Pete Domenici

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I ask that I be permitted to speak 1 minute as in morning business.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. The time has come to move back to this bill. I want to say to Senators it happens frequently, when things are going well, that nobody is very interested in moving along. So we have to push you along by making sure Senators, or their staffs, understand this has to be a day where we get rid of three or four amendments, including a couple of very important ones that are here for the Senate to consider. There is a pending amendment Senator Cantwell has before us. We are trying right now to work out a unanimous consent agreement whereby we will move off that amendment and have a time for a vote. Then we will move onto an amendment--we are thinking that will be an amendment by Senator Bingaman--with a time agreement, somewhere around 3 hours equally divided. We will share that with Senator Bingaman and others. Then there is a third amendment from our side of the aisle which, for the sake of naming it, we will call the DeWine amendment. It is not necessarily the name, but he is one of the Senators. We know he has an amendment. We hope we can lock that in to follow after the Bingaman amendment. We will agree on the time. Then the DeWine amendment will have a certain amount of time after which it will be ready for a vote. I am thinking with some degree of certainty we will have three votes. That will take us into the evening. We will have this pending amendment, the Bingaman amendment, that he considers very important on the mandate for renewables across the land, and then we will have a DeWine amendment that has to do with the oil cartel. I am waiting for those who are putting these numbers together to come here because Senators have to be consulted. If people wonder why this takes a little bit of time, let me explain. We are agreeing to something, but people in the Senate have to agree. So we are checking with them now. The only other way we could do it, you see, for those who wonder where they are, we could have all Senators down here and say, Do you agree with this or that? But we can't do that, so we have this little time interval where we ask the Senate be put into a quorum call and that is what I was going to ask right now.

Mr. DOMENICI. I would ask the Senator, if he would, give me a little bit of time before he does that and let me see if we can have a unanimous consent agreement locked in so we have some idea how much time you will use, or others.

Mr. DOMENICI. If you are so generous, I will listen and when I think I am tired of listening to you, I will put up my hand.

Mr. DOMENICI. I have no objection.

Mr. DOMENICI. We are grateful. We will have a unanimous consent to take care of today. Let me just say briefly, if I were President of the United States-- which obviously is beyond the realm of possibility--I would be opposed to this amendment. It is not as if it does nothing to the President. It says, Mr. President, whoever you are--and it obviously will not be this one--tell us how, give us a plan, tell us how you will reduce America's consumption of crude oil by 40 percent by a year certain. What President would like to do that? What President would think that is a worthwhile effort if he would have to send up some kind of plan at which the whole world would laugh? Our cars would have to be the size of golf carts or we would have to make a breakthrough in the next 10 years, which we have been working on for 40 or 50 years, and we have not made it yet. The very ones talking about it do not want to even get the oil from ANWR. That is a million of what they are asking for, and it surely would be here by the time their resolution talks about it. What if the President, whoever it is, says: Let's go to ANWR and get a million. Guess what they would say: Destroying the world, getting rid of the environment. But a nice little resolution, nice little bill saying we have a solution to this. We will just be a John F. Kennedy and say our goal is to some way, somehow, cut America's consumption of crude oil from overseas by 40 percent, when it has been going up every year with everything we are trying to do. In this bill, we are trying what is real. We are challenging all of the technocrats, the technologists, the scientists. We are telling them: Here are resources, find solutions. What superentity would we create in this country and say: Here you are. You are on top of all this. You prepare this plan. You give it to the President so he can give it to the people. To what end? What would it do? A 40-percent reduction reduces our consumption by 7.2 million barrels. We cannot even get anyone to vote to let America produce 1 million barrels now. If that 1 million would come off 7.2 million barrels, we would still be a huge way away. Do not misunderstand, this issue is an American issue of high consequence. America is doing everything it can. We did not used to. That is why it is so hard now. We let it get away from us. It will not come back under control with a gaudy, impossible resolution that will sound like somebody has a plan. I have attempted just to tell the Senate the truth. I have attempted to offer an amendment to this and just up the ante and say if we can do 7.2 million, why don't we do 8.2 or 9.2, and put it in there and say we will vote on a bigger one. Then I thought, maybe I ought to be what I have tried to be on this bill all along, honest and forthright, and as best I could explain to the Senate, we have to do everything we can, with imagination, with vigor, with certainty, with resources, but the kind of things we know we can do, that we know we put our shoulders to it and we work hard. We are finally coming to the point where Americans do believe it is a big problem. I don't think they are blaming people anymore. It used to be we called the big oil companies up, swear them in under oath--I don't know if the Senator remembers the day we called them up here and had them swear. We said: You are the problem; you are why we are importing all this oil. Remember those days? They told us everything they could. That hearing went away. What happened? The next year we imported more oil and more oil. It isn't that the Senator doesn't think we should have an American plan. What we have in this bill is an American plan. Senator Bingaman and I and many others have worked hard to put it together. Some people say it does not do enough as it is. I heard some reporters yesterday commenting. I wondered what they were reading. They said: It doesn't do anything for nuclear. It is the most far-reaching pronuclear set of proposals we will have ever before us. The same commentators said it cost too much money. I don't know where they got the numbers. We have not even spent in this bill. We were given a $2-billion reserve fund. We have not spent all of that yet. I shouldn't have said that because everybody will be down here wanting to spend it, but they have to go through us before they can spend it. The tax portion is about like the House portion. It is a pretty good bill. It is not a spending bill. When you authorize programs, incidentally, you are not saying we are going to buy them or pay for them. The distinguished occupant of the Chair knows in agriculture you authorize programs, but you do not expect the appropriations to do exactly what you say. You say: This is a program we would like you to think about. That is what this bill does in terms of authorization. Overall, it is a very good bill. Is the proposed unanimous consent agreement satisfactory?

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I received notice that our Republican leader wishes to speak, he said, at 11:15. I want to make an observation and see if the Senator from Tennessee will answer it. The Senator from Tennessee went through all these other ways we could go about cleaning up our air and reducing the carbon emissions. What strikes me is, let's assume we are going to do all those things, because I think we are. I remind the Senator, however, that the $2 billion in there on nuclear--we should all understand, we can produce nuclear powerplants before that ever happens. That is fourth generation. That is getting ready for hydrogen. That is not charged to this, nor is it going to apply. Nonetheless, take all the rest. Let's assume we are doing them. The interesting thing about this amendment is, if we were doing them and saving carbon emissions, we do not get any credit for that; am I right? We still are going to have this 10-percent mandate for renewables. So let's assume a State 4 or 5 years from now opens a nuclear powerplant. That is as clean as wind, is it not? It is terrific from the standpoint of emissions, but we still have to do the 10 percent, right, the way this approach is; is that correct?

Mr. DOMENICI. And in every respect, a State will not get any credit for the fact they are doing all these things that move in the direction we want because here sits this mandate that says you do this anyway.

Mr. DOMENICI. I think that is not right, as I look at it. That confounds me as to why that would be the case. We are urging they do the others, but in some cases, they are going to be mandated to spend this rather extraordinary amount. Once the credit is gone, incidentally, this kind of energy is going to be pretty expensive stuff.

Mr. DOMENICI. The mandate does not go away. Somebody has to produce it and it has to be charged.

Mr. DOMENICI. I yield the floor. THE PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader is recognized.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I listened with great attention to the minority leader. I want to state to the Senate, as I listened I had one question that went through my mind. I am in no way--I have not been studying Guantanamo, in terms of hearings and the like. But some of our leading officials, in whom I have great confidence--the generals who speak, the Vice President--are asking the question, What would we do with those people, those prisoners? I guess it would be interesting for those who are very concerned about the issue to think with us a minute. What about the other side? What do they do with their prisoners? They don't have any problems, right? They kill them. We have been watching that. They hold them as hostages, tell the whole world about it, and then the next day they say cut off their heads. That is how they get rid of people who they think are an impediment to what they want to do, those who are fighting their cause. We don't have that luxury. We pick up these combatants and what do we do with them? What are we going to do with them, I ask rhetorically. We surely are not going to do what they are doing. We have to do something with them and it is not an easy solution. Who wants them? Will we put them out and say go home and then they will be out there killing our men again? It is a very serious proposition, in terms of the United States of America having a difficult problem here. I understand my time has elapsed.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Let me say, before the distinguished Senator leaves the floor, how much I appreciate his comments today and his analysis of this bill. But more than that, around the Senate there are some people--I guess, in the parlance of the racetrack, some are show horses and some are work horses. This Senator is a work horse. He has been on this committee for a few years--not as long as this Senator, but that is just because I have been here so long. Hardly anybody has been here longer than this Senator. But he works all the time on this. He knows a lot about this bill. He has some specialties in this area to which he has contributed immensely. Some things on this bill he is right on. He is more correct than the bill. He didn't get to do what he wanted on some of them, but he understands that we have a good bill. It is hard work. He was there all the time, helping us, doing his share, pulling his part of the load, helping us get this bill through. I want those who are aware of him and know of him to understand that is what the Senator from New Mexico thinks about that. I want the record to reflect that. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I send modifications to the pending amendment to the desk. It has been approved by both sides and the parties to this discussion.

Mr. DOMENICI. I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, this amendment will gut the ethanol amendment which has been crafted in a bipartisan manner. My good friend from New York suggested it would be unfair to make us all buy milk produced in New York. I think that would not only be unfair, but it would be a disaster because we wouldn't have any milk anywhere because they do not produce enough milk to go anywhere in the United States. In any event, we ought to table this amendment and get on with the Energy bill. I compliment the Senator on his arguments. He always makes excellent arguments in behalf of his State and his people. In this case I believe the country is going to be well served by making us less dependent upon oil that is imported from a cartel. He speaks of competition and whether there is going to be competition in ethanol. Let's be serious about this. There is no competition in the world markets for oil. In this case we are going to be producing ethanol that is American in order to displace, gallon by gallon, the oil we import. Having said that, I move to table the amendment. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. DOMENICI

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

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I note the presence of the distinguished Senator from Washington, Ms. Cantwell, on the floor. We have agreed heretofore that her amendment would now be the subject matter before the Senate. I understand the Senator is prepared to offer it.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, may we have a copy of the final draft of the amendment?

Mr. DOMENICI. We have it. I wonder if we can discuss what the Senator's pleasure is. We have nothing else pending but her amendment for at least a couple of hours or more. How much time does the Senator think she might need?

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, we will not set a specific time, but let's talk about a couple of hours. I gather that the Senator would not need all that time continuously, if somebody desired to speak. I ask the Chair to recognize the Senator to answer my question.

Mr. DOMENICI. It is the understanding--and I hope Senator Cantwell would comply--that there will not be any other subject matter come up. I ask unanimous consent that no other amendments be in order while this discussion is taking place, other than discussing the amendment.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, having said that, Senators on our side have heard we will be on this amendment for 2 hours, probably longer. If any of my colleagues desire to come down and debate the issue, I would very much appreciate them letting us know or, in fact, come to the floor and we will arrange for them to speak. I yield the floor.