Facing the expiration of these payments this year, rural counties have been forced to begin laying off teachers, librarians, and county employees that provide critical services.

And these communities cannot absorb the loss of these workers. Nor should they have to deal with further erosion of the sense of community that many of their towns were founded on.

But today we are reversing this trend and helping counties retain county employees and teachers, keep roads safe and maintained, stemming cuts in vital government services, while also providing funding for resource conservation projects, forest service land rescue services, and programs to support economic development.

This bill not only provides new opportunities for American businesses to take advantage of the growing green energy economy, but it provides real opportunities for Americans to save real dollars.

So today I ask my colleagues to join me in voting for a strong, bipartisan tax package that helps move this country forward toward greater energy independence and provides needed tax relief to our families and businesses.

I would also like to take a moment to recognize the mental illness parity provisions in this bill. What they mean is that when Americans need mental health treatment that they will not be faced with higher costs for that treatment than they currently have for medical surgical treatments. This bill would require private insurance plans that offer mental health benefits as part of the coverage to offer such benefits on par with the medical surgical benefits. Any cost-sharing or benefit limits imposed on mental health services must not be any more restrictive than those imposed on medical surgical services.

Your support on all of these provisions cannot wait any longer. We have run out of time, and the time to act is now.

I thank the Presiding Officer and yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, as I rise to speak this morning, for the first time since April 1, the price of oil has fallen to below $100 a barrel, and that is certainly a welcome relief to many Americans across this country and to businesses who have been devastated by high energy markets.

We shouldn't underestimate the damage that has been caused. Just this past Friday, in my home State of Washington, Alaska Air announced that more than 1,000 people will lose their jobs because of high fuel prices and a slowing economy. Compared to last year, Americans have paid $76 billion more for gasoline in 2008, and I know many people went without vacations, and businesses have cut back on their operations.

Now, we have had various independent reports that have shown that the fluctuation in price from 2007 to 2008 cannot be explained by simple supply-and-demand fundamentals. And we are having a hearing at 2:30 this afternoon in the Energy Committee about excessive speculation and how prices were driven to record highs this summer. But what we need to also realize is the scrutiny Congress has placed on Wall Street along with the promise to have stricter oversight has had an impact; prompting a large volume of capital starting to leave these markets.

It wasn't that long ago when President George Bush was picked up on the Internet at a reception saying ``Wall Street got drunk.'' Now, I don't know if the President really meant to have this publicly captured on the Internet, but it was, and I know afterwards his Press Secretary was quoted as saying:

Well, you know, I actually haven't spoken to him about

this, but I imagine what he meant, as I have heard him

describe it before in both public and private, was that Wall

Street let themselves get carried away and that they did not

understand the risks these newfangled financial instruments

would pose to the markets.

And while it is Wall Street that has gotten drunk, it is the American public paying for the hangover.

Today, we are struggling to contain one of the most severe credit crises since the Great Depression, and American families are going to pay dearly for that lack of oversight and regulatory indifference to what have been critical markets for us to oversee. I give credit to Secretary Paulson for his swift action over the last couple of weeks to contain the economic fallout from a reeling Wall Street.

During the past decade, the agencies charged with financial oversight have turned their eye from what has been one of the worst excesses our country has seen. My question for my colleagues today is, when are we going to learn the lessons of history and make sure Congress does its job in the oversight of the regulatory agencies so they do theirs?

In many ways, today's super-bubbles are a repeat of the 1920s when too much borrowing to underwrite too many speculative bets using too much of other people's money set up the entire economy for a crash. In 1999, Congress repealed key parts of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. The repeal allowed banks to operate any kind of financial businesses they desired, and it set up a situation where the banks had multiple conflicts of interest.

Several economists and analysts have cited the repeal of this act as a major contributor to the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis.

In fact, Robert Kuttner, cofounder and co-editor of the American Prospect magazine wrote in September 2007:

Hedge funds, private equity companies, and the subprime

mortgage industries have two big things in common. First,

each represents financial middlemen unproductively extracting

wealth from the real economy. Second, each exploits loopholes

in what remains a financial regulation.

But we didn't end our deregulation there.

In 2000 we also deregulated a new and volatile financial derivative that is at the heart of today's housing credit crisis--credit default swaps.

As White House press secretary Dana Perino described it earlier this year, these ``newfangled financial instruments'' that posed a risk to the market actually grew into a $62 trillion industry.

Warren Buffett has called these credit-swaps ``financial weapons of mass destruction.''

The proliferation of these newfangled financial instruments has resulted in huge profits and losses without any physical goods changing hands.

I come to the floor asking my colleagues: when are we going to learn the lessons of the past?

When are we going to realize that the 1929 stock market crash has the same root cause as the recent housing bubble?

Both were financed by dangerously high leveraged borrowing. And after the crash many banks failed--causing a ripple effect that devastated our Nation's economy.

After the 1929 crash, Congress stepped up and changed the banking laws to eliminate some of the abuses that had paved the way for economic disaster.

My question is--we acted after the crisis and Congress did step up and do something. What I want to know is whether we have learned our lesson. Are we going to legislate consumer protections in advance, or only after a bubble bursts?

The savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s when 747 savings and loan associations went under provides a similar lesson.

Like before, much of this mess can be traced back to the deregulation of the savings and loans which gave these associations many of the capabilities of banks, but failed to bring them under the same regulations.

Congress eliminated regulations designed to prevent lending excesses and minimize failures.

Deregulation allowed lending in distant loan markets on the promise of higher returns, and it also allowed associations to participate in speculative construction activities with builders and developers who had little or no financial stake in the projects.

The ultimate cost of this crisis is estimated to have totaled around $160 billion, with U.S. taxpayers bailing out the institutions to the tune of $125 billion. This, of course, added to our deficit of the early 1990s.

I ask my colleagues: When are we going to learn this lesson?

We have failed to see that oversight and transparency are always critical parts of any functioning market.

We have failed to see that when Congress makes reforms, like the Commodities Futures Modernization Act in 2000, or like the repeal of key portions of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, or the deregulation of the energy markets in

the 1990s, they cannot disregard these important fundamentals of transparency and strong Federal oversight authority.

I could go on and on for my colleagues on my own personal experience with the western energy crisis that happened in electricity markets in 2000 and 2001.

We saw that during the electricity deregulation experience which started in the mid 1990s, people argued that electricity was just another commodity. But it is really a very critical element to our economy.

Many experts cautioned that electricity was too vital a part of our economy and way of life to let these markets go without the transparency and oversight that is essential.

We all know the rest of the story. We saw that deregulation set the table for some of Enron's spectacular manipulation schemes of 2000 and 2001 among other bad actors, that caused more than $35 billion in economic loss and cost our nation over 589,000 jobs.

Again, only after the crisis was over, did Congress step in. Only after the crisis did Congress give the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and now the FTC, more regulatory authority on energy markets. And once more, Congress illustrated that it prefers to act after the fact.

So I ask my colleagues: When are we going to learn?

When are we going to quit deregulating these critical markets without much thought to the transparency and oversight that is critical for markets to operate and function correctly?

When are we going to learn that when we take our eye off he ball, Wall Street raids the cabinet and, as the President say, Wall Street gets drunk?

I mentioned that later today we will be holding a hearing in the Energy Committee to examine the oil futures market. We will examine why we need meaningful legislation to close the loopholes that exist in those dark markets.

This deregulation has helped spark today's price super-bubble, as George Soros warned at a June 3 Commerce Committee hearing, that is driving our markets to no longer be based on supply-and-demand fundamentals.

In one fell swoop, this deregulation did a number of things that enabled today's perfect storm to brew.

No. 1, we let these newfangled financial instruments called credit default swaps go unregulated, and it made it easy to use bad debt to finance home mortgages.

As George Soros wrote in his book documenting the credit crisis:

At the end of World War II, the financial industry--banks,

brokers, other financial institutions--played a very

different role in the economy than they do today.

He went on to explain, as I said, that banks and markets are not as strictly regulated today as they were in the past.

In 2000 we deliberately chose not to learn this harsh lesson and allowed these new, volatile financial derivatives that are the heart of today's markets to go unregulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

What we need to do is make sure we learned this lesson, to go back now and close the loopholes that exist and make sure the agencies that are in charge of oversight actually do their job. We do not want the American people to continue to have to pay for mismanagement and lack of oversight by not having transparency in these markets. We need to make sure these agencies are accountable.

The bottom line is we have a CFTC that is more lax in allowing traders to run amok than protecting families who live on Main Street in America. That is why I continue to hold up CFTC nominations. We need a more sophisticated regulatory regime oversight, including regulators who will be aggressive policemen on the beat. We need to collect more data to make sure that markets are not being manipulated. We need to make sure the market is driven by basic market fundamentals and not greed.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Nora Adkins, a detailee to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, be granted the privilege of the floor for the remainder of the second session of the 110th Congress.

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

Mr. President, I rise today to put some facts on the

table about the high cost of energy. I know many of my colleagues have left town, but some are still here. And even though today is August 1, I doubt that it is the last we are going to hear on this debate. I expect that we will hear about it all during August.

I come to the floor this afternoon to just put a few last remarks into the Record about what I think this debate has been about and what I think it will be about when we return. I know some of my colleagues have put out statements today about what they think we should do in moving forward. I think it is very important to address the issue of the high cost of energy and to put forth a realistic plan for our country to move forward.

Many times this week we heard the slogan: Find more and use less. It reminds me of the slogans we hear on oil company commercials who spend hundreds of millions of dollars saying things such as ``beyond petroleum,'' and ``look at the future we are planning.'' They are spending all of that money trying to convince us they have a plan, when in reality they are keeping us addicted to oil.

Mr. President, now is not the time to worry about big oil. They just posted astronomical second quarter profits. ExxonMobil alone made about $130 million a day--not bad for a hard day's work impacting consumers. In fact, since the Bush Administration came into office, oil industry profits have totaled $641 billion. And as this chart shows every year's profit was greater than the last.

The complexity of this issue is that many colleagues really think that drilling more is going to solve our nation's energy crisis. But the clear facts is it is not going to; drilling more will just continue to add to the profits of these companies at a time when we should be investing in clean energy solutions.

So now is not the time to give the American people the false hope that drilling is going to have any effect on oil prices or provide any drop of relief at the pump. Now is not the time to play politics and to try to continue to play the blame game.

Instead now is the time to realize that our economy can't take much more of this. We simply have to get off of oil. It is time, after 8 years of an administration with a dead-end oil policy, that we understand the long-term cost of our addiction to oil and how it is strangling our economy and our vitality. Because unless we change course, and change course soon, we soon will be sending $1 trillion abroad to cover our foreign oil addiction. No amount of drilling--no amount--in the United States will change that fact.

Just a few years ago I would come to the floor and talk about how we were 50-percent dependent, heading toward 60-percent dependent on foreign oil. Now we are talking about being 70-percent dependent and even more unless we change course.

I think it is safe to say that the last 8 years of this administration has done great damage to the continuation of our addiction to foreign oil. We have tried their approach. It doesn't work. So what we need to do today is move ahead.

We need to admit the United States consumes one-quarter of the world's oil but only has less than 2 percent of the world's oil reserves. We will never, ever be able to affect the world oil price. Even if we drilled in every corner of God's creation in the United States, we would not be able to affect the world price of oil.

Americans can do the math. They know we need to be aggressively putting new policies into place that will make us a 21st century leader in new energy solutions. That is what we should be doing in the Senate as well.

Unfortunately, it seems as though many of my colleagues aren't doing this simple math. Instead, they are trying to exploit the current crisis and convince us that we should continue this oil addiction. That the answer is to give big oil one of their top legislative priorities-- one they have wished for for several decades breaking the quarter- century-old moratorium on drilling off of America's pristine coast.

Pro-drilling advocates and certainly the President of the United States seem perfectly comfortable perpetrating what I think is a cruel hoax on the American people. They are willing to imply, to insinuate, and to outright pretend that drilling off our coastlines will help provide some relief at the pump. They are willing to pretend that drilling will somehow lessen our dangerous dependence on foreign oil.

Though my colleagues on the other side of the aisle do not like to admit this, the American people can listen to experts at the Department of Energy who say:

Access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf Coast

regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude

oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030.

We heard that 2030 is the magic year by which drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf would produce supply. But our own Energy Information Administration said that access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern gulf coast regions would not have a significant impact on the price before 2030.

I know we had a lot of discussion about the psychological impact, but oil industry experts have testified before Congress that the notion of more drilling would have no psychological effect on world oil prices. That is from oil analysts who have written books about oil and covered it for many years.

But even in 22 years the offshore drilling scheme will not provide consumers relief. This is what the Energy Information Administration said:

Because oil prices are determined on the international

market, any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to

be insignificant.

So the notion that somehow our drilling is going to help us relieve the price when we are such a small player on the world market is really a hoax. We are not going to be able to have any significant impact on the price.

Even if we drilled in every last corner of our great Nation it would not have any impact. We will never be able to drill our way out of the fact that our addiction to oil leaves critical aspects of our economy in the hands of OPEC.

We do not have 22 years to wait. We need to be aggressive in getting off oil and move ahead. I know many of my colleagues really think the drilling that has been talked about here will provide relief, and they assume that oil companies would invest the tens of billions of dollars it would take to drill up and down our coastlines. I guess we should ignore for the moment that these same oil companies are not even utilizing 83 percent of the leases they already have.

But the truth is that all the drilling will do, even post-2030, is lead to 1 percent of what the United States needs. That is right, if we go ahead and lift the moratorium on Outer Continental Shelf drilling and that process starts and we get to 2030, the United States will still need over 22 million barrels of oil a day. That is what our growth rate is expected to be under the status quo. Drilling in the 600-million-acre moratorium areas would only meet 1 percent of U.S. needs in 2030. All that money, all that risk of catastrophic spills, all the years of waiting, and that is the payoff--1 percent.

It is not good enough, and the American people need and deserve better solutions. That is what, when we return, we have to focus on.

There is a way out of this hole. It is definitely not drilling deeper, and it is time to say enough is enough and that we have to change course. My colleagues who use a chart that says ``Find More, Use Less'' on the other side of the aisle have the same empty slogan as those oil company ads that pretend they are the solution.

In fact, I think the solution my colleagues on the other side of the aisle ought to consider is: Find more and hold up less. They ought to hold up less legislation that allows us to move forward on a renewable energy strategy. Find more renewable energy and sources of power and production for the United States that can impact the price consumers are paying now, can impact what they are going to have to pay in 2009, and what they can do to get us moving off our oil addiction.

I say hold up less, because if we look at what has happened in the last year or two, we have had many proposals to move ahead off oil and on to clean energy sources that would have impacted the price at the pump. In fact, what this chart shows is the dozen times the other side of the aisle held up critical clean energy bills.

Starting in June of 2007, when we had a $28 billion clean energy package that we tried to pass. This bill would have eliminated some of the subsidies that

oil companies got embedded in the Tax Code, because if we are at $126 or $140 a barrel of oil, it is pretty hard to argue that oil companies still need tax incentives.

One of the best parts of this legislative package created a consumer tax credit of up to $7,500 toward the purchase of plug-in electric vehicle. That was a provision I authored with Senator Hatch and Senator Obama. I know many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have talked a lot recently about the great promise of plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles as a way to get us off our addiction to oil.

I talked about that 1 percent that was going to be supplied by drilling by 2030. If we invested in plug-in electric vehicles over roughly the same period of time, using electricity from our grid for fuel, we could have a 50-percent reduction in the amount of foreign oil we would need to import.

So the Republican plan by 2030 is to drill everywhere to reduce foreign oil needs by 200,000 barrels of oil per day. Our plan, which is investment in clean and alternative energy solutions, like the plug-in electric vehicles would reduce foreign oil imports by 6.5 million barrels of oil a day over the same time period.

The difference is unbelievable what we could have achieved if the Republicans would have stopped holding up these policies.

And my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are saying: We are not supporting plug-in electric vehicles unless you give us offshore drilling. They are saying we are holding hostage the great ideas and promise of the future of reducing our oil dependence unless you agree to continue the old, insane practices of giving incentives to oil companies with record profits to continue to provide the non-solutions to one of our nation's greatest problems.

It is time to get the solutions out of the hands of the oil companies and into the hands of the American public who want tools to reduce their oil consumption.

Literally, my colleagues voted no for cars that could get over 100 miles per gallon on the equivalent of $1 of gasoline. That is right, that is what a plug-in hybrid will get you. That analysis and study is there, that our nation's electricity grid today has enough spare capacity to power 70 percent of cars on the road today if they were electric hybrids. So instead of paying $3.99 for a gallon of gas, you would only pay about one dollar for the same amount of electricity.

This was just one realistic proposal the majority offered to move our nation to where we need to go. But every time they vote no on one of these proposals, we slow up the process. Voting no in June of 2007 was holding us up to going to that transition.

So I am glad other people on the other side of the aisle realize the promise of plug-in electrics, but they are not voting to help us break through and implement these solutions that could help us today and break the shackles of big oil.

As I mentioned, this was a bipartisan bill that Senators Hatch, Obama, and I introduced over a year ago. Our bill provides scalable credits that increase up to $15,000 for large vehicles. We had this big discussion about what cars Americans drive, how big, how small, safety issues, farm vehicles, big transportation vehicles. The great thing about plug-in hybrids and battery technology moving us forward is we can put those in any size vehicle. We are not going to be limited to a small car. The legislation would also provide assistance for automakers and parts manufacturers to retool their facilities to speed up the transition time.

So the Hatch-Cantwell-Obama bill would have been very progressive in getting solutions out into the marketplace that could have gotten us toward that goal we need to get to quickly.

Unfortunately, in December of 2007, there was another blocked attempt for us to change this policy. In December of last year, the majority of Senate Republicans blocked what would have created a renewable electricity standard. That is something even President Bush, when he was Governor of Texas, supported and today Texas is the nation's largest wind energy producer for our country. But Republican obstructionism cost us over 90,000 megawatts of new renewable energy capacity by 2020. That is the equivalent of 135 new coal-fired powerplants.

If they had not blocked this legislation in December of last year, we could have been on our way in 2020 to reducing the amount of coal-fired powerplants that we would have had in our country and getting on to renewable wind energy. The billions of dollars in clean energy investment, tens of thousands of jobs could be making an incredible positive impact, more so than any drilling offshore could ever be.

Then, just a few days later, there was another blocked attempt to move toward a clean energy transition when Republicans blocked a smaller clean energy tax incentive package that also would have ended subsidies to the big oil companies that have made these record profits. Even this scaled-back approach was too much for big oil, and they basically made their voice heard on Capitol Hill. Big oil refused to give up what was $13 billion in unwarranted tax breaks over 10 years, despite hundreds of billions in profits over the last 8 years.

Mr. President, the American people should know that Senators that voted against that bill voted against solar power, against wind power, against making homes and our commercial buildings more efficient. Against incentives for homeowners to lower their home heating and cooling bills and against making the electricity grid smarter, less prone to blackouts, and against plug-in vehicles.

Last February, there was another successful effort to block $6 billion of clean energy tax incentives on the stimulus bill. This time we gave up and said: You know what, forget the oil company subsidies, we would like to get rid of them, but you don't want to get rid of them, so let's put this as part of the stimulus package and let's stimulate our economy by moving forward. The stimulus bill reported by the Finance Committee had $6 billion in clean energy incentives that would have provided a short-term extension of expiring tax credits and help us stimulate the clean energy economy instead of having it bleed a slow death.

But we failed to pass that legislation. It would have helped us with the creation of 100,000 green-collar jobs and $20 billion in energy investment over the next year. If $20 billion was not stimulus and 100,000 green energy jobs, I don't know what was. Yet that was another big hold on our ability to move forward.

The bottom line is, we cannot keep up this slogan of saying: Find more, use less. We need to find more clean energy and hold up less legislation that will let us get there. Quit holding hostage clean energy legislation that is the truer predictor of domestic energy production, of if we are going to continue to be hostage to foreign oil, of if we are going to make progress of moving the United States forward. But again our colleagues held us up on moving to that legislation.

In fact, it was interesting that during the time of this vote, some of my colleagues were actually out campaigning at a solar plant. The CEO at the solar plant during that debate said:

The only question before us today is if the Senate, which

is debating an economic stimulus bill at this very moment,

understands green and can be green. Federal tax credits for

solar energy are about to expire which will send the growing

solar energy into a tailspin, especially here in California.

But the Senate can ensure we keep the economic engine moving

forward and extend the solar tax credits as part of the

economic stimulus bill.

We know what the result was. We didn't pass that legislation. And the blockage continued.

In June of this year, blocking continued on a tri-partisan bill on the Senate floor. That is right, a climate change bill authored by an Independent, Republican, and a Democrat that would have had a low carbon fuel standard in it that would have saved an estimated 5 million barrels of oil per day by 2020. That is equal to nearly 85 percent of our daily oil imports from OPEC. Another missed opportunity, because that legislation didn't pass.

On June 10, we had another opportunity to try to pass clean energy legislation that would have helped us in reducing our critical energy needs. There were hundreds of businesses that were up here on the Hill asking for us to pass this legislation, telling us that new job creation and reduction of fuel costs depended on it, and yet, again, we had a blockage of this legislation. And it seemed, in fact, that many people

cared more about the hedge fund managers' ability to use offshore accounts to avoid paying taxes than they did whether we were going to solve this energy problem by making an investment in new energy. So again we had a blocked vote that prohibited us from taking action and taking our country in a new direction.

That same day we tried a second vote and again were blocked in a comprehensive effort to get oil companies to either reinvest a portion of their astronomical profits into these needed areas of infrastructure or pay the tax so we could help clean energy solutions. And you guessed it, it was also blocked and held up.

About 6 weeks ago, on June 17, there was another blocked attempt when we tried to come up with a resolution to the long overdue extensions of clean energy tax incentives. Again, a strict party-line discipline maintained a filibuster, and companies across America started to lose hope that we were going to keep this investment cycle.

The problem is, without the tax incentives every year, where we have failed to produce a coherent policy on clean energy, we have seen astronomical drops in investment. As this chart of wind energy investment shows there was a 73-percent drop in 2001 to 2002, and a 77- percent drop from 2003 to 2004, the two times Congress allowed the Production Tax Credit to expire. And this is where we have gotten in 2007--this level of investment in wind energy resources. Yet now it is collapsing right in front of us because certain Senators would not pass legislation to make continued investments and continued predictable policy that the clean energy industry can use to put up new power plants.

In fact, around this time I got a letter from a company that I think illustrates the mistake we made. It came from a solar company named Abengoa and the Arizona Public Service, a local utility company. They told me that the Senate's failure to pass clean energy tax incentives was going to lead to the cancellation of a 280-megawatt concentrating solar plant near Phoenix. That is a $1 billion investment down the drain, and 2,000 construction jobs that will not happen, as well as 80 full-time jobs lost that would have run the plant.

So we tried many times, but they continued blocking these critical bills. The filibustering just this week just further illustrates this issue.

It is frustrating because we have even heard from those who have been in the oil industry such as T. Boone Pickens and others who say that unless we aggressively act to reduce our dependence on oil and get off of foreign petroleum, we could see, as Mr. Pickens told us at one of our Senate hearings last week, $300-a-barrel oil.

I don't think any of my colleagues want to see that. So I hope my colleagues go home and understand that our future lies in providing opportunities to find more renewable production, not drilling hoaxes. I hope they will quit holding clean energy hostage for the oil company executives; quit holding up the good legislation that could move our country forward.

I hope my colleagues will come back to the Senate in September with the notion in mind that reducing by 50 percent our dependence on foreign oil by accelerating the transition to plug-in electric vehicles should be our goal. That they will realize that holding up good legislation hostage for the 1 percent--the 1 percent--we might get from our Outer Continental Shelf drilling is risking our country's future.

This is the time to make the transition, and I hope my colleagues will hear that and understand it is not time to keep perpetrating hoaxes backed by and focused on by the oil companies. Rather its time to stop the politics and get serious about implementing a plan that gets our country off our dependence on oil. So I hope when we get back in September the other side of the aisle will quit holding up these critical clean energy bills and work with us to move forward on a desperately needed new energy strategy for the United States that will provide real price relief for Americans.

I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Commerce Committee be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 2095, and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a Lautenberg-Smith substitute amendment, which is at the desk, be agreed to, the bill, as amended, be read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate, and any statements related to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Veterans' Affairs Committee be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 2245 and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read a third time, passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and that any statements be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 2608 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Smith substitute at the desk be agreed to, the bill as amended be read a third time and passed, the title amendment be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be laid on the table, and any statements be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Veterans' Affairs by discharged from further consideration of H.R. 4918 and the Senate then proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid on the table with to intervening action or debate, and any statements be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 6340, which was received from the House.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read three times and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid on the table, and any statements be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 6580, which was received from the House.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and any statements be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 886, S. 2507.

I ask unanimous consent that the amendment at the desk be agreed to, the committee-reported substitute, as amended, be agreed to, the bill, as amended, be read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements be printed in the Record.

I ask unanimous consent the Judiciary Committee be discharged from further consideration of S.J. Res. 45 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

I ask unanimous consent that a Levin amendment be agreed to; the joint resolution, as amended, be read a third time and passed, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and any statements be printed in the Record.

I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 912, S. Res. 618.

I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and that any statements related to this measure be printed in the Record.

I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be discharged from further consideration of S. Res. 627 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and that any statements be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 924, S. Res. 624.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and that any statements related to the resolution be printed in the Record.