Rob Bishop

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from Idaho (Mr. Sali).

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. So here we are debating a bill under a rule which we all know should have best been under a suspension. It's not a perfect bill. If they accept an amendment later on, it will be a perfect bill. But for any imperfections that are here, this bill has far better drafting, far better intent, far more bipartisanship than perhaps some illogical partisan gamesmanship that produced vociferous debate under suspensions yesterday. But one would wonder why we are taking time on the floor to consider a bill which was passed out of the Resources Committee by a voice vote and a bill in which I intend to vote in favor? What is it about this bill that is actually so important that we are talking about it rather than other more pressing national issues such as an energy crisis? Why does such a relatively innocuous bill take precedence over finding solutions to gas prices that are now around $4 a gallon and probably going higher? It must be that this bill accomplishes something so dramatically important that we are foolish to consider other issues, such as national security or our deepening dependence on foreign oil. This bill deals with an area that includes no Federal waters. There are no Federal assets that are a part of it. It could easily be done with an inter-local cooperating agreement, which many States in the West use. Instead, the Federal Government is involved in that. Despite that fact, I still intend on voting for this particular bill. This is a recreational bill. This bill provides moneys for trails, maps, signs, and all the nice things in the quest of healthy outdoor recreation in the Chesapeake Bay region. This program was originally authorized in 1998 as a 5-year program, and then reauthorized for another 5 years in 2002. And now the authorization, not for the program but for the appropriations for this program, are set to expire and the proponents are offering this legislation to authorize funding this program for eternity. There will be no caps on the funds that can be appropriated for this program, no time limit. Maybe this is such a big priority for the Democratic majority because the National Park Service testified this program has received $7.7 million in earmarks since its creation. Maybe the Democrats wish to preserve a conduit for earmarks masquerading as a recreation bill. This is what takes precedence over national security and the energy crisis here on the floor of the House. Yet, I don't object to the earmarks that were made for this particular bill, even though some of them are different. Part of the money that goes to this particular bill or has been earmarked in the past has been $20,000 dollars for a Native American interpretive brochure. I don't oppose that. Funds go into this for a Dino-Mania! Camp-In so that people can delve into the world of dinosaurs as your family spends the night in a Virginia Living Museum, explore how big some dinosaurs were, find out what might have caused their extinction, and it also comes with an evening snack and a breakfast. My favorite, the Tree Spirits. The ancients believed the trees had spirits, and if you look hard enough, you see them in this woody bark. This workshop will focus on the old beliefs to trees, their meaning, their practical purposes. Fathers and sons will join the rangers on a hike as we scavenge the materials to make our own Tree Spirits for you all. I actually don't object to that. I still intend to vote for this particular bill. Nature hikes, picnics in the park, learning about ecology are causes to champion, and I'd be happy to support those things, but this bill doesn't solve the major threat to those activities. How will one be able to afford to get to these outdoor locations, enjoy these earmarks when the gas is too expensive to allow them to travel anywhere. At this point, Americans are not working to live, they are working to pay for the gas to get to work and back home. With gas at $4 a gallon, weekend family visits to the Chesapeake are becoming less and less of a possibility. Unfortunately, our unwillingness to address the dramatic spike in energy prices today hurts American families, not only by putting some recreational activities beyond their reach, but by wrecking the household budget for basics, such as food, electricity, and medicine. Some people talk about our goal should be to get revenge on companies that produce energy, but such a program does not add one barrel of energy to meet the demands of the present time. The Resources Committee, from which this legislation originated, is the same committee that has jurisdiction over domestic resources, resources on public lands, such as the Outer Continental Shelf and ANWR. It's past time for the Resource Committee to stop in its quest to become merely a ``Recreation Committee.'' This country has locked up more resources in America than other nations have in their entire country. America is blessed with a wealth of natural resources and historically we have had the unique ability to develop and continuously improve the technology needed to use these resources. We have faced and overcome bigger challenges in the past, but we in Congress must act now to meet the critical energy needs of today. We need to stop creating obstacles to domestic energy production so the American people can get to work and solve the problem. That should be the priority of the people, that should be our priority as well. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I am happy to yield 4 minutes to the newest member of the Virginia delegation, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wittman).

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

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, if you recall back to the movie ``The Natural,'' if you remember there is that one wonderful scene where this mythical team, the New York Knights, have called in a psychologist to talk to the team to try to get them out of their losing slump. And as they are sitting there, talking to these ballplayers he says, ``The mind is a strange thing, men. We must begin by asking, what is losing? Losing is a disease that is as contagious as syphilis. Losing is a disease as contagious as the bubonic plague, attacking one, but infecting all. But curable. Now I want you to imagine you are on a vast ocean. You are on a ship at sea gently rocking, gently rocking, gently rocking, gently rocking.'' In that scene Roy Hobbs, now in disgust, breaks out of that and leaves this therapy session, because he recognizes that the solution to their losing season is not sitting there talking philosophically about it, but actually going out on the field and doing something. We today in the issue of energy are in the mode of simply talking about it. All we are doing is coming here and talking about these theoretical approaches, gently rocking, gently rocking. We are talking about building straw men that we can then knock about, whether it is big oil or a so-called bubble, or yesterday someone said the reason we are paying so much at the pump is because of Enron. Ken Lay has somehow reached up from the dead and somehow hiked up the price of gasoline. And our only solution to this entire situation so far is we have passed a piece of legislation that allows lawyers to go out and sue OPEC, in the hopes that maybe they might give us some more energy money. It is almost as if what we are trying to say is we are going to have everyone sit down and listen to a psychologist that will try and convince us that freezing in the dark can be an enjoyable thing if we just have the right attitude towards it, because losing is simply a mind game and it is contagious. What Roy Hobbs did is the exact opposite. He left that stuff. He went out on the field, he knocked the cover off the ball, and when they actually started doing something, that is when this mythical New York Knights team started to win. If we want to solve the problem of energy for American citizens, we have got to stop, quit talking about it and our secret plans and coming up with these mythical enemies which we want to attack, and we simply have to go out and do something. And that means production now. We cannot sit here simply idly by while American people are suffering without actually doing something in reality. And that means yes on conservation, but it also means we have to increase production. If we don't do that, recreational opportunities like this particular bill have no purpose and have no meaning. There is nothing left for them to do. If I could give a few statements that have been given by people who live in this area and who will be impacted by this particular bill and what they are saying about the energy issues and how it impacts and affects them. ``Repercussions,'' a quote here, ``from the escalating price of fuel are felt everywhere. Sportsfishing is no exception. Neither is the business of chartering, headboating or commercial fishing. The same applies to businesses associated with fishing. One big tackle shop proprietor told the other day, `I have four people and myself working now and not a single customer in the shop. Haven't seen one in 10 minutes.''' ``Alex DeMetrick reports gas prices are soaring, having an impact on those who depend on boats and the Bay to make a living. Naming a work boat the `Last Penny,' which may have been a stab at some kind of subtle humor, it is striking a little too close to reality at the fuel docks around the bay as diesel is now at $4.50 a gallon and climbing. `Gas is doubling and the price of seafood is going down,' said one of the watermen who works there. `Working the water takes constant moving, but with crabs spotty and fuel high, watermen are trying to conserve. They are hurting us bad,' he says. `It's almost double in the past year, so it is taking a right good bite out of us,' says another one of the watermen who works there.'' Over at Dredge Harbor, New Jersey, another one of those people who work there said high gas prices are also affecting his customers. ``Instead of taking four trips down the Chesapeake Bay, they now might take two trips this year, and most of their customers use their boats as homes afloat so they can conserve as much fuel as possible. High prices are somewhat affecting the sales.'' Another one of the reports from this area, ``Elevated prices are causing some charter fishing captains to want to jump overboard.'' As one said who owns a yacht yard, he is selling gas for $4.20 per gallon at his fuel dock, and he has noticed fewer and fewer small power boats on the water. What we are simply doing as we go along with this, there are other people that simply say, ``Now I can see no way of getting over the hump of fuel costs. We have got good fishing, but we have fewer and fewer customers. With gas prices going this way, we are simply losing the opportunity of using this resource for the purpose in which it was therefore designed. High costs not only affect the fishing industry on the water, local businesses are also feeling the gas price pinch. A local tackle shop simply said, `I still got people working there and no one is coming in there.' Gas prices are dipping into his resources and his ability to make a living.'' Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time I have?

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. One of the things we have to deal with if we are actually going to deal in a proper way with the reauthorization of this entire program is to understand that if we are going to have these types of opportunities, either for people to recreate, people to learn, people to enjoy, people to enhance their entire environment, we have got to be able to get them there. Kind of like today. We seem to be needing to get people up from the White House, in which case they are walking because we can't afford the fuel to put them on buses to get them here. Therefore, things change because of those circumstances, and it is one of those concepts in which we are working. If we really need to be serious about this, we have to realize that our energy crisis today is limiting the ability to experience this type of an environment, this type of attitude and this process. And if we want to make full use of the Chesapeake Bay resources that are there, we have to make sure that real people have the opportunity of going there and experiencing it. Because when we talk about oil prices, we are not simply talking about some concept, some ethereal project that is out there. We are talking about real people, how they live, how their jobs work, how they get to the chance to recreate and make their lives fuller and better. And that has to be an integral part of this discussion, ought to be an integral part. In fact, it is a more significant part of this discussion on a bill that still is a decent bill that should have been done as a suspension, not as a rule here on the floor. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, one of the things I would still like to try and reemphasize as we are talking about this particular bill is this bill deals with the reauthorization of the appropriations concept. This is not about cleaning up the environment. Several of the speakers who have spoken today talked about the necessity of environmental protection. This is not the EPA's program. This is a wholly separate issue and a separate concept. One of the things that we should keep in mind is the purpose and the concept of an authorizing committee, is an authorizing committee should be reviewing what we are trying to do at periodic bases. That is our purpose. One of the things in this particular bill that is a problem, is problematic to the future, is that it rejects the ability of Congress to take periodic reviews of this particular program. When it was first initiated in 1998, there was a 5-year statute in which we would then review it. In 2002 we reviewed it. We are now looking at a bill that I think we are all going to agree is needed to go forward, but there still should be some kind of review. It should not be forgotten that when we voted this particular bill in the Resource Committee on a voice vote, there were six other bills at that time similar in scope, similar in fashion, similar in funding, but each of them had a periodic review attached to it. So a bill by Mr. Udall, a bill by Ms. Baldwin, a bill by Mr. Bilbray, by Mrs. Bono Mack and Ms. Bordallo, all of them had the responsibility of allowing Congress to do what it is supposed to do and try to take some kind of review at regular basic intervals. That still is the wisest approach to it. It is one of the few flaws that I actually find in this particular bill, and it is one of those flaws that probably should be addressed. We talked about the kinds of grants that have been awarded in the past. There are $7.7 million worth of earmarks not asked by the agency that have been added to this. We have added grants in certain years that have been, for example, $34,000 for the Chesapeake Bay Marine Museum, $21,000 for the Stratford Hall Plantation; $12,000 for the Mason Neck State Park; and $18,000 for the Annapolis Maritime Museum. I am not objecting to these as being inappropriate. In fact, I could probably argue they were appropriate and they were needful. They are useful. But I am saying that what Congress should do if we actually fulfill our responsibility is make sure that we look at these on a periodic basis, and that should be part of the statute. That is what we commonly do in most pieces of legislation, and it all should be part of this legislation at the same time. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, the amendment that I proposed here was actually proposed in the committee as well, and it is an amendment which in all sincerity is an effort to try and make a good bill into a very, very good bill. It has no intentions whatsoever of trying to derail the path of successful completion of this particular bill, but actually solve a problem and present a sense of comfort that might not necessarily be there as the bill proceeds to the other body. We are dealing, obviously, as some people have--not here on the floor, for all of us here on the floor who are Members, but some people have said that this is simply a sunsetting provision. It is not that. This program is not going to be sunsetted. But there is an authorization of appropriations which desperately needs that time to be looked at. My amendment is designed to bring this bill in line with all the other bills that we have passed out of the Resources Committee this year. Typically in the Resources Committee we review authorizations on specific periods of time. For this reason, I anxiously anticipate the support of Democratic colleagues, because this is good government. It is a fiscally responsible amendment. My amendment reauthorizes the review of this program after 5 years. This is a compromise between the National Park Service request, which was no authorization at all. They were fine about technical assistance, but they suggested there should be no more grants given to this program, as they said this program has matured enough and don't need any more, and the bill's sponsor who was asking for an eternal unending authorization of appropriations. Five years was good enough the first time this program was authorized, it was sufficient when this program was reauthorized, and it ought to be a sufficient time for Congress not to abrogate our responsibility but do our responsibility to review the programs that we authorize and how they are being funded. There is a reason we add these positions to bills. As I told you in the committee, the very committee that sent this bill out, there were six other bills in a similar status; and on each of those six bills we put in this process so that the committee could review that authorization and the funding source and what those programs were doing at 5-year intervals. Some bills we have passed out have no time limits, but in every situation they have funding limitations that are put on them. This particular bill in the course it is drafted right now has no funding limitation nor any review process to it. And that is where it can be improved. There is a reason we add these provisions to bills. Without them, programs have a tendency of languishing, depending upon Federal funds, where we want them to encourage recipients of these funds to use them wisely and to have an incentive to produce results. When programs expire, we have a chance to reevaluate them and conduct this oversight. That is our responsibility as an authorizing committee and as Congress as a whole, and we should not abrogate that responsibility. Without my amendment, we are relinquishing our oversight and leaving it simply to appropriators. Already this program has received, as I said earlier, $7.7 million in unrequested earmarks. This bill also eliminates the annual cap on the funds that are eligible to be received. I understand that this has been an excellent conduit for earmarks, but let us not lose the fiscal responsibility that we have to do and get away from simply handing out a blank check. I mentioned earlier parts of the program that are funded, somewhat sarcastically, I admit. They do sound on the surface humorous. I am not opposed to what they are doing; I am not opposed to those programs. I am simply saying that Congress should have the responsibility of looking at those at a regular period. That is our job. It is nearing impossibility for the average family to drive to any of these recreation areas; much of the responsibility for that lies here in Congress as well. Despite that fact, the other side of the aisle is unwilling to increase oil and gas reductions. I hope they will cut the taxpayers at least a small break by accepting this good government amendment, and allow us to review how the money is spent on a periodic basis as we traditionally do in most bills that come out of this committee. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania, who has done a great job in explaining the reality of the situation that we have and the reality of what our future can be if we are willing to take to the field right now and do it. So we are fine. What we hope to do when we do a comprehensive bill is actually provide 12 steps that will fit what Mr. Peterson was talking about and the three goals: Increasing our conservation, increasing our production and increasing our innovation. Those 12 steps are very simple. First is increasing American natural gas. As Mr. Peterson just told you, we could heat 100 homes for the next 30 years with the natural gas we have available but not yet developed in this country alone. Step two, increase American oil resources that we have in this country. We have increased the amount of oil we import seven times since the 1970s, and we decreased our exploration and production of American oil in the 1970s because of American policies, government policies. And the only thing we need to do to increase that so we can recover American oil supply is change American government policies. Step three, look at coal, American coal. We have 200 to 300 years' worth of coal undeveloped, unsecured in this country. Step four, develop American oil shale. 70 percent of all the oil shale in the world is in three western States in the United States, where there is more undeveloped oil than underneath the entire country of Saudi Arabia. Step five, increase affordable and clean nuclear fuel. Since the 1970s, we have had no new nuclear power plant built, while our friends in France in that same time period have built 58 plants. That has to be part of a future solution. Step six, we have to invest more in renewable sources of energy: Sunlight, wind, rain, tide, geothermal heat. All of those have to be increased. Right now, only about 7 percent of the total energy consumption comes from renewables. We are not going to solve the problem by this source alone; but if we could increase that, double it to 15 percent, 16 percent, 17 percent, we would go a long way toward doing that. And part of the way of doing that is government policy again. When we try to improve our solar and wind power plants, if we would simply extend the investment tax credits by another 5 years we could start moving forward dramatically today in that particular area. Step seven, greater efficiency and conservation, and especially giving incentives for the government to do that, for individuals, business, as well as government. And the reason I actually put business in there, they are already doing it. The U.S. steel industry today uses 45 percent less energy to produce 1 ton of steel. The U.S. forest and paper industry today uses 21 percent less energy to produce 1 ton of paper. We have the technology to do that. What the American government needs to do is to provide rewards for individuals and the government to do the same thing that the business community has taken on as a means of being profitable. Step eight, we increase our gasoline refinement capacity. We all know we produce in the United States about 17 million barrels of oil a day, but our consumption need is 21 million barrels of oil today. And we all know we haven't built a new refinery since 1976; and only 23 years ago we had 324 operating refineries, today we have 148 operating refineries. And for those who are operating, they are still only marginal because the market does not bear them. What we have to have is increasing supply of American oil going to American refineries; we need, and this bill calls for, an additional 10 new refineries immediately built on property owned by the Department of Energy to do that part. Step nine, to adopt common sense regulatory relief. Department of Interior suggests that we have about 80 billion barrels of recoverable oil and natural gas that are locked away because of regulatory controls that Congress has put on those areas. Our need for standards don't have to be sold out, but they need desperately to be reformed simply so we can make decisions faster, because we need relief now, not sometime in the future. That time was long ago. We need it now. Step ten, we have to improve our transmission and energy infrastructure. We have 5 million miles of electrical distribution lines; we have 1 million miles of natural gas pipelines, and they are incredibly outdated and they do not supply America's needs. We have to improve those. If we are going to improve them with ethanol and we are starting to unload ethanol, we have to have blending terminals. We don't have it. Department of Interior has right now been tasked with trying to develop energy corridors for the future, and there are people trying to stop them from at least identifying where we will have energy corridors for the future. That cannot be. We must identify them, and they must be useable. Step 11, we have to restore our domestic energy workforce. I hate to say this, but there are 90 percent fewer petroleum engineers and geoscientists who are graduating now than 20 years ago. Unfortunately, our workforce for the future and how we develop technology to innovate is simply not there. We have to provide some incentives, some rewards, some scholarships to develop that workforce. It has to be part of our program. Finally, step 12, we have to tap American innovation to develop our new energy technologies. And I mentioned how we did that, the same way we have in history: We prepare and provide rewards for people in America who can solve our problems. Now, as I said, one of the things my party is willing to do is move forward directly on this. Just like Roy Hobbs in The Natural realized sitting there listening to a lecture on the psychology of defeat does not produce a solution. Getting out on the field produces a solution. And what the Republican party wants to do is to get out on the field and make it happen, do the work now. And this comprehensive bill is one of those that have to take place. We are ready to move forward with an attitude that it can be solved, it must be solved, and we have the capacity to do it. And our goal will be to become energy independent and energy secure now, not in the future, but now, in our lifetime. I keep coming up here every day looking up at the top of this building with a quote by Daniel Webster up there which simply reads and tries to exhort to us: Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its power, and see whether we also in our day and generation may not perform something worthy to be remembered. We have the capacity and the ability to do something worthy to be remembered, and the Republican party wants to get on the playing field to do that. That is our goal, that is our destiny. The American people deserve it. And we can't wait; we have to do it now. Mr. Speaker, I thank you for your indulgence. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Would the speaker yield for a question?

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. In 1909, the first flight across the English Channel was spurred on by a prize from a newspaper. Charles Lindbergh made his flight, nonstop flight from New York to Paris because there was a prize offered. And a $30 billion aviation industry sprang out of that. The British Spitfire, which saved England in the Battle of Britain, was developed as a result of the Snyder Trophy, a prize for technological development. The United States Government also offers prizes today with its NASA Centennial Challenge Program, and it reaches out to nontraditional sources of innovation in academia, in industry, as well as the public. Americans have always looked to ourselves for solutions. If we just have the confidence in American ingenuity, American creativity to deal and to overcome our problems and to insist that we do it now, we do not wait, I am confident that we can do that. As I said, in all sincerity, if we are to solve the problem at the gas pump today, there are three elements that have to be there. We have to be able to produce more, to conserve more, and especially to innovate. I am happy to be joined by my good friend, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Peterson) and ask him if he would join us and talk about one of these areas which is extremely important to him, and he knows so much about it, that is the production end that has to go along with the increased technology for the innovation, as well as conservation. But without production, we cannot make it fit. I am sure if we can have one of our good pages bring the easel and the first of the charts here, it can illustrate exactly what we are talking about as we move forward in this particular piece of legislation in an effort to try and make sure that we have a complete and rational policy towards energy production and solving the problems of people; letting them have their lives back with cheap and affordable American energy.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the recognition and the opportunity to say a few words on the topic that has been talked about here on the floor repeatedly as well as by our constituents on almost a daily basis. For those of you who may not have heard it originally earlier this morning, I want to harken back once again to that old movie, ``The Natural.'' As you will remember, the fictional team--the New York Knights--in an effort to try and stop their losing streak, brought in a psychologist to speak to them, to the team. As he was sitting there, talking to them, he simply said, ``The mind is a strange thing, men.'' We must begin by asking what is ``losing.'' ``Losing'' is a disease as contagious as syphilis. ``Losing'' is a disease as contagious as the Bubonic plague, attacking one but infecting all. Now, imagine, if you will, you're on a ship at sea on a vast ocean, gently rocking, gently rocking, gently rocking, gently rocking. At that stage, Roy Hobbs, not being able to take it anymore, realizing the possibility that actually winning a game has nothing to do with talking to a psychologist or to a psychiatrist at the team meeting but that it has everything to do with performance on the field, just bolted out of the room and ran up there because he couldn't take it anymore. What Roy Hobbs realized is, if you are going to be successful, it has got to take action. You have to do something. There are too many people on this floor who have been talking and talking about energy. There are too many people who have tried to find scapegoats to blame for the energy situation we are in. They blame Big Oil. They tell you we're in an energy bubble of some kind. Yesterday, someone even suggested that Enron was the reason. The only thing we have done under the auspices of the majority party so far here is allow attorneys to go and sue OPEC countries so they'll give us more oil. Now, that is like talking to them and simply saying, ``Lack of energy is a disease.'' Imagine you're on a ship, on a vast ocean of oil, gently rocking, gently rocking, but are not doing anything to get the job done. Indeed, if we continue on that pattern, we can be living in reality the words of the book, which are simply ``how we get along by freezing in the dark.'' See, what Roy Hobbs understood in the movie was that, if you want to win, you don't get there by talking about it. You have to get out and do something. He went out on the field; he was given a chance to play, and he pounded the crap out of the ball. In so doing, he was able to be successful, and the New York Knights started to win, to win more than they ever had again. One of the things this party is talking about is, if given the chance to play one more time on the field, we will go out there, and we will do things. We will promote action. We will not be satisfied with simply the psychology of saying, ``We will freeze in the dark and accept it and be happy about it.'' We will produce energy to eliminate the need for the consumption. Because you see? It is, indeed, an attitude. Our attitude should be that we are not accepting the status quo and that we are not going to be satisfied until we have a new goal in this country, which is to be energy-secure and energy-independent. That has to be our goal and that we are going to do things now to do it. I hate to say this, but I am one of those who strongly supports American energy production. There was a time, if you actually admitted that in public, it was kind of like you're in favor of drowning kittens, but with gasoline's now costing $4 a gallon and being likely to rise, people's attitudes have now been changing. Some people used to say, if you were for American energy production, you were merely a shill for Big Oil. Unfortunately, there are still people who are saying that, but that's not the reality. Who I am fighting for are the people who are being impacted by our energy crisis. I am fighting for the thousands of natural gas users in my home State of Utah who are going to be asked to pay next winter to heat their homes at an increased cost of around 36 percent. It will be the largest increase in their ability to heat their homes in the history of this country. I am fighting for 1,100 citizens who lost their jobs last week and for the countless others who are going to pay increased ticket prices with the airlines because United Airlines announced it was cutting 1,100 jobs and was removing 100 airplanes from its fleet because it could not contain the spiraling oil fuel prices. I am fighting for an Ethiopian-born, Washington, D.C. cab driver who for the first time since his kids started school was unable to greet them when they came home from school because, every day, he now has to work 2 hours longer just to make the same daily income he was making before this energy, gas price spiked. I am fighting for people like Christine of Utah, who is actually selling her plasma now to make ends meet with this high-energy demand. I am fighting for dozens of citizens in my State who are reportedly selling their jewelry, electronics--even one gold tooth--in order to cover the high cost of gasoline. I am fighting for a young father in Virginia who was not able to attend his father-and-son outing last month because the cost of the gasoline to go there was too excessive. I am fighting for the students in Nevada's Clark County School District who are facing a 62 percent budget overrun solely because of the amount of gas it takes to run the school buses in that county's district. I am fighting for citizens in my home State who choose to risk imprisonment in order to fill up their tanks. One Utah minivan and truck driver, a minivan and truck that belong to the Alpine Medical Equipment Company, had his gas tank drilled, and the sole motive was to steal the gas in his tank. Because of that, there were 30 needy people who did not receive their scheduled deliveries of oxygen tanks, wheelchairs and beds at their homes on that particular day. Now, to my Democratic colleagues, I want you to notice there was no mention in that litany of people of Exxon or of Shell or of Conoco or of BP or of Chevron or of all of the other Big Oil scapegoats that we often hear about. But let me make no mistake. I do support these entities because I am for a fair and level-headed recognition that our main focus, that our main mission in this country, must be to deliver and to develop cheap, affordable energy for American citizens. They are not public enemy number one nor should we try and push off on scapegoats the inability to do that. We have the ability. We have the resources. That's why we're fighting today, and I will not cower in support of average Americans who need this kind of support. Now, in so doing, the Western Caucus, of which I am a member, will be introducing a bill that is trying to do what needs to be done, which is to make sure that we have a comprehensive approach to energy development. Conservation is a key element in meeting our energy needs, but that alone will not solve the problem. Production of all means of energy because there is no one, single, silver bullet is a key element. That alone will not meet the needs. Innovation is also needed, innovation in some kind of effort that, when we have the new sources of energy that we can develop, we need to be able to deliver those sources of energy. So the three elements that have to be in any particular bill and will be in a comprehensive American energy act are the concepts of pushing conservation, of pushing production and of pushing innovation, not necessarily in any particular order. All three of them have to be there if we are ever going to meet the needs of the American people. It has to be there. There are some who would like to try and single out some particular area. There is a city in France that is kind of going back to the future. In fact, what the city in France did is they got rid of their entire municipal fleet, and instead of their municipal fleet of automobiles, they bought horse-drawn carriages. They are called eco- friendly, horse-drawn carriages. Each one of those fleets costs $17,000. They feature disk brakes, signal lamps, removable seats. That's how they're trying to solve their energy problem. Now, the only thing I will caution once again, when we try to go backwards into history to try to solve our problems rather than using modern technology, is that, in 1900 in New York City, just before the automobile was introduced and everything was once again with those eco- friendly, horse-drawn carriages, New York City produced 90,000 tons of horse manure every year, not to mention the millions of gallons of horse urine every year. I'm sorry. That had to be disposed of, most of it in the water. What they found in New York City is that it was impossible to get rid of all of the horse droppings, and therefore, there was on the streets a fine mist, a mist that was always in the air, and there was an endemic tuberculosis problem to the point where environmentalists in New York City, when automobiles were finally introduced, were happy because, for the first time, they could limit the amount of horse-drawn carriages and could actually improve the health of citizens in New York. Sometimes, trying to go back in history or try to find a cheap, easy way is not the solution. The solution is technology. Technology can present solutions to all of our problems. Sometimes it's a long time in coming, sometimes it comes as rapidly as new cell phone plans. Consider in 1900 what Jules Vern must have thought as he predicted in the future in his writings. Did he ever realize we would go from radios to iPods, from antibiotics to organ transplants? Do you think he actually envisioned the concept of bottled water? All those things are results of technology. New technology will allow us to better use our existing energy resources, and that technology, which has to be part of this equation, the innovation part, has to be both in the public and the private sector. We need a major overhaul of the way Washington manages our input. We cannot solve all our problems by bringing in a bunch of experts to sit in a room in Washington. We must reach out with an aggressive national research effort. One of the reasons we want to produce more energy in the United States is because the royalties we use can, and in this bill, will be funneled back into research so that technology can find even better ways of doing things. We also have to realize that as we are looking for that, it has to be market-driven. We cannot have an over-reliance on old technologies and uneconomical resources simply because they happen to be politically successful here in Washington. The best way to destroy this effort of using technology is to allow government to pick winners and losers. It has to be done through the concept of the private sector. Federal mandates and massive government programs will not solve the problem. Certainly we will have government- funded labs. But they cannot be the only solution. I do not believe it is the only, nor is it the most practical way of solving our problem. If we want to think of how we can spur on innovation, what we have to do is tap the greatest resource this country has, which is the American people. Just think of what American people have been able to do in history. In 1784, we invented bifocals, something I still don't use; 1794, the cotton gin, and it changed the world; 1805, Americans invented refrigerators, and the next year, coffeepots; 1837, it was power tools; 1849, the safety pin; 1867, the typewriter, which revolutionized the way information is handled; 1867, it was barbed wire, which enabled us to secure the West. Even more important, and also in 1867, we invented for the first time toilet paper. In 1888, it was revolving doors. Three years later, it was escalators, which evolved into the Ferris wheel the next year. In 1903, crayons; 1905, windshield wipers; 1930, Scotch tape; 1945, microwaves; 1955, nuclear submarines; 1957, polio vaccine; 1970, optical fiber; 1972, the artificial heart. It continues on and on. Clearly, a country creative enough to come up with bifocals, the first oil well, the first blue jeans, the first telephone, the first crayon, not to mention airplanes, lasers, computers, everything else, is capable of developing the next source of energy and the technology to develop and deliver that energy. If we look at history, it's likely that we would have even begun it before we imagined it today. How are we able to do that? By doing what our bill proposes to do and presenting prizes for technological breakthroughs in innovation. I remind you that the British government offered a prize in 1714 for a device capable of measuring longitude, and John Harrison, a clock maker, got 20,000 pounds for devising the first accurate and durable chronometer that transformed the way we traveled across the oceans. In 1810, the first vacuum-sealed food was produced, after 15 years of experimentation, because Napoleon offered 12,000 Francs as a prize. We still use that technology today. Will the Speaker be kind enough to tell us how much time remains.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Could I also ask that Representative Foxx from North Carolina, who is a member of the board, come and express her opinion as well.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Just stay involved, stay active, and stay the overachievers you are. Thank you for your service here. We have appreciated you.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the ranking member of the Agriculture Committee, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte).

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

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. This is, to be honest, a very sad day on this bill today on the floor. As an educator, I simply understand the need for secure rural schools funding. As a westerner and someone who served for a long time in the State legislature, I understand what payment in lieu of taxes, or PILT, means to western counties. Unfortunately, though, this bill that is before us today did not get here through regular order. This is not the same bill we discussed in committee nor is it the same bill that I and some others cosponsored. It appears almost as if political games are now being played in an effort to pass this particular bill, which breaks new ground. The precedent has always been, in dealing with secure rural schools and PILT, that we have dealt in a bipartisan manner in an effort to find legal and politically feasible solutions to pay for secure rural schools and payment in lieu of taxes. We have always addressed these two issues in a bipartisan manner, always, until now. H.R. 3058, this version of it, has broken that covenant. When a version of this numbered bill was passed in the Resources Committee, two promises were made to the Republicans who cosponsored it, Mr. Walden and me and others. The first promise was that PILT would not be decoupled from secure rural schools. I cannot stress enough the importance of PILT funding being coupled with secure rural schools, as was promised. Even the majority leader in the Senate has said this is the key to the success of this piece of legislation. And yet this promise was broken. Second, the offset using the 1998/1999 lease moneys was supposed to be taken out by the time this came to the floor. This set of money, which has already been spent three times on three different bills, not the same pot of money, the exact same dollars which have been spent, is not going to be a solution to this. The gentleman from Oregon suggested last night that there might be constitutional concerns and we should not listen to those. I have some sympathy for that approach, but the fact of the matter is his speech last night was to the wrong audience. It should be to the lower courts, who have already ruled that this pot of money is not accessible to us. In 2006 we passed the Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act. Using these fees for that was justifiable. Using it in this bill is not justifiable. Those fees for the Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act was to fund programs and projects related to conservation of OCS-related resources. It was to increase America's energy supply and encourage domestic energy development on the Outer Continental Shelf. Because we are no longer using that and have now taken them to a different level, it will be a breach of the oil and gas leases and designed to punish energy companies and discourage much-needed domestic oil and gas production. This bill sends now a message to every energy company in America that Congress will not respect lease contracts and will result in less oil, less gas production, which I certainly hope is not the objective of the Democratic Party. We need to have a different way of paying for this bill that does not include an energy price-increasing bankrupt offset. We need a genuine offset that will pay for both PILT and secure rural schools without making America's energy more expensive, less available. And to be honest, if the court upholds their ruling that they already had, if the other courts do, there won't be any money for secure rural schools in this project anyway. Now, I know there will be people who will tell us this is merely a bogus placeholder. We don't really mean to use this money as the bill progresses through, which simply shows that perhaps PAYGO is nothing more than an accounting game or scam as we're looking at it, and that all we need to do is give a blank check over to the Senate, pass it along, and they will fill in some reasonable way of funding this particular bill. We will abdicate our responsibility of coming up with legal, legitimate, responsible legislation because somewhere down the line, someone else will do it. If the Senate, indeed, has a secret magical formula for funding this bill, why wasn't it in the farm bill? Why wasn't it in the extension of the Rural Schools Act? Why did the Senate not put it in a bill and send it over here? Or why did the sponsor not negotiate with the Senate to insert it in this bill so we could discuss it in the House? The promise was before this bill to the floor there would be a legitimate source for an offset. It is not there. Instead, we seem to be playing a game of political gotcha, which is so sad because there was a compromise that could have funded this bill and done it in a legally effective way. It was presented by the National Education Association on behalf of schools. It was supported by the consortium of counties. It was supported by energy producers that would have fully funded PILT, fully funded the secure rural schools, expanded energy options. It would have given States control over sand and gravel for beach replenishment, over the viewshed, States control over their offshore renewable energies, would have funded energy and minerals higher education program, and be done with real money, not the funny money in this particular bill. It is language that is similar to a bipartisan bill passed in the 109th Congress which was supported by Mr. DeFazio and 39 other Democrats in a bipartisan way. The question that we have to ask ourselves today is why are we confronted on suspension with a bill that has a phony PAYGO offset, money that we know is not there? Why are we presented with a suspension bill that has already been rejected by the Senate, that has already been rejected by the administration? Why instead did we not agree to go with the compromise approach, which would have had real offsets and provided real solutions to fully fund our schools, to fully fund PILT, and not to have to take it out of the hide of anyone who stops at a gas pump this weekend? Now, that's what we should have done, and we didn't do it. And that's why this is a very, very sad day on a bill that was not discussed in committee. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. May I inquire how much time is left.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield to myself the balance of our time. I appreciate Chairman Rahall from the committee coming down here earlier to speak on the bill. When this bill was under his control, he treated us with kindness and consideration. In the tornado of words that we have heard here today, there is one thought that still comes through: We need a permanent solution. This bill is half a bill without a permanent solution and without an offset that is legitimate. The counties, the education community, and the energy companies presented a real solution that would really pay, not a phony placeholder, but real money that would pay for full tilt, full secure rural schools, a real solution to real problems. This bill is the wrong bill, the wrong process, at the wrong time, and should be defeated.

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

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I appreciate the comments that have been made so far. I'm reminded by President Reagan, who once said there you go again, and some of those statements can apply here. But one statement was they aren't accurate, but what we are talking about here in this part of the discussion deals with how real people are impacted in their daily lives. We no longer are talking about energy consumption as an ethereal process or whether it meets different needs, kind of a policy concept. We're talking about how people, real people, bake their food, heat their homes, and how they keep their jobs. For every dollar that there is an increase in oil prices and gasoline prices, it simply means that jobs are lost, that revenue does not flow here. Social Security programs are diminished, and the overall quality of life is diminished. We're talking about real people and how real people are impacted. For every dollar a poor person or a middle-income person has to spend on increased energy consumption, that's a dollar they cannot spend on luxuries like tuna casserole. This is what we're talking about. If you're extremely rich, you can try and buy your way out of it like an old medieval duke buying indulgences from the Catholic church. But for middle-income people and poor people, we are talking about how they live their lives, and we're talking about a country that has more energy potential locked up than other Nations have in their entire countries. That's the concept that is here, and yet we always come back to picky little reasons why we can't develop the source, renew that source or build on that particular source as well. We can't develop in ANWR because even though the Carter administration set this particular piece of property aside for energy development because it offends somebody. We can't have windmills off the coast of Massachusetts; it doesn't look right. We can't drill off the coast of Florida because it might offend the tourists someway. We all have picky little reasons on why we can't do it, and the net product is we harm our own people because we don't have a policy that provides a positive reinforced policy, a strong program that will encourage conservation but also encourage production of every source of resources that we have at our disposal. It has to happen and it has to happen now because we're dealing with real people. We're also dealing with the security of this country. Early on this floor, they talked about an element of section 526 that was passed in the energy bill which simply had the proposal of cutting out the needs of our military in their advancement for alternative synthetic fuels. That's one of the things we're looking at. Five years ago, it cost us $2 billion a year for petroleum for our military. Today, we're talking about $12 billion a year. We cannot do that any longer. Those are the issues we have to have. We have to realize that what we're talking about is real people.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Who we are hurting are real people, and those people who are in the middle income and those people who are on the edges of our society and those people on fixed incomes, which is about 45 million Americans, those are the ones who get hurt first. And the more we talk about the philosophy, what should or should not be done, and the later we decide to take as our policy statement that we will become energy secure and energy independent and we will develop all the resources we have at our disposal to become energy independent, that's when we actually decide to try and help people. I thank the Speaker for his indulgences.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I have one other issue as well. We have talked, both in committee, the Rules Committee and I'm going to bring it up here on the floor, of the issue of charter schools. The committee has stated as their policy they wish to have charter schools treated fairly in this particular bill. If a charter school is, of itself, a local education agency, the language in this bill covers charter schools and they will be treated fairly. Unfortunately, if a charter school is part of a different local education agency it does not guarantee in the language of the bill that that charter school will be treated fairly. We have examples, anecdotal I admit, but anecdotal from coast to coast in this Nation, of charter schools who were not treated fairly by local education agencies. And unless specific language is placed in this bill, it does not guarantee that will happen. I appreciate the chairman of the committee adding new language in a manager's amendment that will try and make a study of this to see if they can report back. But the bottom line is simply this. Despite our statement that we want charter schools to be treated fairly, the language of our bill is a gaping loophole that does not meet that if the charter school is not part of the LEA, and I would hope, I would certainly hope that the chairman or the sponsors would guarantee that they would continue to work on this issue to make sure that this is given out in a fair and equitable manner because we want fairness and logic. It doesn't exist in the distribution formula in this particular bill.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. When this bill was originally introduced by the gentleman from Kentucky, it would have required the Department of Energy to conduct a study of needs nationwide and then provided grants to meet those needs. This doesn't quite do it. There have been no studies. NCE did one about 8 years ago which talked on a regional basis but not anything more specific. Another study was done about 3 years ago, and instead of trying to identify construction needs, this bill tracks money based on title I spending, which simply asks the question, is there a connection between construction needs and the distribution formula in this particular bill? If not, and this bill escapes, we will be coming back repeatedly with ideas that we need to tweak this or that in the effort to create some kind of fairness for the future. At the committee I raised the question, because my State has an equalization formula, not just for maintenance and operation which is programmed, but also for capital outlay. And I asked how this bill would impact my State and I was told we would find that out; get back with you. That still has yet to happen. So let me try and tell you what this particular bill would do in my State as it relates to how we fund construction needs within a State. The State of Utah has two different categories, historically. First of all, we have continuing school building aid which basically went for areas that were overcrowded, where there was a surge of students creating crowded school conditions. We also had a category that we funded which was continuing. I'm sorry. Let me switch that around. Continuing was for overcrowded. Critical school building aid was for those districts that happened to have all their buildings coming of age at the same time and needed an infusion of cash. We then equalized the formula so that districts in the State of Utah were given State money, in addition to what they could raise locally, to meet these particular needs. So I simply went through the formula that this bill would equate, and what would it do in the State of Utah. This is the bottom line. The districts that have continuing school building needs, overcrowded, would not get money from this formula. The districts that have critical school building needs, which simply means the age of their buildings are all coming together at the same time, would not get money from this formula. Indeed, the districts that get money from this formula are the ones in the State of Utah that do not have the construction needs. And that's a simple problem with this bill. If we had gone along with what Congressman Chandler had originally established and tried to establish a criteria of where this money would go, there would be some logic to it. There is no logic. We are simply throwing money at a target that is constantly on the move. Satchel Paige used to talk to young pitchers and say, ``Just throw strikes. Home plate don't move.'' Well, in this particular bill, we can't throw strikes because not only is home plate moving, it doesn't even exist. And that is a key problem with what we are trying to accomplish in this.