Pete Domenici

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Then I will take our 7 minutes now.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, the second part of the amendment addresses the issue of using less. We have all heard about electric cars, and we know if we can get these batteries up to where they will do 100 miles before they need to be recharged, we will have electric batteries sprouting up all over America. That will save crude oil. Without a doubt, we will have established an excellent approach to America's energy future. All we need is for our majority leader--he belongs to the Senate--to be fair and let the Republicans have a vote on behalf of America. Why do they fear votes in this regard? I yield the floor and thank the Senate.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Before the Senator sits down, might I ask a question.

Mr. DOMENICI. I wanted to ask the Senator from South Dakota about his speech. You just got finished telling the American people what you would like to do on the bill, if that bill were present now and we were debating it, the bill they have been talking about, the speculation bill. You have been saying this is what you would do. A little while ago, the majority leader told the American people: You all could offer amendments on nuclear, on offshore. It seems to me he said that, and you are talking as if that is wrong, that we couldn't offer amendments. Could you explain why you feel the way you do and why it would appear that what he said is not true when compared with the way you are reacting? You are a good Senator. The way you are reacting, it seems as if what the majority leader said is untrue.

Mr. DOMENICI. Well, Mr. President, let me say to my good friend from Tennessee, first, what a pleasure it is to serve with him. I am sorry we have not served together the last 2 years on the Energy Committee because the Senator moved--after we got the big Energy bill through, and to his State's benefit--to the Appropriations Committee. I still get to work with the Senator there. I say to the Senator, let's see if we can put it into focus. American people, I hope you have been watching for about 30 minutes or 40. Because if you go back about 40 minutes or 45 minutes, you will see somebody standing over there. His name is Harry Reid. He is from Nevada. He is the majority leader. You would have heard him say: Well, I have offered to you that you could have offered an amendment for the offshore. You could have offered an amendment for nuclear. He went on through five or six. You could have offered them, but you didn't. Isn't it strange that he stands there and tells the American people and the Senate that, and here, today, there are five Senators talking with you, all who, it seems to me, have good brains, who seem to be interested in their State and our country. What are they saying? They are saying: We wish we could offer an amendment. So that means they could not. Right? I will tell you, here is how I approach it. I am going to look at the Parliamentarian and say to the Parliamentarian: You might know, Mr. Parliamentarian, because I asked. I will tell you, and I hope you will accept what I say is true. The Parliamentarian has told me the two amendments Majority Leader Reid put on the so-called speculation bill-- he added them to it to fill the tree--are called amendments Nos. 5098 and 5099. So, Mr. Parliamentarian, let's assume we are talking about the so- called speculation bill. Let's further assume--because it is true-- there are two amendments that have been offered to it, amendments Nos. 5098 and 5099. With that, I will ask: Is it in order for the Senators from Tennessee--either of them--or the Senator from New Mexico, with that situation, to offer an amendment that would permit the opening of the offshore resources of America? Would that amendment be in order?

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I say to the Senator, you asked me, could I help you. I think I have helped you, right there. I think I have helped those who are listening.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I say to the Senator, that amendment would not be in order.

Mr. DOMENICI. Yes. Whenever I talked about the regulations, I want to clarify that the first commercial rigs couldn't be developed because of what they did. Senator, I just wish to say before I sit down--and I am ready to--how pleased I am that you are going to stay after I leave and apparently stay on the Energy Committee and apparently work on something very dear to my heart: nuclear energy. I worked for 8 to 10 years on that, with marvelous staff help. I think we had a lot to do with going from no nuclear power in America to a very live activity where many companies are standing in line to offer their licenses at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to produce nuclear power. We need to finish with a recycling provision. I understand you are interested in that and you will probably work on that in the years to come, and I commend you. I will be gone. I think my good friend from Tennessee who is here knows we have to do recycling, the second phase of this activity. Right in his State, we have taken the lead. TVA has taken the lead in nuclear power because they were ready, and before anybody else they were building one, building a half one, turning it into a whole, and that has been a tremendous experience for the nuclear industry. He is to be praised because that happened with people being heard and all and with no serious complaints, and it is on its way, just like the rest of them. They are going to build them right next door to existing ones, and that is going to be a pretty good approach. Remember that when you start working at it, they are not building them in new places, they are building right next door to ones that have been there for 30 years. People say: Of course, build another one. You might hear some anti's, but they are not anti's around the existing plants because it has been nothing but good, and you will find that when you start to take the lead in that. I want to say I think the time is up for me, and if it isn't, whatever it is up here tells me I am about finished for the day. I am. I do want to say to both of you that it has been tremendous to talk here today. I think, somehow or another, we have made the point that there just cannot be one set of truths for the Democrats, one set of truths that apply to the majority leader, and another set of truths that apply to us. It is either true or its not true, and the issue of whether we have been able to offer amendments in the true way, to amend them and to debate them, to be amended themselves, whether we have been in that position is clear, clear, clear as the clearest water on Earth, it is that clear that we have not been able to because it has been denied to us. Anybody standing up saying: You could have offered amendments--how could we? I don't know how we can. Maybe next week we can offer six or eight or more. Senator, maybe you can stand up and offer them and let the Parliamentarian say they are not in order; say, why not; and we will get the answer. Maybe somebody who put those two amendments on there to close everything up, maybe they would consider taking them off. I mean, if he says you can have an amendment, well, can we have an amendment by taking down your two amendments and then we will have our amendment? I am sure the answer would be no. Why wouldn't it be? Because they don't want you to offer an amendment, right? That must be it. I yield the floor. Thank you, Mr. President. I thank the Senator for giving me time.

Mr. DOMENICI. Because in the Senate, we run on parliamentary rules. There is a rule that if an amendment has been filled, the tree has been filled, you cannot offer any more. Now, we have a majority leader who has used that rule more than any other leader in the history of America. That means he has offered two amendments to an amendment so you could not offer any other amendments. That is the way he runs the Senate. He does it not only to us, he does it to everybody because he does not want to have a vote on what you want, which you have so eloquently spoken to, or what the Senator from Alaska wants or what I would like. He does not want any of those. Why? Because maybe he will lose and maybe we will open this big parcel of land to the American people, open it so we can use it. Somehow or other, Democrats do not want more energy. I do not know why. It is incredible to me that with the American people clamoring for it, they do not want it. But they have a leader who is acting so no amendments can be offered. He stands and tells the American people any amendment they want can be offered. Frankly, I tell you, you can put those things up beside each other, and one is true and one is not true. I think I have established the reality that if I wanted to offer any amendments he was talking about, they would be out of order. I have lived in the Senate for 36 years. I have never had a Senate such as this. This Senate is run by one person. It is worse than the House Rules Committee. The House Rules Committee establishes the rules by which you work. But we do not have that. We have one person. He decides because he is entitled to the floor, he offers two amendments, and that equals a denial of the rights for either Republicans or Democrats to offer an amendment. That is where we are. Look at the good we could have done. Look at the issues we could have resolved. Look at what we could have told the American people: We have opened your property which contains billions of barrels of oil and God knows how many trillion cubic feet of natural gas. It is going to be open so we can use it. Well, we cannot tell them that. It is kind of strange, but I think it is true. I am very glad you asked me to explain it. I am glad we have the number. Maybe next week we can ask the majority leader, when he is here, if he would withdraw those two amendments so we could have amendments. I think if he were here, I would ask him that. I would ask him: How about a unanimous consent agreement, Mr. Leader, that we will remove your two amendments. They stand in the way of all our amendments. How about removing them? I would get some mumbo jumbo, and he would say he wants to leave them there. I thank the Senator.

Mr. DOMENICI. I did. Surely, I did.

Mr. DOMENICI. He said no. And he had the power to do it because, I told you, if our leader would have taken any one of those seven--say, he would have given you one of them and said to the distinguished Senator from Alabama: Why don't you offer this one? If you would have offered it, somebody would have said that meant that amendment is out of order, and the Parliamentarian would have said that is out of order. You cannot offer amendments because those two amendments have been offered to fill the tree. That is a nice word. We have to understand it. What he has done is put those up there, which equals no one has a right to offer an amendment: I have done it. I have had all the amendments that this institution is going to have. I have the right to, says the leader. I put them. That is the end of the amendments.

Mr. DOMENICI. Nowhere.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I believe it is absolutely what our distinguished chairman of our conference--who is on the floor, who was the leader of the colloquy that took place--has so eloquently said. It is right here in our hands that offshore contains more oil and gas than any other property of the United States, and it not only should be the subject matter of debate but there should be an amendment offered and we should vote on it and say yes or no to opening it for drilling. Can you imagine how happy the American people, who have followed this issue, would be if one of these mornings they could read: Senate votes on offshore drilling and says yes. I do not know why the Democrats do not want to do that. I would think they would be in favor of it because most Americans are. So I do not know where they are getting the messages. But you cannot stand here any longer, after what we have established today, and say you can vote on any of these. Somebody is going to be here with the name of these amendments, and anytime he says that, we are going to ask: Can we remove these two amendments that stand in the way of us doing that? I don't know what his excuse is going to be, but there will have to be one. Right?

Mr. DOMENICI. Yes.

Mr. DOMENICI. Oh, yes.

Mr. DOMENICI. Well, actually, when we did our big Energy bill--that is when the good Senator from Tennessee was on our committee--one of the things we wrote in--it went by rather easily, nobody knew it; I knew it because I worked on it and I put it in there--we decided that the Bureau of Land Management property up there in those three States belongs to the Government--that property. So it belongs to the people. There was not any provision to let the leases out so they could use it for research on how to develop it. We permitted that in our bill. Sure enough, it worked. Within 6 months after the bill was passed, there was interest. The interest was evidenced by one of the major companies taking out a lease. They wanted to spend $4 billion developing a technology. They were ready to move and see if it was going to work. Well, that is a lot of money, and it means that is going to take a lot of money. Well, you know what happened. Similar to all these other things around here, in the dead of night, on the Interior appropriations bill, an amendment was put on, a rider, you call it. It said: You cannot proceed to write the final regulations for the research and development--not for the production--for the research and development so people will know what they are getting into and what they can spend money on. They passed that at night, put it on there. We know where it came from. It came from those who want no development in the State of Colorado. And there we are, similar to all these other amendments that have been put on that take away property rights from our American people. That was done there. We are asking that be lifted. We have an amendment to do that. We cannot vote on it. Right?

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. I understand I am entitled to speak now, for how long?

Mr. DOMENICI. Before the Senator leaves the floor, I wanted to say--I wanted to talk about three things, briefly. First, the Senator is talking about an amendment that I cosponsored with him. He adequately explained that if the tree were not filled by the majority leader, that amendment could very well be before the Senate. It is very important and very simple. We would have a chance at some point in time to vote, would we not, on that amendment? And it would say we are going to open the 85 percent of the offshore of the United States that is closed today, and we are going to let the Governors work with us and try to give them part of the royalties so we can have a seamless growth in the offshore production, which could indeed change the supply-demand pendulum that is currently causing this big spiral upwards that causes gasoline prices to go up--that is what that amendment is for?

Mr. DOMENICI. I want to make one more point. I heard the Senator talk about his hope for a bipartisan bill. We could get plenty of people on because there ought to be Democrats who are for this. Wouldn't it help a lot if eight or ten Democrats on the other side were to tell their leader they do not like this, they do not like the way he has filled the tree, he ought to take down some of those amendments so we could go to work, bipartisan or otherwise, so we could try to have an amendment to vote on? That would help, wouldn't it?

Mr. DOMENICI. I don't know where the voices are going. All the voices in America, up to 75 percent, are saying they want to open the offshore so we will have that asset for them to use. You cannot do that without having a vote on the Senate floor. That would not happen but by a miracle; you would have a vote.

Mr. DOMENICI. That amendment the Senator has spoken of that he was going to offer, but it is out of order--he is going to have to ask the majority leader for permission. That is a real strange U.S. Senate. I never understood that we had anybody of whom you had to go ask permission, but that is the way they have it set up. You will have to go ask him. If he says no, you can't offer this wonderful amendment. The second part of your amendment is the part that concerns energy, and it could be working within a couple of years, couldn't it? The part on batteries that would help us with new electric cars, it could come on by the numbers, by the hundreds?

Mr. DOMENICI. I want to say, the Senator from Minnesota couldn't put it more clearly before the American people than he has done. He has tried to offer an amendment that goes right to the problem and confronts it head on. The Senator has heard from the Parliamentarian-- you have requested permission to offer the amendment, and you heard you cannot. Why you cannot is because the tree is filled; that is, the number of amendments allowed has been filled by amendments by the majority leader, and there is no more room. There is no more room for something really good--your amendment. There is no room for it. You have shown everybody what that all means. This means we are going to be around here telling the American people: We cannot help you. We cannot help you with the amendment that you talked about because we cannot consider it.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I am going to proceed. How much time do I have?

Mr. DOMENICI. I think the Senator from Oklahoma wanted to speak?

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I have spoken on the Senate floor about how the majority leader has used this process and eliminated our ability to offer amendments. I refer my colleagues to a speech given on the floor last night by the senior Senator from Pennsylvania where he lays out a compelling case against the growth of this process known as filling the tree by the majority leader in the Senate. It is a good speech. My colleagues should read it and heed it, heed the warning, because the more it is used, the less this place is a Senate. The more it is used, the less we have the rights of Senators to offer amendments and debate and have votes because we are curtailed, cut off, eliminated by this process. You ought to read the speech and be fearful of the future of this institution but, more important--equally important--your rights as a Senator. You ought to be worried about that. It will not be the Senate you thought it was if you sit around and let this happen. We are going to stay on it until the leader understands that there is a group of Senators who do not like it and are not going to sit here and take it. I would like to speak for a minute for the American people. I would like to talk about a great amendment that is going to be pushed aside because of this short-circuiting in this bill. This amendment gets to the heart of what we have been saying. We need to find more and use less. We have a great quantity of American resources on the Atlantic and Pacific offshore coast. So the first part of the Coleman-Domenici amendment which Senator Coleman has been speaking about would allow the coastal States--to say to those areas that we can open the waters within their offshore boundaries for leasing 50 miles out. Believe it or not, we know how to do that. Platforms can be built 50 miles out or 60 miles out, drill down 50,000 feet and have 12 or 14 wells under one platform. They do not have to drill a platform for each well.