Larry Craig

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I understand there are no further Republican speakers, so I yield back the remainder of our time.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 10 minutes, to be followed by Senator Whitehouse from Rhode Island for 30 minutes, to be followed by Senator Brownback for 10 minutes.

Mr. CRAIG. First and foremost, let me thank the Senator from Rhode Island for his courtesy. We have been moving back and forth throughout the last number of days of debate. My presence on the floor allowed him to offer the courtesy--and I greatly appreciate it--to speak for 10 minutes ahead of him. He would be entitled to be next. I thank him for that. Let me speak to what Senator Grassley has spoken to briefly in saying that the ranking Republican on the Finance Committee has spoken very clearly on the critical nature of tax policy to the economy. While that is valid, there is a tax at this moment in time that is being charged every consumer in America who buys gasoline at the gas pump. It is the tax of nonproduction. It is the tax of public policy that has denied our great country its continued ability to produce the necessary supply of energy to the phenomenal economy we have. As a result of our failure to continue public policy that allowed production over the last 20 years, Americans are paying a higher price, a higher energy tax today at the pump than ever in our history; $4.10, $4.15, $4.20 gas is at this moment the No. 1 issue in America, not only taxing the pocketbooks of the average consumer but taxing the average family in a way that they not only feel less secure today because their energy bill has gone up over 20 percent this year but because we have a Congress stalled out at this moment. We have a Senate that is denying its responsibility to the American people to pass public policy that will allow us to continue to produce and, hopefully, drive down the price of oil. In the absence of that kind of policy, what has happened in the last 6 months as energy prices have gone through the roof? American consumers have driven 40 billion less miles. They are voting with their feet at this moment and voting to stay away from the gas pump. As they stay away from the gas pump, as they drive less, as they conserve, not only are they changing the economy of our country, they are changing their lifestyles. I don't think they are very happy about it. In fact, those I talk to back home in Idaho are very angry about it. But they are having to do something to avoid the phenomenal tax energy has placed on the American family. What happened in the last 2 weeks? Oil prices, world oil prices have begun to drop. They are dropping not because of increased supply, not because the Senate has done anything, but because the American consumer has said: We can no longer afford this. They are backing away from the pump and changing their lifestyle. It is truly an issue of supply and demand. Supply hasn't gone up in the last several months but demand is dropping. Not only is demand dropping in our economy, it is dropping in Western Europe. It is dropping in Spain and Denmark, where there are significant recessions or downturns in the economy underway. In China and India, which have become the new large consumers of oil, our economy's slowdown is going to situate a slowdown in the Chinese economy, which has become a major supplier of goods to the American economy. That is just around the corner. So are we going to be lulled into a sense of false security if energy prices over the course of the next several months drop below $4 a gallon and into $3 a gallon? Will the American consumer heave a sigh of relief and say: Crisis over? I hope they don't. Here is why I hope they don't. It is very clear from this graph. This is a graph from 1890 to 2030 about the overall supply of oil in this country. Starting in about 1950, a very interesting pattern emerged that grew rapidly until today, when we buy our oil, 70 percent of it, from some other country; in other words, we don't supply it. We could supply it. We have the oil reserve under the ground. But for political purposes, we have denied ourselves, our market, our producers the right to go there and get it. Here is what has happened. The dependency has grown so that we are now nearly 70 percent dependent on foreign sources of oil. We are less secure today. We get whipsawed in the world market because oil is priced as a world commodity and now, in the last decade, China and India have entered the market in ever greater demand. What I want to show next is a bit of a complication but it is true in the oil markets of today. Why do I know about it? I have been in Congress 28 years. I have spent a fair amount of time dealing with energy. All during that time, I have argued that if you don't produce, someday something would happen--it is called a breakpoint--that breakpoint would occur, and American consumers would all of a sudden find a phenomenal ramp-up in the price of energy at the pump, that tax I am talking about, that 20 percent hike in the cost of energy that American public policy produced for the American consumer in the last year. Here is the chart. The dark area is U.S. production from 1970 to 2005. That is what we were producing. I shouldn't say just U.S. production; it was overall world demand production. What is interesting about it, this little green margin at the top was surplus supply. In other words, it was available. The market wasn't demanding it, but if the market demanded it, you could turn on a pump, turn a valve on a well somewhere in Saudi Arabia, probably, or maybe Venezuela, and you had spare capacity in the market. But as you will notice, this green margin, this spare capacity margin in world supply began to rapidly narrow starting in about 2000 through 2005. That is when China and India were entering the market at ever greater capacity because their economies were growing. They were becoming more wealthy, and they were using oil as a part of the energy supply to produce the goods and services they were selling to the world market. During that time, we were not expanding world capacity. So the margin, if you will, the bumper wasn't there anymore. Come 2005, we were nearly at a breakpoint. Beyond that, here is the rest of the story, and we know it today. There is no spare capacity out there. There is no way we can offset increased demand. So consumers in America and all over the world are starting to compete for the substance of oil by higher prices. That is why for the last 2 weeks we have been on the floor talking about the ability to increase supply against ever-growing demand. But the market forces are at work. That demand has slipped off a little bit. Why? Because of that high tax at the gas pump. That doesn't mean it will go away, not at all. China and India are still consuming at ever-higher rates. They are simply going to grab that which we are not using today in the world market. So when our consumers want to come back to the market, when prices drop a little bit, will there be more oil in the market? There is a strong possibility there may not be, unless this Congress recognizes the error of its ways and allows us to get into the business of production again. We have put off limits all around the United States vast quantities of oil that I and the world believe we ought to be producing. Guess what the American consumer is saying. In the State of Florida, where maybe a year ago or 2 years ago, 70 percent of Floridians would have said: Don't drill off our shore, I am being told by legitimate polling today that 70-plus percent of them are saying: Drill, produce. In fact, we believe that by the end of the week or early next week, the American people will see credible polling data that says nearly 80 percent of the American people are saying: You go produce that oil. Why are you asking foreign nations to supply it? We have the oil. Why aren't we drilling it? You hear the argument here on the floor: My goodness, it would take 4, 5, 6 years to bring that oil online. I suggest that it wouldn't take 4 or 5 or 6 years. We know the oil is there, maybe 2 billion barrels of oil and literally hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of gas. Here are the pipelines. Here are refineries. Here is the infrastructure that could take this oil immediately out of what we call the eastern Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Florida, and bring it into production within 2 to 3 years. What does the marketplace say? What does that buffer out there, that green line on that other chart say, if, in fact, we were to do that? It would say: My goodness, there is now potentially spare capacity in the market, and prices begin to drop. No, we can't produce our way out of a crisis, but we can lessen the crisis while the American economy and technology are taking us to new forms of energy and to new ways to supply transportation. I hope the Senate faces the reality that we have to get this country producing again. If we do, we can say to the American consumer: We will lower your tax burden at the gas pump, and we are going to create once again the kind of flexibility the American consumer has in their family budget. You lower the gas price, you lower the tax at the pump. That is the reality of what we are doing. It is a very real tax today. It has frightened the American consumer, and it has put our Nation in a state of insecurity. I yield the floor.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, my colleague from Missouri has just spoken very clearly about a fundamental problem facing the American consumer and the American family, and he has used the word ``crisis.'' I totally agree with him that $4-a-gallon gas or more at the pump today is truly a crisis for the American family and for the budget of every American household. He joined with me in cosponsoring an amendment, and he spoke of that amendment a few moments ago that we would like to offer to the bill the majority leader, the Democratic leader, has brought to the floor, S. 3268, a bill to allow drilling in this area of the gulf where we know there is substantial oil potential. The Senator from Missouri spoke of some 3 billion barrels, or somewhere near that, available in this yellow zone off the coast of Florida and down from the coasts of Alabama and Mississippi and Louisiana. It is critical that the American oil industry be allowed to lease that land and begin development and exploration. Why? Not only do we believe the oil is there, but it is immediately adjacent to pipelines, refineries, and the facilities that will immediately process that oil and put it into the American distribution system. Many are saying: Well, it is going to take 5 years, 6 years, 7 years, or 8 years if we drill now in the Outer Continental Shelf. It will take some time. But in this area, it will take potentially a great deal less time because we know the oil is there and it is immediately adjacent to the distribution system of this country and the refinery capacity in the Gulf States. The American consumer today goes to the pump and pays $4, $4.10, $4.15, nearly $5 in some States and asks the question: Why? Here is what has happened in the American oil supply system that answers that question. Starting in 1950, as the rate of use of oil in our country grew, we began a slow but very aggressive spread between our supply and the demand. As you will notice here, starting in the 1990s, we actually begin to supply less of our own oil into the market and we begin to buy more and more oil from foreign countries. This debate today is about a supply-and-demand issue. Yes, there could be--pointed out yesterday by our Federal Trade Commission--a small amount of speculation in the market, and we ought to address it. But the reason there is so much activity in the market is the equation right here--the dramatic difference between what supply is entering the market and the demand from use, world use, in the market. It really is that fundamental a problem. When we are using more than we are producing in the world market--and it is a world commodity-- then, of course, prices begin to escalate, as they have dramatically over the last several years and now in the last year even more so. Why are we saying to the rest of the world: Drill your oil; we don't want to drill ours. Produce from your oilfields; we are going to keep ours off limits. I don't understand and I don't think the average consumer in any way understands that kind of an argument. Yet, for the last 15 years, that has been largely the public policy of this country--to put off limits known oil reserves while we ask the rest of the world to supply for us. This is a larger picture of exactly what we are talking about. We are producing oil in this area of the gulf now. Our largest domestic volume of oil is coming from that area. But look at this area here, almost equivalent in size and potentially as rich in oil, and yet it is off limits. It is politically off limits. We can go there and we can explore and we can develop it if we have the political will to say yes to it. And the amendment I am offering--or I would like to offer to the bill that is on the floor--would allow us to do that and create a 50- mile safe zone for the citizens of Florida. But we are not given that opportunity. That is really the fundamental issue at hand. The bill that we refuse to let go any further until we get the opportunity to offer amendments is this bill, S. 3268. As I said yesterday, look, not one drop of oil in it, not one drop of oil to satisfy the supply side of a very aggressive, demanding market. The only way we are truly going to bring prices down at the pump is to send a very clear message to the marketplace that we are going to allow a greater volume of supply to enter that market. While we are doing that, over the next 5 to 10 years, we are going to make every effort, through loan guarantees, through new types of technology, to reduce the demand side of our market. That is what we ought to be about here as we shape public policy for our future--to assure that we have the abundant supplies we need, while we recognize that it is a finite item and that there will be a day when there will be substantially less oil out there than there currently is and that we ought to be going toward the new technologies--the electric cars, the plug-ins, the hybrid, and all different kinds and versions of that. I am one of those who now believe we ought to be looking at every possible source of energy for the energy supply of our country. But we shouldn't be openly denying known supplies today, and that is exactly what is happening here on the floor of the Senate. For the last 2 days, or nearly 3 days now, the leader has simply refused to allow the process to go forward, to allow my amendment and other amendments by my colleagues that would ensure a public policy allowing us to go into this area and develop it and to go into other areas we have taken off limits for political purposes only and put them within our limits again. Our technology is there. The technology we have for the deep water of the gulf is truly the finest in the world, it is the safest, and it is environmentally by far the soundest of any other country in the world. Yet we deny ourselves the right to use our own technology to supply our own energy to the American household. No, I suspect the average person listening can't quite figure out what is going on here on the floor of the Senate, and it is really a fundamentally simple argument: The Democratic leader will not allow this country to produce in the areas where we have known oil reserves that we can get to the quickest and that we can bring online the fastest. I hope the phones start ringing as Americans grow angry with a politician who denies them the supply to the marketplace that would bring down the price of oil at the pump. S. 3268 is the vehicle with which we could do that if we were allowed to amend it, if we were allowed the normal process of the Senate. Republicans unanimously said today that we ought to have the right to amend it, that we ought to stay here all next week working on it, until we can say to the American people that the energy crisis isn't over, but we have done everything within our power to bring down the price and lessen the burden on the family budget. I yield the floor.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, for the last 36 hours now, we in the Senate have been attempting to move forward on substantive policy that would produce more oil and bring it into our systems to offset and, hopefully, lower the price our consumers are paying at the pump. But nothing has happened. It is interesting, the majority leader says we don't have time to do it, and yet we have been here 36 hours doing nothing but talking when amendments could have been offered that might have been substantive as it relates to taking down the Federal moratorium that exists over many of these properties where we know there are known oil reserves. I find it fascinating that this morning in the Wall Street Journal, an editorial speaks about Speaker Pelosi of the House and Harry Reid, our majority leader, and other liberal leaders on Capitol Hill being ``gripped by cold-sweat terror. If they permit a vote on offshore drilling, they know they will lose when Blue Dogs [Democrats that are more conservative over in the House] and oil-patch Democrats defect to the [Republican] position of increasing domestic energy production.'' What would be wrong with that? It would be an admission on the part of Democratic leaders that their position of the last 20 years to deny increased production, all in the name of environment and conservation, hasn't worked. They simply cannot let that dirty little secret out. Except there is one real problem: The American people are beginning to figure out that it didn't work. Why have we gone from 30 percent dependency in 1980 to 70 percent dependency today on someone other than a U.S. producer, something other than a U.S. reserve? The reason is because we quit producing. The debate today, while it is embodied in S. 3268, called a speculation bill, is really about production. Republicans have simply said: Allow us to amend that. Allow us to bring to the floor amendments that would, by potential of opportunity, produce increased production. I wish to talk about one of those amendments that deal with offshore drilling. Several years ago, I introduced a term that is now being used by many, called the ``no zone.'' By that, I simply meant that of these areas around the coast, shown on this map here of the United States, where we have geographical authority--meaning our territorial water--in which we are denied the right to go and explore because of a political decision, because of policy made out of politics, not substance, we believe that within those areas there are literally billions of barrels of oil. We don't know that for sure. We only know that, based on old geological surveys, there is a great potential. We do know that where we were allowed to drill down in the gulf, that is where a majority of our current oil supplies are coming from, even in the deep water. But on the coast of California, Oregon, and Washington, and off the coast of Florida, the Carolinas, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia, it is: No, heck no. The politics won't let us go there. So we would like to offer a few of those amendments. We would like to change the character of the ``no zone.'' Let me tell you about an amendment I would offer if I were given the chance to come to the floor on this bill and offer an amendment for full debate. We think it is a constructive amendment. It is an amendment we would call the Domestic Offshore Energy Security Act of 2008. It would take all of this yellow area on the map and allow it to go out to bid for the purpose of production. Just a year and a half ago, the Congress--when gas was at $2-plus a gallon--decided we would let this little piece go into exploration and development. It was called lease sale 181. We debated it for weeks, negotiated for weeks. Finally, we brought all of us together to agree. Well, we believe there is a substantial amount of product out there. We don't know for sure, but the leases are going forward. It is believed that there are 1.2 trillion cubic feet of gas and maybe between 185 million and 200 million barrels of oil. The advantage of this sale is that it is very close to all of the known refineries and the infrastructure that can bring it to the market very quickly. My amendment would bring this whole area into play, where there literally could be billions of barrels of oil and multitrillions of cubic feet of gas. But the answer is no. The Democrat leader says: No, can't do that, won't do that; politically, we are not going to go there. The American consumer is asking: Why? In fact, I am told that the polls in Florida, by a majority, are saying: Drill it. Do it right, do it responsibly, do it cleanly, but drill it. We want the royalties that would come to the State of Florida that would pay for our education, but more importantly, we want to bring down the price of gas because it is really breaking the family budget. What happened when the President announced a few weeks ago he would lift an Executive order on a moratorium, when the market began to show that this year the American consumer was consuming less than last year because of prices? Oil prices began to fall, from the high of $140 a barrel down to, today, about $122 or $123 a barrel--nearly a $20 drop per barrel--on the reality that the marketplace was working, demand was going down. If you keep allowing demand to slide but you work on bringing up production, you bring the price down. You save the American family's budget. But here on the floor of the Senate, it is: Oh, no, we can't go there. The leader of the majority party will not admit that his policy--their policy over the last 20 years of denying production has now brought this crisis on. That is exactly what the editorial of the Wall Street Journal basically said. Why not let the debate go forward? Why not allow amendments to be offered by anyone, for that matter? Why not allow those debates to go forward? There is another interesting article from this morning. I ask unanimous consent to have the Wall Street Journal editorial and this U.S. Geological Survey Report printed in the Record.

Mr. CRAIG. Here is the headline: ``90 Billion Barrels of Oil and 1,670 Trillion Cubic Feet of Natural Gas Accessed in the Arctic.'' That is called ANWR, folks, and other areas in the Arctic. Once again, it is politically off limits. The oil is there, but the law says you cannot go there. It is really quite that simple. Who are lawmakers? We are. We are the policymakers. Why aren't we on the floor today debating the amendments? Why aren't we offering those amendments in a responsible fashion? Why don't we deal with what the American public needs at this moment; that is, to see their Congress being responsive to their greatest problem, the single greatest problem at this time, which is the price of oil and the price of gas at the pump. It will create greater problems if we don't deal with it quickly. It is permeating the economy and shoving up the price of nearly everything we touch. Energy is the underlying force of this economy. If energy prices continue to go higher, the economy itself is weakened. Why isn't the Congress and the leadership of the Senate moving forward? Why are we stalled out and wringing our hands and saying there is no time? There is no time to fix the American family's budget. There is only time to divert our attention to terms like ``speculation.'' Let me tell you, here is the bill. Here is S. 1368. There is not one drop of oil in it. See that. Not one drop of oil is in this legislation. But in the amendment I would offer, there could be millions, if not billions, of barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of gas. That is the reality of what we are talking about. Why, why, why, Mr. Leader, are you denying the Senate, the greatest deliberative body in the world, the right to offer these amendments and vote on them? We are stalled out because of the leadership. We are stalled out and told we cannot go there. I don't think the American public in any way understands the politics of this one.

Mr. CRAIG. Politics is quite simple: If you for 20 years were wrong and the market now shows it, how can you admit you were wrong? That is the issue at hand. Mr. Leader, it is time you admitted it and we got on with the business of becoming once again a great and productive nation. I yield the floor.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, the Senate has engaged over the last day and a half or two in probably one of the most important debates and, I hope, series of votes and actions this Congress can take this year. For the future years ahead, it may be precedent setting as to whether this country will return to its ability to produce not only traditional forms of energy but will grow to expand into new and alternative sources of energy so we can become increasingly less dependent upon foreign sources. Great nations--and ours is a great nation--do not depend, in a way that they become dangerously at risk, on other nations' resources for their strength and their vitality. The great strength of our country has always been we could feed our people during a time of war and emergency, that we could take care of our own because we had an abundance of resource. It was also true of energy--all forms from energy--from the day we discovered the use and the effective use of whale oil as a form to light our houses and illuminate our worlds, to a progression from there to petroleum products, coal and then kerosene and then diesel and now, of course, gas and diesel and a myriad of products that flow from the hydrocarbons our Nation so abundantly produced. I came to this Congress in 1980. At that time, we were about 35 percent dependent for our hydrocarbon needs on foreign nations. The rest of it we produced ourselves. As a result of that, we had flexibility and we had little to no liability, and, therefore, little risk, that we could be held hostage or that our economy and, therefore, our people and their will could be shaped by a foreign power. That time has changed because, over the last two decades, we made a concerted decision--a political decision--to stop producing. We began to put vast known oil reserves off-limits in the name of the environment, and we began to increasingly buy from foreign production and foreign-producing powers. Today, we stand at a near 70-percent dependency, and for any great nation to be 70 percent dependent on someone else other than themselves, that great nation is a nation at risk. Today, the United States of America is at risk because we don't control our energy destiny. We have to react to it. We send our President to foreign countries with hat in hand, asking them to produce because we have grown so rich and so arrogant we refuse to produce ourselves. That game plan or that scheme, while it wasn't working, at least was reasonably well accepted, until other consumers began to enter that world market of oil: China and India and other developing nations. They began to consume from that finite pool of resource from which we were the large takers. The price began to change. I remember a few years ago I thought: Well, gee, at $2, that is a break point. The American consumer will finally react. We went by $2 a gallon for gas as if it didn't exist. Well, at about $2.75, I began to get phone calls from some of my farmers and large consumers saying: Larry, it is getting pretty pricey out here. But the average consumer still wasn't reacting. Last year, we went by $3 a gallon as the world began to recognize we were consuming more and more and producing less and less of a very important product--crude oil. In the high dollar, the $3-and-some-odd-cents range, my phones began to ring. Idaho consumers, who are large consumers of energy--because we travel long distances in big, expansive, Western rural States such as Idaho--were saying: Larry, this is expensive stuff. We are having trouble. That was at $3.50 or $3.60. Then, all of a sudden, it hits four bucks and everybody's phones light up. America asked us--the politician, the public policy shaper--what happened? Why are we here? Why was this allowed? Why are you standing in the way of the ability of the marketplace to drill and produce? That is the debate we are having right now. It is a very important debate. The majority leader, the Democratic leader, Harry Reid, has brought S. 3268 to the floor saying: It is speculation. Somebody out there in the marketplace is profiteering; therefore, this is the bill that will fix it. Well, I am saying: Harry, that is fine. There might be some slight maneuvering in the market, so let's debate the bill, but we also know it is clearly a supply-and-demand situation and maybe we ought to figure out how markets work. A few of us know about that. Others try to deny it; that is: If you have more being consumed than you are producing, you create a new value to the commodity or the product being consumed. So what I am saying and what other Republicans are saying is: We will debate S. 3268, but we want an opportunity to add to it a production concept. We want to be able to produce, to turn this great Nation on to production. Guess what they are saying over here. No, no, no, no. We have built our political base on nonproduction over the last 20 years. We have said let's be green. Let's don't produce anymore. Let's take it off-limits. It didn't work, did it? No, it didn't. If you are paying four bucks today and you are angry about it, there is a clear answer why you are: This Nation quit producing. We didn't quit consuming. We began to consume what the rest of the world had, and the rest of the world wants it now as badly as we do. That is the reality of the problem we are in. This Senate ought to spend all the time it takes to produce a bill that deals with speculation, if it is there, and allows this Nation to produce once again. We have done it. We did it in 2005. We were responsible. We brought a bill to the floor, we spent 2 weeks, we had many amendments, we debated them up or down, they passed by 50 percent plus 1 or more votes, and those that didn't failed. We produced one of the better energy bills our Nation has seen. When we started that debate, there wasn't a nuclear reactor on the drawing board for design. Today, there are 33--a direct result of a responsible action on the part of the Senate and the House in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Then, in 2007, last year, another energy bill--because the Senate was somewhat awakening and public policymakers were awakening to the reality of the need that had not hit us full force in 2008. We passed a bill that had a new renewable fuels standard that allowed increased production in biofuels. Today, the Department of Energy said if we didn't have ethanol in the market, the gas at the pump would be 25 to 40 cents more a gallon. So we have done some things there, and there are those who oppose it. There were some on the floor who opposed it, but we handled it in a responsible fashion. We brought the bill to the floor. We allowed it to be amended. We debated it. There was no filibuster. There is no filibuster today. It is simply a majority leader of a party that has based their politics on a nonproducing policy, and they can't allow the consumer to understand it or see it. So when we come to the floor and say: Let's amend it, let's add production to it, the answer is: Oh, no. Politically, we can't go there. There is an election out there. Let the American consumer and his pocketbook burn down. Well, if that is the policy of the day, it is the wrong policy. It should not be allowed. I am one who will refuse to allow it to go forward. We are either going to debate energy in a full-blown, responsible fashion; we are going to allow amendments that are going to be up or down, we will win or we will lose, but America deserves to see a robust, proproduction, proconservation, proalternative, antispeculation debate and bill produced on the floor of the Senate. Anything less isn't acceptable. I hope the American people are listening today. Anything less than that isn't acceptable. My time is nearly up, so let me conclude because others are on the floor to debate this important issue. Two years ago, I introduced this chart to the lexicon of the debate on American oil production. Then I called it the ``No Zone,'' and others are now using it, and I am mighty proud they are, because this red area was where American politics said you cannot drill. We called it the ``No Zone.'' Well, we know there is potentially billions of barrels of oil there, but oh, we dare not touch it, for whatever political reason, I am not sure. But guess what Americans are saying today and what is incorporated in the opportunity to debate and amend a bill here on the floor: That is to allow effective and responsible exploration in areas where oil is known. So come on, Harry Reid. Give America a chance to save some money. Give America a chance to get back into production. It is quite that simple. I will conclude by saying: How simple? Use the bill you have. Allow it to be amended. Allow a full debate. Allow Senators to work their will, and we can produce something that in time will allow production to flow and the American consumer to be once again advantaged by a robust energy market. I yield the floor.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I came to the floor on June 19 to address my colleagues and the Senate about energy prices, as many of us have, because there is no question that the Senator from Colorado and I, when we go home on the weekends, hear as the No. 1 concern on the part of Coloradans or Idahoans their energy bill--the price of gas at the pump. We are big western States. We travel long distances. When you roll into a gas station with your Ford F-150 and you start filling it up and you drive away, because it has dual tanks on it, having paid over $100 to fill it, you have a problem. You have a problem because you had bought that vehicle to facilitate your ranch or your farm or your job and you had anticipated that the most you would probably ever pay was $25 or $30 to fill up. That is what you budgeted. That is what you understood the economic impact of that vehicle, necessary to your job or your business, would be on your job or your business. But in less than a year, that changed. That is the working man or woman's side of it. What about the soccer mom who travels around all over the community every day, dropping off her kids and going to the store and picking up goods and services and coming home and all of a sudden having an energy bill in the family budget that she and her husband had never anticipated would be there. We all know their salaries or their jobs are not going to compensate them because they are going to spend $500, $600, $1,000 or $2,000 more this year on their energy bill. That is only at pump, let alone at the meter that monitors the electricity at their home that is going to be going up; and the natural gas that is going to go through and into their heating systems and their stoves. That is going to be going up. There is no way for them, other than taking money from something else in their life, to offset that impact. Those people such as myself who spend a good deal of time, and have for 28 years, on the issue of energy, were very fearful that a day such as today would come, a day of reckoning, a day when our country that, almost 20 years ago, decided it would no longer be a producer but because of environmental policy and political attitude, we began to change. We decided we would try to offset production with conservation and, in large part, we said to the energy-producing segment of our economy it could no longer drill in America, go elsewhere. I will never forget meeting with the President of Amoco in Los Angeles about 15 years ago. He opined to me that the day would come when his company would have to leave this country because it could no longer produce in this country--and that is what happened. And doggone it, that is the truth. You can document it. You can see it happening. It happened. We put millions of acres off limits for one reason or another but largely because of an attitude in this country that somehow we were going to muck it up a little bit environmentally and we ought to leave it alone and it ought to be pure and it ought to be pristine. And, oh, by the way, energy is cheap. It was inexpensive at the time and we could buy it from somebody else. So basically we set the rest of the world to producing and we became increased consumers and increased buyers of foreign oil. During that last 20-year period, something else began to happen. The oil we were consuming was no longer owned by companies we had interests in, it was owned by nations. It was owned by nations that were sometimes friendly to us, sometimes not so friendly to us, but nations that began to recognize they could gain the wealth of America by selling it oil because America no longer wanted to produce. We grew from about 35 percent dependent upon oil when I came to Congress in 1980, to, today, nearly 70 percent dependent. And those nations have us right by the gas nozzle today. They can do what they want. They are reaping our wealth at unprecedented rates--$1.2 billion a day--and they are turning around and buying back our companies and buying back our real estate with our money. But it is now under their ownership. The greatest wealth transfer in the world is taking place as we speak, as America drains itself dry for the need of energy, and a Congress unwilling to act responsibly and having failed to act responsibly for the last 20 years. It is a dilemma unparalleled in American history. When I came to the floor on June 19, I said there is an old country western song that says ``a little less talk and a lot more action.'' That was June 19. Now we are into mid-July. Oil prices went up nearly $15 more a barrel during that period of time and gas went from about $3.90 on average to $4.11 on the pump nationwide. Guess what. We still got a lot more talk but very little action. Why is America angry today at their politician? Because their politician is fearful of action. I once voted to lock up ANWR. I once voted to put off limits drilling out on the Outer Continental Shelf. It was for all my environmental friends. How do I change? How do I shift the political gears to meet the American people today who are saying simply go where the oil is, explore and develop and bring it on line. We need it desperately. It is draining our pocketbooks dry. That is the domestic economics side. What about the national security side, when we are 70 percent dependent on foreign oil? So it is a national domestic economic issue and it is a U.S. national security issue. Guess what, folks. A lot more talk and hardly any action. So when the President stepped up a month ago and said why don't you in Congress lift the ban on Outer Continental Shelf oil drilling, I turned around and called the White House and said: Why don't you, Mr. President? You did it by Executive order a couple of years ago for the politics of Florida. Why don't you act? He did act. He acted last week, in a responsible fashion, to lift the Executive order that limited the exploration and development in the Outer Continental Shelf. Guess what happened. Between the combination of a realization that Americans were consuming less in the summer of 2008 versus the summer of 2007--down by nearly 15 percent because they simply can't afford the oil and the gas anymore-- coupled with the President saying to the marketplace, there is a potential for development and more production, the oil price began to slide. In the last few days it has dropped from $147 to $134. If it continues to do that, we might see gas prices at the pump slip 15 cents or 20 cents. But I doubt that it will unless this Congress acts. The majority leader, the Democratic leader, came to the floor yesterday with a bill, 3268. What is it about? He says it is about speculation. What is speculation today? Is speculation the futures market that anticipates that gas may be going up so you hedge your investment against the future so you can offset the expense of new energy? Is that speculation or is that wise investment? I don't know. But I do know this, that in the legislation the Democratic leader has put up, there is not one drop of new oil in it; not one gallon of new gas in it; not one oil rig worth of new production in it. We listened to two experts today who came to the Senate to talk about energy. They said there is no easy way out. You have to have some production, but you need conservation. OK, look at the speculation side. Create greater transparency. Do all of those things. But it is truly a supply-and-demand market today and we are supplying less and demanding more. In this country in the last 10 years, our demand curve went up dramatically as everybody rolled out in their F-150 Ford pickups--and I don't mean to be picking on Ford Motor Company or their big SUVs--and they were getting 12 or 15 or 16 miles to the gallon and it was $2 and aren't we having fun, until it hit $4. Now they are mad and frustrated and angry and fearful of their future--and they have a right to be. Many of us believed this day would come; we just didn't know what day on the calendar it would occur. Because the old principle of supply and demand in the marketplace, you can't divert. It happens. When you are supplying less and demanding more, it happens. Here is a simple formula. Take every oil field in the world today that is producing, that has those big rigs on it pumping the oil--it depletes, meaning it uses up the oil in the strata that is underneath, at a rate of 4 percent to 5 percent a year. So the ability to have a field to continue to produce at the level it is begins to decline. On top of that, the world is demanding about 1.5 percent more oil every year than it did the year before. Why? We are growing, we are buying big cars, our economy grows--but something else has happened. There is a new economy across the Pacific known as China. All of a sudden, they became consumers of oil. They begin to buy in the world marketplace. Then there is another country further on across Asia known as India. They are consuming more and they are buying out of the same pools we are buying out of. All of a sudden the perfect marketplace storm occurred. We began to consume a great deal more than we were willing to produce. In this country we were consuming a great deal more than we were willing to produce, so the marketplace looked at it and said: Oh, we have a problem here. All of a sudden those who look at markets began to try to protect their future by buying into the future through the system--with no indication from us that we were going to do what was not politically correct, from the standpoint of our politics back home, but what was politically right for the American consumer; and that is, to get us back into the business of production. So I am telling the majority leader, you can bring a speculation bill to the floor, but this is a Senator who will not support it and will not vote for it if it does not have production in it. We cannot talk our way out of this one, we cannot manipulate our way out of this problem. We have to produce our way out of this problem, and we have to conserve our way out of this problem. Is it not interesting that when the world market began to discover that Americans had tightened their belts because they could no longer afford the gas at the pump and the consumption rate from last summer to this summer is down 15 to 20 percent and you have a world leader, this President, our President, stand and say: America, I am taking the limits off, in the ability of my office as President, through an Executive order, I am taking the limits off the Outer Continental Shelf, where we know there could be oil. Some of us have said we ought to do the same thing here. Next week there will be plenty of amendments, if the majority leader allows true legislative dynamics on this floor, a bill to come up and a bill to be amended because we will add production to his lots-more-talk and little-to-no-action bill. We will add production. If we do, and if it makes it to the President and if he signs it, I will bet you the price of oil in the world markets will begin to decline a little. Now, while that is all happening, in the next months and years, we have a lot of other work to do as a country. We have to bring on the hybrids, we have to bring on the electric cars, we have to learn to conserve in other ways. Last year, I broke stride with the auto industry. I said: Mandatory 4 percent increase in CAFE fleet average standards. I had not done that in 28 years of my politics here. The auto companies came to me and said: Gee, why are you leaving us now? I said: I have not changed in 28 years and neither have you. I changed. I partnered with a Democrat, Byron Dorgan. We set a mandatory 4-percent CAFE standard for fleet averages of automobiles in this country. It became law. When it is fully implemented, over a period of time, it is akin to bringing on an oilfield that produces 1.5 million barrels of oil a day because that is the amount that is saved. So as a Senator who has always been a supporter of production, I also recognize there is a lot that can be saved through conservation. There is a lot that can be saved through new technology. I believe the generation ahead of us, this next 10 years in the economy, is going to be the decade of energy. I think Americans are going to invest more and understand more about their energy and do more about their use of energy than they ever have in the decades before. Why? Because it is going to cost more. If it is going to cost more, there is probably more profit to be involved. If there is more profit to be involved, there is going to be more investment in it. But Congress, get out of the way. Quit being politically correct. Demand standards. Demand quality environmental procedure. But get out of the way, politicians. Let America produce once again. When we do, our economy will strengthen, the American families will fear less, our national security will be more assured, and we will not let the Venezuelas or the Nigerias or the Saudi Arabias or the Irans jerk us around by the gas nozzle the way they are doing now because, once again, as a great nation, we begin to stand on our own two feet. We have arrived at that break point in the world of energy. It is time we act, responsibly, directly, and that we deal with a lot more action and a lot less talk because our Nation became a nonproducing nation today because of politics and public policy, not because the oil was no longer there. Shame on us. Shame on the American politics of the last 10 years that denied production in this country. The American consumer, listen up: Call your Senator or call your Congressman right now and say: Pass a bill that allows us to drill. It is quite simple. Pass a bill that allows us to drill. The futures market will decline and gas at the pump will begin to drop and the American economy will begin to stabilize. It is going to take some time, but you have to act first. So, Mr. Leader, you can bring a talking bill to the floor but allow us to make it an action bill. Allow us to make it a production bill. Americans, call your Senators and say: Allow us to drill. It is that simple. That is how we change the world of American politics today, that for the last 20 years has denied the right of the American marketplace to produce the energy necessary to stay independent, free, and reasonable in price. I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for up to 15 minutes.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Colin Jones, a fellow from the Idaho National Laboratory, be granted the privilege of the floor for the duration of the Energy bill, S. 3268.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Madam President, today I honor and congratulate one of the most successful athletic programs in the Nation that few people outside of my home State know about: The Lewis-Clark State College baseball team of Lewiston, ID. This year, head coach Ed Cheff led the LCSC Warriors to yet another NAIA World Series championship. This year's victory makes three championships in a row for the Warriors and 16 overall, all coming in the last 25 years. Those 16 titles are far and away the most in NAIA history, with the second place school having just four. Despite having only 3,500 students, Lewis-Clark has grown into a national baseball powerhouse under Coach Cheff's tutelage. Since Coach Cheff took over in 1977, the Warriors have put together a winning percentage of 79.8 percent. This year's 58-6 record is the latest and greatest example of his leadership. And this success isn't just by smaller school, NAIA standards; more than a hundred of Coach Cheff's players have gone on to be drafted by Major League Baseball teams, including four this year. Idaho does not have a franchise in any of the major sports leagues. We are known for potatoes, not winning championships. But thanks to Lewis-Clark State College baseball--and another successful Idaho college program, Boise State Bronco football--that is changing. LCSC baseball has given Idahoans a team that we can hang our hat on and be proud to call our own. While sports are perhaps the quickest way for a school to capture headlines, a college or university can thrive only with sustained, high-quality education. Athletics alone do not make a school. The classroom must always be the foundation, and Idaho schools--from Lewis- Clark to Boise State to my alma mater, the University of Idaho--are all institutions of exceptional academic quality. Madam President, I am proud to see more young Idahoans enjoying success, and I wanted the Senate to be aware of the achievements of the Warrior baseball team. Congratulations to Coach Cheff's team once again.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I am filing at the desk today an amendment to the emergency supplemental that will be coming over, or is already here, from the House to reinsert a provision that the Senate put in our version of the emergency supplemental before it went to the House for their consideration. This amendment includes a 1-year funding for the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act. What that simply means is timber-dependent communities and school districts across the country would receive their level of funding for one more year until such time as we can fully reauthorize the act. The Senate Finance Committee, in the extender legislation, has a reauthorization in it. But we don't know whether that will come immediately following the Fourth of July recess or some time into the summer. Here is the reality of the emergency funding about which we are talking. There are 775 counties and 4,400 school districts in 42 States that is now making critical hiring decisions for the coming school year that will start at the end of August. These school districts need this money. It is quite simple. They have no other way of raising the resource that is now terminated as a result of our inability to move in the appropriate fashion. What we are talking about is 9 million schoolchildren who will be affected. In my State, numerous school districts and potentially several hundred teachers are getting their termination notices because there simply is no money to hire or to continue to hire them. What are we talking about? A timber-dependent county, a county where 90 percent of its landscape is owned by the Federal Government and 10 percent is owned in fee simple and pays taxes into the school district, and they have no possible way of raising enough revenue when a third or a half of the revenue came from those public lands originally through timber sales. Senator Wyden and I some years ago created this legislation. It is known as Craig-Wyden or Wyden-Craig. We have helped these school districts, and we are fumbling here trying to accomplish that. We put it in our version of the supplemental. Now the supplemental comes back. It is not a pure document. It is not exclusively a military funding document. It has veterans money in it. It has emergency money in it for FEMA to handle the disastrous flooding going on in the State of Iowa. In my State of Idaho, in Clearwater County, we have a disaster. It isn't flooding. It isn't the Clearwater River over its banks. It is a school district that is dramatically having to diminish the quality of education because this Congress has not acted in a timely fashion, and we simply roll over and say: Oh, well, we will probably get it done in July, but then again it might be August. It is now we must act because in August, that school will be back in operation and that schoolteacher who was teaching some level of academics in that high school or grade school will be gone because the money has not been replenished. I call that an emergency. I call that a need to address the supplemental. I have talked with the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, I have talked with the ranking member. They, too, view this as a crisis. I know we all have our priorities, but in this case Senator Crapo, Senator Smith, Senator Domenici, Senator Stevens, Senator Murkowski, Senator Bennett, and others agree with me. And there are numerous Senators on the Democratic side of the aisle. I have spoken a few moments ago with Senator Wyden. The State of Oregon will be in crisis if we don't resolve this in a reasonable fashion. This is simply a 1-year extension of funding at current levels. It is not a new reauthorization. It represents about $400 million in the chairman's mark that moved out of here before. So this amendment, as I speak, will be filed at the desk, and I would hope, in our effort to move legislation and finish the supplemental, the emergency supplemental, that we also recognize there are some domestic emergencies here at home, such as the flooding on the Mississippi, such as tornado-ravaged areas, such as school districts having to fire needed and necessary educators to provide for the quality of education of their children because Congress did not responsibly fund public land, Federal public land-dependent counties, and created the crisis by our inaction. With those comments, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for up to 10 minutes.

Mr. CRAIG

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

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak as in morning business for up to 15 minutes.

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, over the course of the last several days I have refrained from speaking on the floor about energy. But I have watched the floor very closely as I have seen kind of an interesting duel going on. An advocate of drilling, I found it fascinating that some on the other side of the aisle were saying that if we opened our outer continental reserves and drilled them, it would simply make no difference to the current state of play in the oil market or the price of gas at the pump. I find it not only interesting that that kind of conclusion is being drawn, but I also find it phenomenally naive that kind of statement can be made. It is my opinion, and I think the opinion of a good many, that we are in a classic supply-and-demand situation in the Nation and therefore the world's oil markets. There is alleged speculation. There is alleged manipulation. I don't know whether any of that is true, but I do know the facts of what we live with and have lived with for the last several years. There have been many of us in Congress who said there would be a day of reckoning if we continued to consume oil at a greater rate than we were producing and refining and bringing it to the marketplace. I believe it is very possible that day of reckoning is at hand. The world market in which we acquire our oil, the world market in which gas is refined from oil, is just that--a world market. It is not a domestic market. It doesn't happen down the street, only to be supplied on that street. It happens in the Middle East, it happens in Latin America, it happens in Canada, and it happens in this country. It all comes together in a world market, and we compete at the local gas pump for the price of the world market. Here is a perfect example of the reality in which we live as America's consumers. I do not deny--in fact, I sympathize with and I am frustrated for America's consumers who today are facing $4 and $4.45 and $4.50 gas. It is taking a huge bite out of their back pocket, and they are not ready for it. They have not been eased into it. They should not have had to even be worried about easing into it because it should not have happened. But the Congress of the United States for the last 20 years has been in a perfect and absolute state of denial. Energy was inexpensive compared to the rest of the world, and we could put this known reserve off, we could put this off, we could worry about that tomorrow because we didn't have to worry about it today. We could be environmental purists because it was easy to do. Here is what was happening in America. The supply through the 1970s and 1980s and 1990s was dramatically dropping, but the demand was continuing to go up at an unprecedented rate. In fact, after the oil shock of the 1970s, when we adjusted some CAFE standards and we did a few other things, our economy took off. As our economy took off, by definition we became ever increasingly larger consumers of oil, of hydrocarbons. It is that which lubricates the economy of our Nation. If we are going to be 25 percent of the world economy, guess what, we consume 25 percent of the world's energy. But we were not producing 25 percent of the world's energy. We, by this time, had begun to develop a huge dependency on other places in the world, all while we were having this phenomenal luxury of saying you don't have to drill in ANWR or Alaska, it may have 15 or 20 billion barrels, but we don't know, we can't touch it. We don't have to drill off the coast, we don't have to worry about oil shale. We don't have to worry about anything. We can be green and talk about the environment and deny the reality of the marketplace and grow increasingly more dependent on somebody else. Here is an interesting chart. It is a chart I found in a book I am reading now that I recommend all Senators read. It is called ``A Thousand Barrels A Second.'' Think of that. That is the title of the book, but it is a title of reality. The reality is that the world in which we consume energy and from which we buy energy today consumes 1,000 barrels of oil a second. Do the math: 86.5 million barrels of oil a day. That is what the world marketplace is, and we consume 20-plus percent of it. Here is what was happening from the 1970s on when we were in an oil shock. We looked at ourselves, we adjusted ourselves a little bit, and we began to try to figure other ways. Oil production from 1970 to the year 2005, as demonstrated by the dark blue--as you notice, it was going up progressively. But something else was happening that allowed for adjustments in the market. This green area was the extra capacity the market was not consuming. So when there were bumps in the market, there was extra capacity. It didn't happen to be in the United States. It predominantly was in the Middle East and with the OPEC nations, but it was extra capacity. Here we are in 2005. What had happened? China had come into the economy. India had come into the economy. They were beginning to consume at rates we did not expect. While they were consuming and buying out of the world's markets, the world's capacity was continuing to drop as it relates to consumption. This is not necessarily a lecture in economics, but it is a lecture in supply and demand. For any Senator to deny the reality of the marketplace is either naive or politically incorrect. The marketplace is working in a way that none of us likes today, and our constituents are feeling it in their back pockets, and they are picking up the phone and calling their Senator and saying: Do something about it. We are trying to figure out a way to politically dance that line. There is very little we can do about it tomorrow. There is a lot we can do about it in 2 to 5 years if we let the world begin to produce again. But we have not made that choice yet. The President is talking about it. Other people are talking about it at this moment. They are talking about going into the known reserves. But here is also a reality of what has happened. See this declining line right here? Any time you drill into an oilfield, any time you begin to lift crude oil out of that field, you begin to deplete the field. An average oilfield in the world depletes at 5 percent to 7 percent a year. That is the historic natural level that the industry will tell you--you get a depletion rate. If you are depleting at 5 percent to 7 percent a year and the world demand growth is going up at about 1.5 percent, you have a problem if you are not producing more oil to the marketplace. That is where we are today as a world consumer of oil. We are not producing the increased volume necessary to fit the growth of the marketplace. It is really quite simple. We as country are producing increasingly less. We have 80 billion barrels of reserve out there, we think. At least we know we have 25 or 30 billion barrels of known reserve in ANWR and the Outer Continental Shelf. If we do the new geology, maybe we have 80, maybe we have 120. We don't know it, but we believe it is there. What is the value of drilling it; it is going to take 3 to 5 years? You bet it is going to take 3 to 5 years or more. The problem is today. Yes, we should have thought about it 3 to 5 years ago, but we were all running to look green, running to talk about the environment, wanting to do things we didn't want to do, but we did it because it was good politics. And we were denying the marketplace. Here is the reality we got ourselves in. We don't control the marketplace anymore. Other nations of the world do control the marketplace. The Saudis control it, and on down the line. Eighty percent of the world's supply of oil out there is controlled by other nations, not companies--not ExxonMobil, not Chevron, not Marathon; they control way less than 10 percent of the total reserves. The rest of the world is now telling America where to go; that is, you go to the market and you buy off the market and we are not going to give you any margin. At the same time, we are denying ourselves production in the marketplace. Here is what happened. It is a reality that all of us have to face. Oh, we said no California, Oregon, and Washington; we said no down the east coast because it was politically the right thing to do; we said no up around Florida; we said no up here in ANWR in Alaska; and we believe there may be as many as 80 billion barrels of oil. What does 80 billion barrels mean if you can develop it? It means maybe a couple of million barrels a day into the U.S. market and into the world market. What does that mean? I believe--and I think the market believes--the true value of oil today based on today's consumption levels is maybe $85 or $90 a barrel. But that extra margin on top, that $40 of margin sitting on top that produces $130 or $140 of oil today, is speculation. It is speculation based on a futures market that says in the future, because America is not producing and the world is not producing to that decline chart, because we are not adding that extra 5 or 6 percent a year, out here in 2010 and 2015 that is going to be the real price. We have to secure that for our consumer. So we are going to bet on the future. Mr. President, 2 billion barrels into the U.S. market, now or 5 years from now, what does it do to the price of oil today? Some futures speculators, some people who buy in the futures market say that if this country commits itself to drilling, if this country commits itself to development in the 2-year to 5-year period, the market will begin to adjust and come down. Why? Because of the belief that we are going to find it out there, we are going to add it to the pool, and we are going to develop that margin of protection, again, that the market historically had against an ever-growing market. Is this the answer for 30 years from now? Of course, it is not. I have said and others are saying that it is a bridge to the future. It is the reality of where we are today because electric cars are not prevalent in the market. It is a reality of where we are today because hydrogen fuel cells are not in the market. But they are coming. It is a reality of where we are today because we are not producing enough ethanol, both corn-based and cellulosic. There is a huge new wave of technology coming, but it is 3 years out, it is 10 years out, it is 15 years out. What do we do in between? Do we simply turn to our consumers and say: Buck up; pay for the oil. Pay for the gas. Pay $5. There is nothing we can do about it. Don't let your politician tell you that, because there is something we can do about it. We can bring on our known reserves. We can open them up to the market. We can let the bidding process go forward, and we can tell the world market that America is going to be producing again, in a timeframe of 3 to 5 years. As a result of that, the speculation will begin to move out of the market because there will be a sense of reality returning to what has been there through the 1970s and the 1980s and the 1990s, and that is additional supply to offset the depletion in the oilfield itself and the demand for about a 1- percent or 1.5-percent growth in the market as these new technologies begin to take hold. Last year, Senator Dorgan and I passed a provision that we called the DOES Act which said, let's get the scientists out there, use the new geology and find out where the oil is. Oh, no, we cannot do that. We might find it. And if we find it, we might want to drill it. And if we want to drill it, that is not green, that is not environmentally sound. Even if, as we know, today's technologies allow us that kind of environmental protection, it was not politically popular to do. We passed it out of the Senate. Thank you, Senators, for helping us. It was lost in a conference with the House. You see, even a year ago, Congress was in a state of denial, of denial of the reality of the marketplace, of a reality of depletion, of where we were and where we are going to go. So our consumers today are paying more than they have ever paid for energy. They are not happy, and they have every reason to be angry at a Congress that for 10 years at least, or 20, has been in a state of denial, not recognizing the reality of a market that would come home to rest on the price of oil. But it has. And it is today. I am thinking if there are questions today whether we ought to drill in our known reserves and use all of our environmental tools to be sound, and some are still holding back at $4.50, what do you do at $5 a gallon? What do you do when the consumers' frustration turns from anger to fear? Because, you see, fear is a whole new emotion. What if they begin to fear they can no longer afford the home they have, or their food budgets, or the structure and security of their family? What happens when they still have to have energy to move to work, and it is going to cost them more than they have ever dreamed of paying in their lives? I think fear will turn politics in the direction of a marketplace, in the reality of what we can do, whether it is 2 years out or 5 years out. So to the American consumer who is angry today, and may become fearful tomorrow, e-mail your Congressman, e-mail your Senator, call them. Tell them: Let's get this country back into production. Do it in an environmentally sound way, do it clean, do it right, but do it. Put your money into new technologies. Invest for the future, because oil is not going to be there, and the oil that will be there 10 years from now is going to be a lot more costly, because we have pumped all of the easy, we have reached all of the low-hanging fruit, and that which comes tomorrow will be more expensive because it is deeper, or it is in a sensitive area where we have to be more careful than we have been in the past. Because we are always going to need some oil, we hope only for transportation, we can do it with electric cars, we can do it with plug-ins, we can do it with all the right kinds of things that begin to turn us away from an oil market. For those who said Congress has not done anything in that area, we have done some things. We passed the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and the Energy Policy Act of 2007. There was not production of oil in it. Many of us tried to get it in, but we were denied because it was not ``politically green correct.'' But then again, gas was $2, and now it is $4, or it is $4.50; it may soon be $5, because the world has awakened to the reality of supply and demand and need. They are going to wrestle for it, and they will wrestle in the marketplace. Those who can pay the highest price are going to get the fuel. But to the average consumers, middle-class Americans, that will become a great frustration, as it should. They need to make sure they have a Congress that is willing to face the reality of the moment, and say, let us produce. Let us get this country back into production. Let us look at our offshores. Let us look at ANWR. Let us look at where we know the oil is, while we work to find out if there is anymore somewhere else. Let's encourage production here at home, so that not only can we enter the market with more oil, but we can be more secure, because this is a question of security, whether it is security in the home, or whether it is security as a nation. Politically, this Congress for the last two decades has been doing the wrong thing when it came to petroleum and energy security. We grew increasingly dependent on foreign nations, and as we did, we not only put our Nation at risk, we have now put the energy-consuming American family at risk. We should not be a part of that. We are here to facilitate the possible so the marketplace can do what it can and does very well. Right now the marketplace is squeezing and squeezing hard and competing for the last remaining oil until more oil comes in production. Here is the last thought of a simple equation. If demand is going up 1.5 percent a year worldwide, and depletion in the existing producing fields is going down at 7 to 8 percent a year, and you are not finding and bringing anymore on line, then the price goes up as the supply goes down. But if you find a little more to add, about 5 percent more annualized, you offset the difference and price stabilizes. That is the way the market works. We do not have control of that as politicians; we can only control access to future supply. That is what we ought to be about as a Senate and as a country. So e-mail your Senator, write your Congressman, tell them to get going. Let's get this great country of ours back into the business of production so the supply and demand in the marketplace stabilizes and the American consumer can begin to become comfortable with where we are headed in energy policy and their pocketbook.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, in 1923, a 14-year-old boy dropped out of school in Declo, ID, and began working as a potato sorter. He eventually became a potato and hog farmer, a forester, a miner, an entrepreneur, an industrialist, an investor, a billionaire, and today-- he is a legend. John Richard Simplot was born in Dubuque, IA, in 1909--but his family moved to Idaho when he was young, and Idaho remained his home. At an early age, J.R. knew school was not for him, so he dropped out and began working in the fields. He saved up and was able to buy 40 acres of land and several hogs. He planted potatoes and fed his hogs with a homemade feed recipe that allowed him to use his own spuds and meat from wild horses. That saved him some money on feed; moreover, as luck would have it, a harsh winter depleted the grain stock, and come market time, J.R.'s fat, home-fed hogs stood out against everyone else's skinny pigs, and the young man reaped the rewards. He expanded his hog business, and by the time he sold it, he owned roughly 500 hogs. He took his earnings and put them into horses, farm machinery, and seed potatoes. From there, he rented some land and began to build what would later become his empire. In 1928, at the ripe old age of 19, Simplot learned of a machine that had been built in eastern Idaho. It was an electrically driven potato sorter. J.R. saw potential and found a partner, and together they spent $254 on the new piece of equipment, which enabled them to sort not only their own crops but the crops of other farmers as well--for a price. A dispute between J.R. and his partner forced them to decide who would keep the machine. J.R. said ``I'll flip you for it,'' and wouldn't you know it--he won the coin toss. He was off on his own. Winning the toss was luck, but the rest of his success throughout the years can only be attributed to his devotion to hard work and his incredible resourcefulness. For years the young Simplot built hog pens, dug potato cellars, tilled soil, hauled sacks of potatoes, and did countless other tasks. It was after the Great Depression, though, when Simplot's chance came to make a name for himself in the potato business. The Bureau of Reclamation was created, and projects like dams and canals began along the Snake River in Idaho. The projects would bring more water to the valley, which would lead to more farms, more crops, and more opportunity to diversify within agriculture. By 1940, J.R. had 33 potato warehouses and had also gotten into the business of onions and onion-drying. When the United States entered World War II, there were only five companies that could dehydrate vegetables, and no one could dehydrate potatoes at least not until J.R. Simplot found a way. He began producing dry potatoes for U.S. troops and by 1945 was producing an average of 33 million pounds of dried potatoes a year. That was one- third of the U.S. military's consumption during the war. As his success in potatoes expanded, his ability to save money by producing his own raw materials grew. In 1943, he didn't have enough boxes to ship out his dry potatoes, so he started his own box plant. When that company needed more lumber, he bought a lumber company. And when his supply for fertilizer for his potatoes was cut off, he developed his own. He went to the Fort Hall Indian Reservation looking for phosphate rock for his new fertilizer and ended up tapping into the largest phosphate mine in the West. He leased the land and built a fertilizer plant. In 1945, J.R. Simplot became a cattleman when he built a small feedlot for the purpose of getting rid of the potato waste coming from his processing plants. Peelings and sprouts were mixed with alfalfa and barley to make feed for cattle, and yet another Simplot business flourished. A huge discovery in the 1950s propelled the empire forward even further when Simplot discovered a way to freeze potatoes--and the frozen french fry was born. It was the 1960s when J.R. went into business with a man by the name of Ray Kroc. Kroc was a fast food operator who had begun a chain. That chain was McDonald's, and soon the Simplot Company became the largest supplier of frozen french fries to the fast food giant. By the late 1960's, J.R. Simplot grew more potatoes, owned more cattle and land, and employed more people than anyone else in Idaho. He was the largest processor, drier, and freezer of potatoes in the world and owned processing plants, fertilizer plants, mining operations, and other enterprises in 36 States, Canada, and overseas--making him the largest industrialist in Idaho and one of the largest in the world. But he continued to get into new businesses. Using his potatoes, he began producing ethanol in the 1970s, and with the manure from his cattle operations, he began fueling methane gas plants in the 1980s. At the same time, he invested in a small computer chip company that is today Micron Technology. He left his footprint on Idaho perhaps more than anyone else in history. Dubbed ``Mr. Spud,'' he provided countless jobs for Idahoans in so many areas. He seemed to have his hand in everything that is Idaho, and everything he touched seemed to succeed. But that is not the reason I admired the man. Even with all his success, J.R. Simplot had his failures. The difference between many people and Jack, though, was his never-ending drive and determination to get up and do something again, and to do it better. It was his persistence in wrangling successes from failures that made J.R. the kind of man everyone should admire. He wasn't just a brilliant business man. He loved Idaho, and in fact, a few years ago, signed his home over to the State of Idaho to use as the new Governor's mansion. He also loved his fellow Idahoans. And although he never received a formal education, he always believed in getting one and therefore gave millions of dollars to universities and students in Idaho. He was also a major supporter of the arts. Recently, at the young age of 99, J.R. Simplot passed away at his home in Boise. He had risen that Sunday morning, walked into his kitchen and insisted to his wife Esther that he was going to go to the office. That was the kind of man J.R. Simplot was. Even at the age of 99, even with billions of dollars, his last thought was that he needed to go to work. I am going to miss my friend Jack, and my sincere condolences go out to Esther and his family. But it is important for the record to show that his passing has significance well beyond his immediate community in Boise. J.R. Simplot should be celebrated for the tremendous impact he had, not only on Idaho's history but on U.S. history. That impact, and his legend, will live on.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, this Saturday, June 14, our Nation celebrates Flag Day. It was on this day 231 years ago that the Second Continental Congress officially adopted the red, white, and blue flag to serve as an icon for our newly formed Nation. Living and working in the United States, one may find it easy to overlook the prevalence of our flag--it stands atop buildings, in school yards, next to libraries, and even in our neighborhoods. President Woodrow Wilson, in recognition of the significance of our flag, set aside June 14 as a day to observe our flag and take pride in our Nation. The first flag, commonly known as the ``Betsy Ross'' flag--given the name after the legend that she designed the flag--contained 13 stars and stripes to symbolize the 13 original colonies. As our Nation grew, so did the stars in the constellation, finally leaving us with the 50 stars that we all recognize today. One of the many beautiful aspects of our flag is that it can mean different things to different folks and is even open to your own personal interpretation. For many, the flag represents freedom; for others, individual rights or justice. For some, it is a reminder of those who fought to protect all Americans' right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Our first President, George Washington, had this to say about the flag's symbolism: ``We take the stars from heaven, the red from our mother country, separate it by white in stripes, thus showing that we have separated from her.'' This year, we honor our flag the day before Father's Day. In light of this, I would especially like to pay tribute to all the fathers serving in our armed forces who will be unable to celebrate with their families this weekend. I ask that we keep these brave men--whose service ensures the freedom that our flag so gallantly symbolizes--in our hearts and prayers as we celebrate Flag Day. In closing, let me read an excerpt from a poem that is familiar to many in our country, because it has been read at countless ceremonies where American citizens are gathered. It's entitled ``I am the Flag,'' and it was written by Howard Schnauber: I am the flag of the United States of America. My name is Old Glory. I fly atop the world's tallest buildings. I stand watch in America's halls of justice. I fly majestically over institutions of learning. I stand guard with power in the world. Look up . . . and see me. I stand for peace, honor, truth and justice. I stand for freedom. I am confident. I am arrogant. I am proud.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, though the origin of Father's Day is not clear, fathers throughout the United States are made to feel special by their children every year, on the third Sunday in June. Sunday, June 15, marks my 24th year as Dad to Mike, Jay and Shae. And in recent years, their seven children have made me a doting granddad to boot, doubling the joy of our celebration. Throughout these years, I have never taken a Father's Day remembrance for granted--perhaps because I adopted my children when I had the wisdom and maturity to appreciate the pure joy of having them in my life. I have treasured the handmade trinkets, the interesting ties and the simple melody of their voices greeting me on that Sunday morning every year, ``Happy Father's Day, Dad! We love you.'' Father's Day always has been a time of reflection for Suzanne and me--to look back fondly on our kids' achievements and to take pride in how they handled life's disappointments. I remember Shae's first date and her first breakup, Mike's first car and Jay's first soccer game. But nothing affected me as emotionally as my children's love and loyalty during the dark days of last August. When I was under siege by the media, by my political opponents and even by some I thought were my friends, it was my three children who surrendered their privacy and risked being tarred by those demanding my head to take on their Dad's critics. They were relentless in correcting the record--in television interviews and in doggedly responding to newspaper reporters' endless questions. And when I appeared before the media to respond to unspeakable accusations, my kids stood with me, looking my accusers squarely in the eye. In the privacy of our home, when I would despair, they were there to lift up their Dad. Someone once said, ``If there is anything better than to be loved, it is loving.'' No father in America is prouder of his children than I. So this Sunday, the luckiest Dad in Idaho won't be just waiting around for his annual Father's Day calls and visits. This Father's Day, Dad is honoring the three who chose me to be their father--Shae, Mike and Jay.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I join with my colleague from Florida to talk about an issue that is probably on the minds of nearly every American today, especially if they just pulled their big SUV away from a gas pump and they fed their credit card into that gas pump and it registered $100. That is the reality the American consumer is being subjected to today in an unprecedented way. So my advice to the Senate today goes back to an old country song that was popular a few years ago, by a female country artist, called ``A Little Less Talk And A Lot More Action.'' That is exactly what ought to be going on in the halls of Congress today: a heck of a lot less talk and a lot more action. What ought that action be for the American consumer who today is paying more money than ever in the history of our country for energy? In the short term, the ``more action and less talk'' ought to be production, producing oil out of our known oil reserves in this country. That is not the answer for the future. That is the answer for tomorrow, next year, and 8 or 10 years into the future. I call it a bridge solution to the reality of a new generation of energy that is the cellulosics, that is electric, that is the hybrid. But we are always going to need oil or hydrocarbons in our economy to produce the kind of transportation fuels for the big trucks and many of our rail engines and all of those kinds of heavy transportation needs. That is not in part what the consumer is paying for today. The consumer is paying $4-plus at the pump today, depending on where you live, because this Congress over the last 20 years has had an attitude that is quite simple: Put that in wilderness, protect it, deny it, we can conserve our way out of it. The Clean Air Act says it is too expensive to retrofit refineries so we take one, two, three refineries offline. We have taken many of them offline because they simply couldn't comply with the Clean Air Act and they were too expensive to retrofit and our overall capacity to refine, with our overall capacity to explore and develop, went hand and hand down while the American consumer was consuming more. What does that ``a little less talk and a lot more action'' mean? It ought to mean this: It ought to mean going where you know you can get it, going where you know you can drill. Where might that be? Here is that reality that American consumers ought to know about, and then I hope they will pick up the phone and call their Senator or e-mail their Senator and say: Why did you do this? Why over the last 30 years did you deny us access to these areas where we have known oil reserves? In a modern world, for me to quote 20-year-old statistics doesn't make a lot of sense. But for 20 years we have said: No, we are not even going to use new seismographic measuring efforts to determine where the other oil is. We are going to take the old information, 20-year-old information in the red zone represents this. American consumer, listen, because you ought to be on the phone today, calling your Senator and saying: A little less talk and here is the action. Start drilling. Open these areas. Get the bid process going. What can it yield? The U.S. Geological Survey says that in these red zones we have a known resource of 29 to 30 billion barrels of oil. In the undiscovered areas where we believe it is, there is 85 billion, or about 115 billion. You do the math. If we could produce a few more million barrels a day, what would the market do? What would the speculators do? They would run for cover. We would take $30 or $40 a barrel right off the top of the market that is a speculative price today that is betting that America will not do this because they are betting Congress is going to be doing a lot more talk and no action. If we act, if we do what we ought to do, if we go where we know we should go, where the oil is today, and we find that there are 120, 130, 150 billion barrels of oil, down comes the market. If the market comes down for America, the market comes down for the world. That is the price in the market, because we are talking about market trends that are world trends--not only us. If you think we are having a bad time here and we are paying $4, what is a European paying? They measure by liters, but they are usually, probably at $9 or $10 now. So they are as angry as consumers as we are as consumers about the reality of the market in which we all live. I am talking crude oil. I am not talking natural gas. In these areas we believe there could be as much as 633 trillion cubic feet of gas. For the chemical industry of our country, for the world as we know it, that is hugely important. For all of the costs of the goods and services we are buying at the market shelf today that are going up in price, they are reflecting their need to have the ingredients that flow from oil or that flow from gas. Whether it is the transportation that gets them to the shelf or whether it is the ingredients of the product that is on the shelf, this is a world today that is dominated by what we call hydrocarbons--oil and oil derivatives, and gas. We are all going to be paying a great deal more. The thing that is most visible is the pump, that $4 or $4.20 or $4.50. The Senator from Alaska told me this morning that in areas of rural Alaska where they barge the gas up and offload it during the summer for the locals to use, it is well over $5 a gallon. And it is going to that consumer at well beyond their inability to pay. They are growing frightened; they are relating to that Senator fear that they can no longer live their lives the way they would like to live them because they simply have to deny themselves access to gas, access to oil. Well, that is the reality of where we live and what we have done to ourselves. It all started in this Congress 20 years ago in the name of the environment. We began to deny, deny, deny, and deny. Consumers are saying something much different today than they did then. Because they recognize that in a state of denial there is a price to be paid. They are now paying that price. So what happened and what is happening? Well, on May 19, a Gallup Poll came out. They asked Americans: Shouldn't we allow drilling in the U.S. coastal waters and up here in the ANWR area, the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge? A few years ago, a majority of Americans said: Oh, no, no, no. Let us protect those areas. Today, well, this was even before $4 gas, this was May 19, not this week, and 57 percent of Americans said: Drill it. There is a new Rasmussen Poll out today which is even higher than that. Americans are saying: Drill it. Go where the oil is. Explore it. Develop it. Bring it online. Do it in an environmentally sound way. And our technology today can take us there. We do not risk the environment when we do this. Anybody who stands on the floor of the Senate today and says: Oh, save the environment, is in a 20-year-old environmental time warp. And it is quite obvious why. They haven't seen the technology. They do not know what we now can do; that we have learned from the 1960s spill in Santa Barbara. Have you heard some Senators quote the facts about Katrina? Over a thousand wells were knocked offline, drilling rigs knocked off point. Not a drop of oil spilled. Why? Technology. So America, awaken. Pick up the phone. Call your Senator and say: Get with it. A lot more action and a lot less talk. Because right now we are talking. We are jawboning, we are politicking, and the consumer is having their budgets burnt up by the reality of the marketplace that this Congress helped set decades ago. Hear me. A lot less talk, Senate, and a lot more action. Let's go to work. Let's drill our reserves. Let's produce them in an environmentally sound way and let's give this consumer and our economy and the world a better place to go. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that for the next 30 minutes, an energy intern from my office, Carolyn Jones, be granted the privilege of the floor.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Thank you, Madam President. Let me recognize at the beginning of my comments that yesterday I was on the Senate floor to talk about the incorporation of good forest policy as it relates to rejuvenating America's forests to increase their capability of sequestration of carbon out of the atmosphere. I said at that time there would be an amendment. That amendment has the cosponsorship of Senators Domenici, Allard, Crapo, and Barrasso and has been filed. It is an important amendment, if we ever get to that phase of this debate, where we will be able to effectively craft and shape a policy for our country. We deal with striking the international intent within this bill to take our money to help others before we help ourselves. We define biological sequestration. We think that is extremely important because we know how to do that now at the Federal level. It is not the old business-as-usual model; it is establishing a baseline and being able to effectively measure from there. We allow forests to get credits from meaningful sequestration, and I think this is tremendously important to be able to do. It is not about the volume of a stand of timber; it is about the ability of that stand to sequester. If you have 400 trees per acre, you have overpopulated that area by as many as maybe 250 or 300 trees per acre. But that is the measurement of the Boxer amendment. It is absolutely counterintuitive to modern forest science. We change it to where we are and to where we know our forest scientists are today. We use existing monitoring and measuring tools, which is very important. It is a product of 1992 legislation when we charged the U.S. Forest Service and their laboratories to get at the business of being able to effectively measure. We use internationally recognized sustainable forest management standards. We use RFS and productive tax credits for biomass and biomass removement, and of course we use stewardship contracting, which is critically important. Let me take the Presiding Officer and those who might be listening today on a very interesting journey that starts at America's gas pump. Let me assume that the Presiding Officer has just driven up to a gas pump somewhere in America. You stick the hose in your car, you activate the pump, you slide your credit card, and you begin to fill. Depending on the size of your vehicle and the price--anywhere from let's say $3.85 a gallon for regular to maybe $4.44 in California--you begin to grow annoyed as the calculator on the pump goes: 35, 40, 45, 50, 55, 60, 65--oops, you have maxed the pump and you have to get more by reactivating the pump to fill your SUV. Your anger is optimal now. You have just paid 100 bucks or somewhere near that, and you have never done that before. You move your view up to the pump and it says ``Chevron.'' It says ``Shell.'' It says one of the major oil companies. You focus your anger on that company and you say: It has to be their fault. They are making record profits. Somehow, there ought to be a way to stop them from doing what they just did to me and my pocketbook and my family's budget. Let me take you, the consumer, then, a step further and suggest to you that you are part of a problem that has been growing in America for a long while. Your demand for the use of energy has gone nearly straight up over four decades as you have increased your consumption of it. Why? Because the price was reasonable and you enjoyed it. The price was reasonable and your demand went up dramatically, but while that was going on, there were interests at work in our country that said: We are not going to produce any more, we are going to produce less, and we did. So our overall supply began to drop at about the time that our demand began to go up catastrophically. What happened was an interesting scenario. So now you have hung your hose up from the gas pump, you have just paid 100 bucks, and you are angry as heck. You are part of the demand curve in our supply in our country that is dropping down, and you have just blamed Exxon or Chevron or Marathon or someone because you have spent 100 bucks to fill your SUV and you are not happy. If you took all of these small companies and blamed them all and said they have to be the problem, they would only represent about 6 or 7 percent of the problem. The problem these companies have is that they are buying a substantial amount of their oil from this side of the chart. They are buying their oil from countries--from countries that don't give a darn about our problems. We have grown so dependent on foreign countries that now some 55 to 60 percent of our consumption comes from them, and we pay a phenomenal amount for it, or should I say you--you, the consumer who has just put up the hose on the gas pump and who has grown angry, wanting to focus your anger on these companies. Is it Canada you want to blame? Well, let's see now, at $125 a barrel, we are paying Canada $280 million a day. Why should we blame them? They are supplying our needs. There are no gas lines today. There is no diminishment in supply. It is a price problem. Well, then let's blame Saudi Arabia. Oh, yes. They are over here. They are the big boys. The President just went over there, hat in hand, begging that they turn their valves on, and they said: No, Mr. President. Your problem, not ours. You are going to keep buying our oil. You need it. We are paying them $190 million a day. Maybe it is Venezuela, run by a little tinhorn dictator--$160 million a day flowing from our consumers' pocketbooks-- or it is Nigeria at $140 million or it is Algeria at $70 million. The bottom line is, well over $1 billion a day comes right out of the consumers' pocket and goes primarily to one of these companies that buy from one of these countries. They buy the oil at the current world price, and they are allowed to take some profit from it; sure they do. Their profits are record highs because the charges are record highs, and the story goes on and on. We search to blame. We have little alternative. The business of the oil economy has little elasticity to it. We can't switch over to something else unless we park the SUV and get a bicycle. But you can't haul your kids to the soccer game on a bicycle. You can't haul boxes of groceries home on a bicycle. So the American economy and its consumers are questioning themselves right now, saying: What do we do? Let me suggest there is somebody to blame besides ExxonMobil and Chevron and Marathon. Why don't you blame the Senate? Why don't you blame the Congress of the United States which, by being subject to environmental pressure over the last 30 years, has largely denied the right of this country to effectively develop its oil reserves and create a less dependent relationship with all of these countries? That is what we ought to be doing, but we are not doing that. Here is a map of the gulf region of Florida. In this region, we are developing this right now. We have just opened this area after we spent 2 years trying to get it open because politics would not allow us to open it, and we think there are about 2.2 million barrels a day starting in 2012 down here. This is lease sale 181. But over here, there may be as much oil as there was or is here, but this is politically off limits. We can't do it. Why shouldn't the consumers say: Well, what is the politics of it? You are draining my pocketbook dry. Is there value in those politics? Why don't you develop your reserves? Well, Florida, Presidential politics--you name it. Floridians are awfully frustrated by the fact that you might be able to drill there. This area right down here is the Cuban basin, the northern Cuban basin. Cubans are letting leases out to drill there. The U.S. Geological Survey would suggest that there is some oil there--maybe quite a bit of oil--but we won't get it. It won't traffic through Exxon or Chevron because we have a policy that denies us access to that region of the world because, if you will, of the politics of Cuba, plain and simple. So here is our problem with that and here is our problem with this interesting picture. We have about 115 billion barrels of reserve in gas, about 29 billion known, about 5 billion undiscovered resources. In gas, we have about 633 trillion cubic feet, 213 trillion known, 419 unknown. Now, that is information that is 20 years old because politically you dare not go out into any of these regions today with the new seismic technology and explore because if you did and you found oil, you might want to drill, and that would be environmentally unacceptable. Oh, how frightening. I remember a time--and not all do unless you are about my age--come 1969 when there was an interesting oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara in southern California. It made national headlines because it was one of the first major oil spills that did substantial environmental damage. I have oftentimes referred on the floor to our denial to access the Outer Continental Shelf as the ghosts of Santa Barbara that lurk in this Chamber and hide in the background of environmental arguments. That was Santa Barbara in 1969. But what is fascinating about Santa Barbara is that while we didn't drill offshore Santa Barbara because of a moratorium on the Federal waters, we continued to drill offshore Santa Barbara in the State waters. Today, offshore Santa Barbara, CA, is producing 731,000 barrels of oil a day. They just cut a new deal with some oil companies to drill in this area. Well, why aren't they allowing us to drill offshore further out in the Continental Shelf? Because California doesn't get the money. Oops. Sorry, folks. Money trumped the environment. Remember that. In Santa Barbara today, they are drilling for oil if it is within the 3-mile limit of the shoreline because that is State oil and that is State water. But out in the Federal reserve, Outer Continental Shelf, no, no, no, no, can't do, must not do that, something about a problem. Well, what the ghost of Santa Barbara and the 1969 oil spill did was shove us into a period of technology unprecedented. Today, we are drilling offshore in the gulf, and the water is so deep that we didn't even imagine a decade ago we could be there. We are doing it appropriately and in a very clean fashion. So here are the headlines in Los Angeles, April 20, 2008: Santa Barbara approves offshore drilling. Well, what happened to this picture here? What happened in 1969 with this oil rig spilling oil, sea lions dying, fish dying, muck, oily muck along the shoreline? That is Santa Barbara, 1969. We were led to believe they stopped drilling altogether, but they didn't. They just approved new drilling, but it is inside the 3-mile zone. Now, Californians are selective, apparently, about their environment. If there is money tied to it, well, maybe we can drill, if we get all the money, but if we don't get as much of it, we won't drill offshore. That is the kind of politics that have gone on today. So remember how I started these comments a few moments ago? You have just driven up to a gas pump, you just stuck the nozzle into the tank of your SUV, you just cranked out 100 bucks of regular at about $4.40 a gallon--in California, because of the boutique fuels of the Clean Air Act--and you have grown angry because somebody was ripping you off, and that somebody had to be an Exxon or a Chevron or a Marathon or someone else. But I hope I have been able to suggest to you some additional knowledge: That they represent maybe 6 percent of world production. It is the petropolitics of the world today where nearly 90 percent of the known oil and the reserves are owned by foreign nations that are sticking it to us, and they are sticking it to us today because of our own interesting greed, because we grew luxuriously fat on cheap energy and we developed cars that take a lot. Now that we can't fill them for 20 bucks and it is costing us 100 bucks, we are angry and we want to blame somebody. Blame Saudi Arabia, blame Venezuela. But how about blaming us here in the Congress, because some of us have tried, but the body politic of America denied that we should touch our own reserves, develop our own oil, and that we should become dependent upon someone else. So we have legislation on the floor today that doesn't help that. It creates, in fact, greater dependency. It doesn't move us forward to develop those known reserves. It doesn't allow us to do the geological exploration in the deep waters of the Outer Continental Shelf with the new technologies, in which we will find much more oil than we know is there. America, blame your Congress--blame your friendly Congressman or your friendly Senator. Ask them how they voted. Ask them how they are going to vote on ANWR, on Outer Continental Shelf, on new development, on new refinery capacity. Oil is not the answer for 50 years from now, but oil is the bridge that gets us from where we are to where we need to be with new technologies. But our lack of foresight, our rush to be green, and our rush to deny the realities of the marketplace has produced the problems we have today, and there are people to blame. We ought to start right here with a Congress that would not listen. But year after year, while I and others brought ANWR to the floor for a vote, and while we tried to get into the Outer Continental Shelf, politically, it was simply an unpopular thing to do, because some would say this would be the picture. Fellow Senators, this picture I display on the Senate floor is a picture of the past. This is of 1969 Santa Barbara. From that day forward, we began to apply technology to drill heads, to drill rigs, through our capability and talent. When Katrina hit the gulf and hit the coastline of Louisiana, parts of Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida, offshore, not one drop was spilled. Thousands of wells were shut down. Rigs were sent adrift. But what is depicted in this picture did not occur. This will not occur again because of the triple safety devices and all of the kinds of things that have been incorporated as a result of this. So California today drills happily away within the 3-mile zone, because they get 100 percent. But outside the 3-mile zone, no, no, no, can't touch, might hurt the environment. Shame on us. I yield the floor.