Larry Craig

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Economic Stimulus Act.

Mr. CRAIG. I will not lose my momentum. I will keep it right here, Mr. Leader.

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I thank the managers of the bill, the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee for the debate that has gone on. The chairman was opining a few moments ago that the debate today had been focused on gas and high gas prices and that somehow her bill was going to push gas prices even higher. That may happen. I don't know that. What I do know today is that the American consumer is fed up with $4 gas, and anything we do that would even risk pushing gas prices higher ought to make the American consumer mighty unhappy. So I say to the chairman tonight, I am not going to talk gas prices, I am going to talk something different because I was convinced, based on my time on the Environment and Public Works Committee and having crafted a bill that got hearings, got a markup, and was ready to come to the floor when the chairman's staff took it, turned it inside out, and brought it back to the floor in an unheard document, I was convinced then gas prices were going to go up, and I think my colleagues this afternoon who have spoken openly in opposition to this bill have strongly made the case that the American consumer is going to pay mightily for this bill that is before us if, in fact, it becomes law. So I am a bit puzzled when I hear the title of ``Climate Security Act.'' I am confident that this might protect the environment, but what does it do for people? What does it do for the consumer who is going to be put through a financial wringer, not only with their home heating bill but continually at the gas pump, if the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, Senator Boxer, has her way? Why don't we call this bill the China-India Economic Stimulus Act of 2008, because clearly those countries that are rapidly becoming the largest emitters of greenhouse gas are going to be allowed to run free in the world economy while we put the clamps on our economy. That is a reality we all know and to which the American consumer has already reacted. Fewer jobs in our country, more jobs in China--does that make economic sense at a time when our economy is struggling? We are just going to stick another hole in our economy and send those jobs to India or China? Or maybe we could call this the U.S. Recessions Act of 2008. I have said it, I believe it, I have been in this Congress 28 years, and I have never seen a piece of legislation to equal this one. It is the largest single redistribution of wealth in our country ever tried by the human mind through the public policy process. To me, that is frightening--frightening for my grandchildren and their future, frightening for the Idaho economy, frightening for the U.S. economy. And what are we going to do about it? We are going to stand here and say: But it saves the world. I am not going to argue that the world isn't worth saving because I want to spend a few more years in it, but I want to make darn sure the world in which I live and my children live is a world that is at least as good as the one we have today from the standpoint of the environment and from the standpoint of the economy and the economic opportunities that come from that economy for my children and my grandchildren. Is this micromanagement as I describe it? We just heard the Senator from New Hampshire begin to worry about $100 billion here, $100 billion there, and $100 billion over here, and the Senator from Virginia says: Well, we have to have some money. Yes, we do, but we are talking trillions of dollars. That is $6.7 trillion. And last I calculated it, that is a lot of money and it is going to be taken from the pockets of the American consumer, passed through Government, and handed out in a variety of ways yet to be determined by the bureaucracy. OK, that is all I am going to say about the economy of this bill. When we were marking up another bill that never made it to the floor, I wanted to talk about substantive efforts, such as sequestration and revitalizing the American landscape in a way where we truly could take carbon out of the atmosphere and put it into plants and put it in roots and put it in tree stumps and tree stems in a way that was true, vital, positive environmental sequestration of carbon. I was told: No, you couldn't do that. Oh, no, no. The chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee said: No, you can't do that; we won't allow that kind of amendment. We are not going to have forestry in this bill. You bring your amendments to the floor, Senator Craig. And that was the way the bill was crafted. All of a sudden, we get to the floor, and guess what is in the bill: a 10-percent carbon credit for companies that invest in foreign forests--not U.S. forests, not the Payette National Forest in Idaho or the San Bernardino National Forest in California where 60 percent of it is dead and dying. No, we can't do that. It has to go to the Brazilian rain forest. I am not going to debate rain forest politics tonight, but I will tell you that if we are going to tax the American people to improve the forested landscape of America, then by darn we ought to invest it in our landscape and not in Brazil's landscape or China's landscape. But that is what this bill does. With that in mind, let me talk about forestry and forestry sequestration and what happens when you have a young, vital, growing forest across America and its ability to pull carbon down out of the atmosphere and store it in tree trunks, not just for a year or two or three but hundreds of years. It is the single greatest form of sequestering carbon from the environment that man ever thought about because Mother Nature was well ahead of the game before we came along and began to mess up the environment. Yet this bill does nothing about it. The reason I get a little excited about this idea is because of, in the year 2000, in Belgium, a climate change conference. It was the last year of the Clinton administration, and they were trying to give away our forest credits to the world to try to convince them we believed in Kyoto. I stayed up 24 hours straight to stop them from giving away our ability to use our forest to sequester carbon out of the atmosphere into foliage and trees. I won and they lost. Now the world has changed and we can measure the reality of forest sequestration and we are not allowed to do it in a comprehensive way? That is where we are in this debate. Fast forward with me, if you will, to where we are in the health of America's forests today. We have over 180 million acres of dead and dying forest in our country. They are no longer pulling carbon out of the atmosphere and bringing it down, they are doing what a tree does when it dies--they are releasing it back into the atmosphere. We have unprecedented rates of forest burn in America today that we haven't seen in 60 to 70 years. That is what is happening in American forests--last year, 9.2 million acres, 2 million of it right in my home State of Idaho. The beautiful, clear, blue skies of Idaho were full of smoke all summer. Why? Because of a forest management and policy that is now simply allowing that to happen and because of a forest whose health is in such a state of dying, decaying, bug-killed trees, our great forests are now beginning to release carbon into the atmosphere at a higher rate. This year alone, you would say: Well, Senator, we are not in the forest fire season in the West. No, we are not. But since January 1 through May 30, we have already burned 1.49 million acres of forested lands across our Nation. We have seen them burning in Florida and other places. What are they doing? They are releasing carbon into the atmosphere. The reason I bring this chart along tonight is because it tells the story of the tragedy of the American forest. See this line? This is a result of a history of our forests as they evolve and they grow and they live and they die. We went through a period in the late 1920s and early 1930s of climate change, where we weren't hustling around trying to change the world but Mother Nature was changing, and we had a dust bowl era and we began to learn about El Nino and La Nina and Pacific decibel oscillation and all the changes going on in our environment that created a tragedy in our forests as they grew dry. And we began to see phenomenal fire burns in the late 1800s through the early 1900s, up until about 1920, when our Forest Service decided to change policy and go after fires. Now, remember, fires are burning, releasing carbon into the atmosphere at a tonnage rate unprecedented, at least in man's history. Why did it plummet and why did forests become a sequesterer of carbon again instead of a releaser of carbon? Because we established a policy called 10 a.m. That is right, 10 a.m. in the morning. The U.S. Forest Service said that a fire that started the day before, we are going to have it out by 10 a.m. the next morning. And so we put phenomenal resources into putting out fires. After World War II, when all the young men came home who had been jumping out of airplanes in Europe, they became smoke jumpers and dropped down on small fires and put them out. And the era of the smoke jumper in the U.S. Forest Service was born. And what happened? It is right here on the chart. Forest fires plummeted, down to a period in 1945 on--1950s, 1960s--in which we simply weren't burning. We were putting out fires. And our forests became a net sequesterer of carbon.

Mr. CRAIG. I would be happy to yield to the leader.

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, while the Senate majority leader is still on the floor, I want to talk about a fire that happened in his State just a few years ago because I was directly involved with that Senator in recognizing the dead and dying conditions of the Tahoe Basin in both Nevada and California. He came to the committee--the committee that I chaired at the time--and said: We have to fix this problem; a lot of people live in that area. And we did. We sent money out to the U.S. Forest Service to get in and change the character of that dead and dying forest. But the courts and the environmental groups would not allow it to happen. Lawsuit after lawsuit stopped it. And a year ago, the Tahoe Basin burned--3,100 acres, 250 homes, and what is more important, or as important, 140,000 tons of carbon released into the atmosphere. Do you know the second largest releaser of carbon into the atmosphere, after coal-fired utilities? Forest fires. The second largest releaser of carbon into the atmosphere. Yet this bill does nothing about it except give money to Brazil to save the rain forest because it is a popular environmental issue. That is what this bill is about, the politics of the environment, not the reality of the circumstance in which we all live, in which the Senator from California nearly saw the entire San Bernardino forest wiped out and a Governor of her State who had to declare a state of emergency and go in and try to stop it from burning. So if you are going to create a new world, a greener world, a cleaner world, one that has less carbon in it, you have to have a forest policy--a forest policy--that begins to revitalize our forests, to thin them, to clean them, to change the kind of ecosystem in them that doesn't tolerate 180 million acres of dead and dying trees that will release hundreds of millions of tons of carbon into the environment. So what do we do? Six tons of CO2 is released every time an acre burns. Six tons. Up to 100 tons of CO2 can be released per acre, depending on the number of trees within that acreage--300, 400, 500. So that is a reality. Last year, in the 9.2 to 9.4 million acres that burned, we released the carbon equivalent emissions of 12 million passenger automobiles running for 1 year, or the entire passenger automobile fleet of the State of California, or somewhere close to that. Yet this bill doesn't address forestry? It doesn't address forest health? It doesn't address the kinds of things that we ought to be doing in an active management system to revitalize our forests? No, it doesn't. It is not environmentally popular to do. Environmentalists have spent the last 20 years shutting down our forests. So tomorrow I will bring a comprehensive amendment to the floor to attempt to add to this bill, to get us back into the business of forest management, healthy forests, revitalizing our forests, and, hopefully, over time changing the ecosystem of our forests in a way that we don't burn 10 million acres a year and release hundreds of thousands of tons of carbon into the atmosphere. And this can be done at very little cost. You don't have to have a cap-and-trade scheme that pours trillions of dollars into it. That is what we will talk about tomorrow. Gas is today. Let's talk about trees tomorrow, one of the greatest storers of carbon, one of the greatest sequesterers of carbon in the world today. I yield the floor.

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, in the rebuttal scheme, is there an effort to make comments back? No? All right. I thank the chairman. And let's add one more word-- ``forestry sequestration.'' That is another new buzzword added tonight.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I pay tribute to Dr. James S. Holt, who passed away on April 28, 2008. Dr. Holt was known to many Members of this Senate because of the outstanding contributions he made to developing sound Federal public policy related to agriculture, immigration, and employment. It was through his involvement in these issues before Congress that I got to know Jim and gained a tremendous respect for his wealth of knowledge and integrity--and especially his unwavering commitment to finding policy solutions that were correct, even if that meant they were also uncomfortable or difficult. Jim Holt received his Ph.D. in agricultural economics from the Pennsylvania State University in 1965, and then served 16 years on the Penn State faculty as a professor of agricultural economics and farm management. From 1978 until the present, Dr. Holt headed his own consulting firm, as well as serving as senior economist to a Washington, DC, law firm, where his responsibilities included research, policy analysis, and government relations in matters related to labor, agriculture, immigration and animal welfare. Dr. Holt authored more than 70 publications and served agricultural clients in more than 30 States. Jim was a recognized expert with unique knowledge of the H-2A program and served as a consultant to national organizations such as the National Council of Agricultural Employers and the Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform during his involvement in the major immigration and H-2A reform efforts in Congress during the past 30 years. I first became aware of Jim's expertise when he helped farmers in my own State of Idaho to establish the Snake River Farmers Association an organization that helps obtain legally authorized workers through the H-2A temporary and seasonal foreign agricultural worker program. Earlier this year in Idaho, at a meeting of the association, Jim and I teamed up again to address the grave labor situation facing Idaho farmers. I had the pleasure of working with Jim in the development of the AgJOBS legislation that I coauthored with Senators Feinstein and Kennedy. As my colleagues know, this bill has enjoyed broad bipartisan support and even passed the Senate in 2006. Jim brought his unique knowledge to the process of developing this historic legislation that brought together farm worker advocates and growers in an effort to provide a legal and stable agricultural workforce. During the past decade, Dr. Holt testified numerous times in both Chambers of Congress before the Committees on Agriculture, Judiciary, and Education and Labor in an effort to educate members on the importance of reforming our farm labor system and the severe economic consequences if we fail to do so. When we succeed in enacting the AgJOBS legislation and I am convinced that will ultimately happen--it will be in no small part because of the immeasurable effort Dr. Holt devoted to that cause over the past decade. On behalf of the policymakers who have worked with Jim Holt and benefited from his wise counsel over the years, I would like to express profound regret at his passing. He will be sorely missed. Let me extend my deepest sympathies to Jim's many friends and colleagues, and to the family he leaves behind.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, it gives me great pleasure to come to the floor in the final hours of the debate over agricultural policy in this country and to, first and foremost, thank the two principals, who are here on the floor, the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Ag Committee. They have done yeoman work in a very difficult process--15 titles and 673 pages of policy--in what is, without question, one of the most complicated efforts at putting public policy and interest groups within the agricultural community together in some degree of harmony. I thank my colleagues for the work they have done. Mr. President, I will be brief, as I have already come to the floor several times to discuss the valuable programs included in this bill. But I would be remiss not to take the opportunity to thank my colleagues--and this Congress--for producing a good product for the American people. We have been ``tangled in inaction'' on so many issues. The American people want a functional Congress. The 2008 farm bill conference report represents a monumental feat for the U.S. Congress. Every 5 years, we undertake the task of reauthorizing our farm policy. This version includes 15 titles; 673 pages. Though some who have not yet served on an agriculture committee during the reauthorization of a farm bill may disagree, let me assure you this is one of the most complicated pieces of legislation considered by Congress, and it is also one of the most important. In an age of skyrocketing energy prices, economic uncertainty, and now a global food crisis, there is at least one thing we should be able to be certain of: our Nation's food security. We cannot take for granted our ability to feed ourselves, lest we become dependent on other countries for our food in addition to our oil. How do we achieve food security? Here are a few key principles. First and foremost, we enact policy designed to keep our food producers productive and profitable, and ensure access to those foods for all Americans. This includes things such as a safety net to protect farmers from volatile price swings; and nutrition programs that give access to fresh fruits and vegetables in schools. We enact policy that incentivizes state-of-the-art conservation practices to encourage the best possible stewardship of our agricultural lands. This will ensure these lands stay productive and profitable for future generations. And we enact policy that helps American agriculture continue to diversify--including becoming a larger player not only in our food security, but also in our energy security. This bill does just that. This bipartisan work product--aptly named the Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008--sets a strong and secure direction for our food, conservation and energy future. The bill has broad support from virtually every corner of my State of Idaho, and every corner of the Nation. Congress has heard from rural farmers to urban food banks calling for passage of this vital piece of legislation. Mr. President, 500 farm, conservation, nutrition, consumer, and religious groups sent a letter supporting passage of the farm bill conference report. These groups--with one voice--recognized that the bill ``makes significant farm policy reforms, protects the safety net for all of America's food producers, addresses important infrastructure needs for specialty crops, increases funding to feed our nation's poor, and enhances support for important conservation initiatives.'' It is not a perfect bill--we all will admit this--but it is a great bill. I commend my colleagues for their work. The President has stated his intention to veto this bill. It is not often that I so strongly disagree with our Commander in Chief, but on this I must. There are too many great things in this bill to deny its passage over a few areas of disagreement, too many important things for my State of Idaho, and for the Nation. We began several years ago to ensure that specialty crops were adequately recognized in this new farm bill. We now have a new title devoted to horticulture and organic agriculture. It dedicates approximately $3 billion for specialty crop, pest and disease, nutrition, research, trade and conservation priorities important to this vital industry that represents nearly half of all crop cash receipts in our country, including: $466 million for Specialty Crop Block Grants to support local efforts to enhance competitiveness of local products; $1 billion to expand the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Snack Program to all 50 States--which will help our school children develop healthy eating habits; $377 million for a pest and disease program to combat costly damage to crops such as our famous potatoes; $230 million for the Specialty Crop Research Initiative to address food safety, mechanization, plant breeding, and other priorities; $59 million for trade assistance and market promotion to maintain and grow our international markets; and many other programs. Idaho's famous potatoes, our burgeoning table grape and wine grape industry, our apples and onions and carrots and nursery and ornamental crops--and this just touches the surface of both our current production and our potential to continue to diversify. Now, it should be noted that this is only one part of the effort to ensure the competitiveness of our specialty crop industry. The next step is to ensure that we have an adequate workforce to conduct the labor in which the average American refuses to participate. The harvesting of those healthy fruits and vegetables--this, I contend, is as important, or more important, than these ``competitiveness'' priorities that we have finally set forward in the farm bill. So our work is not done. And I could go on for a great deal of time, talking about: the commodity programs that create a vital safety net for our wheat, barley, peas, lentils, chickpeas, oilseeds, sugar, wool producers, and so on; the conservation programs that will help Idaho's booming dairy industry address environmental challenges associated with their growth, and our crop producers to incorporate better stewardship practices; the nutrition programs that are vital to improving the health of our youth; the rural development programs that will ensure funding for things such as water and wastewater programs, broadband, and rural housing; the energy programs that will help us reach the 36 billion gallon RFS by creating new incentives for cellulosic ethanol and beginning to pare down the subsidy for corn-based ethanol; the wildlife programs, such as the provision authored by my colleague from Idaho, that creates incentives for endangered species recovery; the forestry, trade, credit, disaster programs. Those programs that will benefit the Nation--and my State of Idaho in particular--are simply too vast to cover. I thank my colleagues once again, and urge support for this vital piece of legislation. I will now speak, again, specifically to Idaho and to the specialty crops provision that Senator Saxby Chambliss spoke to that is now a very important part of agricultural policy. We know specialty crops are about 51 percent of the gross revenue of American agriculture, and yet they were never mentioned in agricultural policy from a Federal level. Oh, yes, we had research and experimental programs, and we targeted money into the specialty crop area, but the program crops--those kinds of base crops we think about, be it cotton, soybeans, corn, wheat--all of those were the staples, if you will, of American agriculture, while today they do not represent the majority of the portfolio. That is why several years ago I thought it was critically important we begin to work to include a specialty crop title. So we began that effort. Today, we have completed that effort with the help of these two Senators and a broad-based coalition to now have a title devoted to horticulture and organic agriculture. In my State of Idaho, specialty crops are a big deal. Many people have heard about potatoes and Idaho. It is almost synonymous in the minds of the average American. Yet, by definition, that is a specialty crop. Is this a loan guarantee? No, it is not a loan guarantee. It is an effort to advance specialty crops in a variety of ways: specialty crop grants to enhance competitive local markets; expanding the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Snack Program in our high schools and grade schools in all 50 States; pest and disease management control; research programs in these areas; initiatives for food safety, mechanization, plant breeding and priorities to keep our edge, if you will, our world- class edge in the area of specialty crops; along with trade assistance and market promotion. That is a full title. Not only did these two Senators--our chairman and ranking member--who led the effort for us, get this in the bill, they also got money behind it. Frankly, I thought maybe we would have to go the first 5 years simply authorizing the program and then beginning to fund it. But there is now substantial money behind it. It will go a long way toward helping the specialty crop areas and organic agriculture in the kind of farming many of our agricultural areas are moving into. When you get at the edge of urbanization and agriculture and agricultural farmland, boutique farming, small specialty crop farming oftentimes becomes the transitional form of agriculture. To keep it profitable on the land, so we can keep the land in agricultural production, is very important, and I think that is offered in all of this. I also thank my Idaho colleague, Mike Crapo, who has worked a long while on making the Endangered Species Act and those private properties that care for endangered habitat--to have a relationship, to have an advantage, to incentivize landowners to appreciate the reality of having an endangered species on their property. He has done that. Our colleagues have recognized it. It is very important we do that. I could go on a great deal more about the programs that are there: the commodity programs that create a vital safety net for our wheat, barley, peas, lentils, chickpeas, oil seeds, sugar, wool products, and so on; conservation programs that are adjusted and important. A great deal of effort has been focused on energy over the last several years and agriculture's role in that. It is not by accident that this bill has a title that recognizes energy, and that being a part of--a very valuable part of--American agriculture. To transition dollars out of a mature market in corn-based ethanol into cellulosics is a major step and a correct step in the right direction. My time is up, but I want to thank my colleagues for the effort at hand. We had a solid vote out of the House last night. I think we are going to have a strong vote in the Senate today on this conference report. Let me say in closing, to the White House and to our President: Mr. President, you and your people have been at the table working on this program with us for well over a year. It is time you recognize the value of this program, what has been put into new agricultural policy, and support us in that effort. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. CRAIG

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

Mr. CRAIG. Madam President, let me also ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak as in morning business.

Mr. CRAIG. Madam President, I thank the chairman because of the activity we are involved in on the floor with the legislation that he is shepherding at this moment.

Mr. CRAIG. Madam President, the reason I am speaking at this moment on the floor is that an event happened this week in Bonneville County, ID, in southeastern Idaho, that I think is significant not only to this Nation but ultimately to the world. A global nuclear service company selected that area of our country in my State to site a $2 billion uranium enrichment facility on a 400-acre farm west of Idaho Falls on Highway 20, a location that is very near the birthplace of global nuclear power and the nuclear industry. In 1951, the first light bulb was lit by nuclear power in Arco, ID. Of course, while that is a little known historical fact, the actual reactor itself is now a national historic location, so designated by the late President Lyndon Johnson a good number of years ago. Since that time forward, over 50 prototypes of nuclear reactors have been designed at the Idaho Nuclear Laboratory and our first nuclear plant for a submarine. In fact, I often laughingly say that out in a big bathtub in the middle of the high deserts of Idaho is a nuclear sub and that many who train to operate our nuclear Navy trained in Idaho. It was because of that significance and the relationship that Areva, this global company, could have with our national laboratory facilities that they sited this nuclear service company there and their enrichment plant. Areva, the company, will employ, at a peak during construction, nearly 1,000 workers over an 8-year period. When operational, the plant will employ some 250 full-time workers, with a total annual salary of approximately $15 million. The plant will provide over $5 billion to the local economy of southeastern Idaho over the next 30 years. The enrichment plant could be the first of many nuclear partnerships that Areva will have in the United States and with Idaho. The next generation nuclear plant being designed at the Idaho lab right now allows and puts Areva into an alliance relationship. UniStar, which some who track the nuclear industry know about, is looking at an opportunity in Idaho, and Areva and Constellation and other major energy companies of the world are involved in that. My colleagues have heard us talk about NGNP which, of course, is a nuclear global energy partnership. Once again, Areva is a part of that. Over the last year, I, my staff, and the Idaho congressional delegation have worked with Areva. Because they showed interest in siting in Idaho or Washington or Ohio or New Mexico or Texas, we began to work with them to show them what Idaho had to offer, not only in a relationship with our national lab but a phenomenally talented workforce that is capable of doing the kind of work they need done. We worked very closely with the office of Gov. Butch Otter. As a result of those relationships, we began to work with the Idaho legislature to provide an economic incentives package for this kind of development. We also worked with the Idaho Department of Commerce and Industry, with the city of Idaho Falls, ID, which has always had a very positive working relationship with the National Nuclear Laboratory that is located just miles from that city. Those are the kinds of partnerships the State of Idaho, the City of Idaho Falls, the Governor, the Idaho legislature, and the Idaho congressional delegation were able to put together that finally brought Areva to recognize the tremendous opportunity that rests in siting a world-class facility such as this in our State. I mentioned a moment ago and got unanimous consent that Colin Jones be allowed on the floor if he chose. Colin is a fellow from the Idaho National Lab and he worked in a very close relationship with this company to make sure they had all the answers when they needed them to make this happen. Now, why is all this significant? Right now, we are talking about climate change. We are talking about trying to rebuild an industry in our country and for the world that we nearly lost, and that is the nuclear industry. For 20 years, this country, for some reason, grew very fearful of the idea that we might advance generation of electricity by new nuclear plants, and we literally stopped. In so stopping it, we nearly lost the industry itself and the ability of the industry to build new nuclear reactors, tied with generating facilities for electrical purposes. Along came the growing concern of climate change and the emission of greenhouse gases and other environmental concerns that caused us, in many instances, to stop producing energy in the traditional ways we had produced it. Nearly 60 percent of the energy in this country is produced by coal- fired generation facilities. Many of those today are emitters of CO2, and there are some who believe it is the concentration of CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere that may be causing an increased or an accelerated rate of warming of our globe. While we are trying to make those changes, the rest of the world rushes headlong. In fact, China is a perfect example of bringing at least one new coal-fired plant on line per week to supply its growing energy and economic needs. We had always been criticized for being the larger emitter of greenhouse gas because we were 25 percent of the world economy. Now, China, a country that we didn't think would become the larger emitter for several years, this last June measured as the largest greenhouse gas-polluting Nation in the world. My point is quite simple. The need for new environmental and clean energy technology today is absolutely critical, and building the infrastructure that can supply us with abundant energy is even more important. If our country is going to continue to grow, it has to have an abundant supply of all sources of energy. We have seen what happened just in the last several months as we have watched prices of gas at the pump go up to the level they are today, the shudder that has gone out from the consuming public, and the political reaction in Washington as we chase ourselves in circles trying to find an excuse to blame somebody for the inaction of the Congress over the last 20 years in the area of production and refinement and the overall development of energy itself. The reason Areva's decision to site a facility not just in Idaho but in this country--a uranium enrichment plant--is a process that is key toward building the fuel to supply a nuclear reactor because that one technology that is available today beyond wind, beyond solar, to supply clean energy to the market is nuclear. While Sun is intermittent and solar is intermittent, nuclear reactors supply a strong base load of electricity to the American grid. While we struggle with the technologies for clean coal, while we look to build other technologies, the one we can build today in a very demanding energy market is nuclear. Yet in a nuclear conference in Chicago just this week Excelon and other companies that are major utilities said because of this whole new demand the price of building a nuclear reactor has doubled from maybe $4 billion per single plant to now $8 billion or $9 billion. This is the bottom line: The cost of energy is going to continue to go up until we bring online the technologies and the infrastructure to supply those technologies to continue to build an abundant energy supply for our country. So that is why I came to the floor today to talk about what got announced in Idaho this Tuesday, and that was a world-class, $2 billion uranium enrichment plant by the Areva company and International Utilities. I am proud of my State and all of the people in my State for the work they have done to accomplish this. I compliment them all and wanted them to be a part of the Congressional Record. I yield the floor.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that Colin Jones, a congressional fellow in my office from the Idaho National Laboratory, have floor privileges during the duration of my comments.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, and I will not object, I came to the floor last night to speak to a time extension for our colleagues on the farm bill.

Mr. CRAIG. I am speaking to the unanimous consent request and the extension, and I think it is appropriate at this time. It appears our colleagues have labored hard and long. We believe we have a compromise for the farm bill. This gives them adequate time to refine it and bring it to floor as a conference report for final consideration.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. I will be happy to yield to the Senator from Florida.

Mr. CRAIG. I am more than happy to.

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, during consideration of the reauthorization of the FAA, a great deal of conversation has gone on on this floor about energy and the cost of energy. It is appropriate that we talk about it at a time when our airlines are struggling and we are attempting to reauthorize FAA. Part of the reason our airlines are struggling is the unprecedented aviation fuel prices. It is only one of the many reasons they are having difficulty today, but clearly the doubling of their costs are putting at risk their corporate structure and their ability to serve an American public. But it is not just the airlines that are at risk. Every American consumer and every business is finding the tremendous increase in the cost of energy a significant problem. For example, just a few minutes ago, my BlackBerry buzzed. My wife Suzanne is out in Boise, ID. I got an e-mail about the temperature, which is 31 degrees in Boise this morning. At the bottom of the e-mail, she said regular gas just hit $3.53 a gallon. That is a lot of money. Now, that is not as much as others are paying across our Nation, but when an Idahoan fills their tank and they go from community to community, oftentimes they drive hundreds of miles--not just a few miles but literally hundreds of miles. Idaho is a great big Western State. Our distance is oftentimes a significant part of our commerce and our ability to conduct economic activity, and fuel prices have always been significant and important. Idaho is also a large agricultural State. The cost of the production of foods today has gone up dramatically because of the cost of diesel, if you will, the cost of fertilizer, and all of those components that go into the production of food and the transporting of the food. Part of the reason food is going up on the retail shelf of the supermarket today is the cost of getting it there, let alone the cost of producing and refining it. Many truckers are saying that just to fill up their truck now can be as much as $1,000. They are not able to change their freight rates to adjust as quickly to the high cost of energy, and they simply have to--this is the term--``eat it.'' Well, they cannot afford to eat it. Oftentimes, those trucks are simply turning off their motors and sitting idle. So the impact of energy costs on our economy can be dramatic. I came to the floor yesterday to talk about it and to say that, in large part, the American consumer, in their frustration, is saying: Whom do we blame? I don't think they have to look any further than the U.S. Congress and the failure of this Congress--the House and Senate--over the last 20 years to do the things that were necessary to continue production, to ensure refinery capacity, to ensure exploration and the development of reserves, while we were doing all of the other things in conservation, in CAFE standards, assuring that we had a new form of transportation energy. But, no, we have failed to do the right things, and as a result of that, the American consumer is, in fact, paying a great deal for our failure. What do we do to change that? Instead of just wringing our hands, there are all kinds of ideas out there about changing it. Some would suggest that you just tax the big oil companies; if you just tax those big oil companies and put that money somewhere else, that will solve the problem. There is an old adage in economics that is quite simple: You usually get less of that which you tax. In other words, the higher you tax something, the less you are going to get from it. Do you want to, by taxation, nationalize America's independent oil companies? Is that a way to get production and more oil and gas at the pump? Remember, there are not any gas lines out there today. There aren't the kinds of lines we saw in the 1970s during the last energy crisis. There is supply. It is the cost of supply that we are frustrated about and the impact that cost is having on our economy. Here is one of the problems we have. I talked about a Congress that failed, a public policy that failed, a policy that failed to continue to produce as demand went dramatically up--not just in this country but around the world. The blue line on this chart is the supply line. As you can see, in the 1990s it peaked and it began to drop. That is, of course, U.S. production versus U.S. consumption. In other words, as a nation we began to produce less and less crude oil into our refineries. Today, we are near 60 percent dependent upon other sources of energy, from outside our country, to come into our refineries and to go out of the gas pump to the consumer. In fact, you can see that the red line-- demand--has gone up dramatically as our economy continued to grow over the years, as more people were driving cars, and as more cars consumed more gas. The only way you are going to keep price down is when the supply line and the demand line are somewhat in concert, somewhat tracking each other. That simply stopped in the 1950s, as we began to grow increasingly dependent upon foreign nations. We passed the Energy Policy Act of 2005, but it wasn't really directed at transportation fuels. Last year, we added to that and we began to address transportation fuels. We brought ethanol into the market by subsidizing that and allowing our farmers, and those who take corn from them, to produce ethanol to become increasingly effective in the market. That is working to some degree. In fact, it is estimated today that 20 cents would be put on the price of gas at the pump if it wasn't for national and rural ethanol production. Now, it has caused other problems. Some would argue that it has caused problems in the food chain, and it probably has. I think the marketplace will work that out. So there are things we have been doing. But I think, most importantly, it is the things we have not done. It is the failure of our country to recognize the increased dependency we were developing from other countries around the world. I think that has become one of our greater frustrations. While you have some on the campaign trail today talking about taxing the big oil companies, the big oil companies don't own the oil. It is the cartels. It is the nations. It is not oil companies, it is oil countries that we have to worry about today. I didn't coin the phrase, but I use the phrase quite often, ``petro- nationalism.'' If I am a country and I am small but I am sitting on a pool of oil, I become rich overnight. The reason I become rich overnight is because Americans will come and buy my oil. If I want to form a cartel and I want to control the supply of that oil, then they will pay even more for it because Americans quit producing for themselves. Here is a statistic that I find fascinating, and some have said that if we don't stop this in the near future, we will spend our Nation into poverty as we spend all of this money on oil. We are now spending well over $1 billion a day outside our country to buy oil. That is a phenomenal figure. Our neighbors to the north, we send them $280 million a day; to Saudi Arabia, we send $190 million a day; to Venezuela and Dictator Chavez, we send $160 million; to Nigeria, we send $140 million; to Algeria, we send $70 million. Do Venezuela and Nigeria and Algeria have our best interests in mind? I don't believe so. They have their own interests in mind. We are literally making them wealthy because we are buying their oil. Many of us talk about energy independence, and last year when we passed that legislation I was talking about, the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, we did some very good things in it. As I said, we looked at increasing production by conservation, by CAFE standards, and by renewable fuels standards. We said to the automobile industry: You have to design cars that burn less, and in doing that, we will improve our overall position on dependency by dropping it significantly by 2030. But it takes a long time to redesign a car, make it efficient, produce it, and then sell it into the market. Those are the realities of a problem where you cannot just fix this tomorrow. We cannot just change the price of gas at the pump tomorrow because we cannot fix the underlying problems instantly. But as I said earlier, if Congress is at fault, the problem in this, then Congress ought to be doing more about it. And it is not just wringing your hands and wanting to tax. It is doing things that get us back into production while we learn to conserve, while we have cleaner automobiles, while we look at alternative fuel sources, while we get more hybrid cars and electric plug-in cars in the market. That is all coming, but that is 10 years, 15 years, and 20 years out. What do we do in the interim? I believe there is something we can do, and we ought to do. In America today and in our territorial waters we are sitting still on a lot of oil, a dramatic amount of oil. Some would argue under old U.S. Geological Survey analysis that we are sitting on at least 100 billion barrels of oil. If we are sitting on it, why aren't we using it? Once again, the politics of Congress and the politics of States enter into the debate. A couple of years ago, I began to talk about an issue I called the no zone. What was I talking about at the time? I was talking about that area of the United States and Outer Continental Shelf of waters that we knew had large volumes of oil. But California said no. We said no in Alaska. We have said no off the east coast. We have said no around Florida. Because we have said no, the American consumer today is paying the highest price for gasoline ever. That is a fact. It is a simple reality. Our dependency on foreign nations grew. As I just expressed, over 60 percent of our oil is coming from outside the continental United States when we know there is a significant amount of oil outside the continent. When I introduced this chart a couple of years ago and I began to talk about the no zone and there were a few folks wringing their hands, we went to work. We went to work and we looked at oil sales in the gulf and the development in the Outer Continental Shelf in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Thanks to our effort, we did something. The American consumer needs to know we went into lease sale 181 off the coast of Florida. We looked at and found a tremendous amount of capability there and we began to develop it and we are developing it today. We have allowed other lease sales to occur. That is tremendously important. We are beginning to tap some of that oil supply that we know is out there and about which we ought to be doing more. That is what I think is important, and that is on what I think we ought to be focused. To sit and wring our hands and tell the American people there is nothing we can do, and all we are going to do is go out and tax and tax, which will not produce--we ought to be talking about production. The legislation I have introduced today talks about production. It talks about production in a positive way. I mentioned a few moments ago the action we took last year in lease sale 181. We were successful in bringing Florida along in their cooperation and understanding, which was phenomenally important. We know there are millions of barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of gas out there. What is most significant about oil development in this region is that the infrastructure is in place. What do I mean? Refineries, pipelines, capacity. We don't have to wait 5, 6, and 7 years just to build the infrastructure. It is there, and the oil is under it. That is why we did lease sale 181. But there is a lot more we can and should do. That is why the legislation I have introduced today does just that. It doesn't start drilling, but it says a couple of things that are quite simple. As we have heard others talk about the fact we are putting money into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve at this time, we are buying oil off the market and putting it underground in the salt domes in the South for a time of necessity, I suggest we stop doing that for the time being, and I suggest we take that money we are using for those purposes and we modernize our inventory of our known reserves, our unknown reserves, and our capacity because the true SPR--SPR means Strategic Petroleum Reserve--the greatest reserve in the world is to know what we have, where it is, and how we can access it. That is one of the most important things we can do for the consumers of America today. I know it frustrated some of my Floridian friends when I talked about our inability because of policy to allow our companies to go in to the northern area off Cuba and drill because Cuba was allowing other countries to come in and develop. Just 90 miles--45 miles until you hit the zone--90 miles off our coast on the extreme of the Florida Keys there are foreign nations drilling oil today. India is there, and India has now discovered oil. China is there, and China has now discovered oil. We are not there today because our policy is 45 years old and still says: No, no, Americans cannot get involved with Cuba, even though we believe Cuba has phenomenal potential oil reserves. Shame on us. America, listen up: It is Government policy today in large part that has caused you the pain at the pump, and it is very important that Government act today to reduce that pain. The legislation I am offering would create an inventory that would do just that. It would allow us to know what our reserves are. We have moratoriums off the coast of Florida, and yet we know there are huge oil reserves out there. Why are we not doing something about it? Well, it is local politics. It is national politics. It is green politics. It is politics. That is why we have the price of oil we have today, nothing more and nothing less but politics, and our economy is growing more fragile by the moment because of it. Is it demagogic to say that? I don't think so. I don't think so at all. I pulled out the sign, the no zone. The no is a result of politics, whether it is the politics of the State of Florida or the politics of the State of California or whether it is the national politics of this Senate that will not allow for us to drill for the reserves in what is known as ANWR, the Alaskan national wildlife area, where we know there is phenomenal abundance. It was all done, all of this no, this political no was all done in the name of the environment. There was some reason at the time these old ideas were put in place. We had the oil spills off the coast of Santa Barbara, and as a result of that, Americans were concerned. So California said no more drilling there, and then we followed up. A few years ago, we had a great national tragedy in the gulf area of our country. That tragedy was called Katrina. She came rolling up and through the gulf. We know what she did in New Orleans. She did something else nobody wants to talk about today. She knocked offline hundreds of oil wells that were producing out in the gulf--knocked them off. She even set some of the drilling rigs adrift. But not a drop of oil was spilled. Why? Because modern technology today and American know-how and a concern for protecting our environment has produced one of the cleanest deepwater oil drilling industries in the world. We are producing in this area of the gulf off the coast of Texas, off the coast of Louisiana, off the coast of Mississippi, and with 181, we just brought into or soon will be bringing into production off the coast of Alabama. Why not off the coast of Florida? Why not off the coast of California? Why not off the coast of the Carolinas, Virginia, and on up where we believe there is significant gas and oil reserves? It is old politics of the past that is caught in the ghosts of Santa Barbara of decades ago. Yet our technology today will take us there, but our politics will not take us there. That is why I have introduced the legislation I have. The least we can do is inventory with modern technology to know where our oil is. I notice the president of Shell said in a press release the other day: If Americans sent a message to the world that we were going to start drilling our own reserves and bringing them into production, the price of gas at the pump would drop dramatically, 25 or 30 cents a gallon or more. That is significant stuff, both short term and long term, to the economy of this country. I say to my colleagues, I say to our country, and I say to our consumers: Is it a time to act? You bet it is a time to act. While some suggest we tax the big boys out of existence, we do not produce anything by doing that, while we can create all kinds of other structures. Do we produce more, do we build refinery capacity, and do we assure the American public while we are transitioning into hybrid cars and electric cars and hydrogen cars and all of those kinds of activities that we support and are doing research and development on today that they will still have an abundant supply of energy? That is our job. That is the job we failed in doing over the last good number of years, and that is the job we ought to stop and start over and do it right and reward the States that are the boundary States to the production of the Outer Continental Shelf. We have huge oil reserves in this country, and yet we are letting the rest of the world have our wealth. Why not keep our wealth in this country by the development of these reserves? The first step is the legislation I have introduced today. Let's at least in the next few years do the inventory, the modern, sophisticated seismographic inventory that USGS can do to let us know how much is out there because what we know today is simply old stuff. Those efforts were done years ago. Already out at the edge of this green line in the deepest waters in the gulf under the newest drilling technologies, we are finding phenomenal oil that just a few years ago we did not even know we could get to. We are getting to it. We are producing it. It is clean, and it is environmentally sound. We ought to be doing that everywhere else. I have joined my colleague from Louisiana who just came to the floor, who introduced legislation that says when oil gets to $125 a barrel, we ought to give the States the option to allow the development of the Outer Continental Shelf off their State. You darn bet we ought to, and those States ought to be rewarded for it. There is so much this country can continue to do instead of standing still and wringing our hands and trying to blame somebody else for our failure over the last 20 years to continue to allow this great country to produce for its consumers.

Mr. CRAIG. I will be happy to yield to the senior Senator from Virginia.

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I thank the senior Senator from Virginia. He is absolutely right. When I think oil, I think gas because, obviously, in lease sale 181 and in other areas where there is gas, there is oftentimes oil, and oftentimes where there is gas, there is no oil. We believe that to be the case off the coast of Virginia. The Senator from Virginia has been a leader, without doubt, in that very kind of effort to allow at least the seismographic effort, the exploration that would determine for us the kinds of reserves we have and may have for the future. I thank the Senator from Virginia for his leadership in this area.

Mr. CRAIG. Without question it is there today, and we know that. We are the leaders of clean drilling in deep water for the world, no question.

Mr. CRAIG. I do recognize that. I do appreciate what our military has said. I also understand a few years ago we took offline a naval training area in Vieques. Why? It was no longer a popular thing to do. If there is oil under this area--and we believe there is--and it is a training area, why couldn't we train here? Or why couldn't we train over here? The reality is, what is at this time more valuable? It is very easy to say don't do it. Or is it possible to say can we do both? There are a good many experts and professionals in the field who said that. We can have a military training area, and guess what we also can do. We can pull the oil out from under. How do you do it? Quite simply. You put a location, a location and you slant drill thousands of feet and you do not have to pepper the area with all kinds of drilling rigs. Today's technology is amazing. It is politically comfortable, I appreciate that, and I understand the State's politics and I do not deny that--but this is not the oil of the State of Florida. This is the oil of the citizens of our country. It is the politics of Florida today that deny us the oil, not the politics of America. So it is a simple question: Should we inventory it? Should we know what it is? And should we, under modern technology, reward the State of Florida for the potential benefit? It is ironic we did not move at all to stop drilling 45 miles off the Florida coast. We could even take a 45-mile zone here, or more, consistent with what is going on in Florida today and still protect this. But the Senator is right. It is a military area. Guess what. I am kind of a modern guy. I believe in technology taking us where we can go and having the best of both worlds. But right now the American consumer has the worst of the world we have created for them--a scarcity of a supply that is driving costs and impacting our economy in a significant way. I suggest the legislation I have introduced, while it will not impact the State of Florida, will give us a base and an understanding and knowledge of what we have as a reserve. We are spending millions of dollars a day to buy oil and put it in the ground when, in fact, we ought to spend a few million dollars and find out about all the oil we already have.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Madam President, what is the current state of the floor?

Mr. CRAIG. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak as in morning business.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, during consideration of the reauthorization of the FAA, a great deal of conversation has gone on on this floor about energy and the cost of energy. It is appropriate that we talk about it at a time when our airlines are struggling and we are attempting to reauthorize FAA. Part of the reason our airlines are struggling is the unprecedented aviation fuel prices. It is only one of the many reasons they are having difficulty today, but clearly the doubling of their costs are putting at risk their corporate structure and their ability to serve an American public. But it is not just the airlines that are at risk. Every American consumer and every business is finding the tremendous increase in the cost of energy a significant problem. For example, just a few minutes ago, my BlackBerry buzzed. My wife Suzanne is out in Boise, ID. I got an e-mail about the temperature, which is 31 degrees in Boise this morning. At the bottom of the e-mail, she said regular gas just hit $3.53 a gallon. That is a lot of money. Now, that is not as much as others are paying across our Nation, but when an Idahoan fills their tank and they go from community to community, oftentimes they drive hundreds of miles--not just a few miles but literally hundreds of miles. Idaho is a great big Western State. Our distance is oftentimes a significant part of our commerce and our ability to conduct economic activity, and fuel prices have always been significant and important. Idaho is also a large agricultural State. The cost of the production of foods today has gone up dramatically because of the cost of diesel, if you will, the cost of fertilizer, and all of those components that go into the production of food and the transporting of the food. Part of the reason food is going up on the retail shelf of the supermarket today is the cost of getting it there, let alone the cost of producing and refining it. Many truckers are saying that just to fill up their truck now can be as much as $1,000. They are not able to change their freight rates to adjust as quickly to the high cost of energy, and they simply have to--this is the term--``eat it.'' Well, they cannot afford to eat it. Oftentimes, those trucks are simply turning off their motors and sitting idle. So the impact of energy costs on our economy can be dramatic. I came to the floor yesterday to talk about it and to say that, in large part, the American consumer, in their frustration, is saying: Whom do we blame? I don't think they have to look any further than the U.S. Congress and the failure of this Congress--the House and Senate--over the last 20 years to do the things that were necessary to continue production, to ensure refinery capacity, to ensure exploration and the development of reserves, while we were doing all of the other things in conservation, in CAFE standards, assuring that we had a new form of transportation energy. But, no, we have failed to do the right things, and as a result of that, the American consumer is, in fact, paying a great deal for our failure. What do we do to change that? Instead of just wringing our hands, there are all kinds of ideas out there about changing it. Some would suggest that you just tax the big oil companies; if you just tax those big oil companies and put that money somewhere else, that will solve the problem. There is an old adage in economics that is quite simple: You usually get less of that which you tax. In other words, the higher you tax something, the less you are going to get from it. Do you want to, by taxation, nationalize America's independent oil companies? Is that a way to get production and more oil and gas at the pump? Remember, there are not any gas lines out there today. There aren't the kinds of lines we saw in the 1970s during the last energy crisis. There is supply. It is the cost of supply that we are frustrated about and the impact that cost is having on our economy. Here is one of the problems we have. I talked about a Congress that failed, a public policy that failed, a policy that failed to continue to produce as demand went dramatically up--not just in this country but around the world. The blue line on this chart is the supply line. As you can see, in the 1990s it peaked and it began to drop. That is, of course, U.S. production versus U.S. consumption. In other words, as a nation we began to produce less and less crude oil into our refineries. Today, we are near 60 percent dependent upon other sources of energy, from outside our country, to come into our refineries and to go out of the gas pump to the consumer. In fact, you can see that the red line-- demand--has gone up dramatically as our economy continued to grow over the years, as more people were driving cars, and as more cars consumed more gas. The only way you are going to keep price down is when the supply line and the demand line are somewhat in concert, somewhat tracking each other. That simply stopped in the 1950s, as we began to grow increasingly dependent upon foreign nations. We passed the Energy Policy Act of 2005, but it wasn't really directed at transportation fuels. Last year, we added to that and we began to address transportation fuels. We brought ethanol into the market by subsidizing that and allowing our farmers, and those who take corn from them, to produce ethanol to become increasingly effective in the market. That is working to some degree. In fact, it is estimated today that 20 cents would be put on the price of gas at the pump if it wasn't for national and rural ethanol production. Now, it has caused other problems. Some would argue that it has caused problems in the food chain, and it probably has. I think the marketplace will work that out. So there are things we have been doing. But I think, most importantly, it is the things we have not done. It is the failure of our country to recognize the increased dependency we were developing from other countries around the world. I think that has become one of our greater frustrations. While you have some on the campaign trail today talking about taxing the big oil companies, the big oil companies don't own the oil. It is the cartels. It is the nations. It is not oil companies, it is oil countries that we have to worry about today. I didn't coin the phrase, but I use the phrase quite often, ``petro- nationalism.'' If I am a country and I am small but I am sitting on a pool of oil, I become rich overnight. The reason I become rich overnight is because Americans will come and buy my oil. If I want to form a cartel and I want to control the supply of that oil, then they will pay even more for it because Americans quit producing for themselves. Here is a statistic that I find fascinating, and some have said that if we don't stop this in the near future, we will spend our Nation into poverty as we spend all of this money on oil. We are now spending well over $1 billion a day outside our country to buy oil. That is a phenomenal figure. Our neighbors to the north, we send them $280 million a day; to Saudi Arabia, we send $190 million a day; to Venezuela and Dictator Chavez, we send $160 million; to Nigeria, we send $140 million; to Algeria, we send $70 million. Do Venezuela and Nigeria and Algeria have our best interests in mind? I don't believe so. They have their own interests in mind. We are literally making them wealthy because we are buying their oil. Many of us talk about energy independence, and last year when we passed that legislation I was talking about, the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, we did some very good things in it. As I said, we looked at increasing production by conservation, by CAFE standards, and by renewable fuels standards. We said to the automobile industry: You have to design cars that burn less, and in doing that, we will improve our overall position on dependency by dropping it significantly by 2030. But it takes a long time to redesign a car, make it efficient, produce it, and then sell it into the market. Those are the realities of a problem where you cannot just fix this tomorrow. We cannot just change the price of gas at the pump tomorrow because we cannot fix the underlying problems instantly. But as I said earlier, if Congress is at fault, the problem in this, then Congress ought to be doing more about it. And it is not just wringing your hands and wanting to tax. It is doing things that get us back into production while we learn to conserve, while we have cleaner automobiles, while we look at alternative fuel sources, while we get more hybrid cars and electric plug-in cars in the market. That is all coming, but that is 10 years, 15 years, and 20 years out. What do we do in the interim? I believe there is something we can do, and we ought to do. In America today and in our territorial waters we are sitting still on a lot of oil, a dramatic amount of oil. Some would argue under old U.S. Geological Survey analysis that we are sitting on at least 100 billion barrels of oil. If we are sitting on it, why aren't we using it? Once again, the politics of Congress and the politics of States enter into the debate. A couple of years ago, I began to talk about an issue I called the no zone. What was I talking about at the time? I was talking about that area of the United States and Outer Continental Shelf of waters that we knew had large volumes of oil. But California said no. We said no in Alaska. We have said no off the east coast. We have said no around Florida. Because we have said no, the American consumer today is paying the highest price for gasoline ever. That is a fact. It is a simple reality. Our dependency on foreign nations grew. As I just expressed, over 60 percent of our oil is coming from outside the continental United States when we know there is a significant amount of oil outside the continent. When I introduced this chart a couple of years ago and I began to talk about the no zone and there were a few folks wringing their hands, we went to work. We went to work and we looked at oil sales in the gulf and the development in the Outer Continental Shelf in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Thanks to our effort, we did something. The American consumer needs to know we went into lease sale 181 off the coast of Florida. We looked at and found a tremendous amount of capability there and we began to develop it and we are developing it today. We have allowed other lease sales to occur. That is tremendously important. We are beginning to tap some of that oil supply that we know is out there and about which we ought to be doing more. That is what I think is important, and that is on what I think we ought to be focused. To sit and wring our hands and tell the American people there is nothing we can do, and all we are going to do is go out and tax and tax, which will not produce--we ought to be talking about production. The legislation I have introduced today talks about production. It talks about production in a positive way. I mentioned a few moments ago the action we took last year in lease sale 181. We were successful in bringing Florida along in their cooperation and understanding, which was phenomenally important. We know there are millions of barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of gas out there. What is most significant about oil development in this region is that the infrastructure is in place. What do I mean? Refineries, pipelines, capacity. We don't have to wait 5, 6, and 7 years just to build the infrastructure. It is there, and the oil is under it. That is why we did lease sale 181. But there is a lot more we can and should do. That is why the legislation I have introduced today does just that. It doesn't start drilling, but it says a couple of things that are quite simple. As we have heard others talk about the fact we are putting money into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve at this time, we are buying oil off the market and putting it underground in the salt domes in the South for a time of necessity, I suggest we stop doing that for the time being, and I suggest we take that money we are using for those purposes and we modernize our inventory of our known reserves, our unknown reserves, and our capacity because the true SPR--SPR means Strategic Petroleum Reserve--the greatest reserve in the world is to know what we have, where it is, and how we can access it. That is one of the most important things we can do for the consumers of America today. I know it frustrated some of my Floridian friends when I talked about our inability because of policy to allow our companies to go in to the northern area off Cuba and drill because Cuba was allowing other countries to come in and develop. Just 90 miles--45 miles until you hit the zone--90 miles off our coast on the extreme of the Florida Keys there are foreign nations drilling oil today. India is there, and India has now discovered oil. China is there, and China has now discovered oil. We are not there today because our policy is 45 years old and still says: No, no, Americans cannot get involved with Cuba, even though we believe Cuba has phenomenal potential oil reserves. Shame on us. America, listen up: It is Government policy today in large part that has caused you the pain at the pump, and it is very important that Government act today to reduce that pain. The legislation I am offering would create an inventory that would do just that. It would allow us to know what our reserves are. We have moratoriums off the coast of Florida, and yet we know there are huge oil reserves out there. Why are we not doing something about it? Well, it is local politics. It is national politics. It is green politics. It is politics. That is why we have the price of oil we have today, nothing more and nothing less but politics, and our economy is growing more fragile by the moment because of it. Is it demagogic to say that? I don't think so. I don't think so at all. I pulled out the sign, the no zone. The no is a result of politics, whether it is the politics of the State of Florida or the politics of the State of California or whether it is the national politics of this Senate that will not allow for us to drill for the reserves in what is known as ANWR, the Alaskan national wildlife area, where we know there is phenomenal abundance. It was all done, all of this no, this political no was all done in the name of the environment. There was some reason at the time these old ideas were put in place. We had the oil spills off the coast of Santa Barbara, and as a result of that, Americans were concerned. So California said no more drilling there, and then we followed up. A few years ago, we had a great national tragedy in the gulf area of our country. That tragedy was called Katrina. She came rolling up and through the gulf. We know what she did in New Orleans. She did something else nobody wants to talk about today. She knocked offline hundreds of oil wells that were producing out in the gulf--knocked them off. She even set some of the drilling rigs adrift. But not a drop of oil was spilled. Why? Because modern technology today and American know-how and a concern for protecting our environment has produced one of the cleanest deepwater oil drilling industries in the world. We are producing in this area of the gulf off the coast of Texas, off the coast of Louisiana, off the coast of Mississippi, and with 181, we just brought into or soon will be bringing into production off the coast of Alabama. Why not off the coast of Florida? Why not off the coast of California? Why not off the coast of the Carolinas, Virginia, and on up where we believe there is significant gas and oil reserves? It is old politics of the past that is caught in the ghosts of Santa Barbara of decades ago. Yet our technology today will take us there, but our politics will not take us there. That is why I have introduced the legislation I have. The least we can do is inventory with modern technology to know where our oil is. I notice the president of Shell said in a press release the other day: If Americans sent a message to the world that we were going to start drilling our own reserves and bringing them into production, the price of gas at the pump would drop dramatically, 25 or 30 cents a gallon or more. That is significant stuff, both short term and long term, to the economy of this country. I say to my colleagues, I say to our country, and I say to our consumers: Is it a time to act? You bet it is a time to act. While some suggest we tax the big boys out of existence, we do not produce anything by doing that, while we can create all kinds of other structures. Do we produce more, do we build refinery capacity, and do we assure the American public while we are transitioning into hybrid cars and electric cars and hydrogen cars and all of those kinds of activities that we support and are doing research and development on today that they will still have an abundant supply of energy? That is our job. That is the job we failed in doing over the last good number of years, and that is the job we ought to stop and start over and do it right and reward the States that are the boundary States to the production of the Outer Continental Shelf. We have huge oil reserves in this country, and yet we are letting the rest of the world have our wealth. Why not keep our wealth in this country by the development of these reserves? The first step is the legislation I have introduced today. Let's at least in the next few years do the inventory, the modern, sophisticated seismographic inventory that USGS can do to let us know how much is out there because what we know today is simply old stuff. Those efforts were done years ago. Already out at the edge of this green line in the deepest waters in the gulf under the newest drilling technologies, we are finding phenomenal oil that just a few years ago we did not even know we could get to. We are getting to it. We are producing it. It is clean, and it is environmentally sound. We ought to be doing that everywhere else. I have joined my colleague from Louisiana who just came to the floor, who introduced legislation that says when oil gets to $125 a barrel, we ought to give the States the option to allow the development of the Outer Continental Shelf off their State. You darn bet we ought to, and those States ought to be rewarded for it. There is so much this country can continue to do instead of standing still and wringing our hands and trying to blame somebody else for our failure over the last 20 years to continue to allow this great country to produce for its consumers.