Peter DeFazio

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. In conclusion, I think we have heard arguments on both sides. I am convinced more by the arguments I have heard on our side. I don't believe it is an undue burden on States. I live in a mosquito control district, and 3 years ago, they had tremendous concerns. Last year, they went ahead with their regular program, and this year, they are going ahead with their regular permit, under a general permit which they filed online. They said it wasn't a big deal. So I don't know where the millions of dollars comes in, unless we have States or applicators or other who don't own computers or whatever. I can't figure out where that number comes from. So I don't believe we have created an egregious problem. Given some of the past problems and the number of impaired waterways in my State, we just want to know where the stuff is being applied. We certainly want to be certain it is applied according to the label, but if it is not, then we have some capability of tracing it back and finding the responsible party and preventing future problems and potentially penalizing those people. With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield as much time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. Esty). (Ms. ESTY asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Well, it is Groundhog Day again here on the floor of the House of Representatives. Much of the speech we just heard actually was read 3 years ago on the floor. Three years ago, we were in a different place. There was a new pending rule. There was tremendous uncertainty whether this would be an undue burden on individuals--no, in the end, it isn't at all--on individual farmers--no, except for the largest farms over 6,000 acres--or on forestry. And no, it has not been a problem, and I have a heavily forested State. So there was tremendous uncertainty, and the House Republicans moved this legislation. Of course, it went nowhere in the Senate. Here we are 3 years later. We have been living under the permit and general permit process, and I am going to look forward to hearing some very specific problems, denials, or litigation from the other side--not maybe, there should have, could have, would have, might be stuff, because I am not aware of any. And we have asked. Now, sure, my Farm Bureau supports this. Hey, whatever. That is great. Others say sure, but it is not anything that we really have on our priority list. But, you know, here we are. Fires are burning in the West. We don't have time for a hearing or a bill to get money to the Forest Service and the Interior Department, but we do have time to do pretend legislation that isn't going anywhere in the Senate again to deal with a problem that doesn't exist. Why doesn't it exist? Well, first of all, all individuals and applications by farmers are exempt under a permit. You follow the label, you are fine. No one can sue you. Then you have, if you are a bigger applicator, if you are like someone who is paid to apply pesticides and herbicides, you have to give notice under a general permit. That is all you have to do. You file it online. Not too burdensome. Most applicators, I think, have access to a computer. Is there an approval process? No. Is there a waiting period? No. You just file it, and then you are exempt from litigation if you follow the label. So why would we have this? Well, there have been a few instances of problems, and we want to be able to track where those problems originated. So if you have a general permit out there for an industrial application or a commercial application of a certain herbicide and it starts showing up downstream with dead fish, you know probably where it came from and you can trace it back and you will probably find out that they violated the label. Now, why did this come about? Well, for a real reason: 92,000 steelhead were killed in southern Oregon because an irrigation district chose to use a powerful herbicide in its irrigation canals and they didn't follow the label in terms of the waiting period for it to degrade. They ran the water through and killed 92,000 fish. That is where this all started. So we are not saying they can't use it, they can't apply it--you know, they can--but we want to know where it is coming from. In that case, it was pretty easy to track back. The trail of dead fish led right back to the irrigation canal. In other cases of impaired waters--and I have a long list in my State, and I am sure there are other States--we are not quite sure how they got impaired or where they are being impaired, and we would have a better indication if we merely have this notice requirement. Now, there will be a lot of fear-mongering here today: ``You won't be able to use stuff on your lawn.'' ``You will be liable.'' ``It won't be available.'' No, not true. ``Farmers won't be able to apply their own herbicides and pesticides.'' No, not true. ``Very large farms, commercial applicators will not be able to use it.'' No, not true, but they will need to put a notice online they are using it, and they are supposed to follow the label. I really find it unfortunate that we are spending time on this instead of getting some additional allocation of funds to fight fires in the West. My State is burning up. Washington State is burning up. California is burning up. Other intermountain States are burning up. The Forest Service and BLM are going to run out of money this week or next. They have got all their other budgets to pay for fighting fires because they can't stop fighting the fires. They can't stop. But Congress has a bipartisan, bicameral bill agreed to by the President. There is nothing else like that in Washington, D.C., with the partisan activity around here, the conflict always between the House and the Senate. Here is a bill agreed to by Democrats and Republicans--52 Rs, 52 Ds on the bill. Here is a bill that is pending in the House and the Senate, bicameral--it is also bipartisan on that side--and it is supported by the President. But we can't find time to take action on that and get the Forest Service and BLM money this week because we are doing stuff like this about pretend problems that don't exist and scaring people who use these products legitimately. It is a very sad waste of our time. With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, the end of this week begins the August recess, or district work period. Some of us will go home working--and I am going home to a State that is on fire. We have four major fires, and many dozens of other fires are burning in Oregon, Washington, California, Nevada, and Utah. The Forest Service and the BLM have about exhausted their budget for fighting fires. They can't stop fighting fires. So they are going to have to gut their other budgets, including budgets that would mitigate future fire risk, fuel reduction, and other programs. They will also cut recreation and other things that people really care about. Congress has not seen fit to give them adequate money. There is a bipartisan, bicameral proposal, supported by the President--that is about the rarest thing in Washington, D.C., these days--to give the Forest Service and the BLM the tools they need, an adequate budget, and for these extreme fires--the 1 percent that cost 30 percent of the budget--treat those like emergencies, like we do floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes. What have the Republicans done with this? Nothing. Nada. Zip. Not one hearing. Not one mention, except in the Ryan budget, where he said he didn't support that approach; they should just gut their budgets, or we should kill some other program to pay for fighting fires.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. No, I have no requests for time. Apparently, we have done something unusual around here, created something that doesn't seem to be controversial, except among a few talking heads out there somewhere. Mr. Speaker, having no requests for time, I am happy to yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The so-called Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013, which I opposed for many reasons, but buried deep within it--you know, they were sitting down, crunching numbers. They had the Ryan-Murray budget deal, and they had to meet certain targets. They were short. You can't raise taxes around here. Well, yes, maybe you kind of can, things that are taxes that don't look like taxes. So the deal that was cut was a 125 percent increase in the TSA passenger security fee. Now, many Americans probably wouldn't object too much to a passenger security fee increase if they thought it was going to enhance passenger security, especially with better throughput for the long lines at the airports. But no, that is not where the money is going. It is just going somewhere in the Federal Treasury. Maybe it will help reduce the deficit. Maybe it will be spent on something else. No one knows. But airline passengers will pay it. A one-stop flight from Eugene to San Francisco used to be $2.50. The tax will now be $5.60. That is a pretty steep increase, and that is what really drove me to support this legislation. I am happy to talk about increased taxes and have an upfront debate about it, where it is needed and where it needs to be reformed, but these invisible things like this, where some backroom deal between a senior House Republican and a Democrat in the Senate, where they just stick it on to airline passengers, that shouldn't happen. It can happen, in part, because nobody knows. They weren't watching the debate, it was buried in the bill, and they don't see it in the required full-fare advertising. There is just one big number. Well, where does all that money go? Well, guess what, a lot of it goes to the government, and as of this week, on a one-way flight to San Francisco, another $3.10 will go to the government. So I think if we had good disclosure of the tax part, then it wouldn't be as easy for some of my colleagues to sneak that stuff through. Now, secondly, we are kind of looking at the nanny state here. Do you know what the current rule is? Well, the airlines can advertise the taxes after the full fare, the aggregate fare, but it has to be in smaller print. It has to be in smaller print. Talk about the nanny state. Give me a break. What do you think, Americans are idiots? Besides that, I have trouble with small print, and a lot of other people do too. So they are probably going to be really squinting, trying to read the small print part, where the big numbers stand out. Third, why airlines? Why did they go after the aviation industry? Whoa--were there a lot of complaints? No, there weren't. In May 2011, there were four complaints about fare advertising out of 1,062 complaints. If they really wanted the FAA to focus on things, they would look at customer service, baggage, 143, 120, boarding problems, 116, refunds, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So the FAA somehow went out in search of a problem that didn't exist; but guess what? Did they fix the problem that didn't exist? Did we go from four complaints to zero? Oops--no. Actually, May 2014, with the new full-fare advertising rule with the tiny print for government and big print for the total cost, they had 12 complaints. Complaints are up 300 percent. Now, I wonder what that is about, so I would say that this was a nanny state rule in search of a problem that didn't exist that may have created a problem that does exist. There is a whole host of issues that go to price sensitivity, many studies about that, and other things. So it is detrimental to the industry; it is, I think, confusing; and I think it is deceptive. In March, I was going to hike the Grand Canyon. I was going to rent a car that was going to sit for 7 days. I didn't want to pay a lot for a rental car to sit for 7 days. So I went on Priceline, and I bid. I got a car for $19 a day--pretty good, but I know that the next page is going to tell me what I am really going to pay. Now, any informed consumer knows that. It is prominent because you have to get finally to click and agree to the end, so you are going to see the whole thing. It is the same thing with airline tickets under this bill. You will see first what the airline is charging you. Next, you will see what the government is charging you, and then, finally, you will see what you will pay. That is just like I paid for this rental car, just like a hotel room, just like for cruises and everything else. Now, I don't want to give anybody down at DOT any ideas--or whatever other agencies have jurisdiction in those areas--because I don't want them to start thinking, well, wait a minute, maybe we need a nanny state rule too because we don't have one for rental cars and we don't have one for cruises. No, that is not my point. My point is consumers are pretty smart. We are not concealing anything here. Give us full and meaningful information, and help me prevent people sticking fees on to airline passengers that have nothing to do with aviation in secret budget deals in the future. With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, we have a crisis in firefighting funds here in the United States of America, and what has this Congress done about it? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Zero. Nada. It hasn't even held a hearing. Right now there are 11 major fires burning in Oregon, five in Washington--one the largest in the history of the State--two in Utah, two in Idaho, one in California, and one in Arizona. There are forecasts for a substantial amount of new lightning storms moving through, and that means more fires. Our resources are about at their maximum, and the Department of the Interior and the Forest Service are about to run out of funds. Now, this was predictable. The budget set by the Republicans and Paul Ryan was totally inadequate. There was a proposal, which is the rarest of things in this town, a bipartisan--Republicans and Democrats--bicameral--Senate and House--proposal supported by the President of the United States, and that was to look at what has happened over the last 10 years of the dramatic increase in the severity and the occurrence of fires, particularly in the Western United States, on public lands and to give the Forest Service a budget adequate to fight those fires year in and year out. And also, for those extraordinary fires, the ones that are pretty much unprecedented in history because of mismanagement, climate change, and a number of other things, to fight those with emergency funds just like we deal with tornadoes, hurricanes, and earthquakes. That money should not come out of the budget of the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior, because what do they have to do? Starting later this month, they are going to devastate the remainder of their budget. That means, instead of going out and reducing fuels on fires through contracts, using private contractors and mitigating the future risk of fire, they are going to have to cancel those contracts for this year because they are going to have to spend the money to fight the fires. Then, it is not only firefighting contracts they have to cancel, they have to devastate all across their budget, including recreation programs and their timber sale programs, things that bring in revenue to the Federal Government. Any State that has Federal lands administered by the Department of the Interior or the Forest Service-- most of the States in the Union, much more of an impact in certain States than others--will see a detrimental impact because the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior are going to have to rob their budgets to pay for the costs of these fires. It also means that we didn't have as many people pre-deployed; we didn't have as much equipment pre-deployed; and we didn't have all the resources we needed ready. We also need a whole new firefighting fleet. We are using World War II aircraft. They are kind of at the end of their useful life. And we are now pressing into service planes that are not particularly efficient at fighting fires because we don't have a fleet of planes, a modern fleet of planes, to assist our firefighters to help save their lives on the ground and help save the lives of people in the communities that are affected. And what has this House of Representatives done? Nothing. Not even a hearing. Now, we can blather on forever about all sorts of things. We can have 50 investigations of this or that day in and day out. But can we take an action on something that is staring us in the face, which is the forest fire crisis in the Western United States right now? Come on. Wake up and smell the smoke before it is too late. Take action. Pass this bicameral, bipartisan reform supported by the President of the United States. Give us the resources we need to fight these fires and to prevent future fires so we won't have more years like this.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, we can pretend that we care about the future of America and its transportation system. We used to be number one in the world, widely recognized. We are now rated 26th, and we are moving down quickly. The system is falling apart. There are 140,000 bridges that need repair or replacement, and 40 percent of the pavement on the National Highway System has failed to the point at which you have to dig it up, not just resurface it. There is a $70 billion backlog in our transit systems just to bring everything up to a state of good repair. That is not even to begin to think about building a 21st century transportation system to compete with the rest of the world. For the Chinese, 9 percent of their GDP goes to transportation. They want to be able to move people and goods more efficiently and to out-compete us. Even Brazil, 6 percent. India, 6 percent. The United States of America, 1 percent. We have got to get serious about this. Today, we are going to do a little shuffling around of some money, and say, oh, we can pretend, by pension smoothing and this and that, that we are creating money so we get around not creating more debt or deficit here. Come on. Really, it is pretty phony stuff. Let's get real about how we are going to fund our transportation future. We are fighting with people who believe in a theory called ``devolution.'' That is, they want to devolve the duty of building a national transportation system to the 50 dispersed States and let them figure it out. We tried that. This is 1956. The brand new Kansas Turnpike ended in Emil Schweitzer's farm field for years because Oklahoma couldn't afford their part of that system until the Eisenhower bill passed, and we had a highway trust fund. We know this works--user-fee based, a national system, coordinating among the States, not having roads that disconnect at the border, not tolling the heck out of everything, which some people would have us do, not fragmenting the system. What are you going to say to the Port of Los Angeles, where 40 percent of the freight comes into the country? Oh, you figure out how to get the freight out of L.A. to serve the rest of the country, and you pay for it. No. This is a national obligation. It is international and national competitiveness. We have to get serious, and this bill here today is not serious or long term.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, you have heard the term ``reinvent the wheel.'' We have some people around here who want to un-invent the wheel. The Tea Party--``small government at any cost''--radicals have what they think is a brilliant new idea. It is called ``devolution.'' We will devolve the duty, the obligation, and the funding of the national transportation system to the 50 States. Oh, what a great idea. Well, no. Actually, we tried it in the last century. It failed pretty miserably. Here it is: 1956. This is the brand spanking new Kansas Turnpike. Oklahoma said they would build--oh, they ran out of money, so Oklahoma didn't build their section. Kansas did. For 3 years, cars crashed through the barrier at the end of this and landed in Emil Schweitzer's farm field. That is devolution. They want to go back to that. Dwight David Eisenhower said, no, that is not acceptable. He passed a bill for a national transportation system, funded by a user fee, and the highway got completed. Now we want to go back to that era? We want to compete with the world by spending less on transportation, by having less Federal coordination, and by passing a pathetic Band-Aid bill today with pretend money that will limp us through the next 9 months? No. We need a substantial investment in our national transportation system--putting millions of people back to work, making us first class again, and competing with the rest of the world. No devolution.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. I thank my good friend for yielding that time. Mr. Speaker, sometime in the end of July or, at the latest, very early August, the inadequate budget for forest firefighting for the Department of the Interior and the Forest Service will be exhausted-- that's right, exhausted. We are going to be at a point where there will be fires raging across the West. We are looking at record drought, record dry fuels, and you will be able, probably, to smell or see the smoke across a lot of the country. Mr. Speaker, we should be doing everything we can to prepare for this and prevent this in the future, and that is the crux of this argument. We are not going to stop fighting fires. They can't because the forests will burn and people will die. No, we are going to stop it, but they will borrow from and decimate every other account in their budgets. Forty percent of the Forest Service budget goes to fighting fires on an annual basis, which means every year we repeat this little Groundhog Day thing. They have to suspend the programs that would prevent future forest fires--that is fuel reduction programs, forest health programs. They have to cut into the recreation budget and all of the other activities and things that they must do--cut into their timber management program, everything gets decimated--and the money just goes to fight fires. We have the rarest of rare things here: a bicameral, bipartisan bill that is supported by the President of the United States. What else in this town is bipartisan, bicameral, and supported by the President? Mr. Speaker, this should be a no-brainer. I have asked for hearings in the committee on the coming catastrophe this summer. No hearings have been held. We have legislation with 100 cosponsors--no action, no hearing, and no action on that bill. We need this funding this month, and that way, the Forest Service won't have to decimate the programs that would prevent or mitigate future forest fires. So, come on, guys, let's wake up, smell the smoke, and do what is right and needs to be done--an adequate budget to fight the catastrophic forest fires across the Western United States.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, as I mentioned earlier, the chief executive officer of ExxonMobil, under oath before the United States Senate, testified 3 years ago that the price of oil was $30 to $40 higher than it should have been, and the price at that time was about $100 a barrel, a little less than it is today. So $30 to $40 of the cost of each barrel of oil didn't have to do with the company passing through exploratory costs or lease costs or anything else; 30 to 40 percent of the cost of every barrel of oil is due to speculation by commodities traders on Wall Street, flash traders, derivatives traders, and others. This isn't your grandfather's swaps market or commodities market. It is not users hedging themselves against future inflation. It is not producers hedging themselves. No, it is rampant speculation by people who have no intention of ever accepting delivery of a barrel of oil, have no use for a barrel of oil, except to manipulate its price to make it more expensive to make money for themselves and the people they represent, which is a very small minority of Americans, less than 1 percent. Meanwhile, the other 99 percent of Americans pay more at the pump. We should do something about this. Now, there are those who think the modest position limits in Dodd-Frank will be a horrible, onerous burden on these speculators, and that maybe they can only extract $20 a barrel--maybe only $10 a barrel out of us--so you would only be paying an extra 30 cents at the pump to Wall Street. But as it stands today, after you take out other associated costs, about 60 cents a gallon that every American is paying at the pump today, no matter what the price is, where they live in the country, whether it is very high or very low, is going to Wall Street speculative interests. We should do something about that. If we want to provide relief to the American people at the pump, we should do something about that. This amendment is very simple. It establishes an account where money from lease sales would go to this account, and it would be made available to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission so they could upgrade their computers and do other things to better track and rein in speculators. Basically, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has been choked to the point, in terms of personnel and equipment, I think they are still using Commodore 64s, and they are trying to chase supercomputers. We can do better, and we could do something real for the American people here today other than Groundhog Day on the fifth anniversary and repassage of this legislation that will not become law. Now there are those who will say you are increasing the deficit or whatever. No, it just says those leasing moneys would be put into this account, and they would be subject to appropriation. We would then have to convince the Appropriations Committee that it would be a good thing to upgrade the Commodity Futures Trading Commission so they could crack down on some of the flash trading and speculation that creates volatility and higher prices for Americans. I think this would be a very good thing to do. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman, again, the sentiments expressed by the gentleman having to do with a particular experience in his State--perhaps his district-- is one thing, but this is really clear in the statutory language. It says that we will hold the public comment period. When it closes, the lease goes forward, no matter what we heard. What the gentleman is talking about is that there was a public comment period. The public comment period was closed, and he says that some time later, outside of the public comment period, someone submitted information which was used and overcame all of the other testimony and/or comments that were provided. That is a whole different circumstance than what this is. This is very simple. It just says that there will be a public comment period; we will listen; and at the end of that, we don't care what we heard, it has to go forward as proposed. With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Well, first my condolences to the gentleman from Utah for being a Cubs fan. I am a Red Sox fan, and we have had some problems too. But that was an interesting moment and an interesting analogy made. Mr. Chairman, I am not aware of the specifics of the instance of which he speaks. But I would say that this, as a remedy for a past action, would apply in the future, and it would not undo whatever took place in the past that the gentleman is referring to. And the principle here is fairly extraordinary. It kind of says, Federal bureaucrats never make mistakes. So we have proposed leases in an area. We go through a public comment period. Local people comment. A hunting and fishing group comes in and says, you know, this is absolutely, like, the primo area for hunting or fishing or something else. Or it becomes apparent that this is, like, right in a main recreation corridor, something that the Federal bureaucrat overlooked in drawing up the lease boundaries. But if this were adopted and became law in the future, at the end of the public comment period, it would be, We are the Federal Government. Thank you very much for pointing out that we really screwed that up, that we were just about to wipe out a prime habitat, that we were just about to block or really degrade a prime recreation corridor. We are bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. We didn't realize that. But we are sorry; public comment periods don't mean anything anymore. We cannot condition, withdraw, or change the lease. And that would be it. I don't think that would be good. I really don't. So, there may have been--and, again, I am not aware of the circumstances to which the gentleman is referring in the specific, but I believe that this amendment, looking forward to whoever is in the White House and whoever is administering these programs, would really preclude any part of the public from having meaningful comment and getting a meaningful response from the Federal bureaucracy which has proposed leasing in their neighborhood. With that, Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, what we are talking about here is obscenely profitable oil companies getting a giveaway while we are running massive deficits. Now, everyone says that they want to run government like a business and lower deficits. The GAO has estimated that if this is allowed to run its course without any of these leases being renegotiated, it will be a $50 billion windfall to the oil industry--not million, $50 billion. Now that would be a nice piece of change, both for revenue sharing for the States and for the Federal Treasury. We could apply it all to deficit reduction or other needs, maybe even fund the continuation of the national transportation system. Who knows. The bottom line is, as the gentleman pointed out, it may or may not have been intentional on the part of people at the then-Minerals Management Service to give away these assets to the oil companies. But for 3 years before they slept with them--or whatever happened-- they did include it in the leases. And then what the Court found was that the law that the Republicans passed in 1995 didn't allow those sorts of conditions to be in the leases. So this is a new approach. The Republican law was defective. The Clinton administration--at least some members of it--were corrupt. It is a bipartisan problem. Let's fix it in a bipartisan way. This would just say, if the companies who got this windfall and won that Court case want new leases, we would condition new leases upon them negotiating and paying a fair return to the taxpayers on the old leases and, in that process, make the taxpayers whole. It is a legal and simple way to fix a problem that was caused both by the law, as written, by the then-majority Republican party and the few corrupt members of the Clinton administration.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I have an article from Oil Daily in 2008, and it is on the subject of a 1-day increase of $17.51 in the price of a barrel of oil, and they go on to say nothing in the world happened, that traders were astonished and horrified with the volatility, and this should really settle the argument whether this is speculation or fundamentals at work. There is massive speculation in this market. Even the chairman of ExxonMobil says that a good deal of the price being paid at the pump has to do with speculation. We can whistle past the graveyard and continue to bow to Wall Street and defer to them, but this is the reality. I wish that we would do something about it, but I fear we won't because they are very generous in even-numbered years. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Chair, I believe I have the right to close, so I would reserve until the other side has concluded.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Chair, we had extensive debate yesterday, and it is really not worth revisiting today. We had the same debate last year. This bill passed and has languished in the Senate and will not go anywhere in the Senate. We had the same the year before, the year before, and the year before. You can pretend that you care about high oil prices at the same time while protecting the unbelievably obscene profits of the oil industry. You can pretend that the fact that they are sitting on 28.1 million acres of leases offshore that they have yet to develop doesn't exist and they need to lease more acreage. They basically sit on these leases for years and watch the value of their asset, which is the oil underneath, rise. They have no incentive, actually, to drill in many of these areas because they pay a de minimus--a few bucks an acre kind of lease on an annual basis--and, hey, what a great activity. Meanwhile, the speculators on Wall Street, according to the head of ExxonMobil--who is a pretty good authority--have jacked up the price because of speculation about 60 cents a gallon at the pump. So every American should know every time they go to the pump, they can thank speculators on Wall Street, and inaction on the Republican side of the aisle either attempts to delay any minimal regulation or reforms of wild speculation of flash trading in the commodities market. Instead, they are going to pretend, if we let more leases that the oil companies can sit on, that somehow the price will begin magically to come down, even though all the development in the last few years and the doubling of exports of oil of gasoline and diesel has not brought down the price. It is a so-called world market. We produce it more cheaply here, but we pay the same price as the most expensively produced North Sea oil, so it is all kind of meaningless. With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Now, we have the idea of a 5-year planning process, a 5-year plan, and then, you can just add things to it, so really, it is kind of not really a 5-year plan anymore. It is meaningless. There is an urgent, urgent need for more leases offshore in sensitive areas, there really is--southern California, Virginia, Maine, areas that are incredibly productive in terms of their fisheries, that are heavily recreated, and have other uses. There is an urgent need to plop down some oil wells there because we have only exported 1.7 million barrels of oil and gasoline yesterday-- refined. There is a shortage, and that is why prices are high. If we just produced more in the most sensitive areas, without any environmental review, then the price would drop. Well, no, actually, production has doubled since the Republicans first passed this bill, its fifth year in a row--it is Groundhog Day in June. Now, they are still pretending. Actually, we heard a new argument yesterday: prices would be higher if we weren't exporting all of that diesel and gasoline, and the American Petroleum Institute hopes we will start soon acting like a colony and export crude oil to our friends in China and elsewhere, so they can make manufactured goods and sell them to us. Now, this is a great plan, and we are going to make it even better by not planning anymore. There are 36.1 million acres of land under lease onshore. We had an argument about that yesterday--that is half the bill--and 23.5 million are not in production, but we need to lease more. Offshore, 220 million acres are available under the current leasing plan, 33.2 million acres have been leased, and 28.1 million of those 33.2--that is a pretty high percentage--aren't producing, and that is about 85 percent. We need to lease more. We need to lease it now, so the oil companies can sit on it until they drive the price to $200 or $300 a barrel, which they will because we pay the royal price--we produce oil more cheaply here, but we pay the royal price. We are exporting gasoline and diesel and paying extortionate prices, and the oil companies are making obscene prices, and only if we didn't have a planning process and we leased in some more sensitive areas, price wouldn't go down. With that, I reserve the balance of my time.