Pete Domenici

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. How much time is that, Mr. President?

Mr. DOMENICI. I thank the Senator. First, I believe we have an excellent budget. Frankly, we are charged with a lot of things that we are going to try to do. Most important, we have to find something that will stimulate this economy. I, frankly, believe the President has come up with something very innovative, exciting, and it is apt to work; that is, to change the longstanding double taxation of dividends. Frankly, I am not sure we know how to stimulate this economy with reference to tax cuts, but I do believe we know how to make this economy work far better if we change that part of our Tax Code. I think we should leave the tax numbers as they are and vote the amendment down.

Mr. DOMENICI. Does the Senator have time to answer a question?

Mr. DOMENICI. I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from New Hampshire be permitted to answer one question.

Mr. DOMENICI. Have the budget rules changed? Is there some way that the Senator from New Hampshire can offer an amendment that will, in fact, increase the budget so the COPS Program will be paid for?

Mr. DOMENICI. That is correct. This amendment would not add to COPS. It will add to the budget.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, while Senator Sarbanes is still here, I want to congratulate him.

Mr. DOMENICI. I am on that list. I just want to tell you, 10,000 is just the beginning.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I wish to comment a moment on our Chaplain who is leaving us. I vividly recall when our previous Chaplain indicated he was not going to serve us any longer. Many of us thought it would be impossible to replace him. I was in a small group--I don't remember if it was three or five Senators--who were given the job of going out and looking in America for another Chaplain. Senator Stevens was a member, I recall. So was Senator Mark Hatfield. I don't recall the others. There were a lot of people. I was not so sure that Lloyd Ogilvie, based on the things he had done in his life--he was a great preacher; he had large assemblies of Christians he spoke to in the California area. I did not believe, as one, that he would necessarily fit in, but I said: Let's try him. He preaches with a beautiful voice; he sounds almost like you would expect God to sound. He came, and he has been absolutely marvelous. Everybody here has learned to grow in faith and confidence having him around. It is too bad he has to leave, but he is a very loyal man in terms of his marriage and his wife. I think her illness takes him to join her. I hope she gets well, although she has been very critical and he sees fit to be present there with her. So we all say good-bye and good luck. Whomever he serves and whomever he shares his views with as to where we came from, where we are going to go when we finish here on Earth, and our value system, I am sure they will all benefit, just as we have. I yield the floor.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I rise to introduce the Genomes to Life Research and Development Act. I appreciate the bipartisan sponsors, Senator Cantwell, Senator Murray and Senator Bingaman who join me in its introduction. In the last 2 years, there have been many events celebrating the completion of maps of the human genome. The genome map has been lauded from many quarters, with some referring to it as the ``recipe for life,'' our ``genetic fingerprint,'' or the ``holy grail of biology.'' There can be no question that the work of the DOE, the NIH, and private industry to complete this map has ushered in a new frontier in biological research. I had the tremendous pleasure and honor of being the first legislator to recognize the importance of human genomics. It was at a March 1986 conference in Sante Fe, NM, led by Charles DeLisi and David Smith, that the first proposal for the DOE Human Genome Initiative was developed. And it was in 1987 that I introduced the legislation that laid the foundation for the Human Genome project. Senator Chiles worked with me in this effort, and both the Labor and Energy Committees had important roles in advancing the project. The first year of appropriated funding was fiscal year 1988, with $11 million for the DOE and $17 million for the NIH. Since then, in completing the map, over $3 billion has been invested. I firmly believe that history will view that investment as one that truly changed medical and health sciences for all mankind. I have found it amusing to review some of the arguments against the genome project in those early days. It was labeled as a ``mindless factory project,'' or ``a scheme for unemployed bombmakers.'' One well known researcher said, ``The Idea is gathering momentum. I shiver at the thought.'' Now there's only praise for the future of this endeavor. I particularly value an autographed copy of the original genome map that was presented to me in February of 2001 by Craig Venter, president of Celera Genomics, with the inscription ``Your vision went beyond the parochial objections of the few and the doubts of the many, we all owe you our thanks.'' But even as we can see today that the benefits to mankind from the genome project will be immense, we also are nowhere near the point of fully utilizing the treasure trove of information in these maps. Today, we do not understand how details of genome sequence influence medical conditions. In short, we have a map, but aren't quite sure exactly how that map corresponds to reality. With this bill, we authorize a new DOE program, Genomes to Life. Along with companion measures in the NIH, this DOE program will seek to interpret this wonderful new map and really begin to use it. Through these programs, we will begin to understand how our own DNA sequence, as expressed in our own genome map, translates into a collection of interacting proteins that function as our own personal molecular machine. The intellectual challenges in this new initiative are immense. They require public support for the basic and applied research and development. There must be significant advances in areas like characterization of multi-protein complexes and gene regulatory networks that will be required before biologically based solutions and technologies will be available for applications to DOE missions. New instruments will be essential in the Genomes to Life research. These may be instruments that haven't been invented yet. Specialized facilities will be required to advance the field and realize its promise. This bill envisions these facilities being built as user facilities, using the model that the Department already successfully uses for many facilities in diverse areas of science. With the Genomes to Life program, and its companion programs at the NIH, we'll finally be in a position to understand how genomic information can be used to benefit mankind. From the NIH side, we will be far better equipped to understand many diseases. We may have drugs designed for specific genetic profiles, drugs may be screened for adverse interactions, and side effects of drugs may be predicted and avoided. From the DOE side of the program, we may have biological approaches to hydrogen production or carbon sequestration. We may have new alternatives for detection and mitigation of biological threats. We may have new biological tools to handle complex cleanup issued at DOE sites. This Bill lays the foundation for this new Genomes to Life program, and I encourage its support. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I rise to introduce the Genomes to Life Research and Development Act. I appreciate the bipartisan sponsors, Senator Cantwell, Senator Murray and Senator Bingaman who join me in its introduction. In the last 2 years, there have been many events celebrating the completion of maps of the human genome. The genome map has been lauded from many quarters, with some referring to it as the ``recipe for life,'' our ``genetic fingerprint,'' or the ``holy grail of biology.'' There can be no question that the work of the DOE, the NIH, and private industry to complete this map has ushered in a new frontier in biological research. I had the tremendous pleasure and honor of being the first legislator to recognize the importance of human genomics. It was at a March 1986 conference in Sante Fe, NM, led by Charles DeLisi and David Smith, that the first proposal for the DOE Human Genome Initiative was developed. And it was in 1987 that I introduced the legislation that laid the foundation for the Human Genome project. Senator Chiles worked with me in this effort, and both the Labor and Energy Committees had important roles in advancing the project. The first year of appropriated funding was fiscal year 1988, with $11 million for the DOE and $17 million for the NIH. Since then, in completing the map, over $3 billion has been invested. I firmly believe that history will view that investment as one that truly changed medical and health sciences for all mankind. I have found it amusing to review some of the arguments against the genome project in those early days. It was labeled as a ``mindless factory project,'' or ``a scheme for unemployed bombmakers.'' One well known researcher said, ``The Idea is gathering momentum. I shiver at the thought.'' Now there's only praise for the future of this endeavor. I particularly value an autographed copy of the original genome map that was presented to me in February of 2001 by Craig Venter, president of Celera Genomics, with the inscription ``Your vision went beyond the parochial objections of the few and the doubts of the many, we all owe you our thanks.'' But even as we can see today that the benefits to mankind from the genome project will be immense, we also are nowhere near the point of fully utilizing the treasure trove of information in these maps. Today, we do not understand how details of genome sequence influence medical conditions. In short, we have a map, but aren't quite sure exactly how that map corresponds to reality. With this bill, we authorize a new DOE program, Genomes to Life. Along with companion measures in the NIH, this DOE program will seek to interpret this wonderful new map and really begin to use it. Through these programs, we will begin to understand how our own DNA sequence, as expressed in our own genome map, translates into a collection of interacting proteins that function as our own personal molecular machine. The intellectual challenges in this new initiative are immense. They require public support for the basic and applied research and development. There must be significant advances in areas like characterization of multi-protein complexes and gene regulatory networks that will be required before biologically based solutions and technologies will be available for applications to DOE missions. New instruments will be essential in the Genomes to Life research. These may be instruments that haven't been invented yet. Specialized facilities will be required to advance the field and realize its promise. This bill envisions these facilities being built as user facilities, using the model that the Department already successfully uses for many facilities in diverse areas of science. With the Genomes to Life program, and its companion programs at the NIH, we'll finally be in a position to understand how genomic information can be used to benefit mankind. From the NIH side, we will be far better equipped to understand many diseases. We may have drugs designed for specific genetic profiles, drugs may be screened for adverse interactions, and side effects of drugs may be predicted and avoided. From the DOE side of the program, we may have biological approaches to hydrogen production or carbon sequestration. We may have new alternatives for detection and mitigation of biological threats. We may have new biological tools to handle complex cleanup issued at DOE sites. This Bill lays the foundation for this new Genomes to Life program, and I encourage its support. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. I ask the Senator from Montana if he would place the Senator from New Mexico's name on the various military and veterans bills.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, today is a day, as I see it, to be thankful, to have hope, and to pray. I stand before the Senate thankful for our freedom and for the thousands of American young men and women, husbands and wives, sons and daughters, who are volunteers in the U.S. military, especially for those who are serving in combat in Iraq. I thank each of them for their service and for volunteering to protect us and to protect freedom in faraway lands. I think it is also important to thank their parents, their grandparents, and their spouses for their sacrifice as they wait for their loved ones who are overseas giving of themselves to save the world from a tyrant in possession of weapons of mass destruction. These brave men and women are there to protect us and protect the neighbors of Iraq from the scourge of a tyrant who has violated international rules and failed to disarm. Our men and women, joined by others from around the world, will see to it that he is disarmed. In doing that, they will be doing a very important duty, and they will be giving us the most important gift we can have, to be contributors to freedom in that part of the world and in our own country for the future. Last night, airplanes from Holloman Air Force Base, NM, were the planes that did the initial strikes on Baghdad. They were far away from their home in Holloman Air Force Base, NM. They are the F-117 stealth fighters. They have been joined in that theater of war by men and women from our two other military bases, the air bases at Cannon and Kirtland. They are also joined by units of the New Mexico National Guard and Reserve. On behalf of all of those military personnel, their relatives and friends, as one of their Senators from New Mexico, I thank them. I congratulate them for their willingness to fight for freedom and for the generosity of being volunteers to keep America safe and free.

Mr. DOMENICI. I yield the floor.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Which Senator is going to ask a question?

Mr. DOMENICI. Of course.

Mr. DOMENICI. The Senator knows I don't have a notebook full here. I wanted to make sure. One thing I learned, as a Senator, from Senator Byrd is if you want to make a speech, don't agree to the shortest amount of time because, sure enough, you never get what you wanted to say said. I said an hour. I probably will use an hour.

Mr. DOMENICI. I thank the distinguished minority floor leader. Mr. President, fellow Senators, and more importantly, fellow Americans who might be watching, I am going to have one of my aides turn this chart for a moment. You are going to be able to read the print very easily. It says: If ANWR was the size of this chart, the total footprint of any development there would be smaller than the box below. You see the people running the television here in the Senate have to be very careful because if they are not, you will not even see it. ANWR is as big as this chart. We have done it to scale, all of that blue. Now, regardless of what is said about what you are going to do to ANWR, let me submit to you that you are going to do it on this little piece, I say to the chairman. Look at this. Can you see it? Maybe I can show the chairman of the Budget Committee. Do you see that little piece there? I don't think you can even see it, that little piece. That is where ANWR is going to have a footprint to produce oil for America. Can you imagine we are here arguing about whether or not we ought to take this tiny little piece? Here it is. Let me show it to you again. Do you see this, Mr. Chairman? I don't think you can see it from there. That is the size of the footprint. And the whole chart is the size of ANWR. Now, I can guarantee you, the thousands of Americans who have been writing to their Senators and who joined the Sierra Club to say don't do anything in ANWR have no understanding, have never been told--as a matter of fact, have been told to the contrary--that of this huge wilderness, that is the amount of the footprint which will yield oil for America's future. I ask the Presiding Officer, are you looking at this chart?

Mr. DOMENICI. Do you need any assistance to see it?

Mr. DOMENICI. You don't have to answer. As a matter of fact, I am very hopeful that everybody can see it, because you saw beautiful polar bears, you saw fantastic growth everybody is proud of. But can anyone believe that little, tiny footprint is going to affect polar bears in the ANWR wilderness? Can you believe that much property, used to drill oil for America's future, is going to have an impact on America's economic future? I submit, if the issue had not already been framed, and if, as a matter of fact, Senators had not already been convinced, if they truly started right here on the floor--let's discuss America; let's discuss the amount of oil we have to use each day; let's discuss our future; and now let's take a look at ANWR. If we had not received messages in the mail, if we had not received requests for contributions from those who support keeping ANWR exactly like it is, and not letting us have any of the resources that belong to America--if none of that occurred, we were here in a closed session, all 100 Senators, and those who wanted to say ``no drilling'' got a day, and I got an hour, they could talk all they wanted, and I would put this chart up and say, ``Are you kidding? You don't even want America to take a look at that?'' Now, having said that, it has been said on a number of occasions on the floor there isn't enough oil in ANWR to amount to anything. A few years ago, when I was sitting around and heard somebody say, ``America doesn't need this oil,'' I said to myself, ``Who are we kidding? How arrogant about our future are we? We don't need the oil that could be produced from Alaska because it isn't very much oil?'' Well, I started, over the weekend, asking, How much oil is it? How much oil is it in a way that maybe Americans would understand? And I decided we could take a little trip. We could take a trip through America and look at where we are producing oil today, and as we came upon a State that was producing oil, we would decide whether we needed that oil. After all, we are so strong and so arrogant about our economic future that there is a lot of oil America might have we must not need. Guess what happened. The very first State I came upon was Texas. Texas. As I rode across America and stopped in various States, I stopped in Texas. And what did I find? I went to their Department of Minerals and Resources, and I looked, and I said: Could you help me? I am trying to find out where oil is produced in America and whether we need it or not. And what in the world did I find? ANWR has more oil than Texas. So I surmise we do not need the oil from Texas either. I surmise Texas oil does not amount to that much, because, after all, for comparison purposes, the total reserves in the State of Texas are 5.2 billion barrels. That is data for the year 2000. Let's repeat that. The reserves in the State of Texas for the year 2000 are 5.2 billion barrels. According to the Energy Information Administration, upon which we as policymakers are basing our decisions, ANWR's oil reserves would range from a low--a low--of 5.7 billion barrels to a high of 16 billion barrels. Let's repeat it. The reserves in the State of Texas, because that is where I started that sojourn--I would have ended up, had I not found that out in Texas--we did not have to go any further--I would have gone over to New Mexico and found their reserves, and then I would have gone to Oklahoma. But just stopping at Texas, you find the reserves in the State of Texas are estimated to be 5.2 billion barrels. And according to the experts advising the policymakers, the present Congress, and people of America, the reserves for ANWR--from that little, tiny dot-- are 5.7 billion barrels for the low estimate, and 16 billion barrels for the high estimate. I see the distinguished Senator from Alaska in the Chamber. That means, I say to the Senator, if I read it right, that the reserves in your State, just in ANWR, if one uses the most conservative estimates, are equivalent to or more than the State of Texas. And if you use just a middle point, a 50-percent expectancy in terms of reserve estimates, I imagine if you do that, the yield is twice the State of Texas. Twice the State of Texas. If you like this Senator's estimate, it will be twice the State of Texas, it will not be the 5.2 billion barrels because that is the lowest estimate. Now, I would like, once and for all, whatever has been said in this Senate--with the charts up there about us not needing this, that it is only a speck of the world's production of oil--I would like to submit, we need the production from the State of Texas, and we need an equivalent to the production from the State of Texas which would come from ANWR. America, as rich as we are, as powerful as we are, as willing as we are to say, ``We just don't need this. We will buy it from the world. We just don't need American oil. We don't even need as much as Texas produces''--right--``Just forget about it; we will buy it''--we will buy it, all right. And then, as war looms, the case for Arctic oil gets better and better and better. As we look at America's future, we hear people get on the floor and say: Don't worry about producing more oil; we will just conserve more. Well, we will have an Energy bill here on the floor about when we come back from the April recess. I welcome Senators to come to the floor and tell us how in the world in the future we are not going to have to continue to import huge quantities of oil. Now, somebody can get up and say: We only want half the automobiles we are driving today 4 years from now and 5 years from now. That is ridiculous. Or: We are going to use hydrogen cars. Of course, we are going to use a few of them each year, and in 20 years we are going to use a bunch of them. What do we do in the meantime? They will say: Let's use electric cars. We will use them, but how many? Everybody understands the oil consumption is not going to come down dramatically during the next decade to 20 years. And what are we going to be doing? We are going to be depending upon the world for that period of time, and well beyond that, to buy it from the world. It seems to me that a secondary issue--maybe a primary issue--we are debating in the Senate is jobs for Americans. I regret to tell you that for those who oppose that little tiny piece of this budget resolution called ANWR, they are opposing the biggest job producer this whole bill has in mind. I am more certain that if ANWR is permitted to be developed, when the time comes that it is producing, it will produce more jobs for America than this bill with all its tax provisions and at the same time will produce oil for Americans. This is the estimate given by the experts of the American jobs, high-paying jobs. We are not even including in this the fact that American companies will own it. Americans will be part of the rig operators. Americans will be producing the pipelines. Here is the estimate of employment that would flow from ANWR. You could vote against all the tax relief if ANWR was coming on board next month. That can't happen because it is a few years away. Here are the jobs: 575,000 full-blown American jobs for American men and women and American executives, and they have to be high paying. For any State that would like to look: for Colorado, there is estimated employment of 8,000; New Jersey, 17,000; California, 63,000 jobs if ANWR comes on. I suppose in the course of things, 63,000 jobs doesn't mean that much for a big State such as California. Incidentally, if I would have followed that little trip through America to see where the oil was produced and I would have passed right on by Texas, and passed right on by New Mexico, and passed right on by Arizona and a little pinch of Nevada, and ended up in California, and gone to their mineral extraction department and said, how much oil do you produce? guess what I would have found. I would have found that the production in California of crude oil for America is about equivalent to what will be produced from ANWR when it is producing oil for Americans. Think of that. People look at California and say: Boy, if we didn't have that production from California, where would we be? Isn't that interesting? If we had ANWR on board and producing and we took our little trip through America and ended up in Alaska and somebody would have said to us, well, that is producing about the same as Texas and California, let's just not produce it anymore, what do you think would happen? Do you think anybody would vote for that? I mean, it would be such a ridiculous proposition that we don't need it, even though it is about the equivalent of California and about the same as Texas, that clearly this issue to this Senator reaches the point where you can hardly understand what we are doing on the floor of the Senate with as close a vote as you can possibly get on this issue. To the two or three Senators who still might have enough courage, enough concern, enough freedom to say I am going to do what is best, I submit that they ought to vote to keep ANWR, keep that marvelous huge wilderness that President Eisenhower is cited as having been instrumental in creating, keep it, and use this tiny piece here to produce oil for generations to come. There is an excellent review and outlook in the Wall Street Journal this morning called ``Drilling for Votes.'' That is probably what they assume their editorial is doing, it is drilling for votes. It outlines the issues before us. It is rather succinct. It covers what I have just discussed, the insignificance of the probable damage to ANWR. I have tried to depict it in terms of jobs. It discusses that with words. They are wordsmiths, and they have done it in a very exciting, excellent, and forthright manner. They discuss jobs, which I just did. They also discuss what the distinguished chairman of the Budget Committee discussed for just a few moments as to what is the nature of this tiny piece of geography that is part of ANWR. It is not the beautiful parts of this that have been shown in pictures here on the floor. It is discussed in this editorial in words as to what it is. It says: This oil would come from a tiny piece of land that is nowhere near the ``pristine'' mountains shown in the Sierra Club ads. Exploration would be on Alaska's coastal plain, a sliver of tundra that [the Secretary of the Interior] has described aptly as ``flat, white nothingness.'' The editorial continues: Far from pristine, it is the home of the town of Kaktovik, with its people, cars, boats and airplane hangars. The actual drilling footprint would be about 2,000 acres, the size of Washington's Dulles Airport. I ask unanimous consent that the entirety of this editorial be printed in the Record.

Mr. DOMENICI. One remaining issue is: How do you drill for oil today, and how did you drill for it 25 years ago or even 30 years ago, when some of the wells were drilled in California--maybe hundreds of the wells were drilled in California and hundreds, maybe thousands of the wells in Texas were drilled? Has America made any strides in changing the way we drill for oil in 15, 20, 25 years? I can tell you, some of the most dynamic, intelligent engineers in the world have spent years finding out how to drill holes in Mother Earth. As a matter of fact, the expertise in drilling did not just come over these years from people interested in drilling for oil wells. We have had an interest in drilling for many reasons. Would you believe that the great laboratories of America--Los Alamos, Sandia, Livermore--have had a genuine, abiding piece of their research directed at, how do you drill holes into Mother Earth? One time, they were experimenting in one of the laboratories in drilling thousands of feet underground to see if they could tap into the geothermal heat pockets. They learned all kinds of things about drilling. Then they had to drill holes as part of the nuclear weapons activities in the deserts of Nevada. Millions of dollars were put into, how do you do it so you don't waste time, so you don't produce a whole bunch of environmental degradation? Couple that with the resources of the energy companies, which wasn't soft; it was pretty big. It was pretty hot stuff. You put it together, and you have the most profound, innovative ways to drill for oil you could ever imagine. Let me just suggest, if oil is about 400 yards over there and you found it--about four football fields away--and you don't want to touch that ground, you can start here, where I am standing, and you can drill over there in what is called slant drilling. It is done with such precision today that it can take place for yards and yards and yards from the actual point under the earth where you attempt to strike the liquid mineral, or the natural gas. That is what will be used if you are worried about how will you use this tiny piece, the size of Dulles, to go into the hinterland without touching anything. That is the answer. You will go in when it is frozen, you will do your drilling activity, and when it starts to thaw, you get out and wait until it freezes again, you come back and, frankly, you won't know anything has happened--except that underground you will be moving ahead full speed to make America have more of the oil that is ours, that we own, that we will use for our future. I have a little picture up here from Science Times. It was covered in the Times. It is called ``Hunting For Oil: New Precision, Less Pollution.'' I am sure those who have circulated millions and millions of letters and the hundreds of TV ads saying we are going to ruin ANWR--if we take a tiny piece of that property, the size of Dulles, which I have just shown you on the map, and we drill, they are assuming you are going to spoil the earth as you do when you are producing with the conventional drilling of wells. This is a pictorial of the chronology and the evolution of how you go about drilling today. Using the latest drilling techniques, oil drilling sites like those in the Alpine Fields of Alaska's North Slope are using cutting edge technology in the hope of reducing environmental damage. To reduce the damage, recent advances are lessening the industrial impact on the fragile Arctic ecosystem. They proceed to show you an Alpine Field, Alaska. They show you what is happening. Let me move over here because I described it in not too good a manner a while ago when I said the oil was 400 yards away, four football fields. You could drill from here. Let's look at this diagram. You see, here is the platform that might be the size of Dulles. Here is the drilling. Here is the oil underground. And you see, way far away, the oil is underground, and it is going to be drilled and come up, and everything is going to be done on this platform. The same here. Here is a giant reservoir underground. It is many yards from where you have set out to manage and control the destiny of the tundra. There you are with this dramatic picture of how, just like a curved straw, you put it underground and maneuver it, and the ``milk shake'' is way over there, and your little child wants the milk shake, and they sit over here in their bedroom where they are feeling ill, and they just gobble it up from way down in the kitchen, where you don't even have to move the Mix Master that made the ice cream for them. You don't have to take it up to the bedroom. This describes the actual drilling that is taking place. I told you a while ago that I was going to give you just a shirt- sleeve example, where four football fields over there is where you thought the oil was. I used an example that is way too small. As a matter of fact, 4 miles--not 400 yards, but 4 miles--away is this oil from this drill. It is not yards, not football fields, but miles. How many? Four. Now, you tell me that those who are telling America this will damage this tundra, damage this wilderness, are scurrying to the American people and telling them: Did you know you can set a piece of that aside and 4 miles away you can take oil out of the ground? Pretty fantastic. As a matter of fact, I am using 4, because my staff told me 4. They have evidence from the science that it is 4. I don't see any reason it could not be more than 4. I don't see why it cannot be 6. In fact, if people want to know, we could go ask the experts how far away it can be. It can be plenty far away. So no hard feelings. Everybody makes their case. I have been here a long time. I try to make mine. But I guarantee you, this one has me worried. If the Senate cannot say, 1, we need oil; 2, we need American oil; 3, if we have got American oil and we can take it out of the ground, we ought to properly assess the risk, we ought not to just say no. We just established we need it. It should be American, if possible. So, third, we ought to properly assess the risk. The risk is not properly assessed by saying it is under ANWR, therefore no oil. That is not a risk assessment. That is an arbitrary decision--that in one swath negates the first two propositions of significance and reality. We need oil, and we need American oil. It is too bad that we do hear in America--and people are fair minded--we should not be using so much oil. I hear that. I am prepared to confront that on the floor of the Senate because, when the energy bill comes up, some people are going to say we are not a very good country because, after all, we use a third of the energy of the world. Who do we think we are? Do you know what I say? I say we need it for our standard of living, but we don't deny it to the other people in the world. We will help them produce more. We will help them produce clean electricity so they can grow. But I am not prepared to say, since we need it for our standard of living--just because we use a disproportionate amount--abandon the oil in Alaska. What does that have to do with it? What does that have to do with whether we are using oil? Mr. President, the other thing I think Senators and the people of this country ought to look at is, what is oil? It is easy to say we don't need oil, why should we buy so much oil? But oil is our everyday life. Fellow Americans, do you want to live without cars? Sure, you do. Can you? No, you cannot. I will repeat, would you like to live without cars? Most Americans would say, of course, I love cars, I like them. If you want to say I wish I didn't, I wish I didn't have a car, I ask you, how would you make a living? Equally important, where would you live? There are two freedoms that are not covered anywhere in the sacred documents of our country that have evolved, and they are about as American as the proverbial apple pie. They are: The freedom to own a house anywhere one can afford it; the yearning to have a house that is your own. We are not going to change that until America is no longer America. The second freedom is to own an automobile or two so you can go where you want when you want. I respect the fact that Americans say: This is our life. But I regret to tell my fellow Americans, without oil or if oil becomes so ungodly high priced, both of those freedoms will be in jeopardy. There is no question, both of those freedoms will be in jeopardy because we have built our life around those freedoms being reasonably priced. If we make them unreasonably priced and create anger among the American people, and if, in fact, part of the reason the oil is so highly priced is because you did not want to use your own oil because you did not want to touch that little piece of property in ANWR, I surmise people will not think you have a very good excuse. I for one would say you do not have any excuse at all. I want to recap--and I apologize to the Senate if I have spoken too long and if I have made any misstatements. I do not think I have, but if I have, I will try to correct them. In summary, it is almost impossible to prove that ANWR will be damaged to any noticeable degree if we produce the oil that is under the footprint the U.S. Government would like to lease so we can determine whether oil is there and how much. It is almost impossible to prove damage. I am prepared, although this debate will not go on much longer, to take any instrument, any study, any report anybody wants to bring to the floor to the contrary and debate it. If they want to use the Academy of Sciences study that has just reviewed the Prudhoe area, let's debate it. One may find a few sentences in there that are cautionary, but they will find tremendous amounts of information saying those who claim Prudhoe Bay has been significantly damaging are in error, and it produced that other part, Prudhoe, which passed this Senate by one vote and has produced oil for America without which we would really be in trouble. We can debate that issue. This is so small in comparison to the size of this wilderness, an area in the wilderness for which we are very grateful to whomever structures the underground oil reserves that they put it in this part of ANWR such that the drilling will occur in the area as I have described it: not mountainous and beautiful and full of flowers, but level and barren and frozen in a gigantic piece that looks like part of New Mexico that turned white and froze. The next is we are not strong enough to throw away this much of our own patrimony. I do not know where I got the word except it is so important to own your own resources that in Spanish-speaking countries, such as Mexico, they call the oil of Mexico ``El patrimonio del estado de Mexico,'' the patrimony of the state. That is how important oil is. This is our patrimony. It belongs to us. For those who say we should not drill in ANWR because somebody went there and said, We just should not touch this wilderness, to me is absolutely ignoring the reality of America's future. Every other issue I can think of--new technology which will cause a minimalization of environmental degradation, jobs in the future, and every other issue one can think of--is on the side of the last two or three votes deciding to get this done, not for me, but I have nine grandchildren. I hope they can still drive a car and own a house wherever they would like and work hard and give us ample time to make the transition toward other technologies that will make our lives like they are today rather than lock this up for no good reason. I close by saying the patrimony of Americans. I yield the floor.

Mr. DOMENICI. Madam President, I thank the Senator from Alaska.

Mr. DOMENICI. Madam President, fellow Senators, I come from New Mexico. New Mexico is right next to Mexico. Mexico has oil underground, God made. Do you know what they call it? They call it their patrimony. It is so important that they claim it is theirs and it is their future--not locked up under the ground--to use. It is their patrimony. In fact, in Spanish, they say: ``El patrimonio del pais es el petroleo.'' That is how important it is. Now, for all of those who have been here giving speeches about making sure we protect the ANWR wilderness, look at this picture. Look at this picture with me. You see this big, blue picture? I am going to go around the edges for you. Isn't that big? Senator, do you want to take a look? That is drawn to scale. That is ANWR. Unless you have very good glasses, very good eyes, you can't see, from your seat, where ANWR's drilling sites will be, because it will be that big, Senator. Can you see that little spot?

Mr. DOMENICI. That is how big the development for oil for America will be out of this wilderness. Now, anybody who blesses this floor piously about preservation is ignoring the reality. America cannot live without oil. I wish we could. Alaska is America. Oil in Alaska is our patrimony, just like oil in Mexico is the patrimony of the Republic of Mexico. To say that using that piece of property--see it. I am not sure our TV cameras are showing it to Americans, that is how big it is. It is now said, that is all you need to drill for oil--to do what?-- to produce as much oil as the State of Texas produces. There are even environmentalists who say, in their literature, it is an irrelevant amount of oil, it is not needed. Well, Madam President, as I crossed America, looking to find comparisons, as soon as I got to Texas, I asked, how much oil is there? They told me, it is almost the exact amount of billions of barrels of reserve as is in this tiny piece of property as big as the properties at Dulles here in Virginia. So if this is irrelevant to America, I assume we should not have drilled in Texas. How much oil might it produce? About the same amount as California per year. I ask Senator Nickles, is one to say California's production is not needed? We are so rich and arrogant about our wealth that we can throw away this huge amount of oil? We don't need it for America? I believe to turn this down is not an insult to Alaska; it is not reneging on something to Ted Stevens; it is an absolute denial to the American people of the increased prospect of reasonably priced oil for the future. If you are worried about the future high prices of oil and you want to blame someone, I say, blame the vote this afternoon. If this is defeated, you can put it right up there along with any other country that you assume is out to raise prices on the American consumer. Because that vote, denying the right of Americans to produce this oil, will just as assuredly result in the prospect of increased costs of oil to Americans. I wish we could stand on the floor and say: Americans, we have a plan. We are going to dramatically reduce the number of automobiles.

Mr. DOMENICI. I ask the Senator, could I have 1 additional minute? He said yes.