Pete Domenici

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I have read through the 6-page document that the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts has submitted as his proposal before the Senate. I was wondering, as I read through--if you skip the first few paragraphs, you begin seeing the word ``Convention'' with a capital letter. I went back to see what that is. That is the Kyoto Convention.

Mr. DOMENICI. Senator, would you like to address the Chair, please? Would you like to ask a question?

Mr. DOMENICI. I was not. I was looking here. I said: What is he asking us to do? I finally got down to where the Senator's amendment says: It is the sense of the Senate that we shall do these things, work first by participating in intergovernmental negotiations under the convention with the objective of securing United States participation, et cetera, et cetera. I said: What is the convention? It is the U.N. Framework Convention. It says here. It produced Kyoto. That is what it says here. So I just want to remind the Senate, the Senator is suggesting that we ought to go back and join that convention and do something with the world so we can achieve something positive in global warming, the control of global warming gases. Frankly, everybody here should know, if they did not, the Senator from New Mexico voted for the Bingaman amendment, which many on my side did not, because I believe we have a problem. I said that. I thought that at sometime the Congress should address it. But I surely do not support this resolution which, in a sense, says now the Senate ought to be talking about going back into negotiations with the world under an architecture that has failed us. As a matter of fact, it yielded a very big, powerful what I would call pompous ceremonial proposal called Kyoto, which nobody is going to follow that has any industrial capacity. Now, maybe I should not say ``nobody,'' but very few nations. Most are trying to say: We would like to do it. This Senate has said, 99 to 0, do not send us the treaty, Mr. President, because we are not going to do it. So I think the Senator-- this is a good idea. It is a very excellent speech. His remarks are very admirable. But I do not believe we should today ask, through a sense of the Senate, that we go back to a convention architecture and enter into international agreements under its architecture, which yielded Kyoto, which I do not believe was very successful. I do not think I want to debate it particularly. I have just seen charts as to what it would require of the United States, and we could never do it. How much the other proposals do that is far less, and we can hardly do those. But that is another case. Is Kyoto achievable? No. Did that convention architecture achieve anything significant? I do not think so. We had a great debate, talked a lot about some good things. Maybe some great scientists attended. But I do not think we really want to say it is the sense of the Senate that we should go back to that format. I hope we do not. As far as I am concerned, I will not vote for it. I compliment the Senator again for the ideas expressed and the goals. But I do not think we should do this as a sense of the Senate. I yield the floor and reserve whatever time I have.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, how much time remains on both sides?

Mr. DOMENICI. I say to the Senator, would you yield back your time if I yield back mine?

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I will reserve 53 seconds.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, let me say to my fellow Senators, you have already as an institution, whether you voted for it or not, the Bingaman sense of the Senate. It said the Senate recognizes greenhouse gases are a problem. There is a scientific consensus that it is a problem, that we ought to do something about it through incentives and/ or mandatory caps. So we are on record on that. This is not just an amendment saying we should have a bipartisan congressional group to observe international participation in some agreements. It is much broader than that. It talks about joining in a convention architecture with the world. I don't know what else it could be other than the architecture that was established under Kyoto because that is what it refers to. I don't think we need to do that. I yield back time I might have. I guess we want the yeas and nays.

Mr. DOMENICI. As I understand it--did the Senator use all his time?

Mr. DOMENICI. I ask the Senator from New Jersey, would he be disposed to yielding back his time if this Senator would yield all of my time now?

Mr. DOMENICI. I yield back whatever time we have on our side. I ask the question so I understand carefully. The Senator did not ask for any consent that we take any action. He just delivered a speech. I didn't miss anything by way of a request, did I?

Mr. DOMENICI. I yield back my time.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. DOMENICI. I understand the Senators from Wisconsin and from Kansas have concerns about the potential for regulated utilities to cross-subsidize the business ventures of some of their affiliate companies.

Mr. DOMENICI. Let me assure the Senators from Wisconsin and Kansas that I appreciate their concerns, and I agree that utility customers should not be forced to unfairly bear the costs of business ventures by unregulated companies affiliated with their local utility. Neither should competition be undermined by unfair competition caused by shifting costs from an unregulated utility-owned business to the public utility. We can agree to disagree on whether FERC needs new authority or simply needs to exercise its existing authority. I anticipate that FERC will use its existing and new authority to address the problems described by small businesses and financial groups, but I agree that if there are problem areas, we should take a look at them.

Mr. DOMENICI. I commit to the Senators from Wisconsin and Kansas that I will work with them through conference to ensure that the final version of this bill does not undermine consumer protections or the financial integrity of utilities, or harm America's small businesses by undermining competition. I will also work with them to hold a hearing in the committee about transactions by holding companies and affiliate businesses of public utility companies. Finally, I suggest a General Accounting Office report on affiliate transactions by holding companies and affiliate businesses of public utility companies, as such a report could be a useful resource for us in the future.

Mr. DOMENICI. Sure.

Mr. DOMENICI. Reserving the right to object, I have no objection if we add to that that we have the same amount of time added to our side.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I ask the Senator from California if she would be interested in having an additional minute. You know there is something in this question.

Mr. DOMENICI. The Senator from California will have one minute, and we will have one minute.

Mr. DOMENICI. It is the Senator's right.

Mr. DOMENICI. Madam President, first, might I say to my good friend from New York, I respect his continuous efforts in this regard. But I would say, do not misunderstand that to mean I think his amendment will do any good. I think, first of all, the Senate should know the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is not a reserve to supply the United States with oil on a day- by-day basis. It is a reserve in the event we have a crisis. We had a crisis that started this. That is why we started the Reserve. We had a crisis because Iran, years ago, decided to cut us off. They did not cut us off by a huge amount, but just enough to send a turmoil into the market. Our prices skyrocketed, and the United States said: Well, let's find a place to put some oil that we can retrieve if we have a crisis. Now, everybody should know a crisis does not mean the price is too high or the price is too low. It means America has suffered an untoward shock, a war that all of a sudden happened, and we started drawing down, not an ongoing, everyday event that we just play and have to work in the marketplace. Now, how much do we have? Years ago we thought we had a very big reserve. In 1985, we said: We want to have 118 days of supply; that is, if we needed it, and needed it every day, continually, to supplement what we had domestically, we had 118 days. Because of our growing dependence and other things, we now have 59 days. The Reserve is 59 days of import protection. I ask the Senate, is 59 days too much? I wish we could tell the American people we had 259 days. But we have 59. It will soon be filled. So anybody worrying about amendments saying, Don't put in any more; it will soon reach its capacity, I say, Good. That is what it ought to be. Now, the Senator says: Let's start taking it out now, a million barrels a day for 30 days, with another possibility of a million barrels a day for 30 more days. To what end? Do you think those who control the price by controlling production would sit by and say, ``The United States is going to use its reserve. We don't think they should. It is kind of dumb. But they are going to put it on the market''? In a minute, they could cut production, and any impact using up this important reserve would have on the market would go away. So we would be doing a unilateral act and endangering our security because we would be minimizing the security potential of SPR, and we would not get any good out of it. There is no assurance doing what is suggested will have any significant impact on the price of oil. I know the Senator has said it will bring the price down, but it just does not make sense. A million barrels a day, when we use 20 million barrels--just think of that--how could it have an impact, when the OPEC cartel is a player, and they could make their adjustments? So what I see this as is no insurance at all of anything positive and an absolute assurance of something very, very bad for America-- negative--because we will have increased our risk of not having oil when we need it from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve that we put in in order to take it out when we had an untoward, sort of an attack on the flow of oil by some activity outside our control. Mr. President, while I compliment the Senator for wanting to say to Americans, We want to get the price of oil down, I want to say we worked hard in this Energy Committee. We did everything humanly possible. And if it was as easy as saying, Let's just sell the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, we would have done that, I say to the occupant of the chair, who was a very active participant. Anybody could have made a motion: Let's start selling the petroleum reserve. Nobody did that because we understand it as an activity that is self-defeating. As a matter of fact, Madam President and fellow Senators, instead of doing some good--and I say this in all deference to my friend from New York--it would probably do us some harm. Whatever you take out for this purpose probably adds to the security risk of this great Nation. Again I repeat, we have 59 days of supply. We wish we had 118, as we started out shooting for. And now we would start diminishing that--and I cannot tell you how much; a pretty good chunk--a million barrels a day for 30 days, plus 30 more million barrels. So having said that, I do not think we should do this. Madam President, the time has expired, as I understand it.

Mr. DOMENICI. Indeed. Amendment No. 805, as Modified

Mr. DOMENICI. I say to the Senator you have the right to modify your amendment. Go ahead.

Mr. DOMENICI. You do not need consent. Madam President, he has a right to modify it; is that not right?