Floor Statements

Madam President, I understand Senator Bingaman and I are going to each call up an amendment, and I think it is in order that we have agreed that I would go first and he second, and then we will arrange everything with unanimous consent.

I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside so I can propose an amendment numbered 1628.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Madam President, as we resume consideration of the Energy bill, I would note to my colleagues that we have about 120 amendments filed, and we have 10 amendments pending. Additionally, I understand we have a number of Members who wish to offer other amendments. I encourage people to come forward and file amendments if they wish to do so.

I understand the Finance Committee is working on a major energy package over the next couple of days. I have some concerns about what is rumored to be in that package, but I will reserve my comments and judgment until the Senate sees the full product. Additionally, we have a number of large items that I am sure Senator Bingaman concurs that we have to resolve over the next few days, including the Bingaman RPS amendment, a potential CAFE amendment to the fuel economy language currently in the base text, as well as the debate on the issue of coal- to-liquids, which received a great deal of attention and debate in the Energy Committee and I am sure will receive the same here.

This bill does some great things in the area of biofuels, and it is important to the Senate that we take action on improving the fuel efficiency of our vehicles. This is a win for the diversification of fuels we use, and it is a win for saving energy, but we must act to increase our domestic energy supply at the same time, especially if we can and especially if we have energy. That is one of the reasons I worked so hard to pass the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act, and that is one reason I support the Bunning amendment which I have introduced which will be before the Senate on coal-to-liquids. While Senator Bunning could not be here this afternoon, we all know of his advocacy on this issue. It is important that the topic of coal-to-liquids be addressed before the Senate. I understand that, provided there is time--and I think there certainly should be--Senator Bunning will speak on this amendment tomorrow, as I indicated, if at all possible.

We have developed this legislation. This is not the first time the issue of coal-to-liquids has come up. On May 2, we considered an amendment in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee to provide identical treatment of coal-to-liquids as that provided for cellulosic ethanol. Senator Thomas, from Wyoming, and Senator Bunning offered an amendment to mandate 21 billion gallons of coal-to-liquids by the year 2022. I supported them. But the amendment failed by the slimmest of margins--a 12-to-11 vote in the committee. Since that markup, for over a month there has been an effort to reach out and negotiate a middle ground on the issue of coal-to-liquids. I regret that those discussions ended without agreement.

Let me be clear: I do not support the Tester amendment that may come up before the Senate shortly. I oppose the amendment for a number of reasons we will discuss when these proposals are more fully debated.

The Bunning-Domenici amendment draws wide support from those in the field who will be doing the work necessary to bring those domestic fuels to market. This Bunning-Domenici amendment will establish and mandate for just 6 billion gallons of coal-to-liquid fuel by 2022, a very large difference in terms of the mandated amount, much smaller--22 before and 6 now in the amendment before us. That is a reduction of 15 billion gallons from what we offered in the committee.

This mandate starts in 2016, which is the same year the cellulosic energy mandate begins in the base bill. Importantly, this mandate requires that greenhouse gas emissions from coal-to-liquid fuels be 20 percent better than gasoline--20 percent better than gasoline. Again, that is the same standard as appears in the base bill for cellulosic ethanol. In other words, you can't make the claim that this 6 billion which will be there, this 6 billion gallons, will harm the atmosphere or greenhouse gases any more than cellulosic ethanol, which we are all advocating, and there is so much pressure to get it done and so much almost awe that it is going to get done and how great it will be. It will have the same effect as this is going to have on the air.

There are many ways to provide the incentives for these alternative fuels. One that has been proven to work is to provide a reliable market for the products. We have experience with this approach on ethanol, and I have not been presented with a reason to believe it will not work for other fuels.

In terms of the merits of coal-to-liquid fuels, there are many. Unlike cellulosic ethanol, this has been commercially demonstrated in other countries; now we need to do it here in the United States. Unlike cellulosic ethanol, it can be moved in existing pipes and used in existing vehicles. Coal-to-liquid fuel will reduce the emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxide, particulate matter, and other pollutants when compared to conventional fuels, and coal-to-liquid fuel will create an investment in rural communities, good-paying jobs for Americans, and cheaper energy for American consumers.

As we move forward with the consideration of coal-to-liquid amendments, there are some points about this particular one I would like to point out.

First, the program is entirely separate and will not compete with the biofuels program.

Second, the mandate is only one-sixth the size of the renewable fuel mandate.

Third, only coal-to-liquid fuel that can meet the same life cycle greenhouse standard as biofuels will be eligible for the program.

There will be much we disagree on as we consider the issue more fully. Many will say: We cannot do coal-to-liquids unless we require carbon sequestration. We should remember that we do not require carbon sequestration for ethanol in this bill. For carbon sequestration, I am concerned about efforts to require it and, after all, we have concluded in the base text of the bill before us that carbon sequestration requires more research and development. That is true.

I will agree that requiring the same greenhouse gas standards for all fuels is a reasonable approach. That is why we have included the same language in our amendment.

The amendment is quite different from the one that was received in the Energy Committee on May 2. It has been written to address the concerns that arose then and have arisen since. This amendment represents an effort to ensure that we provide a stable market for the first coal-to-liquids plants, and if that happens, there is no question that coal, one of Americas most abundant fuels, will be on its way to being a first-rate source of fuel for the automobile and related kinds of activities.

There is broad and growing support for reducing our reliance on foreign sources of energy in affordable and environmentally sound ways. Coal is our most abundant and affordable fossil resource. I do believe that technology will continue to make coal cleaner and that this amendment further establishes the path forward.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Martinez be added as a cosponsor of the Bunning amendment.

Mr. President, one unresolved issue that is of grave concern to many in the west is unresolved Indian water rights claims. Over the past century, many parties have sought to determine the extent of Indian water rights in the courts. However, litigation to determine Indian water rights has failed in many respects for both Indians and non-Indians. Unresolved Indian water rights claims are of particular concern in New Mexico which has 23 Indian tribes.

As with all litigation, the outcome is uncertain and one party generally loses. If the Indian nations were to receive a large award by the courts and those water rights were exercised, the senior priority date of many Indian water rights claims have the potential to displace existing users. This means that non-Indian towns, farmers, and industry could ultimately have their water supply cut off. However, in many instances, even if an Indian nation were to receive a water windfall from the courts, many of the Indian nations lack the water infrastructure to make use of the water awarded by the courts. Additionally, Indian water rights litigation often takes decades. For example, the Aamodt litigation in New Mexico was filed in 1966 and is the longest standing litigation in the federal judiciary. Finally, the numerous unresolved Indian water rights claims in many western states such as New Mexico impair our ability to effectively undertake water rights planning as we are unsure of the award that the Indian nations will receive.

Over the past two decades, many parties have pursued negotiated settlements in lieu of litigation, an approach beneficial to all parties involved. In negotiated settlements, multiple parties get together and determine how best to allocate water among Indians and non-Indians in a way that does not curtail existing uses. Many of the settlements also contain authorization for the Federal Government to provide funding to the Indian nations so that the Indian nations involved can make use of the water they are awarded under the terms of the settlement, resulting in economic development and health benefits on the Indian nation.

Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne and his staff deserve a great deal of credit for trying to advance the New Mexico Indian water rights settlements. However, current Federal budgets cannot accommodate the upcoming New Mexico settlements. This is troublesome for several reasons. First, it impairs Congress's ability to resolve Indian water rights claims in a way that keeps all water users whole. Additionally, many of the settlements require the construction of water infrastructure benefiting an Indian nation. Lack of a steady stream of Federal money results in water projects that take far longer to construct, costing taxpayers significantly more money in the long run.

Today I introduce the Reclamation Water Settlements Fund Act of 2007. This bill would establish a reliable source of Federal funding to resolve Indian water rights claims in New Mexico. The bill provides that, over the next 10 years, 30 percent of the revenues generated in New Mexico that would otherwise be deposited in the reclamation fund would instead be used to fund Indian water rights settlements. The amounts deposited in this fund could be used to pay for the Aamodt, Abeyta, and Navajo Indian water rights settlements after the parties resolve outstanding issues and the settlements are signed into law. It is important to note that the fund created by this legislation would allow us to fund New Mexico Indian water rights settlements without compromising the sustainability of the reclamation fund.

The consequences of not settling outstanding Indian water rights claims in New Mexico are dire. The legislation I introduce today would remove the main impediment to the resolution of Indian water rights settlement.

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

Mr. President, one unresolved issue that is of grave concern to many in the west is unresolved Indian water rights claims. Over the past century, many parties have sought to determine the extent of Indian water rights in the courts. However, litigation to determine Indian water rights has failed in many respects for both Indians and non-Indians. Unresolved Indian water rights claims are of particular concern in New Mexico which has 23 Indian tribes.

As with all litigation, the outcome is uncertain and one party generally loses. If the Indian nations were to receive a large award by the courts and those water rights were exercised, the senior priority date of many Indian water rights claims have the potential to displace existing users. This means that non-Indian towns, farmers, and industry could ultimately have their water supply cut off. However, in many instances, even if an Indian nation were to receive a water windfall from the courts, many of the Indian nations lack the water infrastructure to make use of the water awarded by the courts. Additionally, Indian water rights litigation often takes decades. For example, the Aamodt litigation in New Mexico was filed in 1966 and is the longest standing litigation in the federal judiciary. Finally, the numerous unresolved Indian water rights claims in many western states such as New Mexico impair our ability to effectively undertake water rights planning as we are unsure of the award that the Indian nations will receive.

Over the past two decades, many parties have pursued negotiated settlements in lieu of litigation, an approach beneficial to all parties involved. In negotiated settlements, multiple parties get together and determine how best to allocate water among Indians and non-Indians in a way that does not curtail existing uses. Many of the settlements also contain authorization for the Federal Government to provide funding to the Indian nations so that the Indian nations involved can make use of the water they are awarded under the terms of the settlement, resulting in economic development and health benefits on the Indian nation.

Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne and his staff deserve a great deal of credit for trying to advance the New Mexico Indian water rights settlements. However, current Federal budgets cannot accommodate the upcoming New Mexico settlements. This is troublesome for several reasons. First, it impairs Congress's ability to resolve Indian water rights claims in a way that keeps all water users whole. Additionally, many of the settlements require the construction of water infrastructure benefiting an Indian nation. Lack of a steady stream of Federal money results in water projects that take far longer to construct, costing taxpayers significantly more money in the long run.

Today I introduce the Reclamation Water Settlements Fund Act of 2007. This bill would establish a reliable source of Federal funding to resolve Indian water rights claims in New Mexico. The bill provides that, over the next 10 years, 30 percent of the revenues generated in New Mexico that would otherwise be deposited in the reclamation fund would instead be used to fund Indian water rights settlements. The amounts deposited in this fund could be used to pay for the Aamodt, Abeyta, and Navajo Indian water rights settlements after the parties resolve outstanding issues and the settlements are signed into law. It is important to note that the fund created by this legislation would allow us to fund New Mexico Indian water rights settlements without compromising the sustainability of the reclamation fund.

The consequences of not settling outstanding Indian water rights claims in New Mexico are dire. The legislation I introduce today would remove the main impediment to the resolution of Indian water rights settlement.

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

Mr. President, I understand this is all right with the other side, so we have no objection.

We will be ready with ours in just 1 minute. We will offer one. We would object.

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

First, let me say to my friend from Maryland, if you will wait a minute, you do not even have to leave the floor. It will not take very long.

Mr. President, I ask the pending amendment be set aside so I might call up the Thune amendment, which we have agreed to.

Mr. President, I send to the desk amendment No. 1609 on behalf of Senator Thune and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, having presented the amendment, I now ask that the Thune amendment be set aside so the next amendment may be offered by the Senator from Maryland.

Mr. President, I ask for 2 minutes as in morning business.

Senator, let me say before you leave, first, I would appreciate it if you would add me to the legislation, and, second, I thank you so much for doing this, for offering this piece of legislation. That is the best we can do. We can't bring him back--we can't do much. We just hope everything will go well with his family, and this will be something that in truth indicates how much we cared for him and what a true gentleman he was--strong of will and yet very kind and decent. We want to do this in his behalf. Thank you for doing it.

I yield the floor.

I object, Mr. President.

I want all the Senators who are concerned about this legislation, concerned about what they think might happen that is not good if, in fact, the Bingaman portfolio mandates become law, to understand I am holding down the amendments. Certainly we can, if they wish--many of our Members do wish to--not let the Bingaman amendment come up for a long time. We can do that. But we cannot then keep Senator Bingaman from tabling my amendment. There will be a motion to table, if that is what he desires to do, sometime before noon, if that is the time he desires. I wish he wouldn't do that. I would prefer we have a vote on ours and a vote on his. We have asked for that, side by side, with 60 votes on each one. That would be satisfactory to me. But that doesn't seem to be satisfactory to Senator Bingaman, which I thoroughly understand.

With that, those who want to speak against Senator Bingaman's amendment or in favor of the Domenici amendment, we gladly, on our side, accept anything you would like to say. Come down here before 11, or shortly after 11, and you will be heard. For those who want to be part of what is normally called a filibuster, or delaying tactic, and have asked me to be here with you, I do not mind doing that. In fact, that is my job.

I think some of you should come down and speak and be heard on the matter. I wish you would.

I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Obama.) The Senator from North Dakota.

Mr. President, fellow Senators, I know this is a difficult situation for the Senator from New Mexico, because on big matters of energy for the last 3 years, I have been working with my colleague, and we end up coming forth with bipartisan ideas.

In fact, the basic underpinning of this bill that was brought before us is bipartisan. If we can keep all of that that came through us, it will be a very big and powerful bill. I am not sure we can, because there will be those who are trying to take out big pieces of it before we are finished.

But after the bill was out of committee and here on the floor, Senator Bingaman proposed an amendment I could not possibly support, so it did not end up in our bill. So it is not bipartisan; it is his. I have to oppose it.

First, let me say if I were Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, or South Carolina-- and I am not, and nobody sent me here to represent them or defend them, but they are busy and some of them understand this issue. I hope they will vote accordingly. These States I have just mentioned--Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana and South Carolina--are the States that are going to have to pay into this program and they get nothing for it. They cannot produce wind energy, and so Florida is going to pay $21 billion over the course of this legislation; South Carolina is going to pay 6; Alabama is going pay to 7, and so on. I think any piece of legislation that comes to the floor in the field of energy that is so distorted that right off the bat we can come here, whether we are from New Mexico or whether we are from Louisiana, we can come here and say this about our sister States and our fellow Senators should not be adopted. There are not enough Senators to join this list, but we ought to protect them, and we ought to inquire very seriously how can this be such a good bill.

Incidentally, these States have to pay 2 cents per kilowatt-hour. That is where this money comes from I am talking about that I just said they are going to have to pay. That is a huge amount of money they are going to have to pay, these States I am here trying to protect. I am asking them to come down and protect themselves a little more, because I need your help. If you do not help, and if you do not stand up and not let this amendment even pass, ultimately you have got to have a filibuster on this amendment, you southerners and you people I just mentioned, because this is the worst bill that could ever happen to you.

Now what happened was the wind experts and the wind people in this country got big headed. They got a big head. You see, I love them. I have been part of giving them every energy credit we could give to wind energy. Wind is doing preposterously well, but not because it is, per se, such a great source of energy. We are giving it subsidies. And when you give the subsidies, it is a natural that it is clean. I am not so sure it is pretty. After people had it around a long time, they began to complain. But in my State it is terrific. It is up in the low mountains where it can't be seen too much. The ranchers who lease their land love it too because they get paid very heavily, I say to my friend from Alabama.

But the problem is we should have allowed more energy sources included in this major program. My definition changed from Senator Bingaman's to clean, to offer clean energy into this proposal. We raised it to 20 percent with these new kinds of energy I have described many times here on the floor, that everybody supports, that we ought to encourage as much as we are encouraging wind, which cannot be built in certain States of the Union, and yet this is a national policy. Openly he states it is a national policy.

My friend Senator Bingaman says what is wrong with mine is it is not national. I guess that means his must be a national policy. But it is not, because the States I mentioned cannot do it. They cannot produce the wind that is contemplated by this amendment. Since they cannot produce it, they have to pay a fine, a pretty whopping penalty.

I think we ought to try every way we can to try to get alternatives that are clean and put them in this mix. I believe we ought to keep it open as long as we can for those who develop new sources to get in. I am not embarrassed that our amendment says you can let some new sources of energy in after the amendment is adopted, even 5 or 10 years into it. If, in fact, America is acting the way it normally does, they will do that.

I want to give those technocrats we like and love who get things done maximum time to get in and improve clean energy and put it in this mix likewise, since I do not think wind ought to be the national energy. I am not impressed with wind being the national energy source for America. Right now we are stuck; it is probably crude oil that is the energy of America. We don't want it, but it probably is. But I don't think we want to say America has nominated, of all of the sources we have, wind to be the national source of energy.

I think that is what it says, because my opposition and good friend says mine is not national, his is, so he is bragging about it being national. I do not see why it needs to be national.

I never heard of a weaker energy policy being national for America than wind. I mean, it is pretty. It produces energy. It has got a lot of problems. It does not produce it all the time, so you have to have backup energy for it. But it is pretty good stuff. I mean, it is doing a great job.

What we ought to do is we ought to make sure it continues to get its tax incentive. That would be the best thing we could do to keep wind energy going. We don't need this for it. What we need is a 5- or 10- year assurance that we are going to have the tax credit, if that is what people think. That is another thing you look at. This is not even an energy source that can make it on its own, and we are trying to make it the national energy source, the national energy. It cannot do it on its own. Right? It cannot do it without tax incentives right now. Maybe it can later. Maybe that is the way a lot of them start and maybe later on they get there.

I hope my friends in the wind industry don't think what Senator Domenici has been saying here on the floor is anti-wind. It is anti what people are trying to make wind be when it can't be; that is what I am. I have supported everything that has caused wind to move ahead.

I urge my fellow Senators today not to table the Domenici amendment and to leave pending in the Senate two amendments, the Domenici amendment and the Bingaman amendment. Don't kill mine. Leave his here, leave mine here. We will probably get up, get off that amendment, go on to something else in the bill. But even if we close mine, then I urge all of those who are here, who are listening and who understand, we ought to be very careful about adopting this national standard, wind; that you watch out and make sure that we try to force 60 votes on this amendment before it can breathe as an amendment that will be part of this bill.

I would, but I don't want to hold him up.

Mr. President, I move to table the Domenici amendment and ask for the yeas and nays.

I object.

No objection.

Mr. President, do I have any time constraints?

How do I speak if I don't have any time?

I ask unanimous consent to be granted permission to speak for up to 10 minutes.

I am speaking on my own. I am not the proponent. Do you think it is fair that just for my speaking you must speak? If you do, I will have no objection.

I ask unanimous consent that he then have that time. I will take 5 minutes.

That is fine.

Mr. President, I say to my good friend, the Senator from Virginia, I sense what is going on here today would indicate you will have a hard time with this amendment and maybe you won't win. But I guarantee you it will not be long before what you espouse here happens. You will once again, as in so many other things, be ahead of the politicians. You will be two steps ahead of those who do things for political reasons around here instead of the many times you have come forth and put your Senate privileges on the line by doing what is right. Your State must be elated with the idea--if they aren't now, they will be--that they will have the option of letting drilling occur 50 miles off the coast. They won't see the drilling unless they have binoculars. So for those who say they are going to see one of these beautiful wells with all of the equipment, they better have binoculars to see it. For those who are worried about a spill, they will have to be grandmas and grandpas and even older than that before they see one, because even with the big earthquakes and the big things that happened in Louisiana, they didn't even get a spill. How are you going to get a spill if you can't get one out of that thing?

So here you come and you say, with natural gas at $7, feeding all the industries in America--and it does; natural gas feeds the underlying businesses that produce in America--they are all telling us the one thing that is forcing us to do what, to leave America, can you imagine, to be forced to go to another country? It used to be this or that, now it is: We can't afford natural gas. It is so cheap somewhere else, and we have it in abundance on our own property. Offshore is America's property. Here you come with a very innocuous proposal to let the State decide. Then if they say, OK, they, too, have said they are not afraid, then they are going to share in the royalties just like Louisiana and Mississippi. But guess what. The United States is going to share in not only the royalties, they are going to get natural gas for users in America who are desperate. The price used to be $1 and $2. You haven't seen that, and you won't see it. It is $7 for the unit we use. How could some company that uses that for its base industries survive?

If you are in the business of ethanol and running around here bragging about ethanol, let me remind you, the second biggest cost item for turning corn to ethanol, the second biggest cost product is natural gas. Then comes corn. Corn is first and then it. Can you imagine? It itself is making gasoline more expensive, not only natural gas, because we are making gasoline out of corn. Then we are spending a huge amount for the natural gas that goes into heating it, burning it and all the other things, and we can't even get an amendment adopted here today. I hope I am wrong. It used to be the States that didn't want us to. Now we have somebody else objecting. What is it, other States? We are going to have to go around with a cop and ask the States all around us.

I would hope we would pass the Warner amendment here today. This bill, which has nothing in it to produce anything, would at least turn a little bit toward production. You could put up a flag and say: We have an energy bill, and John Warner's amendment is the first one that produced any energy of any significance. We would all be glad to see that happen. We hope we have some other amendments that produce before we are finished.

Mr. President, a number of Republican Senators have indicated they are preparing amendments they want to get into this bill. I just want to remind my colleagues that it doesn't seem like it, but time has really been flying. We will be lucky if we are on this bill until Wednesday of next week, and when we come back on Monday, there are no votes. So if you have amendments, you had better get them ready and get them in, or we probably will not have them considered. You tell me about great things when we stand around here and talk, but I don't have your amendments, so it would be good if you have them. I assume Senator Bingaman has a similar request, maybe not.

Mr. President. I would like to take a few moments to observe Flag Day.

Two hundred thirty years ago this week the second Continental Congress passed a resolution that created the flag of our Nation. On Flag Day we commemorate the anniversary of this resolution and pay tribute to this honored symbol of the United States.

For every generation of Americans the flag has represented the highest ideals of our Nation, democracy, liberty, and justice. I am proud that although the number of stars has changed over the years, what our flag stands for has not.

I hope New Mexicans will take a moment today to honor the flag and all it represents.

Mr. President, I apologize to Senator Bingaman for not hearing all of his speech. I was detained. They told me he had started. I thought they would tell me a few minutes before. I had to drive from downtown. I apologize for that.

Senator Bingaman and I have been doing our best to remain bipartisan. But on this issue, I can't do that. He will go his way and I will go mine. His amendment is on the bottom and my amendment is on top. I have offered mine as a second-degree amendment to his. My recollection of how we do this, when time has run out, unless other arrangements are made--and they could be--mine would go first.

I thank the cosponsors. Senator Craig has just told us that he is a cosponsor. He worked very hard. Clearly, you can see from the morning's work that Senator Pete Domenici, ranking member of the committee, is pretty lucky. He can step down and go out and leave things vacant for a little while, and the man behind me, Larry Craig, will soon take over. No one will know anything was missed. If anything, they will figure things got better. He is very good at it, and I thank him for all the help he has given me. Other cosponsors are Senators Bennett, Crapo, Graham, and Murkowski.

I am saying there is a far better way to reach the goals Senator Bingaman wants, and we don't have to harm so many States in doing it. What we ought to know right up front is that you have to go ahead and choose something. Senator Bingaman chose to put two or three things in his. Before I am finished, I think I can convince you that everybody who has looked at it says that in its application, it is predominantly a wind amendment. It says a couple other things, but when you look at it as to what is done, I am safe in calling our battle a battle between wind in every State, forced upon them at the level of 15 percent of what their utilities use in energy. Every single State will have to have that by a time certain, whether they can do it or not. If they can't do it, they will be penalized.

I want to take a quick look at this map. Here is a map that shows what we are talking about. If you look at it, you see the United States. You see the eastern seaboard is white. Then you see some inlets of water. Then you see it is white again. That means there is not enough wind in those areas to move the wind turbines enough for them to be used to accomplish the goals of this bill. Then if you look out in the western part, you see very big pieces of the West that are white, all the way through this white versus blue and dark blue. The white is what Senator Bingaman calls wind energy. It is clean, but it is wind. I don't believe we should do it that way.

I have said, since you all want something, I am going to suggest that you want clean--not his words, my words--a clean energy portfolio. If it is clean and available, you ought to put it in so they can use it. So you will find that is what I have done. The clean energy portfolio standard provides a comprehensive, technology-neutral program to ensure that clean energy will make up for an ever-increasing portion of our Nation's electricity operation. The clean portfolio standard requires electric utilities to produce a set percentage of electricity from clean energy sources, ramping up to an enforceable goal of 20 percent by 2020. So it is 20 by 20, and it is a clean portfolio. Rather than pick winners and losers--and I stress this--rather than pick winners and losers between various clean technologies that are or will be available in the future, the clean portfolio standard provides for all sources of clean energy--including solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, landfill gas, hydropower, new nuclear power, and fuel

cell quality--under the program. The clean portfolio also provides credit for innovative technologies that will allow future traditional fuels to be burned in a way that captures and sequesters carbon emissions. We are going to do that. Somebody is going to make that breakthrough.

Our bill provides that they can come in. Credit is further provided for reductions in electricity usage from programs that provide efficiency and lower the amount of power that needs to be generated in the first place.

Energy efficiency efforts such as demand response should be part of the solution. Everybody tells us that demand response is a way that, by managing it properly, you can get a very significant savings.

Finally, since we have faith in American engineers, the clean portfolio standard encourages innovation by giving the Secretary of Energy authority to provide credit for new clean technologies that may just be a twinkle in the inventor's eye but which may revolutionize the way we produce and use electricity. If that occurs during the time, clearly it should be permitted to come in. It doesn't have to be here yet. If it is invented in 5 years, we thank the Lord and put it in and use it. We don't operate in stagnation and say: You are outside of our window. You are clean, but you don't come in. We don't give you credit. You go on with that same old wind technology.

I am going to invite my friend from Tennessee, Lamar Alexander, to come down and share again with us what he thinks about what he calls a wind economy. I can't give that speech. I am not that good. But I sure listen to him because I think he is right. I don't believe we want wind as the test of providing an alternate renewable in every State in the Union, even if there is insufficient wind. And we don't want those States paying fines because they can't come in. I don't think Senator Bingaman wants to pull out the States--I don't know how many it would be, 10, 12, 13--and say: We aren't going to do anything there. I think if he did, he couldn't call it national. But he certainly would gain a lot of support if it was fair. To make it fair, you cannot impose the same regulated wind requirement on States that have no wind and then say: Let's vote on this bill. The bill should not be voted on in that way. In fact, those States that have it that way ought to come down here and say: We can't vote on this bill. It is so obviously wrong that we should not do it.

Finally, since we have faith, we are going to expect innovation to be offered to the Secretary of Energy while the years run. That innovation, if it produces something, will come to us and be put into the package we are talking about that will start taking away white and turning it into blue because we put new technology into the area.

Unlike the RPS, the clean portfolio, the CPS, doesn't pick winners or losers. Unlike the RPS, the clean portfolio standard recognizes that regional differences in resources and geography mean that we can't create a one-size-fits-all. That is what I believe. That is what I believe the Senate is going to say. Why pick a one-shoe-fits-all, when you can't get it in. You can't get any foot in on the white up here in the north because you can't get that much in the foot. You can't create one that will put it in and still have essentially what is in the Bingaman amendment.

Take a look at the chart from the National Renewable Lab. It shows where our Nation's wind resources are located. Wind has no application in the Southeast. The resources simply are not available in an entire region of the country.

We cannot ignore the reality that utilities in some regions cannot meet the RPS mandate with the limited resources permitted because they are located in regions that are not blessed with ample renewable resources.

Wind power is the clear winner under an RPS. Advocates of the Federal RPS call it the ``wind power legislation.'' They are right--the only way to reach a 15-percent requirement from the limited number of renewable resources permitted under the Bingaman amendment is from wind power.

Wind is the clear winner in the RPS. This chart I have in the Chamber is based on an estimate prepared by Global Energy Decisions. As you can see, wind will be used overwhelmingly to attempt to meet the RPS requirement. The Union of Concerned Scientists concurs, estimating that two-thirds of the RPS requirements would likely be met by new wind generation. I have told you that already, that it would be almost all wind. Now I am telling you that scientific groups that analyzed it agree with what I said.

The Federal Government has supported wind power development since 1992. I am not saying that is wrong. In fact, there will be much wind produced under the Domenici amendment because much of the renewables will be wind. It is that every State will not be required, and some will not have any because they cannot produce any.

The Federal Government has been allowing a production tax credit since we first adopted it in 1992. Since then, we have spent in excess of $2 billion on wind power development--from R&D, to the tax credit, to clean renewable energy bonds.

We have made a lot of progress in the past 15 years. In 2006, installed wind power capacity was 11,600 megawatts--enough to power 3 million homes. The wind industry continues to grow. With a good subsidy, we continue to give it to them. An additional 3,000 megawatts is going to come on line by the end of 2007.

So we support wind power. Wind power is included in the clean portfolio standard I offer today.

What is interesting is--you have to think ahead with me--the Bingaman portfolio is almost all wind. How many years do we intend to support wind with a subsidy so that this system will work? Without wind, it will not work. It seems like right now, without a subsidy, it will not work. I do not know what the scientists working on it say. Will it soon not need any subsidy? They may say the subsidy can start going away. Or how many years will it be they will have to have it? That puts me to thinking whether you should have it at all.

Today, we have only Senator Bingaman's amendment and mine--both of them. His has all wind, and we have some wind, so we are kind of admitting we are going to keep it as long as we can and pay for it as long as we can so we can have that kind of nationwide--or partially nationwide--program.

For the one I suggest, the clean one, obviously, we use less wind and will still be clean, and no States will pay any fines, no States will be given any slips that they are entitled to money in the future.

The clean portfolio standard results in more clean energy actually produced. It is not watered down. The clean portfolio standard would impose a 20-percent standard--a full one-third higher--yet the proponents of the RPS claimed this is a ``watered down'' program. What is their complaint? That we allow a greater number of resources to qualify for credits under this program?

It is true the clean portfolio standard allows the use of any nonemitting source of power: including expanded hydropower, new nuclear powerplants, fuel cells, clean coal technologies that capture and sequester carbon, and energy efficiency to meet the 20-percent standard.

Thus, the clean portfolio standard allows the use of a greater variety of technologies to meet a higher standard. The goal of this amendment is to provide a greater amount of clean energy from a greater diversity of energy sources. Obviously, the clean portfolio standard does this much better than the RPS proposal.

Mr. President and fellow Senators, the clean portfolio standard allows States that develop their own portfolio standards to opt out of the Federal program. Some are trying to label this provision as a loophole. It is not. Instead, it is a recognition that States should be afforded the right to develop their own clean portfolio approaches without Federal interference. We should not penalize those States that already have forged ahead by imposing an inconsistent Federal mandate.

The Federal RPS could cost billions. Here is an estimate prepared by Global Energy Decisions. GED estimates which States can and cannot comply with a Federal RPS. As shown on the chart, the orange States do not have the necessary renewable resources to comply with an RPS. The majority of the States--27--will not be able to meet the mandate.

Let's look at this another way--by population. This pie chart I have in the Chamber represents those that will not be in compliance with a 15-percent renewable portfolio standard. About two-thirds of the U.S. population--66 percent--will not be able to meet the new standard.

How will the States' inability to meet this new electricity mandate impact consumers? It is going to cost billions.

I have another chart. According to the study prepared by Global Energy Decisions, the cumulative costs to consumers to comply with the RPS is $175 billion. The States hit the hardest are those in the Southeast without access to wind power; Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, and South Carolina.

The EIA recently concluded a study on the 15-percent RPS mandate and found it would cost consumers $21 billion. Obviously, that is still a tremendous cost to pass on to the consumer. However, the EIA has used some questionable assumptions in its analysis that have been rejected not only by the utility industry but by all 10 Southeastern public utility commissions--bipartisan watchdogs for the ratepayers.

With this amendment, we keep our eye on the ball. The true goal of this legislation is an increase in the amount of electricity generated by clean technologies, reducing the emissions in our environment.

Our goal is not to promote one or two or three specific technologies over another. In fact, the only way to ensure that the cost to the consumer is mitigated to the maximum extent is to avoid the temptation to pick winners and losers between technologies that all move us toward one goal.

To limit the number of qualifying resources to a handful of existing technologies is to ignore the history of rapid acceleration of scientific and technological development in this country.

Do the sponsors of the RPS truly believe that innovation is dead? Only a handful of existing technologies qualify under the RPS. This assumes there will be no breakthroughs in the way we produce electricity for the next 23 years.

I believe the incentive of a clean portfolio standard, combined with environmental concerns and rising prices for traditional fuels, will produce an ideal climate for technological innovation.

I ask my colleagues to support this amendment. I think it is the best way to do it. We will have more to say during the afternoon.

With that, I yield the floor and thank the Senate for the time I was given and for listening.

Mr. President, I would say to Senator Bingaman that I have nothing to say now for myself, but I did want to tell him there are a couple of Senators coming shortly. I know about the time they are coming. I don't want to speak before they come, but if Senator Bingaman wants to proceed rapidly, we could do that. It will be 15 or 20 minutes before they arrive.

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

Would you yield 30 seconds to me? Would that be acceptable to you?

Mr. President, I say to Senator Lamar Alexander, who gave about a 20-minute speech or 25, whatever it was, that I truly commend you on your understanding of both the problem and the attempted solutions here and the differences between the Bingaman amendment and mine. The way you present it is laudable. I thank you for that.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I don't know how much longer we are going to be here this evening. I have not been able to confer with Senator Bingaman on the timing. But I do not think we are going to be here very late. I am not sure--I mean, I am sure we are not going to vote on either amendment this evening. Nonetheless, there are a couple of Senators--at least one standing there--who have not talked today and who want to.

I am going talk for a little bit. First, I want to say to everybody-- including the previous immediate speaker who spoke about what kind of people we are who think we have something better than Senator Bingaman--I want to say

that there is no animus between Senator Bingaman and Pete Domenici. We are friends, and it is almost difficult when people are saying: You do so many things together; how can you come up on opposite sides of this? Well, I just studied it as best I could, and I came up with what I thought was a better idea. We have to do that. That is what we are elected for. New Mexicans ought to be wondering what is cooking, but they also ought to know that he has an idea and I have a different idea built on it, and that is all there is to it. One or the other or neither will get adopted, and we will have a good exchange here on the floor to see what is really happening.

I do want to say that anybody who comes to the floor and talks about how much richer we are going to get by having a plan like Senator Bingaman's, the mandate for each State--I have not seen any estimate of the cost to the people of either Senator Bingaman's approach or mine. I have seen one of Senator Bingaman's plans--two of them, and none of them say you are going to make money; both of them say it is going to cost a lot of money to the taxpayers. One says a lot more than the other. So I guess they really don't know. EIA recently studied the 15- percent RPS mandate and found that it would cost $21 billion. But there was another one that was already done before that by Global Energy Decisions, and they said the cumulative cost to consumers would represent $175 billion over the 20-year life. But in both cases, they said it was going to cost money.

So I don't think anybody is going to get all excited about a statement down here on the floor that, among the many things, having a mandate that every State be the same, have 15 percent, nobody is going to get excited and stand up and jump here on the floor of the Senate with the idea that this is a good way for each State to make money. It is going to cost them money. It may be a great idea, and it may be worth it.

But I am here tonight to suggest--and I also want to say that the last speaker on the Democratic side, the Senator from Illinois, spoke also about some of us as if we do not believe in wind energy. Well, let me say, there are not too many Senators who came to the party here in Washington in helping wind energy. There are not too many who helped them more or came to help them sooner than this Senator. The Senate and the House have been helping solar energy to a fare-thee-well. We will continue to do that. But I can say to the wind industry that I have helped you all the way through, and now I note that you are out campaigning as hard as you can for this Bingaman proposal, this proposal by Senator Bingaman, this mandate. When you look at it and think about it, it is a mandate that we use more and more wind energy. That is what it is.

Now, I am not at all sure we are right in assuming that across this land the fundamental way to get things going right is for every State to march to the tune of getting to 15 percent of solar energy in their base. I am not sure that is the best thing for the United States. I think maybe when it was dreamt up, nobody thought there were any other alternatives. But there are, and certainly we are making a mistake in saying it is going to be the language of the Bingaman bill or nothing else when we already see that means wind for the next 20 years or more.

What I tried to say in mine was maybe there is something good about pushing States to change. But I provided alternatives for diversification.

I say to my friend from Montana, I do not know where you stand on a nuclear powerplant. If you have never had one in your State, you are not going to get one because they are building them right where they were. So States that had them are going to get nuclear powerplants within the next 10 years, many of them right where the existing powerplants are. All the Senator from New Mexico, the senior Senator, said was that if that is done during the lifetime of this program and you put in a new nuclear powerplant, you ought to get credit for that. And the only way I could think of was to call my portfolio the clean energy portfolio. That is what is it. And when you look at it that way--and I added to the availability of what is allowed, I added nuclear and I added some other things that I truly believe we should pursue with vigor, and I raised the ceiling to 20 instead of 15. Now, when you look at it, you get a chance of one or the other.

The distinguished Senator, my colleague from New Mexico, thought it was kind of unexpected that this bill had an opt-out and seemed to make of it as if that was something very bad. Look, we are open and sincere about our bill having an opt-out. When a State meets the goal, we see no reason for them to stay in. We think they ought to be able to get out. There is nothing that is naturally ideological or philosophical about it; it just seems there is no reason to keep them in. We have seen no good suggested from keeping them in, and so we think when they get through and meet their goal, they ought to be able, if they want to, to get out. If, in fact, they are already tied together because of electric lines and the like, they will not destroy all of that. There will still be relationships of those types which were built, and the ones that are needed will stay on. They will be there for a long time.

Let me say in closing that one from the other side of the aisle need not talk about those on this side of the aisle, including this Senator, as if we don't understand what wind energy is and we don't have enough dreams about solar energy. We understand both of them. We have funded both of them. We have put the identical tax benefit on both, the same as we have put on everything else.

Last year when we did them all, we gave them all a 27.5-percent tax credit, from nuclear power all the way down to solar, bio, and everything else. They all got the same. We had already begun funding wind power. Again, I say to the nuclear industry, but for the Congress of the United States, the truth is, there would be no wind industry, because without the tax credits we gave to make wind energy work, there would be no wind energy except in a few places. I am not saying that in any way negative. I am for it. I don't know how many more years we will have to give them this tax credit to push them over the hump, but I am going to do that because I believe they ought to move ahead. We are learning both sides of the wind energy delivery system. We are beginning to see some negative aspects to it. It was all positive at one time. Some people are reporting negative ones. Out in the country where we used to raise cattle, certainly anybody who leases their land is delighted. They make a lot more money out of wind turbines than they do trying to graze cattle. There is no doubt about that. Some of those cattlemen are extremely happy because they don't look like the old windmills. They are much different. But they pay well, so they are glad. They joined up with wind energy, those who are lobbying for them. They got all the property owners who are getting paid. They joined them. That is good. I don't know who is lobbying for the rest of the kinds of energy we want to put in so we have diversity.

All this is is a vote to distinguish the two. If you want diversity of clean energy, vote for Domenici. If you want to be tied rigidly by a Federal statute to what is almost all wind, vote for Bingaman. If you want to vote for letting those who have already met their goal opt out if they want, vote for Domenici. If you want to say they have to stay in, somebody ought to tell us all why and how long they should stay in, but if they are going to have to stay in and be rigidly construed as to what counts, then obviously, you have to vote for the Bingaman amendment.

We will have more discussion because everybody is getting well informed and asking questions. I don't know what is going to happen immediately after this. I assume the distinguished Senator from Montana will speak. He was next. I will be leaving and apologize in advance that I would not get to hear his speech about this bill. Maybe someday we can meet back up there in Montana on the campaign trail and he can talk about Montana and I can talk about I don't know what. He can tell me what to talk about. But it is good to be here with him on the floor.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I wish to recognize three great students from New Mexico today. These three students have harnessed their creativity and skills to produce amazing projects which were displayed today at the National Portrait Gallery in honor of National History Day. What a great achievement for these students to be selected out of 500,000 entries to be showcased in the National Portrait Gallery.

Shannon Burns, from Los Alamos Middle school, has put together a 10- minute documentary on Irish immigration and how it contributed to the American Civil War while Ryan Andrews-Armijo and Ashley Page from Moriarity Middle School contributed a documentary on the racial tensions and the triumph over those obstacles, of the 1966 Texas Western College basketball team. I was incredibly honored to meet with these three individuals earlier today, and I am impressed by their projects and their tenacity. I am proud to see these kids learn and put into action what they have learned at school and beyond.

I was also very pleased to hear of 44 other students, in total, from New Mexico participating in the National History Day contest in Maryland today. It is quite impressive to see how well New Mexico was represented in this nationwide contest.

National History Day is an academic organization for elementary and secondary children that has been celebrating history for over 25 years now. This exceptional scholarship program gives kids the opportunity to research a historical event and put that research into a format for others to enjoy. This is a great way for our children to learn and explore history while also putting their creativity to work. History is one of the cornerstone subjects taught in America's schools today. When students learn about the past, they are taught how to handle the future.

National History Day gives us a unique opportunity to reflect on our past and appreciate where we, as Americans, come from. History makes us who we are, it defines us. We must not forget our history. Learning history is as important today in our schools as it ever was. We must always be stewards of continual learning from our mistakes and victories.

Congratulations again to the amazing students participating in this great commemoration of history.

Madam President, I thank Senator Inhofe for yielding to me. I am going to take a very few minutes. I have not had a second round on this. I assume both of us will. I have to leave the floor shortly for another meeting. I will stay here up to the last minute. I want to make a couple statements about the bill, as introduced, and what it does in terms of the transportation, gasoline, and diesel consumption in the country.

We have just had the Senator from California explain an amendment that is no longer an amendment; it is in this bill. The Senator expressed in a very profound way, in a very lengthy explanation, this provision which the Senator from California originated. But we must understand that, today, it comes to us from the Commerce Committee, wherein the Feinstein proposal is encapsulated in the bill that was managed in committee by Senator Inouye and Senator Stevens.

I believe Senator Feinstein would join us in giving our appreciation and thanks to the Commerce Committee for the courage they showed. They met to try to help us put together a bill that would address the energy problems of our country and, obviously, immediately we ran into provisions of the law, or matters of law, that had to be changed, which were not part of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

The big one out there is what do we do about CAFE standards. What happened before is we had a big hoopla on that, and we will probably still have it, so the Senator from California ought to be ready. Obviously, even though she did not amend, it is in the bill. Those who don't like it will offer an amendment to the bill striking or modifying that provision of the CAFE standards of America that is in the bill.

Over all these years, we have been going back and forth, never getting anything done--until this year. Clearly, this bill before us, which took the CAFE standards and finally said we are going to adopt the changes recommended in the Feinstein bill, which have been bantered around--we are going to adopt it in the language of the Commerce Committee and send it over to the leader, and it will be incorporated in the bill. So when the bill comes over, it has whatever was done in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, to save our consumption of gasoline and related products. It has the CAFE standards and a couple of other provisions. I want to say that I believe the bill before us includes the CAFE standards we have spoken of, which were put in the bill by the Commerce Committee, headed by Senators Stevens and Inouye.

In addition to that, which is by itself one of the biggest modifications of our

gasoline usage in this country and, obviously, it has a ways to go because it might not clear the Senate later today, or tomorrow, or whenever we figure out that the Senators who want their amendments finally come up. But as before us, this is the largest transportation savings of fuel in history. CAFE standards all by themselves would have been a very big achievement. Everybody knows that. That is in the bill. So there is one.

Secondly, we adopted just about what the President spoke of in his State of the Union Address with reference to biofuels and a new standard for those set forth in the 2005 Energy bill; that is, the big bill. We started down the path of biofuels, but all we had in there was corn-produced biofuels. What we have done in this bill is mandated 21 billion gallons which has to come from cellulosic ethanol by 2022. So the total biofuel required in our bill is 36 billion gallons. Let's hope--I think it will--that we will produce the little, tiny, remaining technology breakthrough, which we are putting everything in, and if that works, we will be on our way to the breakthrough that will permit us to use the cellulosic ethanol I have been speaking of. That will permit us to reach this new high standard of 36 billion gallons.

Remember, we get the CAFE standards, which have been explained, which reduce the amount of gas and diesel used, and then we have this gigantic breakthrough that we expect, and this tremendous amount of fuel that will come from biomass, which I stated to you was 36 billion gallons. Then this bill has a giant set of mandated efficiencies, increases in efficiencies, the biggest we have ever had. In fact, $12 billion will be saved by our consumers from the efficiency provisions, the big items you buy at your hardware store or big chain store, the items you use in your kitchen and that you wash your clothes with-- those big items have the new efficiency standards, and we have been toying with them for years. Senator Bingaman has been trying to get them done. They are in this bill.

People might still take them out in the next week, but I don't think so. I think this bill will stay as it is. It is bipartisan. The provisions I am talking about, so far, came out of the Committee bipartisan. CAFE did not come out of our committee, but it came out of Commerce bipartisan, with a very huge majority.

I am pleased that right away when we finish that, we get on with the next thing the bill ought to have in it, and that is some new production. That brings the Senator from Oklahoma in, who has been for a long time trying to get us to do something about the refining situation in our country. I am not even totally familiar with the Senator's amendment. He has given it to us and submitted it to the Senate. Senator Bingaman and his staff are looking at it. We will be looking at it. I don't know when we will vote on it. With his permission, I assumed he would not be upset if we set it aside and go on to some other work and then call it up in due course in the Senate. We will do that after the Senator is finished. We don't think we are going to vote on it right away because we have to study it, and the Senator would not have wanted it otherwise. Senator Bingaman wants to look at it.

There is another matter that was also in this Commerce bill. It has been packaged. We have Energy matters, Commerce matters, and I note that Senator Cantwell is standing on the floor. She had something to do with an amendment in the Commerce Committee that has to do with trying to--if there is gouging taking place out there in the hinterland of America, this amendment she and I will talk about when we are finished with Senator Inhofe's amendment will tell everybody what is in the bill about antigouging that the distinguished Senator worked on. It is mostly hers. Others might have added something, but we will talk about it, so that we put together what will be the package we can all understand--that is, the Energy and Commerce package, plus whatever else came in through the Environment and Public Works Committee--a smaller portion. Put all that together and it is a pretty good bill.

With that, I yield the floor and thank the Senator from Oklahoma for having given me a chance to speak.

Will the Senator yield?

Madam President, I told Senator Bingaman that I have to leave the floor for about 20 to 25 minutes, and I need somebody here.

That is what I wanted to tell the Senator. Madam President, can the Senator from Oklahoma stay in my stead?

Madam President, reserving the right to object.

Madam President, I would like to talk to the Senator. We are still on the amendment. What are you asking? That we set it aside for what purpose?

Madam President, parliamentary inquiry: We have set aside only one amendment to proceed with another thus far; that is, the amendment of the Senator from Oklahoma was set aside; is that correct?

Madam President, now he is asking that be done again.

Madam President, I ask the Senator, how long do you think you would be before we could return to the regular order?

One-five?

I do not wish to restrict you. You talk long similar to myself. Would you rather have 20 or 25 minutes?

Twenty minutes is all right by me.

Madam President, we have reviewed the amendment, and actually we have similar activity already prescribed for in the bill. This modifies some, changes some, adds in other places, but all of it is authorizing to the extent that it expands--it is pretty much the kind of thing the bill contemplated. So we have no objection on our side.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Madam President and fellow Senators, I need now to bother you with a few minutes of time, because some very good Senators have come to the floor to speak in favor of a proposal that was brought to the floor by the distinguished Senator from Connecticut, and he was joined by the Senator from Colorado, Mr. Salazar. Between the two, they mentioned and enumerated a number of Senators who favored this--good Senators here who favor this proposal that was brought to the Senate's attention, as it was a freestanding amendment that has been floating around the Senate for quite some time as something that maybe we should consider. Now, it sounds good. Senators who spoke about it spoke eloquently about it, but I would suggest that maybe, just maybe, these goals in this amendment were necessary yesterday--maybe yesterday, Senator Bingaman--I am not sure, but maybe.

But I encourage my colleagues to look to the underlying bill and compare it to the goals that are set forth in that amendment. We don't need the goals, because we have already--the amendment they offer sets goals and then directs the administration to figure out how to get where they are supposed to go. I think that is sort of like outsourcing. That is outsourcing of the legislature duties and responsibilities to the executive, and then praising the bill because it tells the executive they have to reach these goals and save all of this oil. Well, if it were that easy, ever since we found out we were greatly dependent upon foreign oil, it would have been a cinch. There would have been nothing to it. We could have come to the floor and said we have an answer.

We want a dream. We want a dream, and the dream is a two-sentence bill that says the executive branch of Government shall have OMB proceed to direct goals that will get us to the point where we are no longer dependent. What a dream they could say that is. I am kind of paraphrasing my wonderful friend from Colorado who talked about the dream, that this was a dream to achieve big things. But you see, this is merely saying to the executive branch: You do what we ought to do, and when you do it, or if you do it, we are going to take credit today, because we told you to get OMB, the Office of Management and Budget, or somebody in your branch of the Government, to set the goals and then tell us how to do it, and then do it.

Let me get back to why we don't need it, if we ever needed it. I would have made this same argument in any event, but I want to say yesterday it was a little more relevant. My colleagues understand we have a bill before us, and we the Congress set goals on gasoline savings and then we set the policies that will attain the goals. They are tough, hard goals. They are not saying to the President: You reach these goals. We reach the goals. In fact, we will vote on this bill and when we do, if we do, and if we have enough courage, we will be voting on changing the automobile standards in a big way. For the first time in decades, we will have changed the standards for automobiles, for new automobiles, and made the automobile manufacturers make cars every year less dependent, more efficient so they use less gasoline.

But we don't say: Executive branch, You do it. Set the goals. And aren't we happy we dreamed big and we said to you, you set the goals for CAFE standards. We didn't say that. We said: Here, we changed them. And if anybody wants to vote to change the CAFE standards, they are already changed in this bill. If you want to change the CAFE standards and save a huge number of barrels, since they are talking

about barrels, a huge number of barrels of crude oil, because all the gasoline for the most part comes from that, you will achieve those savings by voting for this bill. You don't have to vote for an amendment that says to the President: You set the goals, Mr. President, and then you achieve them. And, boy, when that gets done, we will have made a real dream come true.

Now, I figure we should stop dreaming. We dreamed so much on energy and we have been working so hard that today, for the first time in the transportation section, the section of our law that is transportation oriented, we took one big bite out of the use of transportation fuel, and we did not need the amendment I am opposing that was brought here today and that the distinguished Senators from Colorado and Connecticut and others spoke in favor of. We don't need it anymore, because we don't need anybody else setting the goals. We achieved the goals ourselves right in the bill.

In 1972, President Nixon set the goal of being energy independent by 1980. We were about 30 percent dependent on foreign oil at that time. Today, unfortunately, we are 60 percent reliant upon foreign oil. That tells me goals are not enough. We need action. Interestingly enough, this bill that they offer an amendment to is the action. It is the action per se. We have not had any action that makes us less reliant, substantially less reliant, as does this bill. By adoption of the changes in the laws that apply to new cars, we have dramatically reduced what Americans are going to spend on gasoline and diesel fuel in the forthcoming years because we have changed the law and have caused that to happen in a very good way. But we haven't asked anybody to do it for us. We haven't said: Mr. President, would you find in your administration somebody who could set these goals and achieve them? Boy, we have told you how to do it. We have set them very high so we can go home and tell the American people how high we have set the goals and how much we achieved. But we did nothing in the amendment. We did nothing; we just asked the White House to do it.

I know a lot of people have endorsed a bill that does this, that has these goals that asks the President to ask the OMB to achieve the goals, and we have everybody on it. We have people in ordinary life who are great citizens. We have former Senators, former members of White House staff. They all joined this bill. But the bill was nothing more than a set of goals, and it said the White House should go out and achieve them. It was sort of saying: We would like to be President, but we are not. Since we are not, we are going to adopt this amendment and it is going to tell the President that is what he ought to do. But I say that once again, the amendment, which I am going to call the Salazar amendment for a moment, would require the administration to develop a plan to reduce oil consumption by 2.5 million barrels of oil per day during the calendar year 2016, ramping up to 10 million barrels per day during calendar year 2031. But the bill we are considering already includes an ambitious gasoline savings goal. It goes on to achieve the goal. The bill itself achieves the goal by changing the law. Senators are going to be voting--not the President--to get it done. The bill we are considering already includes ambitious savings. The bill sets gasoline savings at 20 percent by calendar year 2017, 35 percent by calendar year 2025, and 45 percent by calendar year 2030.

Now, we did not ask the President to ask staff to come up with a goal and then today brag on the goal because the President is going to do it. What we did in this bill is we adopted these goals and then changed the law to achieve them.

As you know, we changed the law to achieve the savings, by changing the law on new automobiles and other things in this bill. These goals are consistent with what the President articulated in the State of the Union Address. But we didn't wait around to see how he was going to do it and let him call the shots and then brag that he set the goals. We did it ourselves. The President's Twenty in Ten Initiative calls for a reduction in gasoline usage by 20 percent in 10 years, or by 2017.

This bill not only includes these gasoline savings goals but establishes the programs that will put us on track to meet them. In particular, the bill includes an ambitious renewable fuel standard that will displace foreign oil with homegrown renewable fuel.

I urge my colleagues to oppose the amendment. Then we set the policies that attain the goals we are trying to achieve. Outsourcing our authority--we outsource it to the White House in the amendment that was put before us--Senator Lieberman first brought it up. I don't know who takes credit as its author. Perhaps it is the distinguished Senator from Colorado, Mr. Salazar, but we all know which three or four Senators first came up with it.

I wish to talk for a moment about this. On the biofuels part of the bill, we save 2.5 million barrels per day by 2017--I have converted some of this to barrels so they won't wonder what we are doing--4.5 million barrels per day by 2025, and 6.5 million barrels per day by 2030. This is just the renewable fuels section. If we add the CAFE standards from the bill, we probably will exceed these goals in practice by passing this bill.

This amendment is unnecessary. The amendment offered by Senator Salazar and others here today is unnecessary because we, as a matter of fact, already adopted law changes. We will be the ones who were courageous and did the work. We are not going to just set goals and put numbers there and say, now we have done our job, and say to the President, you go do it, and then come to the Senate and say, won't it be great. We set these goals, and the President will do it.

I don't believe that is the way we are going to do that. If that was the way we were going to do it--I told you about Richard Nixon and how far we were already substantially indebted to the world, 20 percent dependent. We were all trying to get a balanced budget in terms of the energy consumption. He wanted to have a zero difference. He wanted to make everything work, where we didn't have any excess use of oil, and he announced that. But, you see, he was President. He could have done whatever he wanted that was legal. He must have found that the President cannot do it. He didn't achieve it. The Congress tried but could not achieve it with him, and nobody could do it very easily.

We have been doing very well when you consider what we did in the bill we passed 2 years ago, the Energy bill, plus the two things which are in this bill which are gigantic, the likes of which we have never done--the CAFE change, which is giant. You heard the effects from Senator Feinstein. That is not set in stone. That is adopting the changes in CAFE standards, big changes. And then we did the dramatic thing the President recommended in terms of moving ahead with ethanol and beyond ethanol to the kind of cellulosic ethanol, which is going to be truly a magnificent substitute for the oil we are using. But we are not setting a goal; we are going to do it. The bill will do it. By the time we are finished, the bill will achieve almost as much as the Salazar amendment requested in goals.

With that, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, I want to get it clear in the Record who this amendment belongs to. It was introduced by Senator Bayh some time ago. It had as sponsors Senators Brownback, Lieberman, Coleman, Salazar, Cantwell, Kerry, Dodd, and Kohl. The amendment was also proposed by Senator Reid. I now have it straight that these were the Senators on this amendment.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, we probably are going to enter into an agreement to have a vote this evening, but I didn't want the good Senator to leave the floor without me making three points.

I do not seek now to have an argument about his approach. I will do that before the vote when we set that up. But when the Senator from Minnesota talks about a goal of saving oil and the bill before us has savings of gasoline, I just wonder if he knows that most of the crude oil goes to gasoline in the United States. That is a fact, isn't it? Most of the crude oil we import, that we bring into our country to go to refineries, is turned into gasoline and used by automobiles.

Madam President, I am going to yield the floor in a moment. I just want to say, if my colleague thinks carefully, the amendment that was offered that was spoken to by my good friend sets goals to be achieved by the White House, by the executive department. We have a bill before us that I am so proud of because for the first time, we did it right. We put in the bill the kinds of law changes that will save gasoline and oil because we change the law. We don't have to ask the President to find ways; we did it. When Senators vote for it, they will not be voting for a goal that asks the President to do something. They will be voting for a change in the law that makes cars more efficient in the future if produced and used in the American market.

That same bill will save tremendous amounts of electricity and whatever is used with electricity because we are going to become so much more efficient on appliances and the like.

And, third, there will be some enormous savings because we are going to make gasoline from something other than crude oil and other than by making it out of corn. We are going to make it out of switchgrass and other products that are part of the biomass approach.

I am proud that just those three will do more than we have ever done, and we won't be asking a President to set goals to achieve, which a President has never been able to do. If they could, they would do it without us asking them. We are doing it in this bill.

I yield the floor and will return when we have a vote on this matter.

Reserving the right to object, what were the last two lines?

I have half the time?

I have no objection.

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

Mr. President, fellow Senators, let me say, we are getting close to the end of a good day on the bill. This is a three- part bill that came to us from the Energy, Natural Resources Committee, the Commerce Committee, and the Environment and Public Works Committee. Then the majority leader put them together, and I was very proud to be able to come to the floor and tell the Senators and the American people what an outstanding bill this was. We had not heard much from anybody, and people were not quite sure what happened. But people kept saying: We had an energy bill. Well, we can, at the end of the first day, say we still have it. It has not been changed any. We accepted one amendment. It was an authorizing amendment, and it enlarged upon some pieces of the bill. But essentially it is intact.

And, lo and behold, without this amendment that is before us, which I urge the Senate not pass, that they not vote for it--it is harmless, but I do not think we ought to pass it. I wish to tell you all why. To do that I have to talk a little bit about the bill, because the bill changes the law. If all of the things in this bill get adopted, we will save huge amounts of crude oil and gasoline.

The other side keeps mentioning that the bill saves more gasoline and not enough crude oil. But I guarantee you that if we could get the kind of savings that could be forthcoming from transportation fuels, America would be safe, America would be happy, and we would not be dependent, because we would be using much less crude oil also.

So there is no difference. They are almost the same. Nonetheless, the truth of the matter is that never in the history of the Congress have we saved so

much gasoline--that is the thing that moves transportation in America: diesel fuel, transportation, and related products. Never have we changed America so much in terms of how much of that fuel we would use. What fuel? The fuel everybody says makes us more and more dependent, the transportation fuel. Right.

Now, what happened is we did not adopt a bill in the Energy Committee or the Commerce Committee, headed by the Senator from Hawaii and Senator Stevens from Alaska. Those bills that produced that came from these committees and are actually changes in the law.

Let's talk right off and say the biggest change is the CAFE standards. The Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction, had the courage and the guts to adopt a long-standing amendment sponsored by the Senator from California, Mrs. Feinstein, and it had been regularly known as the bill that changes the CAFE standards. We adopted it. It is in here. The changes we have been yearning for are here. We adopted them, and they are now before us. We don't have to ask anybody to make the changes that will cause the biggest single savings in transportation fuels that we ever did.

Then right on top of that, the Energy and Natural Resources Committee adopted a huge multiyear program to use more ethanol but ethanol that would not be produced by corn but, rather, by switchgrass and come out of that whole area we are now researching and just almost over the hurdle in terms of a new kind of production of ethanol. When you add the two together, it is the biggest reduction in transportation fuel we will ever get.

I wanted to make the point that we did not set any goals; we did not adopt any targets; we did not ask the President to find any savings. We asked the President to sign a bill that will make the savings because we change the law.

When oil savings amendments were offered in the past, people would say this was a hidden CAFE standard. They were correct. When you direct the executive branch to save oil in such a dramatic way, one of the only ways you can do it and reach that goal is to change the CAFE standards. So whenever you were telling the President to make these savings, everybody would say: In transportation, the only way you can do it is to change the CAFE standards. Isn't that interesting? But we didn't do that here today. We changed the CAFE standards and saved oil and gasoline over the next 30 years, calculated as it is in the bill, because we got that done.

We don't need a hidden CAFE in this bill, which essentially is the only way you could get to your targets in oil is to do something to transportation consumption, and that means you would have to do something with the so-called hidden CAFE standards that would be incorporated in your suggested targets. In the bill we have, there are real increases in the CAFE standards that are adopted and they were articulated by Senator Feinstein and talked about at length. Perhaps when we pass this amendment asking the President to save oil, perhaps when we do that--and I know my good friend, the occupant of the Chair, thinks that amendment I am talking about is a great thing because it sets targets and let's us dream, as he says, but I think all the President would have to do, if we adopt and sent to him the Bayh amendment--that is properly the name of it because he was the first name on this many months ago--I would venture to say, without fear or trepidation, if we had the bill we have before us today, Senator Bayh wouldn't be introducing this amendment with these kinds of targets, because he would look down and say: The biggest target for crude oil that is used in gasoline is already done because they have changed the CAFE standards. They don't need another target.

If we continue this way and we adopt the Bayh amendment, then when the President signs our bill, he can send it back to us and say: This is my plan, to do what you asked me to do, because in this bill we have already accomplished the things you were talking about.

Let me say, there isn't any rancor. I am not trying to belittle anybody. The truth is, when you have to set targets and tell the President to achieve the targets, you have accomplished nothing. Because if that is the way you could have saved crude oil in the past, every President would have done it himself, would have taken us out of this crisis by doing just what your targets say, go out and find them and do them. But you can't do them. You have to have Congress. You have to change laws.

I want to sit down for a moment and reserve the remainder of my time.

How much time do I have?

What do you want, five total?

I will say five.

Mr. President, that was an eloquent statement and I want to acknowledge it. But I want to make sure those who are worried about America's energy crisis know a mere statement, whether it be verbal or written down on a piece of paper, that says we ought to achieve this doesn't achieve anything. Or we in the Senate think our goal should to be save 3.5 million barrels of oil and then say how proud we are that we are going to achieve this great goal; that doesn't do anything. All you have is, if you have a bunch of targets and goals and they are high and they are big, you can say: We are a better dreamer than the other side, because we have these great dreams about how much we should save and what our target should be. But think for a minute, what do they accomplish?

The truth is, the underlying bill, for a change, saves on crude oil consumption and gasoline, because we have changed the CAFE standards permanently. As anybody in here remembers, every time we were talking about saving large quantities of gasoline, if we could just change the CAFE standards. Remember? Well, we changed them. The biggest way to save on gasoline is to change them. We changed them. We don't need a target in the bill that says we should save on gasoline. Maybe you should say by changing the CAFE standards, but the President can't change the CAFE standards. Only we can, and we did.

They have some auspicious goals, some magnificent targets. They can speak eloquently about what will be required to do them. But the point is, they don't save one single penny's worth of gasoline. They don't achieve 10 cents' worth of savings. They are merely goals, things we wish to do. I guarantee you that the bill they are attaching this amendment to for a change will truly save by changing the CAFE standards permanently. By changing the standard for ethanol and the second generation of ethanol, we will save more on gasoline and then on crude oil, which it comes from, than we have ever done before. So we don't need an amendment to a terrific bill. The bill is something we can be very proud of. Three committees participated. They did it bipartisanly.

Now we have bold and high words about what the President should do because it says the President shall find ways to achieve these goals. That is essentially the plan: Mr. President, we have these goals. Mr. President, you go talk to OMB and you achieve them.

That is it. I do not believe anybody thinks that will work. But I would say, if it passes, I do not know what it does, and I do not know what we would do with it because I do not know how you get any savings from that kind of proposal.

But I kind of know where we are. A lot of Senators and non-Senators got together before we were here with this bill and decided they would introduce a bill that sounded good, that set high goals, and they did. Then we come along with a bill that actually does it, and they want to amend it to get in on the action, which I do not believe would accomplish much.

I compliment the Senators for the way they have worked, and in particular Senator Bayh, whom we do not see very much, but I see him a lot, and I am pleased always to see him. I say to the Senator, I thank you for the way you have responded.

I wish to say again, I don't believe with the bill we need your bill. With the bill that is underlying, we do not need another bill.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. President, today I would like to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the founding of Holloman Air Force Base near Alamogordo, NM, on June 10, 1942.

Established 6 months after the entry of the United States into the Second World War, Holloman served as a training center for B-17, B-24, and B-29 bomber crews for the duration of that conflict. Over the course of the war, 20 bomber groups trained at Holloman before serving in the European and Pacific theaters of the war.

After the war, Holloman became the primary Air Force base for the testing and development of guided missiles and unmanned aircraft. Holloman was also the site of several notable events, including a 1954 rocket-propelled sled test that reached speeds of 632 miles per hour and earned Dr. John P. Stapp the title of ``Fastest Man Alive.'' Additionally, Holloman was the location of CPT Joseph W. Kittinger, Jr's, 102,800 feet skydive in 1960 that broke four world records and it was there that ENOS, the chimpanzee who made the first American animal orbital flight, received his training.

In 1968, a new era at Holloman began with the arrival of the 49th Tactical Fighter Wing. For the last 39 years, the 49th has called Holloman home and has flown F-4 Phantom IIs, F-15 Eagles and in 1992 became the only Air Force unit equipped with the F-117 Nighthawk, also known as the stealth fighter. Holloman also serves as the home to the German Air Force Tactical Training Center.

Today, Holloman is preparing for another major transition. As the F- 117 is retired, the 49th will begin to receive new F-22 Raptors. Since its founding, Holloman has played an important role in the development of new technologies and has been home to the world's most advanced aircraft. Most importantly though, I believe it is the men and women who serve at Holloman who make it one of this country's premier military installations. I would like to thank all those who served and continue to serve at Holloman for their hard work and dedication. I have no doubt the work done at Holloman will continue to contribute to the national security of the United States for another 65 years.

Mr. President, I believe I have the floor. I will be glad to yield for a question.

Mr. President, might I ask the Senator from California, would she like to speak now and then I will speak after her? I have all my time. I would just as well accommodate you. You are going to speak 5 minutes, and the Senator, would you like to speak 3\1/2\, then, and then I will use mine at the end?

Mr. President, I ask it be ordered that that time be allotted now and the time for the Senator from New Mexico follows that.

I yield to the Senator from California.

Mr. President, might I first say to Senator Bingaman, I enjoyed his remarks and summary of where we are and where we have been. Most of that trip has been together; part of it with you on the majority and part of it me on the majority. In combination, there is some pretty good legislation. People may still say they want more, but when you have a system such as we have in America, you have to have two bodies, the Senate and House, agree. We have debate, they have a Rules Committee. Then you go to conference and, think of it, how those two, the House and Senate, naturally disagree. Right? We have to get all that in agreement before we have a bill that goes to the President. Then he has to sign it.

We are lucky. The very first one we did, the big bill, probably the best piece of legislation in modern times to cause America to produce more energy, what energy we could, and to do it in a manner that was frugal, with reference to environmental damage, was the first one and the President did us a great favor. He came to our State to sign it, as you recall. It was the first major piece of legislation. I think that was great on his part, a very good gesture, because the two Senators were from New Mexico and it was the first big bill and it was one he signed with relish--which means, even as to the executive branch, it was not too far off the mark.

Before I get to my statement, I am going to say there is one thing that did not go right. In your remarks, Senator, you mentioned a couple of times how we in the first bill had promoted technology because it was obvious to everyone that, so long as America lived in a world with cheap oil, the power of those who would invent and would use new technology in the field of energy was minimized when gasoline was 50 cents at the pump, because there was no broad incentive to do something about it.

But about the time we got to our major bill, it was quite clear that we no longer were even major players on the international oil scene. They could almost do with us what they wanted because we were way too dependent. They grew more and more, and that made those who do not like America less and less concerned about the economics of them having a monopoly, so to speak. Toying around with the country that is an open economic society is a big difference. They can really wreak havoc.

But when we did our bill, we put in a provision, a kind of catch-all. I remember working on it, and I remember you

questioning it. Then after a while we agreed, and it was the section that provided for loan guarantees and other incentives for the technologies we mentioned in this bill as being most important for America's future.

You and I remember one of those that happened was nuclear. We even had to work hard on a different kind of incentive for nuclear, and we got it in. It was a new kind of insurance for the first few who built theirs, that they get an insurance policy from the Federal Government so as to permit them to expedite the building of that very complicated, energy-producing nuclear powerplant.

But the administration, because somebody in high places does not like loan guarantees--there are all kinds of loan guarantees in government and in this world. But somehow somebody said: You know, we don't like them. And the Department of Energy does not do them, if you can imagine.

So the Department of Energy has not been doing loan guarantees. Who cares. There are loan guarantees all over the Government. The Department of Agriculture has billions of dollars in loan guarantees. I don't think we are going broke. They are paid back. It is just that the guarantees are given in a manner that permits those who use them to get money where they otherwise would not.

Well, we did not do that yet in that first bill. I think we still-- you and I--owe the citizens of our country another push, and maybe we ought to check into it and give one more push to the administration to see how we can enhance the promotion of loan guarantees by the administration because there should be, for all kinds of products that need a lot of money for experimentation, and for many other technologies, there should be a very big pot of loan guarantees. Not $300, $400 million, there ought to be more, a few billion, so that they can do the work, draw their money on new ideas, and get on with helping us make that step from a society that was almost totally roped in by oil and gas and nothing else, into a society with a great divergence of energies.

That is the way we are going in the legislation. The bill before us continues that momentum. So I speak today as we prepare to consider energy legislation on the floor of the Senate to provide the proper context of this bill. I think it would be instructive to reflect, as I have just done, upon the recent accomplishments of Congress.

I have already indicated to you about 2 years ago the President signed the Energy Policy Act of 2004. Senator Bingaman from my home State, this sweeping law was the most comprehensive energy policy enacted in decades.

I have watched with pride--and this has not been mentioned enough because it is hard to do. But I have watched with pride that in just 2 years, this long-term policy has already begun to show great positive impact in the short term. The Energy Policy Act is brightening our Nation's nuclear renaissance. Already over 30 nuclear powerplants are in the works. Imagine that. We went more than two decades without a single one applying, and we have now over 30, with a number of them way up near the top of the clearance scale where we will be seeing them cleared for the beginning of construction soon.

I am sure many of us will go to that and say it is high time, and we were pleased to be part of it. Now, if operational, these plants will provide enough electricity for nearly 30 million American homes, while displacing about 270 metric tons of carbon dioxide each year.

Just think of that. Think of how much we would have to do to displace that much carbon dioxide if it was produced, and we had to get rid of it after it was produced, in a coal-burning powerplant or some other plant in the process of ignition-produced CO2.

This is safe, clean, affordable, and reliable large-scale energy for our Nation. That is why earlier this year the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved two early site permits for new reactors in Illinois and Mississippi.

As we try to reduce our dependence on foreign energy and address the issue of the global climate change, it becomes imperative for our energy and environmental security that we keep the momentum going on nuclear energy in this country.

On coal technologies, clean coal technologies, the policies set forth in the Energy bill of 2005 have resulted in bringing 159 new coal-based facilities to various planning stages. Over the next 5 years, the United States will add an estimated 60,000 miners to the American workforce. Just think of that, Mr. President. Everybody has been wondering if we are going to have enough jobs, enough jobs for our people, because they are looking at the economy of yesteryear, not of tomorrow.

Coal miners, instead of being out of work, we will be looking for people to join the corps of coal miners in this country as we produce more coal because we are going to learn how to use it clean in our country as we seek to avoid this total dependance upon crude oil and natural gas.

This past week, the Departments of Treasury and Energy together announced new instructions for applying tax credits for advanced coal and gasification projects. In total, three Energy bill tax credits will provide over $1.5 billion to help advance energy projects and capture and sequester carbon dioxide. These are already being done and the credits have been given under the laws which were written in this thoughtful process of developing legislation over the past 2 years.

This bill also put in place mechanisms to ensure a secure, reliable electricity grid for our Nation, and helped transform our agricultural bill into an Energy bill--we already know that--providing rural America literally thousands of jobs and billions in new capital investment dollars to help bring clean fuel to our Nation's gas tanks.

In the area of biofuels, the 2005 bill created a solid foundation for these significant policies set forth in the bill, as we will consider this shortly on the Senate floor. As a result of the Energy bill of 2005, we revitalized a renewable fuel industry in America through the first ever renewable fuel standard and production tax credit. We all wondered when that would come. It is done.

There are now 114 biorefineries nationwide, with the capacity to produce 5.5 billion gallons of ethanol a year. That is all because of the act that we passed in 2005 that we keep referring to that we worked here in this body, on a bipartisan basis, and then went to the House the same way, and then had the President join us with great joy in signing it in our State.

Additionally, ethanol refinery construction and expansion currently in the works has enough combined capacity to have an additional 6 billion gallons of ethanol. The biofuels policy included in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 has helped create approximately 10,000 American jobs across many sectors of our Nation's economy. I think sometimes we wonder why the economy did so well. Maybe we should look around and say maybe the money spent on energy facilities across this land, because of this act, had something to do with keeping the employment up and keeping the growth up. I am not sure of that, but I just throw it out.

Indeed, that act of 2005 could have been called a jobs act, could have been called a jobs-producing act, a diversification act, providing jobs that were never there before. Ethanol production and demand are setting records in America as we seek renewable fuel to power our cars that we drive.

The bill reported out of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee this year, with a strong bipartisan vote, we responded to that call for sustainability and to provide a path for the emergence of cellulosic ethanol. That is what we are here to work on today.

That will mean we will be able to produce much more cellulosic ethanol, which will do the same thing as ethanol except it will make us able to produce far more since we can add the cellulosic to the ethanol that comes from corn, and what a machine we will have to produce gasoline for our cars.

In the 2005 Energy bill, we addressed almost every conceivable area of energy policy--from coal to nuclear to electricity transmission, to oil and gas, hydrogen to biofuels. We did this with a majority of both parties in the Senate, embracing this forward-thinking policy for America.

This wasn't even a close vote. In each case it was substantially more than 60 votes, a bipartisan vote, almost equal from each side on each of the important bills. There have been two already. This one will be the third.

Simply put, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 has already helped to strengthen our energy security and to grow our Nation's economy. More importantly, if implemented effectively, the larger impacts of this great bipartisan legislation will be felt for decades in this country.

As we prepare to debate on the floor of the Senate today, we are going to consider a bill smaller in scope and less bold in its version. Nevertheless, this bill represents bipartisan work spanning four committees of the Senate. There are a lot of good policies in this bill. However, I believe there must be a full and fair debate on this bill and a complete amendment process to ensure that the work we will do in the Senate and for the American people on energy policy will be complete. Anything short of that will be a departure from the example of the 2005 act.

The bill we expect to soon consider provides for a biofuels mandate with the potential to displace 20 percent of the growth in gasoline that we use in this country by 2020. This addition of 36 billion gallons of biofuels a year will see the majority of its content come from cellulosic ethanol, a sharp and important move away from corn- based ethanol in our fuel mix.

We consider this an energy-efficient measure that if properly implemented has the potential to provide important efficiencies in vehicles, buildings, homes, and businesses to save the American consumer more than $12 billion annually. This is one part of our energy policy that goes unnoticed, the one I have just described, important efficiencies. And I do say to our majority, who was my minority member when we started, that he has led the effort in this part of the changes in the energy policy, those that would make us more efficient.

He described today in his speech how much efficiency will come just from washing machines and dishwashers. I am not ashamed to talk on the floor about dishwashers. Some people say we shouldn't talk about dishwashers. Why shouldn't we, when it saves a huge amount of energy? I remember when I got a dishwasher. I got a laundry board as a gift from a constituent because I had helped with REA that went up the mountain and took electricity up there. So she came down to me at the foot of the mountain and said: Here is your washboard. I don't need it anymore; I got electricity. I just bought a washing machine. I am thanking you by giving you the washboard. She didn't have efficiency; that was all brawn, right?

Anyway, this bill will save us a lot of energy on those two items that we need and use to make our lives better.

On fuel economy, the Senate stands poised to address vehicle fuel efficiency. One way to help reduce our dependency is by reforming our CAFE standards for the vehicles we drive. Everybody should know the Commerce Committee did that and, by act of our leader and the floor procedures, that is on this bill. So if people want to do something about CAFE, it is pending. Once this bill is made pending, it is the subject matter before the Senate, the CAFE standards, which will compel automobile companies to do better than they have in terms of miles per gallon. We have never gone as far as the Commerce Committee did, so it ought to make for a few hot speeches here on the floor. I don't know when they will come, but sooner or later they will because the CAFE standards for vehicles we drive will be changed.

I have only one page remaining. I don't need to use all my time, especially when some Senators have had to wait. I will close by saying to Senators who are not paying attention and to staffs watching for their Senators, we are not going to be on this bill very much longer today. If you want to come down and speak, I have a little bit of time. I can give you some. But I think we are going to start yielding to other Senators, I assume, and move on. I haven't talked to Senator Bingaman on that.

How much time do I have remaining?

I reserve that time and suggest the absence of a quorum.

I object.

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

I yield back the remainder of my time. I say to the Senator from New York, I was just trying to find out if there were more people on my side.

I object.

Mr. President, this last Saturday, I traveled with my wife Nancy and many of our colleagues in the Senate to Casper, WY, for the funeral service of my friend Senator Craig Thomas.

During the service I was particularly impressed by the words of Minority Leader McConnell and I would like to thank him for so eloquently eulogizing Senator Thomas. So appropriately did his words honor Senator Thomas that I hope all our colleges in the Senate will take the time to read them.

I ask unanimous consent that this transcript of Senator McConnell's comments be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, 50 years ago on June 8, 1957, Clovis Air Force Base was renamed Cannon Air Force Base. On this anniversary, I would like to like to pay tribute to the men and women who have and continue to serve at Cannon.

Cannon was named after GEN John Kenneth Cannon who commanded Army Air Corps forces in the Mediterranean and later was commanding general of all Army Air Corps forces in Europe during the Second World War. After the war, General Cannon served

as commander in chief of U.S. Air Forces Europe and commanding general of Tactical Air Command. During his service, General Cannon earned four Distinguished Service Medals, a Legion of Merit, a Bronze Star, and the Air Medal. He also received decorations from Great Britain, France, Italy, Poland, Yugoslavia, and Morocco.

For the last 50 years the service men and women who called Cannon home have been deployed numerous times around the world to ensure the national security of our country. They have performed their duty faithfully and in a manner that I am sure would make General Cannon proud.

This year we will see major changes at Cannon as the 27th Fighter Wing is deactivated in preparation for the impending arrival of the 16th Special Operations Wing in October. While we are excited for the arrival of the 16th Special Operations Wing, we are sad to see the men and women of the 27th Fighter Wing go.

In the coming years I am sure the 16th Special Operations Wing will continue the 27th Fighter Wing's long tradition of excellence at Cannon. Again, I would like to thank the men and women, past and present, who have made Cannon a source of national pride.