Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 547, submitted earlier today by Senator Durbin.

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 relating thereto be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, there are many items we were taking care of, but I think the Senate, including the Presiding Officer, in the last several days has spent a lot of time talking about the high prices of gasoline and how the consumers are being impacted by it.

I come to the floor tonight to continue that discussion and to say to the American people and the people of Washington State whom I represent that we are going to be aggressive and vigilant about looking into the oil market and why gas prices have risen over 100 percent in a year when there has been no disruption of supply, when there has been no shortage, when most oil companies testified that oil should be at $60 a barrel, why we are at these high gas prices.

Many of my colleagues have been out on the floor speaking. I keep pointing to the fact that the price of oil has been at over $118 a barrel. I don't know what they closed at today. Many consumers have been paying anywhere from $3.56 a gallon to $4.22 a gallon for diesel. Oil futures--I keep emphasizing this--oil futures are part of what drives the day-to-day price of oil. When oil futures are so high, that helps set the price in the day-to-day, what is called the spot market. We know oil futures now will be over $100 a barrel for several years. We know this is a very big indicator of the challenge we face in keeping gasoline prices low.

Many of my colleagues have been out here talking about ANWR, how we should drill in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge and we will solve our problems. I do not support drilling in the wildlife refuge because I think it is a very special place because it is a wildlife refuge. More importantly, in this case, it is not going to solve our energy crisis. Drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge will, at the height of its production 10 or 20 years from now, if it actually occurs, will reduce gas prices by about a penny a gallon. We are talking about a few dollars of savings over a year's period of time. We are not talking about a solution.

The United States has 3 percent of the world's oil reserves. We are not going to drill our way out of this problem. So we need to act.

Many of my colleagues have said it is about the fact that there is not enough gas supply; we don't have enough inventory. And we hear from oil analysts who give testimony or write articles in the paper that ``gasoline inventories are higher than the historical average at this time of year . . . so there is really no need to worry about the supply being too tight.'' This is an oil analyst who said this in March. Here is somebody analyzing the market who says it is not about the supply being too tight.

We had some people say it is all about refineries, if we just went ahead with refineries producing more and there are all these environmental regulations and they cannot produce more oil. According to CEOs of oil companies, that is not the issue because the CEO of Shell testified that--this is before a Senate committee--``We are not aware of any environmental regulations that have prevented us from expanding refinery capacity or siting a new refinery.'' That is not what the problem is either.

We know it is not any existing regulations because here is another CEO of an oil company who said: At this time, we are not aware any projects have been directly prevented as a result of any specific Federal or State regulation.

I have gone over some of these charts, and I am going over them again tonight because I think it is important for us to get to the bottom of what is going on. We owe it to our consumers, to our constituents to make sure that strong Federal statutes are in place that prohibit market manipulation and that they are enforced and that if markets are out of control--and by that I mean there is no justification for the price--we have somebody in the Federal Government, a Federal agency that is going to police that market and hold people accountable for the manipulation of supply and price.

During the summer season, we actually think consumption in the United States is projected to decline. So this notion somehow that the summer driving season is upon us and all of a sudden the price should go up because more people are going to be driving taking vacations and it is going to have an impact and that is why the price should go up is just not correct. This is a statement by the Energy Information Agency that it declined over last year by three-tenths of a percent and is expected to decline by four-tenths of a percent for the summer. It is not really about the fact that all of a sudden just because it is summer we should pay higher gas prices.

I have shown this chart about supply and demand because it shows in the orange color what demand have been and what supply has been, the yellow line. What is interesting is that supply and demand has been fairly consistent over time; that is, we see some anomalies there, but pretty much supply and demand are being met. So someone cannot say we had in 2007 or 2008 a big gap and that is why today prices are 100 times what they were, over 100 percent from where they were a year ago. You cannot say that because supply and demand are basically constant.

That leaves us to say, What is the problem? What is going on and what is causing this problem? When I think about this issue about what America needs to do to make sure oil markets are policed, to make sure oil markets are functioning, to make sure oil, a commodity that is so important to us in the United States as it relates to our economy, is really properly policed by proper Federal agencies, I look at where this is.

I have said a couple times on the floor now it seems to me that hamburger in America has more regulation as it relates to the futures market than oil does. I am sure some will say: What is the Senator from Washington talking about? What I am talking about is basically this chart which is that cattle futures, which are traded on several platforms, basically do not have any exemptions. They have to comply with all the rules and regulations of the futures market. That means they have to register, people have to know who is buying and selling on that market. They have daily reporting requirements. That means there has to be transparency. And there are speculative limits. Those speculative limits in the market for something such as cattle futures basically say if price gets out of control, then they stop the market. They stop the market; they don't let it just careen out of control.

Yet we look at oil--besides the NYMEX, oil has been traded on these mini-platforms, and you ask: Does it have to meet any of these same requirements as beef? No. Look over here and they are exempt. There is no check mark here. They are exempt. They are an exempt commodity. Why? Because in 2000, they were given an exemption called the Enron loophole that basically said those trades don't have to

comply with the same daily reporting requirements of the futures market. They don't have registration, so we don't know who is impacting that market. We don't know who is doing it. They certainly don't have daily reporting requirements, so there is no transparency, and they don't have any kind of limitation on the speculation. Basically, we have a totally different regime of how futures are treated.

As I said, the important point is that the oil futures price impacts the day-to-day price of oil as well. So it is very important that we have a futures market that functions, that is not manipulated, that has a certain amount of transparency to it, that there are reporting requirements so that if something is amiss in the marketplace, it can be investigated.

Let me be clear. I don't think any oil company or hedge fund or any other organization wants a disruptive market that does not function properly on market fundamentals. That is not good for anybody. So everybody should think that somehow hamburger cannot be more important to America than oil as it relates to our economy, and yet we have given all of these exemptions to oil and said we don't need to know this. We don't need to know this information. It is apparent at these prices that market fundamentals are not working. Supply and demand is not working.

We as a body basically said we want a prohibition on manipulation of oil. We made it illegal for any person to directly or indirectly use ``any manipulative or deceptive device or contrivance'' in connection with the wholesale purchase of crude oil or petroleum distillates. And we said any violators of that law could be fined up to $1 million a day. We did that in December. I think that $1 million per day is a pretty stiff fine to deter people from manipulating the market.

We also said anybody who knowingly provides false or misleading information about the wholesale of crude oil or gasoline prices to a Federal department or agency can also be fined up to $1 million per day.

We believe when we look at the Enron case and we look at some of the information that has been provided in these other markets where there has been manipulation, that providing false information was exactly the way we caught and understood exactly how people were manipulating the market.

That is the legislation that Senator Reid and the Democrats pushed and got bipartisan support for in the Senate and we passed in December of last year.

What we have been waiting for is the FTC to act. We have been waiting for the administration to enforce that law. We have been waiting for them to enforce that law by writing the rules and regulations that will police the oil market and catch the manipulators of oil prices in this country.

The good news is the FTC is acting. The FTC, within the last half an hour, 40 minutes, has issued their rule. I have it here. This is the new rule.

It has to go through a public comment period. It has to have the input, I am sure it will be from hundreds of people who will want to say this is how I think this rule should work. I certainly encourage consumers and consumer organizations and my colleagues in the Senate to all respond to this rule because it will be critical that we hear from people.

I think the Chairman of the FTC, Chairman Kovacic, has done a good job saying in a press release just issued:

We understand consumer prices are being hurt by high gas

prices and that the Commission remains vigilant in using this

authority to prevent unlawful behavior that affects gas

prices.

I congratulate the FTC in issuing this rule. But I want people to understand that this rule in its final implementation is what is going to say to those individuals who are manipulating markets--we don't know yet about oil markets. We certainly know we have found manipulation of electricity markets, we have found manipulation of natural gas markets, we have found manipulation of propane, and we are going to use this law and this new rule to police the oil markets and stop any kind of activity that is spiking the price of gasoline and ruining our economy.

I can't say how important it is that we move forward on this rule. I can't tell you how critical it is because without the proper tools, without the proper policing and a market careening out of control--we had an oil analyst who basically said--I don't know if we have that chart--but he basically said Government has to act because there is too much speculative power running around in the market without the oversight, and Government needs to act. If it does not act, prices are going to keep going up.

I wish to give an example because the Amaranth case was a natural gas case where a hedge fund basically manipulated the market and sold a bunch of product into the market, physically a whole month of supply, to crash the price and then basically end up capitalizing on the fact they had so much control of the market.

Back to a chart that we have on beef and cattle futures, it is the issue that when you look at those markets, one of the reasons you police markets and you look at speculative limits and you have exchange registration is because you want to make sure that not one big player has so much market share it ends up using that in a manipulative way, which is what Amaranth did.

After Amaranth basically collapsed and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission went after them for the manipulation of these prices, the price of natural gas fell 38 percent. After they got out of the market, the natural gas price fell 38 percent.

I am not saying this is going to happen, but imagine if that same thing happened in the oil markets. What would happen if we found out there was a big player such as Amaranth that was helping drive up the price and you actually could see a reduction of 38 percent from where we are today at nearly $118--$110 a barrel. Oil would be about $75 a barrel. Instead of paying $3.60 a gallon, we would be paying more like $2.40 or $2.50 a gallon. That is what would happen.

It is critical we police these markets and we use this new rule and that consumers respond and that we do our job in the Congress in making sure Federal regulators are on top of what is an out-of-control oil market that is not based on supply and demand, that is based on some other market activity that cannot be explained. Where there is smoke I think there is fire. We certainly see a lot of smoke in the oil markets that I hope will lead the FTC to investigate vigorously, with this new rule, the potential manipulation and stop these practices to help save our economy and save consumers who are getting gouged at the pump.

We are going to continue next week by reminding our colleagues of what we need to do. We need to protect consumers by closing the Enron loophole. As I said, beef futures have all these requirements but oil doesn't. We need to require the oversight of all oil futures markets. This was No. 3 on our list, get the FTC to act with new rules. The FTC did it tonight, issued their rule. I have not even read it in full. I am going to do that as soon as I leave the floor. I am going to see how good the rule is in basically enforcing the power we gave them in the December 2007 Energy bill.

We need to get the DOJ in the act because I think the FTC, while they have the new authority, should be with the CFTC, they should work with the SEC. They did a great job on the Enron task force in compiling across multiple agencies the case against the manipulation of the electricity markets. They should do the same for the oil markets.

Then, as I said before, I think making sure the President has emergency authority on price gouging, such as 28 States do, is also an important tool, and I am sure we will be talking more about that in the future.

Bursting the energy price bubble is what we need to do. We need to burst the energy price bubble that we cannot explain. We do not know why it is there. It is not supply and demand. It is something else going on, and we need to get to the bottom of it. After Amaranth, pricing dropped to the lowest level in 2\1/2\ years after their getting out of the market, after their manipulation, after a hedge fund came in and tried to manipulate the natural gas market. When we saw the lowest rate for natural gas in 2\1/2\ years after we got that manipulator out of the market, it tells us we have to be vigorous in this battle. We have to be aggressive in protecting our consumers, and that is what the Senate is going to continue to do.

I know the Presiding Officer is on board in that effort. I know many of my colleagues are too. I know Senator Reid is as well.

I encourage my colleagues to weigh in on this issue of the FTC rule and policing of the oil markets. I hope we have hearings in the Commerce Committee to do that and that we show the American public the Senate is serious about protecting consumers from the high price spikes in oil that cannot be described as simply market supply and demand.

I yield the floor.

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

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 9:30 a.m. tomorrow, Friday, May 2; that following the prayer and the pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and that there then be a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each. I further ask that the filing deadline for first-degree amendments be 3:30 p.m. on Monday.

Mr. President, today we were unable to reach an agreement on the FAA reauthorization bill. As a result, Senator Reid filed cloture on the substitute amendment and the bill. The cloture vote on this substitute will occur at 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday. There will be no votes tomorrow and, as previously announced, there will be no votes on Monday.

If there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent the Senate stand adjourned under the previous order.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. President, I have been to the floor now a couple of times already to talk about the high price of gasoline and what is going on in the oil markets. I want to take a few minutes this evening and talk about this issue as it relates to the futures market and what is happening to the day-to-day price of gasoline.

I know my constituents are outraged over this price. I know they are frustrated. It is impacting our economy. They want to see results. They want to see us take action. I think it is very important for us to keep delving into the details of what is causing this problem; that is, the price of gas increasing over 100 percent in about a year's time.

The first thing that is important for us to remember is how dependent the United States is on foreign oil; that we are, at 20 million barrels per day, the highest user of a country dependent on oil. And when you look at other countries and where they are on this issue, you can see that 20, almost 21 million barrels a day of foreign oil really means the United States, given the high oil prices we are seeing in the world market, is more impacted than any other economy.

So that means the United States has to step up and deal with this issue. I am not saying other economies, such as China, Japan, and Germany, are not impacted, but we are five times more impacted, and that is why we need to be aggressive and act on this legislation.

Now, we know where oil has been. In fact, I made this chart a few days ago to show how oil prices have tripled since 2002. I said oil was at $118 a barrel. Well, that changed. It went to $120. Now I think it is back down maybe to $116 today. I have not seen where it has closed. But that means we have seen gas go from $3.50 to $3.60. We have seen diesel at $4.22.

The important point is that oil futures; that is, the future price of oil, people are already purchasing oil and oil contracts into the future, and they are paying $100 or more for the next several years. That means those contracts that people are purchasing in oil futures help set the price for the commodity we purchase today.

If people are saying: I will buy oil into many years from now, 7, 8 years from now, and pay over $100 a barrel, it makes it very hard to have oil purchased in the physical market for a cheaper price than that.

Now, I have spent many hours on the Senate floor talking about supply and demand. The reason I have done that is because when you have a normal market, you have supply and demand, it works pretty well. My concern is, when you look at the statistics and the numbers, and here is a particular example, that world supply basically since 1988 has increased 33 percent and world demand has increased in that same time period 33 percent.

I showed a chart the other day that basically showed these two lines in parallel. This is not about supply and demand. This is not about a major market disruption and thereby not having a lot of supply and thereby causing a shortage and an increase, a spike in price. Now, yes, we have had some anomalies in the marketplace. We have had situations like Katrina, but they have been small instances, nothing that would cause a 100-percent increase in a 1-year period of time in the price of oil.

So that leads you to say simply: What is going on in this marketplace if it is not supply and demand, if the market is not functioning?

Well, one thing I know about this futures price that I described to you is that we have had a lot of testimony before the Energy Committee, before the Commerce Committee. I am sure some of my colleagues with oversight of the CFTC have had hearings.

But one thing we heard from a professor from the University of Maryland was, with those selling or buying commodities in the spot markets, they rely on the future price to judge the amount they are going to pay for the delivery of those commodities.

So I am reinforcing what I said earlier; that is, if people are already buying future contracts, and those future contracts are saying: We are definitely going to pay more than $100 a barrel for oil, That is going to affect the spot market. And the spot market is the market in which people buy the commodity today and what price they will pay.

So if you are sitting there thinking: How much am I going to pay for oil, and people are going to pay over $100 a barrel for it over the next several years, it is certainly going to affect the day-to-day price of oil.

Now, why is this so important? Well, it is so important because the futures market, in my mind, is out of control as it relates to the price of oil. It is out of control in the sense that it is not regulated in the same way other futures commodities are regulated. It is not regulated the same way cattle futures are, for example. They have reporting requirements. They have trading requirements. They have oversight by the CFTC. They are not exchanged on an international exchange to which we do not have access. There is no loophole, but for oil there is. That is the futures market, and the futures market impacts the spot price market.

So let's look at what happened. In fact, one of the analyses that was done on these hedge funds and how they are impacting the futures market--because I know a lot of people think crude oil is produced and an oil company either has that supply and then delivers it to its regional retailers throughout the United States or maybe to other countries and that is how it works. But what is happening is major investors are buying that product.

In fact, hedge funds are taking an ever-larger bet in the futures market because it is smaller than the stock market or the bond market, which means you can have more influence. The funds are using borrowed money to maximize their bets, magnifying their impact on the energy markets and prices.

So this is a reporter reporting about what is happening in the futures market and how hedge funds are playing this large role of moving in and having an impact on what the futures price is. Now, the reason I mention this is because we know this is causing problems. We have a very big example of a hedge fund gone wrong; that is, a hedge fund that was involved in rogue trading and used its power in the futures markets to disrupt the market as it related to natural gas.

So many people probably read about Amaranth; they have seen it in the paper. But what happened is, Amaranth sold large volumes of the next month's gas delivery in the last 30 minutes of the market. So they took a huge amount of supply and basically did what was called ``crashing the close,'' basically to benefit their position.

Now what this did is it cost consumers $9 billion more in the cost of natural gas. That is what this hedge fund did in disrupting the natural gas

markets. And, thank God, we had passed a law in 2005 saying this kind of activity was manipulative and it ought to be outlawed. The FERC is working on enforcement penalties of $291 million against Amaranth in this case.

But this is an example of how a hedge fund has come into the system and had a significant impact. Now, the Chairman of the FERC is saying these futures market prices impact the physical market price, and these manipulative schemes that were used like in Amaranth were designed to lower the prices in the futures market in order to benefit positions held in the physical market.

It is that kind of activity that we do not have enough insight into in the oil markets. You are saying: Well, how do we know about this? This was a natural gas market. And post-Enron we passed a law and said: We need to make this clear, a bright line that this kind of market manipulation is against the law.

We did that, and this is what the policeman on the beat, the FERC, has been doing to stop bad actors. And it is a very bright line. But what we need to do now is to do the same thing with the oil markets because after the Amaranth case, after it collapsed, lo and behold, what happened? What happened? Well, the futures price dropped to the lowest level for that contract in 2.5 years. So, basically, after Amaranth got out of the situation, and throughout this period thereafter, the market fundamentals of supply and demand basically have been unchanged.

This was an investigation that was done by our Permanent Committee on Investigations of the natural gas market. So once Amaranth was out of the market and their activities, guess what. We saw a stabilization in price. That is what we want. We want policing of the market. And that is why we want the FTC to do its job. We want the FTC to do the aggressive job that FERC is now doing in policing the electricity and natural gas market.

This body, this Congress, this President, signed into law language saying that the oil markets should also have a very bright line and should not tolerate market manipulation. That was signed into law last December. For the law to take effect, we need the Federal Trade Commission to actually implement the rule, to say how they are going to use this law, and to focus on catching the bad actors.

I want to reiterate the things that we need to do. We need to close the Enron loophole. The Enron loophole allows for online trading to be exempt from the regulations that other futures commodities comply with.

We need to require oversight of all oil futures markets. We cannot be held, in the United States with that 21 million barrels of oil, to having a blind spot on how the market is being impacted because the FTC does not have any insight into bad actors who might be manipulating it like Amaranth did.

We need the FTC to implement these new market rules. The FTC needs to be clear. They need to publish these rules and implement them as soon as possible.

I believe we need the Department of Justice to step in and help because we have seen, in the Enron case, when the Department of Justice and the CFTC and the FERC and various agencies worked together to piece this puzzle together with their authority, more enforcement mechanisms were used to catch bad actors.

I am sure we will have time again to talk about how 28 States have already implemented statutes to make price gouging illegal. I believe that is some authority that we should give the President.

So these are the things that we should be doing to protect consumers. I know it might seem to some of my colleagues that the oil futures market is complex and might not be the subject of something we should be dealing with on the floor of the Senate. But I will guarantee you, if we do not have a policeman on the beat for the oil markets, we are going to see a continuation of these incredible prices that are not based on market fundamentals.

I know whether you are an oil company or a hedge fund or whether you are someone in the supply chain, no one wants manipulation. Everybody wants markets to function based on supply and demand and basic fundamentals. Everybody should be for transparency of these markets, and they should be for strong Federal statutes implemented by the FTC, and they should be in support of having a very aggressive policeman on the beat to make sure we send a very strong message that these kind of practices will not be tolerated.

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

Mr. President, my home State of Washington, and the Pacific Northwest in general, is home to some of the most pristine nature and breathtaking scenery this country has to offer. I rise today to recognize a well known local treasure that puts the priceless gems of our region within reach. The Pacific Northwest Trail, running from the Continental Divide to the Pacific Coast, is 1,200 miles long and ranks among the most scenic trails in the world. This carefully chosen path runs through the Rocky Mountains, Selkirk Mountains, Pasayten Wilderness, North Cascades, Olympic Mountains, and Wilderness Coast. From beginning to end it passes through three States, crosses three National Parks, and winds through seven National Forests. This trail is a national prize and should be recognized as such. That is why, today, I am introducing the Pacific Northwest National Scenic Trail Act of 2008 with my colleague from Washington State, Senator Murray.

The National Trails System was created in 1968 by the National Trails System Act. This act authorized a national system of trails to provide additional outdoor recreation opportunities and to promote the preservation of access to the outdoor areas and historic resources of the nation. Today there are eight National Scenic Trails that provide recreation, conservation, and enjoyment of significant scenic, historic, natural, or cultural qualities. Designating the Pacific Northwest Trail a National Scenic Trail will give it the proper recognition, bring benefits to countless neighboring communities, and promote its protection, development, and maintenance.

Adding the Pacific Northwest Trail to the National Trail System has gained the support of Commissioners in Clallam, Jefferson. Island, Skagit, Whatcom, Okanogan, Ferry, Stevens, and Pend Oreille Counties in Washington and Boundary County in Idaho. Mayors in numerous cities along the trail support the economic impact the trail has had on their communities

I urge my colleagues to support this bill and to come hike the Pacific Northwest Trail if ever given the opportunity.

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

Mr. President, my home State of Washington, and the Pacific Northwest in general, is home to some of the most pristine nature and breathtaking scenery this country has to offer. I rise today to recognize a well known local treasure that puts the priceless gems of our region within reach. The Pacific Northwest Trail, running from the Continental Divide to the Pacific Coast, is 1,200 miles long and ranks among the most scenic trails in the world. This carefully chosen path runs through the Rocky Mountains, Selkirk Mountains, Pasayten Wilderness, North Cascades, Olympic Mountains, and Wilderness Coast. From beginning to end it passes through three States, crosses three National Parks, and winds through seven National Forests. This trail is a national prize and should be recognized as such. That is why, today, I am introducing the Pacific Northwest National Scenic Trail Act of 2008 with my colleague from Washington State, Senator Murray.

The National Trails System was created in 1968 by the National Trails System Act. This act authorized a national system of trails to provide additional outdoor recreation opportunities and to promote the preservation of access to the outdoor areas and historic resources of the nation. Today there are eight National Scenic Trails that provide recreation, conservation, and enjoyment of significant scenic, historic, natural, or cultural qualities. Designating the Pacific Northwest Trail a National Scenic Trail will give it the proper recognition, bring benefits to countless neighboring communities, and promote its protection, development, and maintenance.

Adding the Pacific Northwest Trail to the National Trail System has gained the support of Commissioners in Clallam, Jefferson. Island, Skagit, Whatcom, Okanogan, Ferry, Stevens, and Pend Oreille Counties in Washington and Boundary County in Idaho. Mayors in numerous cities along the trail support the economic impact the trail has had on their communities

I urge my colleagues to support this bill and to come hike the Pacific Northwest Trail if ever given the opportunity.

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

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

I come to the floor this evening to talk about the energy crisis, the price of oil, and how consumers are seeing the impacts of high oil prices in their everyday lives. The high price of oil is impacting businesses and many consumers can't afford to take family vacations and trips, dragging down our economy over all, and dragging us further into an economic downturn.

What I have heard today on the Senate floor from many of my colleagues is accusations and claims about what is going on and what might have transpired on various issues that might have caused the high price of gasoline and certainly the price of crude oil, which is now well over $100 a barrel. I think it is important to think about what Congress has already done and to make sure we are telling consumers what needs to be accomplished to solve the problem.

What we are hearing from analysts on Wall Street is that this issue is going to continue to exacerbate, and that oil prices will continue to rise. When we think about oil futures all the way out to 2015, still being over $100 a barrel, and oil futures impacting the physical price, it raises a lot of concerns about how the economy can sustain such a high price of fuel.

Let's start with some basics about supply and demand because many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have talked about the fact that they think oil supply hasn't been there, that growth in the numbers of people in India, China, other countries, is exacerbating the problem.

While we have seen growth in demand from other countries, this chart--starting in 1980, going all the way to 2006, and showing some numbers until 2008; the orange line is demand, and the yellow line is supply--except for some anomalies here, shows that supply and demand have kept pace. So anybody who wants to say this is all about supply and demand hasn't looked at a chart such as this showing that these lines pretty much track each other. What it tells us is that we have to look at other fundamental things that are happening in the marketplace and not just make accusations about what is going on.

In fact, if you want to look at the high price of gasoline, you can't say it is just an increase in demand. During the summer season, motor gasoline consumption in the United States is actually projected to decline by four-tenths of a percent, and it is projected to decline by three-tenths for the whole year. We are actually seeing a decline in demand. Obviously, that is not a surprise. Given the high price of fuel, people are not able to afford to continue their normal habits. But the issue isn't that the price is being driven up simply because there is this increase in demand. The high price of gasoline also isn't about the fact that there are low inventories. Some people have wanted to say this issue is about low inventories. When you look at what the industry says, here is an oil analyst who basically says that gasoline inventories are higher than the historical average at this time of the year. So there is really no need to worry about tight supply. Here is an oil analyst saying that.

It points, again, to other questions about what is going on. Some people have said: Let's blame it on renewables. Many Democrats have been big supporters of renewable energy, big supporters of getting alternatives into the marketplace, because we believe if you get alternative fuel into the marketplace, it will lower the demand on normal fossil fuel and create some competitive advantages. I know there are some people--a Governor--basically saying: You ought to repeal the whole RFS. You ought to get rid of this issue as it relates to having a renewable fuels standard. Here is the Wall Street Journal report from Merrill Lynch saying that without biofuels, the price would be even higher, and that basically oil and gasoline prices would be 15 percent higher if biofuels weren't helping to increase the output. So it is wrong to say that somehow our focus on renewable fuels has exacerbated the situation when, in fact, it has done nothing but help the situation. In fact, I love that this Texas A&M study basically found that ethanol has increased in excess of what our renewable fuels standard was, indicating that relaxing the standard would not cause a contraction in the industry, nor would it cause a reduction in the price of corn.

The issue today is where do we go for solutions. Part of the issue is that many of my colleagues are saying it is all about more supply of fossil fuel for the United States. We have had this debate so many times in the Senate. We

have had a debate about whether the United States, with 3 percent of the world's oil reserve, really is going to make a dent in increasing supply and giving consumers a chance to get off fossil fuels. We are going to have a big debate about global warming and its impact and whether we should even keep our focus on fossil fuel or accelerate getting off of it.

Many times today, even down at the Rose Garden, we hear the word ``ANWR'' again, and how ANWR was the secret recipe for lowering gas prices in America. I obviously don't support opening up drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge because it is a wildlife refuge. But I certainly don't support it when even our own Energy Information Administration has said that drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge would only reduce gasoline prices by a penny per gallon and only 20 years after we got to peak production. So at a penny per gallon, if people use 400 to 500 gallons of fuel, we are talking about a few dollars of savings there over many, many months. So the notion that ANWR would be some way of solving our problems just isn't true.

I know a lot of people have talked about refinery capacity, and I think you need to talk to the oil companies about refinery capacity and why they have not expanded. I know my colleague Senator Boxer has been out here many times talking about how she had to stop consolidation in her State because they didn't want to keep a refinery open. But I know this: We know it is not environmental regulation. In fact, according to this CEO of an oil company:

We are not aware of any environmental regulations that

would prevent us from expanding our refinery capacity or

siting a new refinery.

So we know it is not about environmental regulations. That is not what is stopping them either.

Some people have said: Don't take the tax incentives away from the oil industry; don't do that because somehow that is what is keeping the industry afloat. The industry is making record profits. They are making so much profit they don't even know what to do with the profit. They are buying back their own stock.

We know this: We know the President of the United States, George W. Bush, said:

With $55 oil, we don't need incentives for oil and gas

companies to explore.

It is way above $55 a barrel. So I take him at his word that we don't need incentives to continue to explore at that level.

Let's talk about what is the issue. Let's talk about what is the problem we need to solve, for which we need to be responsible to consumers, to businesses, to the economy, and to make sure we continue to deal with this threatening crisis.

I know one oil analyst who looked at these markets. And maybe the man on the street, if you ask him, he thinks something is going on in the oil market. He doesn't think it is about supply and demand. He didn't happen to see that first chart I put up, but he knows something is going on because he sees the irregularity of prices. But this analyst said: Unless the U.S. Government steps in to rein in speculators' power in the market, prices will just keep going up. Basically he is saying that speculators have too much power in the market right now, and unless the Government does its job, the prices are going to keep going up. So it is time for us to act. It is time for us to get smart about this.

It reminds me of the debate we had when the Enron crisis hit the electricity markets. It probably took well into 2001, when many people said: Do you know what, this is all about environmental regulation, or, this is about not enough refineries, and it is about the fact that there is a supply shortage. They came up with all these things.

So as 2002 rolled around and as more and more investigation was done, we found out that, no, it was actually manipulative schemes by various individuals within a very large organization--actually several organizations--that purposely manipulated the electricity markets. They did this so they could short supply and drive up the price.

Now, Congress acted in 2005. We said--after we found out all the facts, we heard all the terms: Death Star, Get Shorty, all the various schemes that had been manipulated--we kept thinking: How could this happen when we had a Federal Power Act that said, on the wholesale rate of electricity and natural gas, you have to have just and reasonable pricing. We thought that is a clear enough message for people. But, in fact, it was not. It was not a clear enough message. It cost my State billions. It cost California's economy billions. So what did we do? Congress made it illegal to use manipulative devices or contrivances in the electricity or natural gas physical markets, and we greatly increased the penalties for market transparency violations.

Now, why did we go to the extent of doing this? We could not believe that such activities were in some way a gray area and that somehow people were still confused post-Enron that this kind of activity was OK. Some people said: Well, you already have the electricity and natural gas markets under the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. What else do you need?

But I was very proud that Congress passed this legislation. Since that law has been on the books, since 2005, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, as it relates to electricity and natural gas markets, has been aggressive about pursuing this power and using it.

What have been the results? Well, the result has been making market manipulation illegal when it comes to oil and natural gas, so that they have had 64 investigations, 14 settlements, $48 million in civil penalties, two ongoing market manipulation cases that could net over $450 million in civil penalties, and a dramatic increase in self- reporting and self-policing. It is like one of my staffers said: If you want people to straighten up, let them know there is going to be a cop on the beat. Let them know there is going to be someone investigating these activities and we are not going to tolerate it, and people will start obeying the law. So we did that.

In 2007, we decided that if this kind of pervasive activity was still continuing in the natural gas and electricity markets--if that was still happening--maybe there was some correlation here with what was happening in the oil markets, because clearly, after looking at all those charts we just went through about supply and demand, and everything else, we could not understand what was happening. We have had oil company executives tell us that the price of oil today should be at somewhere between $50 and $60 a barrel given where supply and demand is. Oil company executives are throwing up their arms saying: We don't know why the price of oil is well over $100 a barrel. So we, in the Energy bill in 2007, passed a law saying it is time to make the same laws we have for natural gas and electricity apply to oil markets. We said that any person who uses, directly or indirectly, ``any manipulative or deceptive device or contrivance'' in connection with the wholesale purchase of crude oil or petroleum distillates--that that was illegal and that Congress made violations subject to penalties of up to $1 million a day. That is $1 million a day because we believe, if you are doing these kinds of activities, every day that you have engaged in those activities you should pay a fine for that.

Now, where are we today with this authority? Because some people say: Well, you passed a law. Is it working? This law does not really go into effect until the Federal Trade Commission adopts rules and puts them into action. That is what we are waiting for now. My colleagues on the Commerce Committee have urged the FTC to hurry about this task, that it is so important to our economy and to consumers to hurry about this task. I know Senator Reid has encouraged them, Speaker Pelosi has encouraged them. So we are in the process now of hoping that the FTC will implement this rule and give proper notice but start the process because once the marketplace knows--just as they did in natural gas and electricity--that these kinds of activities will not be tolerated, we might be able to make a dent in what is happening with this excessive speculation in the energy markets.

Well, let's look at what exactly the market manipulation behavior is that we are concerned about. We basically have said we are interested in whether companies have manipulated the supply, whether they have given false reporting, whether they have cornered

the market, and whether they have engaged in any kind of rogue trading. Those are the things we are concerned about.

Well, let's talk about supply manipulation for a second because that is something for which people might say: Well, it is just about supply and demand, and how do you pass a law about supply and supply manipulation? Believe it or not, there are good Federal statutes on the books starting with a lot of case law and a lot of history. What we are saying is, we do not want any artificial influencing of supply in the energy markets. We do not want someone creating something that is not a normal part of business but is artificially used to create a shortage-- for example, diverting or exporting marginal supply in tight markets. That is, we know the market is tight on oil. You can go back to that chart on supply and demand. They pretty much track very closely. So it is a tight market. When you have an event like Katrina, it is even tighter.

Our question is, Did somebody export supply outside the country just to create a shortage in the United States and drive up the price? Have we had hedge funds holding crude oil ships off the coast just so the price will go up for a few more days?

That is the second point: holding supply deliveries temporarily to boost prices. We have people now who are major players in the oil market who really are not the end users of crude oil supply. They are just big financial movers in the marketplace. They are not taking the delivery of oil because they are out there delivering it to various jobbers or what have you. They are there for a financial investment.

In fact, we want to know if some of these inventory management strategies that have basically reduced physical supply--and basically everybody just trades their reserves on paper, and everybody just trades the paper around, where that, in fact, does not have much transparency to it. So we do not know how much that creates that management system in and of itself. Where we used to have 30 days of crude oil supply, thereby, the market was not so tight. Now we have this paper inventory system. We do not know what that really means. We do not know how much supply is really in reserve. Is that being used to manipulate supply?

Then, obviously, what we saw--I just think back to the Enron days when people said: Oh, no, no one would ever shut down a powerplant just to short supply. They would never do something like that. It must all be about the fact that really something was wrong. Well, we found out that there were purposeful shutdowns of various powerplants to short the market and to drive up the price. So we want to know if there are unnecessary and untimely ``maintenance'' shutdowns just to impact supply in the marketplace of oil.

We also want to know whether there is false reporting because false reporting can lead to misleading or inaccurate statements that also can hinder the marketplace.

Part of this legislation we passed in this bill is to say, in 2007, that if you gave false information, that was also subject to civil penalties of up to $1 million a day because part of this--the same in the Enron case--is it was very hard to understand these schemes. If it was not for videotapes that were put together, we would have never known exactly how these schemes would have worked just by looking at the books. So we want the Government to look at some of this information and if there are manipulative schemes. But if they provide false information, we believe that also should be a penalty.

Now, we know that in one case of natural gas--El Paso Merchant Energy--they reported nonexistent trades to reporting firms while at the same time failing to maintain certain records. They basically created false information about the trades that were going on. The result was six traders were convicted for false reporting and attempting to manipulate the energy market.

Now, the reason why this is so important to the subject we are debating today is that manipulation has happened in natural gas, and why this is so important now is because in the oil markets, and particularly in the oil futures market, we do not even have the same transparency in reporting requirements that we do with other commodities like natural gas. We have given them an exemption in the Enron loophole that was done in 2000 as part of the Commodity Exchange Act, so they do not have those reporting requirements. So we cannot even go and get some of this information to know that something like what was happening with El Paso Energy is transpiring in the oil markets, as it did in the natural gas markets.

So it is one of the reasons why we want to close the Enron loophole and to say that the trading of energy futures, which definitely impacts the price of oil today--and we will get to that on another day out here on the floor, about how the energy futures price impacts oil today, we will get to that, but for today we just know that if you do not have reporting, then there is no way--whether it is the SEC or the CFTC or FERC or the FTC--no one has any ability to get access to the information.

We also know that we want cornering the market to be illegal. Cornering the market would be exploiting the market power through excessive mergers like natural monopolies or blocking new entrants to basically corner the marketplace. We know this is something about which we have a great deal of concern. We know British Petroleum attempted to do this. Basically, they purchased excess propane in Texas, within the pipelines, to hold it from the market and then sell it high. We know they did that in trying to corner the market. The end result was that the Department of Justice and the CFTC ended up with a settlement case against them in the number of $303 million. So we know these things are happening in other energy markets, and we know they are a problem in the--potentially a problem--in the oil markets today.

We also know rogue trading is potentially a problem as well.

Mr. President, I am not going to take much more time on this issue as it relates to the high price of gasoline. I plan to continue to come out to the floor to talk about this issue about the need for the CFTC to promulgate this rule and get on about investigating the oil markets and to make sure consumers are protected.

I talked about what I think the rule needs to do. It needs to prohibit the manipulation of supply and to have a strong statute and penalty for falsifying information. It has to have a prohibition on cornering the market.

I believe that rogue trading is something else we are seeing in the marketplace. We need to have a prohibition on that. People might ask: What is that? It is employing manipulative trading schemes such as buying or selling large volumes of stock or futures contracts with the intention of influencing prices.

You can imagine, if somebody has a large position in one of these energy supplies or stocks, that basically ends up impacting the marketplace. We actually found this with the Amaranth case, in the area of natural gas. Amaranth sold large volumes of what is called next month natural gas delivery in the last 30 minutes of the market. What they did is basically crashed the close of the market. By selling large amounts of futures contracts for delivery of natural gas at the close of the market they manipulated the price and benefitted their large positions in other financial derivatives, and that ended up impacting the physical price of natural gas. The good news is the FERC, because of the 2005 law we passed, was on the beat, doing its job. Unfortunately, consumers paid something akin to $9 billion in increased natural gas costs before the FERC could get this situation under control. Now they are in the enforcement phase of a $291 million civil penalty against Amaranth. We know these situations are happening with rogue trading.

We know of another case that is similar to rogue trading and price manipulation, where Marathon Oil allegedly attempted to sell oil delivery contracts below the market prices in order to basically lower the market price, benefitting them as a net purchaser of foreign crude oil. So there ended up being an investigation by the CFTC, and today they are in a $1 million settlement with the CFTC on that issue.

All these issues, I believe, need to be investigated in the oil markets. They need to have a strong statute passed by the CFTC, similar to in 2005 for electricity and natural gas, where we can

see the results of the investigation, we can see that a Federal agency is doing its job; we need to do the same thing with the oil market.

In fact, there are five things I think we need to do that would help protect consumers from high prices of gasoline. Our economy and consumers cannot afford much more.

We need to close the Enron loophole, in which that 2000 law said that online trading promulgated by Enron, they said, they don't have the same transparency, don't have to open their books or allow people to see what they are doing. We know for other commodities the Securities and Exchange Commission and CFTC look at those things to make sure there is not a manipulation in the marketplace. We cannot even get these because we gave them an exemption. That needs to be repealed. We need to require oversight of all oil futures markets. That is, as I said, the oil futures price affects the physical price of oil. If people are going to buy oil futures well into 2015 at over $100 a barrel, it is going to impact the physical price of oil today. If you can buy oil at over $116 in the oil futures, it is hard to believe that oil is going to drop much below that in the physical market. But these are markets--unlike, again, our commodities in the United States, on NYMEX or the mercantile exchange, such as corn or soybean futures, this is an exchange the United States doesn't have any regulatory impact on. We don't have the ability to look at those books, any enforcement mechanisms. We don't have the ability to protect consumers on that kind of speculation if there is manipulative activity going on.

As I said, we need to get the CFTC to finish their work. This is so important that I think the Department of Justice should coordinate all these agencies because there are futures activities, there is a physical market, and there is the falsification of information. What happened with Enron is the Department of Justice created a task force, called the Enron Task Force. It coordinated these agencies and got to the bottom of what was happening with the electricity markets and the manipulation. I think the Department of Justice should create an Oil Market Fraud Task Force to do the same thing.

Lastly, I know my colleagues will talk about this on the floor--to make price gouging a Federal crime. There are 28 States in our country that have the ability, in an emergency, to make a declaration in the event of a natural disaster, or huge anomalies in the market, and help stabilize the situation with executive power. I am willing to give that same executive power to the President of the United States. I hope he would use it.

In conclusion, there is a lack of transparency in energy trading markets. We need to fix that. This is one of the CFTC Commissioners who said:

I am generally concerned about a lack of transparency and

the need for greater oversight and enforcement of the

derivatives industry.

He is basically talking about this offshore exchange, where we don't have the same kind of oversight that we do. In fact, I said earlier that we have more regulation of hamburger and the future of beef than we have of oil. I will tell you that oil is critically important to our economy, and it needs to have the same kind of transparency and oversight as other futures commodities.

Last, I will reiterate that even on Wall Street, even the analysts who know what is going on in the marketplace, who know these prices are outrageous, not based on supply and demand, are saying:

Unless the U.S. Government steps in to rein in speculators'

power in the market, prices will just keep going up.

An energy analyst said that this month.

It is clear the marketplace even thinks there is too much speculative power, and the answer is for us to do our jobs--for the FTC to do their job, to get the help of DOJ, and for us to make sure we are doing our job on oversight in giving consumers protection. But I think there are very few people in America who do not think these prices are out of control, that it is not normal market forces, it is not normal supply and demand, and if it keeps careening out of control, it is going to wreck our economy. It is certainly wrecking consumers' pocketbooks right now.

I hope we will take action. I hope the Federal agencies will get on their feet and be aggressive about protecting consumers on this important issue. I know we will continue to talk about this on the floor as we continue to pass legislation that does protect America from these out-of-control gasoline prices.

I yield the floor.

Three or four minutes.

Mr. President, I say to the majority leader, I appreciate what he said on behalf of women. Washington State has one of the highest rates of breast cancer in the Nation. We have a very good detection program and good survival rates. We don't know the cause of it, but we know it is very important to continue the research.

I know that in 1992, the so-called year of the woman, when we had one of the largest classes of women elected to the Congress, we saw an increase in women's health research. Why? Because women were in the Congress to say it was important to us to not have the research directed in a way that favored some of the particular programs that were about men's health.

So I thank my colleague. The majority leader is right to say we have to respond to our constituents who are concerned about this issue and want to give attention to it. Clearly, women's health research hasn't gotten all the attention it deserves in the past.

Yes.

That is what we found in the 1990s, in that we didn't have enough representation to ask the hard questions, to say our constituents were not being heard on this issue and to raise this in various committees. Frankly, that was the time period when, for the first time, we had a woman on every committee in the House of Representatives. Once we got women on every committee, we asked the hard questions and increased the percentage of women's health research.

I think it is a very poignant point to the fact that, while NIH does good work, we have to respond to our constituency and, certainly, there can be discrepancies and issues that the larger public should have a say in as to health research.

Madam President, I thank the Senator from Vermont for his comments about what is a growing national crisis: the price of oil and the price of gasoline at the pump. I congratulate him for making many important points relating to this issue and where the Senate needs to go in trying to address it. So I look forward to working with him on his ideas and many of the other ideas my colleagues have to try to give consumers some relief at the pump.

I think many consumers already have either turned on their televisions or seen through the impact of going to the gas station themselves that at $118 a barrel for oil, they are paying at least $3.56 a gallon for gasoline and more for diesel.

But what is important to understand about this is that oil futures-- which is an indication of the price of oil and impacts the physical market's price of oil--are going to be over $100 for several years, including probably until 2015. That is, the marketplace has already decided it is buying oil at over $100 until 2015. So that is going to keep the price of oil high at over $100 and it is going to continue to have a significant impact and it is something we need to take into consideration.

Now, we have heard a lot of debate on the floor this morning about this issue and what the cause of it was. There have been a lot of accusations by a lot of different people saying: Here is what we think the problem is.

Well, I wish to go through a couple things I want to make sure our colleagues understand is not the problem or not the solution.

First of all, we had people talking about how this was all about more supply, and that if Democrats had not opposed drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, somehow today we would not have this problem, we would be sitting here without any kind of oil problem.

Well, I wish to remind people that the Energy Information Administration--our own Federal Government agency--did an analysis of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and said that:

Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would only

reduce gasoline prices by a penny per gallon, and only in

twenty years when drilling is at or near peak production.

That would be when it was at peak capacity. So hardly where we are today--at $118 a barrel--would that have had a significant impact on the prices we have today.

We also heard people say this was about environmental regulations, that somehow environmental regulations had caused this problem.

Well, let's hear from the oil company executives themselves. This one, Shell's CEO, said:

We are not aware of any environmental regulations that have

prevented us from expanding refinery capacity or siting a new

refinery.

So here are oil company executives saying they do not know of any environmental regulations. I think this was testimony before the Senate--one of our committees. So, obviously, their oil company executives are saying that is not what the problem is.

They also said environmental regulations are not stopping refinery expansions. So they were clear, testifying, again, before the Senate:

At this time, we are not aware of any projects that have

been directly prevented as a result of any specific Federal

or State regulation.

So you cannot stand on the floor of the Senate and blame regulations or environmental issues for not doing something that would impact the price of oil today. It is not true. These are CEOs, these are people in the business, and they are basically saying: No, that is not the effect.

We have one more from BP who said that it also was not stopping them from doing anything:

We do not believe that any Federal or State environmental

regulations have prevented us from expanding refinery

capacity or siting a new refinery.

So here is the oil industry itself saying that is not what the issue is, that is not what the problem is. They have not been back since this time period to claim any kind of Federal regulation or environmental issue.

So let's look at the other issue people talk about: inventory. Oh, there must be inventories related to that issue of the fact that you wouldn't allow us to drill in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge or that it is about these environmental restrictions and we couldn't build refineries.

Here is someone who is an oil analyst who on March 10 had this to say about inventories:

Gasoline inventories are higher than the historical average

at this time of the year, so there is really no need to worry

about supply being too tight.

So this is an oil analyst talking about the marketplace and basically saying: You can't say this is about tight supply as it relates to the fundamentals of supply and demand.

So is this just about supply and demand? Is it about that? Well, one individual from the Truckers Association basically just said a few weeks ago:

The oil market is no longer functioning on supply-and-

demand fundamentals.

I don't blame the Truckers Association for saying that because they are on the front line of out-of-control diesel prices. When they see $4 a gallon for their diesel, it takes over $1,000 to fill up a typical tractor trailer, and they can't make enough money when they are paying that kind of a price. This year, they will pay $22 billion more--$22 billion more--for diesel fuel than last year's high prices. So don't think it is not costing Americans and costing industries that are based on transportation and profit margins that are very low.

We know there is more to this issue than what people have talked about here on the floor this morning. But let's look at what is really going on and whether this price is justified. Let's look at that.

Again, I think a great source to understand whether this price is justified--that is, whether there is something else going on in the marketplace--is the oil company executives themselves because if they are saying oil shouldn't be at $100 a barrel, then why should it be at $100 a barrel? If those in the industry are even claiming it shouldn't be at this price, then something must be wrong and we should act to correct it.

But here is the CEO of Marathon Oil who basically said:

$100 oil isn't justified by the physical demand in the

market.

That is an oil company executive owning up to that, just saying right upfront that it is not about the fact that oil should be at $100 a barrel.

Let's look at what some other CEO said, this one the CEO of Royal Dutch Shell, who just recently, on the 11th of this month, basically said that oil fundamentals are no problem, meaning that is not what the issue is. It isn't basically supply and demand. They are the same as they were when oil was selling for $60 a barrel. What he is saying is that the fundamentals in the market are the same as when they were $60 a barrel, so there is no problem with supply and demand.

Let's look at another executive from an energy company. I like this because he actually just recently testified before the House of Representatives and just spit it right out. He just said it plain and simple. He said that the price of oil should be about $50 to $55 per barrel. That is an oil company executive this month testifying before a House committee saying that is what the price of oil should be.

Now, I ask my colleagues, what are we going to do about this situation when even the oil company executives are testifying--in this case, under oath before Congress--and basically saying there is no justification for this price? What are we going to do? Are we going to just sit by and do nothing? We have people in the marketplace who are urging us to do something.

This is from an energy analyst who basically was just quoted as saying: Unless the U.S. Government--the U.S. Government--steps in to rein in speculators' power in the market, prices will just keep going up. That is an oil industry analyst. That is what he is saying.

Everybody wants a functioning market. Functioning markets mean there is transparency, there is not manipulation, it is working well, people can trust the outcome, and people can make investments knowing that someone isn't gaming the system. That is what a functioning market is. It is clear that this individual is saying they are not sure there is a functioning market, and they are basically saying that unless the U.S. Government steps

in to rein it in, we are going to have a problem.

We have seen this before. We saw this with the Western energy crisis in electricity. We saw the market go crazy and people stand by and say: Oh, you know what, you didn't build enough capacity; the environmentalists stopped it; this and this was wrong, and that is what the problem was. Well, during that time period, guess what happened. We lost nearly 600,000 jobs, and there was a $35 billion drop in economic product. For us in the Northwest, it cost our economy billions of dollars, and we are still recovering from it. So now is not the time to sit and point fingers that this is about some PAC environmental problem or regulation or ANWR; this is about taking testimony from individuals and standing up and deciding what we are going to do to protect our consumers.

My colleague from Vermont mentioned a few things, and I wish to mention a few things, also, because I think there are four or five things we should be doing right now to help consumers. This is a crisis. It demands a response by the Federal Government. Some of these powers exist within the Federal Government now, some of them we are working on, but we need to be aggressive about protecting our consumers.

The first one my colleague from Vermont mentioned was closing the Enron loophole. Now, many people may not understand what closing the Enron loophole is, but just to give my colleagues a little refresher, this debate has been going on basically since shortly after 2000 when Congress gave a loophole to electronic trading of energy. Basically, what that loophole meant is they didn't have to have the same kind of transparency; that is, we don't have the ability to look at the books and see whether somebody manipulated the price or was doing something untoward in the marketplace. We gave them an exemption.

Since that time, Senator Feinstein and then more recently Senator Levin, myself, and others have been trying to close that Enron loophole. We have been trying to close that Enron loophole for over 4 years now. If anybody wants to say there is any responsibility here about what Congress hasn't done and it has impacted the price of energy, then people ought to look at their voting record and see whether they voted to close the Enron loophole because that is part of this problem.

In addition, we should require oversight of all oil futures; that is, why are we saying oil futures somehow are less important than any other commodity we trade on the futures market for NYMEX or for the Chicago Mercantile Exchange? They have reporting requirements. Federal investigators can go and look at their books and see whether somebody can manipulate the market. They have that. But, no, we are letting some of these oil futures which impact the price of today's oil--as I said, from now until 2015, people are purchasing oil futures at over $100 a barrel, which means that is going to be a market indicator for what the physical price will be. We need to be having oversight of oil futures.

We had a very interesting hearing about a year ago where a professor from American University, I think, came to testify, and he said: Is hamburger any more important than oil in America? Because he said that when you look at beef and how it is regulated and beef futures, there are things they have to report. There are transparencies in the marketplace. We require all of this of them, but oil, which is essential to our economy, we basically have given exemptions to. So we need to require oversight of all oil futures.

The third thing we need to do is have the Federal Trade Commission write rules for a law that we passed in 2007. This body did something. That is what people should be holding up today--holding up the fact that we did something to protect consumers. We wrote a new Federal statute basically which said that manipulation of oil markets was a Federal crime, that you couldn't have any manipulative devices or contrivances that manipulated the price of oil. Now we are sitting around waiting for the FTC to implement that rule.

Now, some people think: Well, maybe there is not manipulation in the marketplace. I want to give three examples which have happened recently, all in the last few years. They have been the result of having new statutes on the books, but we certainly need to have this regulation implemented. One of those examples was British Petroleum. The company must now pay approximately $373 million in part for conspiring to corner the market and manipulate the price of propane carried through the Texas pipeline. So there is an example of where regulators got on the job. Similarly, in 2006, a manipulative scheme to game a natural gas market by a now defunct hedge fund cost consumers upwards of $9 billion, and in July of last year, Marathon Oil agreed to pay a $1 million fine to settle charges that Marathon Petroleum Company, a subsidiary, attempted to manipulate the crude oil prices in 2003.

So these are incidents of manipulation happening. We have an industry that is saying it is not about supply and demand and the price should really be anywhere from $50 to $60 a barrel; it shouldn't be at this price. We need the Federal regulators to do their job.

The fourth thing we need to do: Having gone through this with the incredible crisis of electricity, we learned we have various agencies with various oversight, and the Department of Justice did something very wise during that time period. It created the Enron Task Force. It created an Enron Task Force to coordinate all the agencies that could help them in the investigation of the manipulation and corruption and fraud that was perpetrated by that company. It worked well. That President's corporate task force on fraud exists within the Department of Justice today.

My colleague from Washington, Congressman Inslee, and myself wrote to the Department of Justice and President Bush on Monday calling for a Department of Justice oil market fraud task force. We believe it is time to bring DOJ into the picture to be aggressive in working with the CFTC, the FTC, the SEC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and any other Federal agency to be the policeman on this beat and make sure oil markets are not being further manipulated.

The last thing we need to do is to make sure price gouging is also not occurring. Now, we had language in the 2007 Energy bill on this issue. I like this language because it is based on language that 28 States have now that in the case of an emergency, when prices have gone out of control, it gives the President the ability to declare an emergency and to deal with those prices. We may be getting to that point. We may be getting to the point where we listen to these oil analysts who are saying these prices are going to just keep going up unless the Federal Government does something, and then I think we are going to have to do more than this. But at least we need to do these four things--and I say hopefully pass this fifth one as well--to make sure we are giving all the tools to the administration to protect consumers.

My colleague from Vermont said it well. This is about what are we going to do to protect consumers. There are a lot of things that have been happening since our economy took this more significant downturn. I would say it is a significant downturn because no one can sustain these oil price impacts across our economy. Yes, there are other things such as housing, but this is having a significant impact. But if you look at some of the solutions we have done so far, whether we are talking about housing or in the banking industry, we have done a lot for the big organizations. This is about doing something to protect consumers on price.

I hope my colleagues will take this list seriously as we propose legislation, and I hope all of my colleagues will join in the Department of Justice starting this investigation. If you look at their Web site, they will tell you when they started the President's corporate task force on fraud, particularly relating to Enron, and they started making sure traders and others knew they were going to lose their livelihood and their profession if they manipulated the market, people started getting serious about their actions.

At $118 a barrel, we have to send a message by the enforcement agencies of the Federal Government that we are going to get serious about challenging manipulative activity as it relates to oil prices and that we are going to do our job and we are going to demand

that the Federal Government have a cop on the beat when it comes to high oil prices.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am surprised that my colleagues say this is all about publicity. How can it be about publicity when, in reality, women make less than men in their everyday jobs? Last week in Pittsburg I

attended an equal pay forum and found young children carrying handmade signs about justice: Gussie, a young girl, said, ``I will work for justice;'' Sofia, another young girl, said, ``I will work for justice;'' Leo, who wanted to join in with these young ladies, said, ``I will work for change and for justice.'' The children planned to walk around and collect 23 cents on street corners, begging for an amount of change that represents the difference between what men and women get paid.

This young generation of Americans wants to know that they are going to grow up in a world where they are going to get equal pay for equal work.

Women, on average, make 77 cents per every dollar their male counterparts make and stand to lose $250,000 dollars in income over their lifetime. We are talking about real dollars. The pay gap follows women into retirement. A single woman in retirement, making less pay in her career, could receive $8,000 dollars less in retirement income annually than a man--this is an issue of justice.

I appreciate that the Senator from Massachusetts has led the charge on this. I want to remind my colleagues that we had a similar Supreme Court decision on identity theft, which passed by a 9-0 vote, that limited a victim's ability to recover when it is held that the statute of limitations begins at the time of the initial violation, rather than when the victim discovers the injury. It was the same issue. You did not know that your identity had been stolen, but the courts maintained a very narrow definition of how long you had to recover. What did we do? We acted. Congress extended the statute of limitations to two years after the individual knew their identity had been stolen or 5 years after the violation. That is what Congress did. We corrected that. That is what we need to do to give equal justice to women so they can have equal pay.

It is quite simple to correct this issue today. We are asking that more women be a part of the math and science and engineering workforce, be part of the information technology age. But if they cannot ask how much their male counterparts are making and find out later that they are only making 77 cents per every dollar their male counterparts make, that is not fair.

We could correct that by now by not only allowing people to come forward at the first instance of unequal pay--but every instance.

It is critical that we address this simple correction. This body has corrected other Supreme Court decisions on these same statute of limitations issues. This is the least we can do.

I see my colleague from New York has come to the floor. We ought to get this bill passed and get on to her legislation that is even more robust--to make sure that employers are treating women fairly and giving them information. This is basic. We should pass it and make sure we send this to the President's desk.

Mr. President, with Earth Day just a week away, I wish to recognize the steps colleges and universities in my State are taking to increase public awareness about the effect our daily actions have on the environment. Specifically, I would like to applaud the commitment North Seattle Community College has made to incorporate sustainable practices into everyday life at the college and local level.

Sustainability, the simple idea that we can meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs is a concept that is relevant to our lives now more than ever. Today, our reliance on fossil fuels is not only exacerbating economic woes, it is driving too many of our foreign policy decisions and fueling the detrimental forces of climate change. It is time we shift our focus to sustainable practices that encourage a cleaner environment, healthier communities, a stronger economy, and most importantly, national security.

My home State of Washington has always been a leader when it comes to environmental sustainability. For 75 years we have been on the cutting edge of utilizing natural resources to create sustainable, clean emissions power. I think that Washingtonians, living next door to some of the most pristine river valleys and snowcapped peaks in the world, realize how unfair it would be if our great-grandchildren couldn't do the same.

Furthering our State's environmentally conscious tradition, in the spring of 2005, North Seattle Community College president Dr. Ron LaFayette put NSCC on track to be a leader in the sustainability movement by creating a standing advisory Sustainable Committee to address issues of sustainability at the school.

The committee, made up of faculty, staff, administrators, students, and interested citizenry, began meeting regularly in 2006. Since then, it has spearheaded NSCC's efforts to become a local and national model for sustainability practices.

The Sustainability Committee created and has begun to implement goals that include creating and developing a fact sheet, Web site, and other information-sharing methodology; creating and coordinating curriculum around sustainability issues. This includes developing new stand-alone courses, integrated studies programs, service learning and distance learning opportunities; furthering the development of a campus trail system, including a walking trail and an interpretive nature trail; incorporating sustainable practices into campus operations--including food service, waste management, and resource usage; and sponsoring the annual Earth Week celebration. In 2007, this festival included guest speakers and over 35 vendors including educational institutions, environmental nonprofits, and neighborhood businesses.

I am personally encouraged by the attention North Seattle Community College and other Washington State schools have given to advancing sustainable practices in our schools and communities. I hope more institutions of higher education will follow suit in years to come.

Mr. President, I rise this morning to talk about the Ensign-Cantwell amendment we are going to be voting on shortly.

I thank the many cosponsors of the amendment, which I believe are somewhere in the 20 range, too many to read. With the actual Cantwell- Ensign bill that was introduced last Thursday, I think we have over 40 cosponsors. It is safe to say there has been much enthusiasm about this idea of moving forward on extending expiring green energy tax credits and doing so in a way that we can get the requisite votes we need for the measure to become law and be signed by the President.

I also want thank Senators Baucus and Grassley for their continued focus on green energy tax credits, they understand that we need to move forward on leveling the playing field between the fossil fuel industry and making investments in green energy technology. I know the Finance Committee has had many conversations about this issue, and I am sure they will continue to make it a top priority.

I particularly want to thank my colleague Senator Ensign of Nevada, with whom I have had an opportunity to work on several issues in the past such as protecting electricity consumers, ratepayers, from the Enron debacle, to now working with him on these green energy tax credits. I applaud him for standing up and taking the lead and understanding how renewable energy will play a key role in our Nation's economy moving forward, certainly the Nevada economy, and the need to provide a level playing field to keep this year's investment cycle going. Senator Ensign understands that, and I appreciate his leadership in getting the other side of the aisle to participate in the sponsorship of this amendment.

I also want to thank Senator Reid who, being from Nevada, understands how important the solar energy and the green energy tax credits are for his State's economy, but he also understands the national economy depends on us moving off of fossil fuels. I appreciate his steadfast support in getting this legislation passed. We are fortunate to have Senator Reid on our side in the upcoming negotiations with the House, we need to make sure this legislation is actually passed by the House and signed into law.

We are at this point because we believe the investments in green energy tax credits, production tax credits for wind and other renewables, investment tax credits for solar, fuel cells, and for other promising energy sources, and the efficiency tax credits that are in this legislation are stimulative. They are stimulative. We voted in this body to put them as part of a stimulus package, and the Senate Finance Committee said we think in addition to checks going to households, some activity that would keep investment and create jobs in 2008 should be a priority.

Mr. President, this is a stimulative measure that would keep about 100,000 jobs and keep and protect about $20 billion of investments this year. That is why it is part of this underlying bill, and we hope the House will look at this

issue as stimulative activity, along with the accompanying housing measure.

The reason why this is so urgent is because the end of the first quarter is here. Companies that are making these investment decisions are going to start issuing their first quarter reports, giving guidance as to the rest of the year and their investments. If we do not make it clear as a Congress that we believe in these tax credits, they are going to start canceling projects.

I know I have been to the floor and said this previously, but now have the last month's numbers as it relates to actual job loss, the 80,000 jobs that have been lost in our economy, and if you looked deeply, you would probably find some of those jobs are these energy- related jobs, where we have not given predictability to investors and, consequently, they are starting to cancel projects.

This Senator does not want to see the next quarter's numbers and see the greater job losses because Congress would not give predictability in the tax code. This is a time when our economy needs investment. It needs investment in those activities that are going to help consumers in the long run lower their energy costs, but, frankly, this is an investment we can make right now that will help our economy create much needed new jobs and investment.

What is our goal? I know many of my colleagues would say: Let's go back to the drawing board and see if we can find a pay-for way of doing this. I am sure this discussion is going to come up in the House of Representatives as well. But I remind my colleagues, we have tried that approach three times. We have tried that approach, and we have failed. The White House has issued veto threats every time we tried to pay for these measures. To now say we are going to revert back to that I think is going to leave in jeopardy the investment cycle for 2008 of that 100,000 jobs and $20 billion of investment.

A more positive way to proceed is to get this particular legislation passed and signed into law so we do not lose the investment in the jobs, we do not see a 77-percent plunge in the investment in wind like we did last time the PTC was allowed to expire. Or see a drop off in solar or renewables or efficiency and the other areas that are just starting to take off. Instead we should get this off the table, signed into law, and we have plenty of time later this year to talk about how we are going to make green energy tax credits a priority in our Nation's tax code so this industry can take off and continue to provide the certainty and predictability we need.

What I am saying is, we should not pin a gold medal on our chest for work we should have done in 2007 to give the market predictability on green energy tax credits. This work is actually late to the game. Let's finish it and be proud we did so in a bipartisan fashion to break the logjam, but now let's get on to the rest of the year in coming up with a funding source for what are predictable tax credits beyond the 2008 and 2009 time period that will really stimulate the millions of green- collar jobs America can have.

The urgency of this issue should not be underestimated. The opportunity for America to become a leader in green energy technology is at our doorstep today. But if the United States does not realize it needs to put its foot on the accelerator, then we are not doing our job in communicating the facts. The Europeans, the Chinese, and the rest of the world are going to move ahead in the manufacturing of green energy technology. The United States can be a leader in that new green-collar industry or it simply can be a marketplace for other countries' technology solutions.

This Senator wants the United States to be a green energy technology leader. I want us to be an exporter of the green energy technologies developed and manufactured here at home, creating jobs in the United States and leveraging the know-how we have in green energy technologies to provide much needed solutions around the globe.

To do that, the United States has to give predictability in our tax code. It has to recognize we are willing to turn our ship off the fossil fuel direction and on to green energy solutions that will help our economy, help our environment, and help shift the change we need in our foreign policy.

I hope my colleagues will take this vote on the Ensign amendment this morning with a lot of foresight into the debate that is going to continue to happen and to support the Ensign-Cantwell amendment, to sign onto the underlying bill to say it is time for us to move forward on this solution and to urge our House colleagues to work diligently to quickly put this legislation on the President's desk so we can get about the other vital energy tasks we must address.

There is much work to do, but let's vote today with enthusiasm that the United States is going to be more aggressive in turning to green energy solutions and to make the United States a leader in green energy technology.

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

How much time remains?

Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the Alexander amendment. Along with my colleague from Nevada, we reached a very delicate balance to get this legislation where it is today. I would hate to see that balance disturbed by the proposal the Senator from Tennessee is offering about wind. The reality is our nation is still only producing a small percentage of renewable energy, and we could produce much more. To curtail investment in one of the most promising renewable technologies at this point would be premature. We have to realize what we are trying to do is create continued incentives not just for the long-term, and this legislation is aimed at saving this year's investment cycle. If the Senator from Tennessee wants to have a discussion later about long-term clean energy investments and what that horizon should be, this Senator is more than happy to talk to him about that. But this amendment before us is about the near term.

The bottom line is that we are trying to do is create stimulus for this year, we are trying to save the investment in the production tax credits, the investment tax credits, and efficiency tax credits. For example, PG&E has proposed purchasing 553 megawatts of power, which is the size of a typical natural gas or coal plant, from a concentrating solar facility in the Mojave Desert. If we don't pass this legislation, we are going to lose about $1.5 to $2 billion in investment and a big opportunity to increase the tax base of San Bernardino County, CA.

Another example, Butte, MT, has one of the largest polysilicon plants in the world, producing feedstock material for solar panels. Expansion of this plant, an investment over $1 billion, is on hold because we haven't given predictability in the tax code.

Passing this amendment will also give consumers efficiency credits of up to $500. Using that credit on insulation for example could save homeowners over 20 percent on their annual heating and cooling bills. The production tax credits in the underlying Ensign amendment, not the Alexander amendment, as a result in the next 3 to 5 years, we will have enough green renewable power to power 35 cities the size of Seattle. If we agree to the Ensign amendment instead of the Alexander amendment, with the investment tax credit, it will build enough solar power, and 1.1 million homes could instead have the power of solar and more renewable green energy. I encourage my colleagues to turn down the Alexander amendment and vote for the Ensign amendment.

I ask unanimous consent that in any sequence of votes after the first vote, the time be limited to 10 minutes each and that prior to each vote, there be 2 minutes of debate available, equally divided and controlled in the usual form.

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote, and I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Madam President, I rise to speak a few minutes about the public lands bill we just voted out of the Senate with a pretty resounding majority of Members.

Within that public lands bill we just voted on is the only wilderness designation, the one my colleague from Washington just described--the Wild Sky Wilderness area. And I am here to not only congratulate her on this important legislation but to also speak because so much was said prior to the vote about why we would have such legislation on the Senate floor, and about the issue of Federal lands in individual States.

I think my colleague from Washington just articulated exactly why such an important piece of legislation is needed, the fact that it is the designation of a wilderness area that she has been trying to get ever since I have been in the Senate. In fact, she mentioned 9 years she has been working on that legislation. Since at least 2001, I have seen this legislation in various forms move through either the House or the Senate. I am sure her enthusiasm today is about the prospect of the Senate and the House, under Democratic control, actually getting this legislation passed.

But let me make a couple of points because my colleague, Senator Murray, brought up this issue, the specifics of Wild Sky's designation. It is a beautiful place. I have had the opportunity to hike there and to see the beauty firsthand. But people don't understand the designation of these Federal lands. I will say right now that I know how much Federal land is in Washington State. We have 12.2 million acres out of over 42 million acres. That is 29 percent of our State. I understand other States may not like that kind of designation, but for us in Washington State it has been part of our lifestyle and part of what we want to preserve.

In fact, Mount Rainier, one of our most visited special places, over 1 million people visit it on an annual basis. And a little company some people may have heard of, REI, based in Seattle, has outdoor recreational gear and does about $1 million worth of business annually. So there are people who very much believe in the outdoors.

I am sure the Presiding Officer knows very well that the beauty of special places is worth preserving, and it is a great boon to our economy.

Senator Murray did an unbelievable job in shepherding this legislation through the Senate and working with her colleague in the House, Congressman Larsen, now for 7 years. There were many times in which she could have gotten detoured by various Members. Actually, this has passed three times in the Senate on the consent calendar but has been either delayed in the House or a Member held it up, and really held up an opportunity for many people to enjoy what our State has, in a very bipartisan way, been supporting.

In Washington State, many people are conservationists. Before they are Republicans or Democrats or Independents, they are conservationists first. Senator Murray has had to persevere with this legislation through various individual Members holding it up. So I say a special thanks to her. And I know if Scoop Jackson were alive, Scoop Jackson would be here to also congratulate her, as someone who did the original wilderness designation. She would be very honored to know that someone such as Scoop, in writing this original legislation, had the issues of Wild Sky very much in mind.

Madam President, how much time do I have?

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent for an additional 1 minute.

Madam President, I want to also mention another piece of the underlying legislation because, again, some people have questioned, why do a public lands bill of this nature. Another piece of this legislation that I have worked on with my colleague, Congressman Inslee of Bainbridge Island in our State, is to preserve an area known as the Eagledale Ferry Dock site on Bainbridge Island as a unit of the national monument designation under our national park system.

People may say, well, why designate this particular area? During World War II, over 120,000 Japanese Americans were forced into internment camps, and the first place from which they were forced to leave and to go to the internment camps was from this site on Bainbridge Island in Washington State. On March 30, 1942, 227 residents of Bainbridge Island were asked to report to this ferry dock site and were taken to internment camps in Minidoka, ID, and Tule Lake in northern California.

So this is what this lands bill is about. It is about protecting wilderness and making designations of sites that should be remembered. So I am very proud we got this bill off the floor, and I hope we will see immediate action by the House.

I thank the Chair.