Rob Bishop

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I would like to take just one moment to clarify the record with respect to amendment No. 61 by Mr. Conyers in the Rules Committee report. Printed in report 112-88, Mr. Duncan of South Carolina was inadvertently added as a cosponsor to the Conyers amendment No. 61. I want to clarify for the record that Mr. Duncan of South Carolina is not a cosponsor of that particular amendment. I appreciate the discussion we have had so far. I would like to remind my colleagues here that if every amendment made in order in this rule were to have its maximum amount of time, we would have already approved a maximum of over--well, we have a minimum of 26 hours of debate on this particular issue. I am appreciative of the concerns of Mr. McGovern of Massachusetts. I also want him to realize there are multiple amendments that were made in order dealing with this and similar subjects. And I am very appreciative that Mr. McGovern, as a veteran of the House, understanding the rules of the House, has been wise enough to use this debate time also for speaking about that particular amendment, which will vastly extend the amount of time he has to cover that issue. That is wise of him; that is good of him. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Young).

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, this resolution provides a structured rule for the consideration of 152 individual amendments to H.R. 1540, the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2012. I would like my colleagues to realize that the Rules Committee received 220 amendments for consideration of this bill; and of the 220 filed, 75 percent of them, or a total of 152, are made in order. Even more remarkable, the vast majority of those that were not made in order were either withdrawn by the sponsor, were duplicative of other amendments filed, were redundant restatements of provisions already included in the base bill, or violated House rules. So this is an overwhelmingly fair and generous rule, and it continues the record of the Rules Committee in this Congress of making multiple amendments in order as long as they conform to the rules of the House. One must commend Chairman Dreier for continuing this record of openness. Likewise, I wish to commend the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon), as well as the ranking member, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Smith), for bringing a bill to the floor under a continuing tradition of bipartisanship and mutual cooperation. Mr. Speaker, sometimes the Congress has a reputation of being contentious and partisan, and that reputation is, unfortunately, occasionally deserved. However, as one who has been a member of the Armed Services Committee and is currently on leave from that committee, I have been pleased to note that, when it comes to providing for the common defense of our country--a core constitutional responsibility-- partisanship has usually been checked at the door with regard to the conduct and the product of the Armed Services Committee in their annual Defense authorization bill, as was this bill, having passed by a vote of 60-1 from committee. This rule builds on that bipartisan tradition when it comes to the Defense bill, and it makes more Democrat amendments in order than Republican amendments. Yes, you're welcome. Our Nation faces some daunting challenges: to provide adequate resources for our national defense going forward, to pay personnel and to provide promised benefits for our all-volunteer force. The modernization of our aircraft fleet is slipping further and further behind, and the average age of our fighter jets is 150 percent of their designed capacity. The age of our bombers is at a record high even as demands for their utilization is great in Afghanistan, in Iraq and increasingly in other places in the world. The infrastructure needs of our military continue to slip further and further behind--the cliche is that they're moved to the right--and a backlog of needed improvements to fill vital military missions grows even greater. A strong national defense is directly related to a strong national economy and to a strong jobs outlook. National defense makes everything else that we enjoy in this country--our cherished way of life, our freedoms--possible. The underlying legislation, H.R. 1540, does a remarkable job, given all of the fiscal restraints that have been involved, in continuing to provide for our common defense. For that purpose, I wish to inform my colleagues that this is a good bill, and we are adding to that a good and fair rule for the amendments. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I ask unanimous consent, Mr. Speaker, that all Members may have 5 legislative days during which they may revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Colonel Yolanda C. Dennis-Lowman, United States Army, for her remarkable record of achievements during her service from July 8, 2008, through July 19, 2011, as the Commander of the Tooele Army Depot, Utah. Under her active supervision and guidance, Tooele Army Depot was officially designated by the Secretary of the Army as a Center of Industrial and Technical Excellence (CITE) for Ammunition Peculiar Equipment (APE) maintenance, which is a very significant achievement. Because of her commitment to safety and the solid policies and procedures she implemented during the 2009-2010 timeframe, the depot achieved more than 610 consecutive days without a loss time injury, which was the best record within the Joint Munitions Command and Army Materiel Command (AMC). It was under her watch that Tooele Army Depot also received the AMC Safety Award, of ``Best Installation.'' During her tenure, the Army implemented the Logistics Modernization Program (LMP) at Tooele Army Depot. By way of explanation, LMP modernizes the systems and processes associated with managing the Army's supply chain at the national and installation levels, and permits the planning, forecasting, and rapid order fulfillment leading to streamlined supply lines, improved distribution, and a reduced theatre footprint. Thus, LMP better supports the warfighter so that they can be better equipped and ready to respond to present and future threats. Colonel Dennis-Lowman managed and supported the depot team during this difficult and challenging LMP transformation. Further, her guidance and leadership led the depot to excel in continuous improvement efforts. In 2010, the depot exceeded the Value Engineering goal by more than $800,000 ($1.48 million versus $2.29 million), and exceeded the Lean Six Sigma goal by more than $140,000 ($931,000 versus $790,000). In 2010, the depot shipped approximately 39,012 tons of conventional ammunition and received and processed 33,218 tons. This was in direct support of the ongoing war efforts around the world, as well as training requirements. Colonel Dennis-Lowman was recognized by the publishers of Utah Business (magazine for decision makers) as one of the ``30 Top Women to Watch--Women Making a Difference in Utah Business.'' She advised and supported a depot team during a Green Belt Project, Water Management. This team was awarded the 31st Annual Secretary of the Army Energy and Water Management Award, as well as the 2009 Federal Energy and Water Management Award within the small group category. During her command, the depot's Law Enforcement and Security Branch did very well and received ``commendable'' ratings during the Headquarter, AMC Force Protection Assessment. In 2010, Tooele Army Depot received the AMC Anti-Terrorism Award for Small Installations. Her guidance was instrumental in receiving OHSAS 18001 (safety), ISO 9001:2008 (ammo shipping/receiving and ammo equipment and manufacturing), and ISO 14001 (environmental) certifications. Colonel Dennis-Lowman coordinated the effort for Tooele Army Depot to be the first Army installation to have a wind turbine. This wind turbine was completed in June 2010, stands 262 feet tall, and produces 1.5 MW of electricity, which is enough to power 300-400 homes, and translates to $206,625 in savings per year. In 2010, the depot's energy usage was 8% lower than during 2009, resulting in a cost savings of over $117,000. In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, Colonel Yolanda C. Dennis-Lowman has served in a most exemplary manner as Commander of the Tooele Army Depot, and has demonstrated remarkable leadership abilities in the face of substantial challenges. I congratulate her on her accomplishments, and invite my colleagues to join me in thanking her for a job well done, and join me in extending well wishes to her for much success in all future endeavors.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I thank Chairman Pearce from New Mexico for using the Western Caucus to illustrate some of these ideas and situations that are here. I'm also grateful that the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Broun) was just here and tried to show how whenever you have a policy that prohibits or discriminates or lessens the amount of energy that we have in this country, it has a direct impact on individuals and people. As he was showing, it has a direct impact on the cost of food. For every dime that diesel fuel increases, that's $400 million the agricultural industry has to put onto the cost of food. Not just in transporting the food but for the fertilizer to grow it, for the boxing, the shipping, the manufacturing of it--all of those things are added to it. For every penny that the cost of gasoline increases at the pump, that is $1 billion that's taken out of the household income of Americans. And whom is that going to impact the worst? Obviously the people at the lower end of the economic scale, who have the most difficult time making their budget stretch to pay for higher transportation costs through fuel, for higher food costs because fuel goes up, for higher heating costs because fuel goes up. They're the ones who are hurt. Now, I also appreciate Mr. Pearce for illustrating that actually we have a situation in which the West, without trying to be specific to a region, but the West has been treated with the heaviest hand over the past few years and has suffered the greatest consequences of that heavy hand. Last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, they simply said that the region that had the highest unemployment for last year and the year before happened to be the West. Six of the top 12 States that had the largest decline in employment-to-population ratio since the recession that began in 2007 are found in the West. Three of the top five States showing the most stress last year in the summer were found in the West, and unfortunately, Washington's misguided policies over the last several years are simply making these situations worse. Let me, if I could, talk about a couple of specific situations that I have found in my State that have added to this problem of what we call the ``war on the West,'' because they have had the dual whammy of not only increasing the price of energy, which is the price of living and the price of doing business, but at the same time of decreasing jobs in our particular area. Part of that is because the West simply has, as a region, over half of its land owned by the Federal Government. This government--it was not planned this way; it just kind of happened--owns 1 out of every 3 acres in the United States. Yet, west of Denver, it owns 1 out of every 2 acres in the United States, and we get to have the fun of working with the heavy hand of the Federal Government on all sorts of efforts, especially when the Department of the Interior has unlimited, arbitrary and capricious powers given to them. For example, the Bureau of Land Management in the State of Utah went through what they call ``regional management plans.'' I have 16 areas. Half of them went through a regional management plan. The people on the ground, who are working there, who live there and who know that area, spent 7 years in developing a regional management plan, which means simply: How will the land owned by the Federal Government--and remember, it's still half of it--be used for development purposes? For 7 years, they held the public hearings, and they went through all the processes. They came up with their plan. The Secretary of the Interior came into office, and in the first few days, he simply said, Those plans don't fit the needs of this country because they authorize 77 oil and gas leases, places where the professionals on the ground determined that the best use of government land was used to develop oil and gas in the State of Utah. The Secretary simply said no. He believed the last administration had made a rush to judgment, and therefore it was his best decision to suspend not only those oil leases but also the land management plans at the same time. He did it simply by the stroke of his signature. There was no work with it. There was no counterbalance. There was no checks and balance system. He simply said, I think it was wrong. It was a rush to judgment. I'm going to stop it. Now, like everything else, this situation went to court, and the judge ruled that, actually, the Secretary was wrong. There was not a rush to judgment by anyone other than the Secretary when he suspended those leases. However, because there was a timing element--one of those technicalities--and because those who were suing waited too long to file the lawsuit, the decision of the Secretary would stand. Now, what the Secretary said is, I'll be magnanimous, and of the 77, I'll let 17 go forward. The other 60, they stay off the table. I don't care what the regional management plan did. The end result of that was simply that you don't have a whole lot of leases that will be put out for development. Unfortunately, it has a ripple effect through the community because not all leases are found on Federal land. There is also State land and very few pieces of private land; but oftentimes they abut one another, and if you block the leasing opportunity on this piece of land, it sterilizes the leasing development opportunity on its neighbor land at the same time. Plus, if all of a sudden the Department of the Interior is sending a message that they're going to be tough on this kind of development, industry gets the message, and they're not going to fight that kind of issue, and they will leave at the same time. The net result of this one action by the Department of the Interior was that unemployment in one rural county in Utah was a loss of 3,000 jobs in a county that only has 30,000 residents. The unemployment tripled over a course of months and only and solely because of this one decision: that not only did we not have the ability of drilling on those Federal lands, but you also lost the opportunity for the private sector to go onto State lands and onto certain private lands. Then there was the ripple effect as they realized what simply happened, which is that the private sector said, I'm not going to put up with this. They took the investment capital that they were willing to put into the region of rural Utah and took it somewhere else where they didn't have to deal with the Department of the Interior. We have the same situation in the West in another particular area, specifically with oil shale. The U.S. Geological Survey, which oddly enough is part of the Department of the Interior, has estimated that, in a 16,000-square mile area of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, there are, roughly, 2 trillion barrels of oil that can be extracted from oil shale. That is more energy than we get from Canada. This is not a new and unusual process. Estonia, in the Baltic states, has been using this same process of extraction from oil shale for 80 years, and they have done it successfully and in an environmentally friendly manner. We could copy that same proposal--but no. Once again, this administration has decided to slow-walk any development, slow-walk any allowance of projects to go forward to demonstrate what we can and cannot do. The net result of losing this opportunity for oil shale is at least $1.9 trillion added to the economy of this country, and there is projected to be up to 100,000 new jobs that would be lost simply by this one decision as well. Now, this is a small area, but if you compound that fact of what is happening not just in my State of Utah but what is happening in Colorado and Wyoming and New Mexico and Nevada and the rest of the West and if you see the compounded problem we have, you truly can understand why in the recession the West was the hardest hit--because we were dealing with the Federal Government in a way that was certainly unfair. I'd like to say one last thing before I yield back to the gentleman from New Mexico. In the last days, as the gentleman said, we have been talking about the ability of trying to jump-start our energy portfolio, our energy self-dependence, our energy ability in three bills specifically dealing with offshore development. We have that same potential for energy development onshore as well that we need to talk about at the same time; but sometimes we also need to talk here simply about understanding how words have meaning. We have been throwing around words in the debate over the last couple of weeks in a way that, I think, has been somewhat unfair and somewhat dilatory, and it has clouded the actual issue of what is going on. For example, there are those who are saying we don't need to actually develop any new oil or gas resources. There are plenty of leases out there that aren't being produced. I want you to know, when you deal with words, that ``lease'' is not the same thing as a permit to drill, and a ``permit to drill'' doesn't mean you're going to find anything for production. Just because there is a lease does not mean there is production. I had a company that was in my office today which has a lease in one of the Western States. They received the lease 6 years ago. Only this year did they finally check off all the boxes, run through all the bureaucratic hoops and do the environmental impact statements to get the permit 6 years later to finally start preparing to drill to see if it is actually productive. Those 6 years cost a lot of money to that company, money which could have gone to providing work, providing jobs, as well as resources to help grow the economy of this country. That's a real cost, and that is real and legitimate. We've heard comments before about how this country doesn't have enough oil because we don't have enough reserves to make it worthwhile. According to the CRS, Congressional Research Study, we have $1.2 trillion worth of gas that is available for production here in the United States. That puts us in the top five countries in the world for oil. We are not an oil-poor country. However, when we talk about reserves, reserves are not the same thing as the amount of money that's available. Our reserves are a definition that is established by the SEC, and by the definition we use, we will always have fewer reserves than other countries, by definition. In addition to that, a reserve can't count as a reserve until you can actually get to it. When we put parts of this country off, when we have a moratorium, by definition, that takes us out of the reserve. So, when someone says we don't have as many reserves as other countries, it's probably true. That doesn't mean we don't have enough oil that can be used and produced. It simply means it doesn't fit the definition. ``Reserve'' is not the same thing as ``amount of producible oil.'' Just like as the gentleman from Georgia said, a subsidy--and we talked about all the subsidies the industries are getting--is when the government actually pays cash to somebody. The oil companies are not getting cash from the government. A subsidy should not be confused with a tax credit or a tax deduction. If it were, when I fill out my long form and I write down my charitable contributions and get to write them off, that means the Federal Government is subsidizing me or subsidizing the charity to which I'm giving. That doesn't make any sense. What we need to do is talk about the words as the words really are meant to be and make sure that the words are used the proper way and not for some rhetorical effort to inflame the situation and reach some other result. The last word we need to talk about is simply ``jobs.'' Right now, there are twice as many government jobs as in all of manufacturing combined. In 1960, those ratios were reversed. We have gone to a lot of effort over the last 2 years to pass jobs bills, all of which produced government jobs. What we need to do is look at jobs in the private sector, and the private sector which creates a reliable, long-term job, a job that also equates wealth that goes back into the system and helps to grow our economy and grow our country. Those are the jobs we should be after, and those are the jobs we need to do. Unfortunately, we will never develop those jobs until we have a governmental energy policy that is reliable, that is not dependent on the whims of some foreign country, and that helps us develop the resources that we have in this country. We can do it and we need to do it, and I appreciate Mr. Pearce from New Mexico for bringing up this issue because that's exactly what we need to do as a policy. With that, I thank the gentleman.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Duncan), another great new member of the Resources Committee.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 245 provides for the consideration of two very important bills, H.R. 1229, the Putting the Gulf of Mexico Back to Work Act, and H.R. 1230, the Restarting American Offshore Leasing Now Act, both under a structured rule. With many amendments, all of which are Democrat amendments having been made in order, this is a very fair rule. I commend the sponsor of the two bills, the chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, Mr. Hastings of Washington, for his leadership in bringing both of these bills to the House. H.R. 1229 is a bill that goes to the heart of the bureaucratic delays, which are preventing the approval of drilling permits within the Gulf of Mexico; and it modifies the standards and procedures governing Federal leases and permits in order to streamline the process, making the development of these domestic resources a reality instead of the status quo of paying lip service to drilling and then stifling drilling through bureaucratic inaction. H.R. 1230 is a bill that would direct the sale of oil and gas leases within the Outer Continental Shelf, reversing a failed administration policy of canceling and delaying those processes. Mr. Speaker, over the last 2 years, many Republicans have come to this floor and have sung the same refrain of ``show us the jobs.'' It was, indeed, a nice song and a catchy tune--so catchy that the minority of today seems to have been picking up on that kind of song as well. I don't expect to hear that today, or at least we ought not to hear it today, because the two bills before us under this rule are real bills that create real jobs for people. Unlike the bills we have seen over the past couple of years which have led us to a situation where today there are twice as many workers in the government as there are in all of manufacturing in this Nation, which is an exact reverse of the situation this Nation was in in 1960, these are not going to be government jobs which attack the taxpayers and suck the money out of their wallets to fund them. These are going to be real jobs that grow the private sector, that expand the economy, that provide wealth, and that will provide, actually, millions of new government revenues coming into this country. The situation we find ourselves in today with regard to energy is one that is detrimental to everybody. Everyone who goes to the pump to fill their cars recognizes the cost is increasing and will continue to increase. They recognize that the situation we are in puts all our jobs in jeopardy, and it is because of the inaction of this particular administration. The President has continually said that he wants to do action, to move forward, to develop American energy, but the actions of his administration have, quite frankly, failed to meet the rhetoric of the administration. The problem has always been a fundamental flaw in our Nation's energy plan. Last May, the Deepwater Horizon accident occurred, which was a tragedy; and we must thank all of those who helped to solve that particular problem; but, unfortunately, the administration's response to that tragedy has turned it into a catastrophe and one which destroys jobs. Immediately, a moratorium on all sorts of development was put into place. Prior to that moratorium being put into place, there were 52 approved and pending permits, and that moratorium was lifted in October; but of those 52, only 10 permits have been issued since that time. Two of them are new in deepwater and are eight of the 52 that were originally done. That means there are over 40 still approved and still stalled in what has become a de facto moratorium, caused by a foot-dragging of this administration that, what one columnist said, is moving at a glacial pace. More rigs have left our shore--12--to go to other places in the world where they are welcomed and where they are developing energy sources, where they don't have to face the red tape and the foot-dragging than have actually been approved by this administration. A perfect example is Seahawk Drilling, a company that had over 500 jobs and 20 rigs that went into chapter 11 bankruptcy. The president of that company stated only one reason for that bankruptcy and that loss of jobs, which was the de facto moratorium of inaction done by this administration in this area in 2008 in a response to an arbitrary drilling ban that was lifted by both the President and Congress. It created a 5-year plan. Virginia was supposed to start the exploration process in 2011, but the Secretary of the Interior delayed that until 2012 and then later delayed all exploration on the Atlantic coast until after 2017. In the Gulf of Mexico, two other sales were canceled and moved out from this year, which was when they were supposed to begin, once again into next year. It became so bad that a judge in New Orleans gave the administration 30 days to start moving on these projects, saying that what was happening by this administration was increasingly inexcusable and that not acting at all is not a lawful action. The result of this has simply been catastrophic for jobs in America. The Obama administration has admitted in its official memorandum that, for those days of its official moratorium, 12,000 jobs were lost; but what is more significant is the de facto moratorium there. An LSU study simply said, if this were sustained for 18 months in the gulf area, there would be 24,532 jobs lost and in the Nation 36,137 jobs lost simply because of what we are not doing in the Gulf of Mexico. It is very simple to understand how this works. Each platform that is out there drilling has 90 to 150 employees. If you add the production team as well as the exploration team, you can multiply that by a factor of four. So you have almost per every drilling up to 1,400 jobs that are tied to that particular project with $1,800 a week as the average wage. That means for every one of those drills that is not put back into production, it is $5 million to $10 million per month per platform that is lost to this economy; and the ripple effect within the economy for our energy uses as well as jobs is, once again, staggering as this administration is, indeed, going at a glacial pace. In Virginia alone, 2,000 jobs will be estimated to be lost if the de facto moratorium that pushes everything to 2017 is allowed to take place. Now, this action, or inaction, by the administration costs every American. It costs us at the gas pump as we see the cost of running our cars increasing almost daily, and this hurts the poor worse than anyone else. It is estimated that every American will pay $700 more this year for gasoline than least year. Obviously, those at the lower end of the economic scale are the ones who are hurt the most. For every cent that is increased in gas at the pump, that is $1 billion that is taken out of household incomes in this country; and it makes sure that Americans are then put at the mercy of foreign oil development and foreign energy sources, which may not necessarily like us, and sometimes they're just flat out bad guys. It also has other areas in which it has affected everyone--once again, those at the lower end of the income scale the most. For every dime that diesel goes up, that is $400 million that is added to the agricultural industry, which is what we eat, which is tacked onto our food prices. You have to have oil for fertilizer. As that goes up, the cost of fertilizer goes up; the cost of running machinery goes up; the cost of food goes up; the cost of pharmaceuticals, plastics. If you go into the emergency room, everything that is not metal has some element of oil that developed it, and all of those are increasing. Now, there are only two ways that we can handle this situation. First, you can go with the old concept of supply and demand and simply increase production, which is what these two bills are trying to do; or you can go to the approach that this administration seems to be asking us to do, which is to cut our standard of living, accept gasoline prices at the European level, and beg Saudi Arabia to be nice to us--to put our futures in the hands of OPEC and then amazingly say we can also solve these problems simply by taxing oil companies at a higher rate. Since 2010, the domestic production of energy in this country has decreased 16 percent. In this year, next year and the year after that, we estimate, unless we make changes, that a quarter of a million barrels of oil will be decreased in our production rate in each of those years. The only area in which any energy production has been increasing is on private property. Unfortunately for this country, almost all of the energy that we have, most of the energy that we can develop, is on public lands, which is controlled by the government, which is doing nothing now to help develop that. This is a time where pragmatism is much better than a failed ideology of restrictions. Now, what these two bills do is to simply reverse the job-killing delays that have been taking place. In H.R. 1229, it reforms the law to require leaseholders to receive permits to drill before they start drilling; and it will do it for the first time by law, not simply by a regulation. It demands that the Secretary of the Interior conduct and approve safety revenues, once again, for the first time in history. More importantly, it ends the de facto moratorium by demanding prompt guidelines and action. It says that the Secretary of the Interior will have 30 days in which to deal with these issues and then can have up to two 15-day extensions--a total of 60 days to do the review. Now, while that may seem to some as a quick path, it's not when you look at the history of what has been done. Before the moratorium went into effect, it was taking 5 to 15 days to do the drilling leases and permits. One company was done in nine days just recently. What the problem is is that most of these are simply not being done simply because of inaction. It also says for those that were approved prior to the May 27 moratorium, you've got 30 days to get them going again. This is plenty of time to do the work. It also does something else for the first time. It provides an expedited hearing process so that legal rights are not lost--they are protected--but you will not go back into a concept of a never-ending lawsuit moratorium. In 1230, the bill recognizes that this year will be the first time since 1958 that we have a possibility of no offshore lease sales. And it wants to reverse that action to proceed promptly with the 5-year plan so that things, for example, in Virginia will be in effect within 1 year, and those that were scheduled in the gulf can be done within 1 year of the passage of this bill. This bill simply will create billions in Federal Reserve revenues coming in, and it will create billions in our economy, and it will create jobs. I hate to say this, but under President Obama, the cost of energy has skyrocketed. The administration has actively blocked and delayed energy production. It's cost jobs. It's raised energy prices. It's made the United States more reliant on unstable foreign countries for our energy. Through the American Energy Initiative, this House is actively working to increase American energy production to lower gas prices, to create American jobs, to generate revenue to help reduce the deficit, and to decrease our dependence on foreign energy. The United States Government has had a long history of sporadic attempts to respond to oil and gas prices. Usually, we have missed the mark. But, unfortunately, oil is still the lifeblood of the world and will be for most of our lives. That is why 70 countries and 31 States in the United States are involved in the process. Prices are influenced by the signals that are given by worldwide circumstances and also by government policy. These two bills are the first of several signals that this House wants to send to the world and to the economy that says our goal should be to come as close to economic and energy self-sufficiency and independence as possible. We are not an energy-poor Nation; and we need to be developing the resources in every way possible, including in the gulf, including in the Outer Continental Shelf, and including on our land sources. That is our future if we want to do anything to create jobs and help the American people. That is specifically what these two bills are aimed to do. With such, Mr. Speaker, this is a good rule and a fair rule; and the underlying piece of legislation is entirely worthy of our support. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 245 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Polis), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only. General Leave

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, let me just make a couple of very quick points, if I could. Once again, the purpose of these two bills is to start our process going towards Americans having adequate energy supplies to live their lives. And it's one of the things that you either increase production or you try to cut back. Our goal is to increase the production. The idea that what we are doing is in some way making safety less significant is silly. There are new safety rules that have been in place. They are ready. They are prepared. They are ready to go forward. The myth of subsidies to Big Oil is one of the things also that we need to talk about because even my fellow Democrats have admitted that the President's plan to push a tax hike on energy taxes does result in the loss of American jobs and higher taxes on independent oil and gas companies. I love the fact that we always spin things by talking about Big Oil. But the nonpartisan Politifact.com noted that a majority of the U.S. oil production comes not from the biggest multinational oil companies but from independent firms. American production activities are dominated by these independent producers who drill 95 percent of the Nation's natural gas and oil wells, accounting for as much as 67 percent of the total U.S. natural gas and oil production. Often we try to find some kind of straw man which to attack, and the idea of Big Oil is one of those easiest ones to do. But in reality, if those tax hikes were to go into place on production, you would not be hitting the Big Oil companies; you're going to be hitting small companies which have 100 or fewer employees, not only offshore, but on the shore as well. That is the attack. I'm sorry. I am not validating President Obama's leadership on this issue. To me, leadership means you do something. Inaction is not leadership. It's not the government picking winners and losers. What this administration is doing by the de facto moratorium, the inability to move forward on this issue is simply picking losers, losers in the field, losers for America, losers in jobs, and that is wrong. This tries to get us going ahead in an area and in a way in which we can do it, we should do it, we have the capability of doing it. All we simply need to do is do it. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. For the moment I will reserve the balance of my time and enjoy the spin.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Fleming).

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I yield the gentleman 1 additional minute.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert).

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Landry). He is a member of the Resources Committee that provides a great deal of insight from his personal background.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, the minority is asking us to walk down a tangent issue by using negative cue words like ``subsidy,'' so let me walk down that for 30 seconds. Please realize the U.S. oil and natural gas industry does not receive subsidized payments from the government. The word ``subsidy'' is inaccurate. Tax deductions should in no way be confused with the concept of subsidies. There are, though, tax deductions that go to all industries. Section 199, which has been talked about by the Democrats, is the domestic manufacturers' deduction. Every industry--manufacturing, producing, growing, extracting--gets a 9 percent of earned income deduction, not a credit, except for oil and gas; but they are limited to just 6 percent. There is similarity. They've also asked us to try and walk down a tangent in talking about safety, but the ideas of safety are codified in the legislation before us. They then say let's increase our production by raising taxes. What a non sequitur. Even if you raise taxes against somebody else and try to create some kind of straw man to attack, that is simply a non sequitur, because we do not have a tax problem in this country. We have a production problem; we have a jobs problem. These two bills go directly to that problem. They increase production and increase jobs. We are not trying to pick winners and losers. We want the Americans to be winners, and that's what our choice is to be. These are two good bills in a time of $4 and $5 gasoline prices that are devastating jobs and our economy. These bills surely should be something that every Member should support.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Scalise), who lives in this area and understands the situation firsthand.