Pete Domenici

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I yield back the time I have. I might say to Senators, we tried very hard to get the vote within 15 minutes last time. I was asked by a number of Senators to please try to do that on the votes. I have no authority to say that will be the rule, but as the floor manager, we have a 15-minute rollcall vote on this amendment. It is a simple one. It is not too hard to find your way to the floor. I trust that in 15 minutes we will have disposed of this. In the meantime, before that occurs, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate convenes at 2:15, the pending amendment be set aside and that Senator Wyden be recognized to offer the nuclear commercial plant amendment under the debate limitation which was agreed to last week.

Mr. DOMENICI. Parliamentary inquiry: Am I correct that there will be a vote on the Dorgan amendment at 11:30?

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I ask to speak to that amendment until 11:30.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I have already spoken, as have Senator Alexander and others, against this amendment. By being against the amendment, it does not mean we are in any way in derogation of the efforts by the distinguished Senator, Mr. Dorgan, in his efforts to pursue a hydrogen economy for the United States, in his efforts to move forward with the hydrogen cell and with the hydrogen car. I compliment him for that. His amendment, which says we should move ahead with certain quotas, with specific amounts, with goals, with mandatory achievements, should not be done. It would not be of any benefit. I yield the floor.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I am pleased to join as an original cosponsor of what we are going to call the Landrieu-Domenici amendment. I note the presence of Senator Alexander who was one of the original Senators who spoke to this matter on the floor. I hope in the remaining time he gets a chance to speak. Let me say there are a lot of people who come up with new formulas, attempt to set new formulas on automobiles, on the mileage that cars will have, and the like. None of them seem to work, and none of them seem to get through this body. This is an ingenious idea of my friend from Louisiana who has been extremely helpful in getting an Energy bill passed. I think when we pass it in a few weeks, and we will, she can take a great deal of pleasure in knowing that much of it was due to her interest, enthusiasm, and support. I hope we will vote for it unanimously, saying to our President, find ways to do this. I believe it is the best way for the Senate to handle it. I yield the floor.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. For the benefit of the Senators who would like to speak, Senator Alexander has indicated a desire to speak for a few moments. He is here. Senator Voinovich, who occupies the chair, desires to speak; Senator Landrieu, from the other side of the aisle, desires to speak. Senator Inhofe and Senator Larry Craig. I say to all of them, if they would let us know through the cloakroom, we will try to put some times opposite their names. We will be using 4 as kind of our scheduling time to see what we can do about setting up a time. Would the Senator from Tennessee like to speak at this time or would he rather that the Senator from New Mexico speak for a few moments?

Mr. DOMENICI. I thank the Senator. I will try to be brief. My colleagues know I have been in the Senate 31 years and that for the better part of that time I spent my time on energy matters but principally, from the standpoint of the floor of the Senate, I was known as the person who handled the budget for the Senate. That is where I had the luxury and privilege of meeting the distinguished Senator, who opposes me on the floor, Mr. Wyden, and many others who serve with me. In fact, that is where I became a very good friend of the distinguished majority leader of the Senate, who served, as the Senator might recall, on that Budget Committee way down at the end of the Republican side. One of the Senators who served for most of that time, that the Senator from Oregon will recognize and remember, was probably one of the most astute and knowledgeable Senators who we have both had the luxury of knowing. We might both put some other attributes along with those but he was that, and that was Senator Gramm of Texas. One day I was exploring a matter with the Senator from Texas. I said: Senator, you know I have been on this Budget Committee for so long, and I am thinking about moving over to the Energy Committee where I have been in the second position for all of these years. You are from Texas and I noticed you never did bother to even get on the Energy Committee. He said: Yes, that is right. I said: Why is that? Listen carefully. He said: Senator Pete, energy is one of the most difficult things to do anything about, nigh on impossible to effect by law any real policy regarding energy, if you are talking about advanced policy that has any impact. I said: Well, Senator Gramm, I might agree with you but--and before I could finish he said: However, I would like to correct that and say one thing to you. Now, this was 5 years ago. Senator Domenici, there is indeed a probability that you can do something if you take over the Energy Committee, and I tell you for sure there is only one thing and that is to reestablish nuclear power as an option for these United States and the world. I wish he were here. I am not quoting him exactly so do not put it in quotes, but he would remember that. When I decided to take this job and give up the Budget Committee, I remembered that and I even told my wife, when discussing at home my next few years in the Senate, that some pretty good people think I am taking on a committee that does not have a lot of potential because energy is too tough to legislate and make policy about. It just sort of happens, except for that rascal nuclear power. Well, he said it. He may not be right but I am trying to prove him right in this debate today and in this Energy bill that we are going to try to finish this week, perhaps with 1 additional week. On May 21 of this year, Alan Greenspan, speaking to the House Energy Committee, said: If we're going to continue to expand our energy base, we're going to have to be starting to look at nuclear power as a potential reservoir of new sources of energy which are not available by other means. He continues: I think that we ought to be spending more money and more time looking and contemplating the issue of nuclear power since natural gas is a serious problem. This morning I happened to hear a talk show with typical Americans calling talking about energy. It was rather nice to hear people from Oklahoma City, from somewhere in Tennessee, California, Oregon, obviously average citizens who were calling in on a radio show asking questions. Most questions had to do with, why don't we have more natural gas? Finally someone asked, aren't there other things we can use? What about nuclear power? Of course, as one might suspect, the answers were rather muddled. The real question now before this institution is, can nuclear power, held in abeyance for about 14 to 16 years in the United States while Japan built new facilities, the country of France is 80 percent dependent upon nuclear power, a little country like Taiwan, which is booming, is currently constructing two facilities with General Electric engineering and design--I cannot recall the name of the contractor. And the United States sits with everybody saying it is almost impossible. With the exponential growth in electricity needs, where we all expect to use natural gas in the burners, to create the heat and electricity, it is nearly impossible that we will have enough natural gas. It is not a question of whether we have a lot of it. It is a question that we do not use anything else because we are frightened to death of using anything else. Some in this country, a small group, have scared us to death about nuclear power. When we add up all the energy produced by nuclear power in the world, including the terrible accident in Russia, which was attributable to a very old-fashioned nuclear powerplant that we would not dare license in America, add these together and nuclear power has been safer than any of the other power sources combined--be it coal or any other--save and except for energy produced by dams. I am speaking of large quantities. Certainly, if we speak of windmills, we speak of solar, we can produce clean energy. Having said that, the issue before the Senate today is, do we want to support a committee that put together a bill that said, fellow Americans, the time has come to quit playing around with energy and do something about a myriad of sources. And to say, wherever you can, we are going to produce more energy. We have tried to produce or cause to be produced every natural gas source we know of that had impediments. If it was too deep, we gave it a benefit of some sort so it could get taken out, anyway. If it was too far away in the ice lands of Alaska, we gave those companies something so they could get it down here. If it is coal, we said subsidize. They are talking that we should not be granting a loan guarantee, presumably at market value, to a first-class company that might want to take a risk at building a powerplant. They are saying we should not do that. But when it comes to coal, we are going to spend over $2 billion on pure research to try to get to that miracle place of clean coal. We did not say, my, you just should not put your tax dollars in a big waste. Last but not least, while our opponents will find this is not relevant, we already have a subsidy for wind energy, those 50-foot-tall windmills. Without the new one contemplated to be added to this bill, that has the potential of producing 245,000 windmills, equivalent source of energy. The powerplants we contemplate lending money to, or offering a loan guarantee, the same amount. Guess how much the taxpayer will have given if that occurs. Thirty-one billion is the direct source for those windmills. Now, the opposition to ours might say, but you are going to get windmills. When you say to the American power industry, if you want to come along and try to build a new nuclear powerplant, modern type, you have to go get your money, you have to take all the risks, and we will underwrite half of it with a loan, they would have us say that is a terrible risk even if it is only $2 billion to $5 billion. But that $31 billion that might occur for windmills is not? Of course, the windmill is not a risk, but it certainly is throwing your money at something that most Americans would wonder seriously about. Having said that, this Senator is not against any of the sources. I think we will win today. When we win, we will go to conference eventually and come out with a major new impetus for nuclear power in this country. For the first time somebody is going to say, let us build one or two new nuclear powerplants. And the greenhouse gas issue that has been raised will not be there because there is no pollution from those two plants that I have just described, if they come into being-- none. Zero. Absolutely clean. We are going to have to find some way to take care of the waste someday. If we want to have a debate here today, or next week, on the waste, suffice it to say that the United States has scared herself silly about waste. Waste is nothing but a technical problem. If you want to go see all the waste in France, get a ticket and go to a city, ask them where it is, and they will take you to a building, and you can go see it all. You might say: Who would want to see it? They will just take you to a building that looks like a schoolhouse. You walk in and say: Can I see the waste? And they will say: You are walking on it. They will say: Just take a look down. You look down. It looks like glass, and there sits the waste, encapsulated, and it will be there for as long as 50 years, if that is what is needed by the French scientists to find out how to put it away or how to reuse it. Here we sit fooling around because somebody convinced us we ought to become immobilized, when it comes to an alternative, until we have a hole in the ground so deep, so big, in such hard rock that we can figure out, way in advance, a way to put the waste in it and monitor it with calculators and say to America and the world: We just monitored it, and we can tell you there will be no radiation for 10,000 years. That is the test because we want to be so careful we don't hurt anybody ever. The test of the technology that is going to have to monitor that--and you can hardly draw the plans, it is such an absurdity--is 10,000 years. Having said all that, we are back to a simple proposition: Do you or do you not want to let the Energy Committee go to a conference with the House and to take with it a bill that says: All the rest of these energies get their help: Biomass gets its assistance, coal gets its help, the renewables are helped immeasurably with tax assistance, every single thing we know how to do to produce more oil and gas is done-- right?

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I have been asked because of other people--not me--that we commence this vote at 3:45. I ask unanimous consent that be the case. Several Senators addressed the Chair.

Mr. DOMENICI. I say to the Senator, they want a vote at 3:45, so we don't need any time. He can have 3 minutes and you can close.

Mr. DOMENICI. I thank all Members for debate and votes. I believe the Indian amendment of the Senator from Colorado is next. Amendment No. 864 Withdrawn

Mr. DOMENICI. No, I would not.

Mr. DOMENICI. I would be pleased to yield.

Mr. DOMENICI. I yield 3 minutes to the Senator from Alabama.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I wonder if I might speak with the distinguished Senator from Oregon about the final vote. We are wondering, from our side, for no reasons other than time--the more time we have left, the more we might get done--whether we might be able to vote at 3:45 instead of 4:15, saving half an hour. We would be delighted to not ask the Senator to give up very much of that time but I wonder if he would consider a consent agreement for 3:45, which will give us, instead of our hour, 40 minutes, and what is left would belong to the Senator, or 35 minutes. Would that be fair enough for the Senator?

Mr. DOMENICI. Sure.

Mr. DOMENICI. Let's not agree. Let's put that before them as a possibility. Right now we are exploring the notion of voting at 3:45 instead of 4:15. If we did that, we would allocate the time away from each hour in order to get there. In the meantime, we will both ask our cloakrooms if there is any problems with any Senators. The Senator from Oregon will do it on his side and I will do it on mine. Mr. President, I assume I can speak at this point; I have the floor?

Mr. DOMENICI. I could go on and on. That is all going to be there. But also in the event--and I am looking for the language in the statute as to when the Secretary can issue these--we have statutory language that says, very simply--and I will read it and close: Subject to the requirements of the Federal Credit Reform Act [et cetera, et cetera, et cetera], the Secretary may, subject to appropriations, make available to project developers for eligible project costs such financial assistance as the Secretary determines is necessary to supplement private-sector financing for projects if he determines that such projects are needed to contribute to energy security, fuel or technology diversity, or clean air attainment goals. The Secretary shall prescribe such terms or conditions for financial assistance as the Secretary deems necessary. . . . That then is provided as up to 50 percent of the cost, by way of a loan. Frankly, it is all a question of risks. It is not a question of philosophy. It is not a question of whose party wants to get on what slope, a slope of entrepreneurship or a slope of guaranteeship. All of that is meaningless. What this is about is: Is it worth this little risk we are speaking of--to get what I just described going again for America? I say, overwhelmingly, absolutely, positively, yes. I do hope, come that vote time, there will not be 50 Senators, or half of those who vote today, who will say we want to strike this and kill this opportunity for America. With that, I will yield the floor to Senator Alexander for his time. Senator Landrieu, are you on some time frame that is urgent?

Mr. DOMENICI. I yield to him and then to the Senator from Louisiana.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the vote in relation to the pending amendment occur at 3:50 with the remaining time to be divided with 20 minutes for the proponents and 10 minutes under the control of the opponents.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, how much time does the Senator from New Mexico have?

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I wonder if the Senator could do me one favor. Let Senator Graham have 1 minute. Then you wind up with the time you have, the same time you have.

Mr. DOMENICI. We don't need to have the Senator speak. Go ahead.

Mr. DOMENICI. We cannot do that.

Mr. DOMENICI. It is not me. I have just been told, after instructions from the leadership.

Mr. DOMENICI. You don't have a couple minutes.