Jim Inhofe

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. We are ready to vote as soon as the Senator brings it up. Amendment No. 2223

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, it is my understanding that Senator Sessions is going to get one more amendment in, and then we will start the voting; is that correct?

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. First of all, we made an effort--and the Senator referenced the Vitter amendment. We have 67 percent of the $789 billion that is not obligated. That means it is not there. The Senator is right; in their minds it may be obligated, but it is not obligated. We tried to have an amendment to triple the amount of money that would have gone to roads and highways and bridges back during the consideration, and we couldn't get that in. The Senator was a cosponsor of my amendment. Now we are trying to do the same thing we were unable to do then. This is supposed to be a stimulus bill. The total amount of stimulus in this bill, in my opinion, is about 7\1/2\ percent. This is an opportunity to do something with real jobs and not have any problem in increasing our debt or deficit. So I appreciate the fact that my colleague is coming down, and several Senators will be coming down, and drawing this to the attention of the American people as well as to our friends on the other side. There is our opportunity to save lives, to do infrastructure--one of the major reasons we are here in this Chamber today.

Mr. INHOFE. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. INHOFE. If the Senator will yield, that is another reason the Vitter amendment and Ensign amendment are good. You are talking about money that is out there, not recoverable. Let's try to direct it where we can get something from it. I had an amendment during the stimulus bill to try to triple the amount of money that would go into actual construction, and they would not take it up.

Mr. INHOFE. Sixty-seven percent has not been obligated, so 33 percent is obligated.

Mr. INHOFE. The answer is 3.5 percent, and an additional 3.5 percent in military construction, totaling about 7 percent.

Mr. INHOFE. If the Senator will yield, it is a real problem we have here. I remember, up until about 5 years ago, our trust fund took care of our needs. The problem we had was not just the fact that as it goes up, the proceeds go down, but that we got involved in things that had nothing to do with transportation. It used to be bridges, transportation, and highways. It was adequate at that time, but the hitchhikers would say there is a big surplus, so let's tap into that, and now we have all these things having nothing to do with transportation.

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, as the ranking member of the committee, first of all, while I love the chairman dearly, she is dead wrong on all the information she just gave you. Let me go over that briefly. First of all, on the Clinton administration. Let's keep in mind that even then-Vice President Al Gore admitted they had a recession coming at that time and that reduced the amount of money that was coming in to run the government. We all know that is basic economics. We also know during the 8 Clinton years he downgraded the military by 40 percent-- not 10 percent or 15 percent. I will never forget the euphoric attitude: The Cold War is over now; we don't need a defense any longer. We cut down our end strength and our modernization program and all of a sudden 9/11 came and we were in the middle of fighting a war with a military that was downgraded by the President. Obviously, it took a lot of money to bring us out. I would say on behalf of President Bush that was a tough situation, but he grabbed hold of it. Yes, we had to spend more money at the time, but he had to rebuild what was torn down during the Clinton years. One word about the Vitter and Ensign amendments. They are both good amendments, and all they are doing is what I thought the chairman of our committee joined me in wanting to do back when we were considering the stimulus bill, the $789 billion bill. Only 3.5 percent of that went to roads and highways and bridges. That would really have stimulated the economy. I had an amendment cosponsored by the chairman, Chairman Boxer. We were unable to get it passed. That would have turned this into a real stimulus bill. Frankly, we would not be here today if we had been successful doing that. Look, 67 percent of that $789 billion is unobligated today. What better use could there be than using that for construction, for getting into something where we can actually stimulate the economy? This has to be done. Our roads, our highways, our bridges are in deplorable condition. Our chairman and I agree on that. We want a robust reauthorization bill. But in the meantime, to be able to take some of the money that is in the stimulus bill that doesn't stimulate anything--we are not talking about taking away from military construction. I am the second ranking member on the Armed Services Committee. I wouldn't tolerate that. That is already in there. But the unobligated funds amount to about 67 percent or about over $400 billion of the stimulus bill. I am going to strongly support--in fact, I recommended to both Senators Vitter and Ensign--that this is a good place to find the money we have to find in order to rebuild our system. I have to say something about the Bond amendment because I will have to leave the floor in just a minute. I am fully supportive of the amendment. The rescission is bad for every State and bad for the highway program. This amendment corrects an accounting provision in SAFETEA that removes $8.7 billion of what was supposed to be unneeded contract authority. I think the rescission was not intended to have the real funding impacts on the States, but the provision in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 changed how the rescission was to be implemented. Now States stand to lose about $400 million of real money. Madam President, $40 million of that $400 million comes from Oklahoma. Right now the Oklahoma secretary of transportation, Gary Ridley--and I believe he is the best secretary of transportation anywhere in the Nation--recently told me my State will be forced to cancel $40 million in projects that were supposed to begin this year. For this reason, this amendment cannot be put off. We have to pass it now; otherwise, States will have to cut planned projects in anticipation of this rescission. Some are arguing this amendment would somehow endanger the passage of the trust fund rescue. I flatly reject this argument. The other body is still in session. Right now they are over there, and we should not bow to its whims. This is not just a Senate problem to fix. The House has a responsibility to address it too. As I stated earlier, the House is still in session and they can take a few extra hours before their adjourning to pass a highway fix bill with the Bond rescission language in it. It is ludicrous to talk about infrastructure spending being an ingredient in creating jobs on one hand and on the other hand allowing $8.7 billion in contract authority to disappear. I urge my colleagues to support all three of these amendments. I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be recognized for such time as I shall consume.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, first, let me say I agree with the points of my friend from Arizona. They are significant. He saved the best until last, because we hear people say the Republican Party doesn't have any answers, when we do have answers. There are real reforms we have tried, and they have worked. The health savings accounts--we tried that on a pilot project basis, and it was tremendously successful. Health coverage and health services are the only things in this country on which individual decisions can be made that would encourage us to save what we are spending. There is no other product or service out there that doesn't have some kind of a competition. I think it is only natural, if you have an insurance policy that covers all these things and you find out you have a problem, rather than worry about what it is going to cost or what treatment to get, you go out and get it all because it doesn't cost you anything. That is one of the problems you have. Health savings accounts have been successful. In fact, we have none of this stuff. In the discussion they have had on socializing medicine, they have not talked about medical liability or malpractice. The Senator from Arizona did a very good job talking about this issue. Just imagine, a doctor has to pay $200,000 upfront before he can do anything for an entire year. Who pays that? It is not the doctor; it is everybody else whom he is treating. That is where you get into the real need for reform. We have a system that has worked very well. By the way, I inquire of the Chair, are we in morning business?

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Morning business. Well, I am going to be awhile. Anyway, what I would suggest doing is going back and looking at what has happened since the Kyoto treaty was considered. In 2005, we had the McCain-Lieberman bill. The McCain-Lieberman bill was very similar to the Kyoto treaty. It was cap and trade. It was very similar to the Warner-Lieberman bill and very similar to what we are looking at today, the cap-and-trade bill, which is the Waxman-Markey bill. They are essentially the same thing; that is, cap and trade, a very sophisticated way to try to regulate greenhouse gases or primarily CO2. I would suggest that many of the people who were talking about doing this in the very beginning were people who were saying: Well, why don't you pass a tax on CO2? I would say: If you want to get rid of CO2 and be honest and straightforward, go ahead and pass a tax and get rid of it. As it turned out, they didn't want to do that because that way people would know how much they are being taxed. If you have a cap and trade, that is government picking winners and losers, and you might be able to make people think they are actually not getting a tax increase. I wish to quote a few of the people who have weighed in on this issue. If you don't believe what I am saying about cap and trade, listen to some of the past quotes from members of the Obama administration and other proponents of cap and trade. They speak for themselves. This is what President Obama said prior to the time he was President. He said: Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity prices would necessarily skyrocket . . . Because I'm capping greenhouse gases, coal, power plants, natural gas--you name it--whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers. John Dingell: Nobody in this country realizes that cap and trade is a tax, and it's a great big one. Charlie Rangel said this not too long ago, speaking on cap and trade: Whether you call it a tax, everyone agrees that it's going to increase the cost to the consumer. Then Peter Orszag, former CBO Director and current White House OMB Director, said: Under a cap and trade program, firms would not ultimately bear most of the costs of the allowances, but instead would pass them along to their customers in the form of higher prices. That is the appointed OMB Director, Peter Orszag, saying that. Continuing his quote: Such price increases stem from the restriction on emissions and would occur regardless of whether the government sold emission allowances or gave them away. Indeed, the price increases would be essential to the success of a cap and trade program, because they would be the most important mechanism through which businesses and households would be encouraged to make investments and behavioral changes that reduced CO2 emissions. He said further: The government could either raise $100 by selling allowances and then give that amount in cash to particular businesses and individuals, or it could simply give $100 worth of allowances to those businesses and individuals, who could immediately and easily transform the allowances into cash through the secondary market. He said further: If you didn't auction the [CO2] permits, it would represent the largest corporate welfare program that has ever been enacted in the history of the United States. All of the evidence is that what would occur is that corporate profits would increase by approximately the value of the permits. Further, although the direct economic effects of a cap-and-trade program described in the previous section would fall disproportionately on some industries, on some regions of the country, and on low-income households, we had several people testify before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee--and you saw the most notorious one speak 2 weeks ago, representing the U.S. Black Chamber of Commerce. He was testifying how regressive this cap-and-trade tax would be. If you stop and think about it, sure, it is true, if you raise necessarily, as they have to do, under the House-passed Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill--if you raise the cost, it is going to be the cost of energy. So you have poor families on fixed incomes who still have to heat their homes in the winter, so the percentage of their expendible income they use in heating their homes would be far greater. So it is regressive. That is why he got so emotional when he was here talking about what the cost would be to the poor people of America. Douglas Elmendorf, Director of the CBO, said that some of the effects of a CO2 cap would be similar to those of raising such taxes. The higher prices caused by the cap would reduce real wages and real returns on capital, which would be like raising marginal tax rates on those sources of income. All of these people are experts. They work in the government, and they work--most of them--in the Obama administration. They are saying this would be the largest tax increase in history on the American people. I think that during the recess--if we ever get to it--which is supposed to take place a week from Friday, we will be in a position to talk about three major issues. We have already talked about efforts to pass some kind of a government-operated health system. I talked about Gitmo, the closing of that, which I think there is no justification for whatsoever. The other thing is that it is the largest tax increase in the history of this country. In an interview with Michael Jackson, AutoNation CEO, he said: We need more expensive gasoline to change consumer behavior. Otherwise, Americans will continue to favor big vehicles no matter what kinds of fuel economy standards the government imposes on automakers. He added that $4 a gallon ``is a good start.'' These are people who do want to increase the cost of fuel for an agenda, which will not help the environment. Alan Mulally, CEO of Ford Motor Company, said: Until the consumer is involved, we are not going to make progress in reducing the amount of oil the United States consumes. On and on, we have people--I plan to spend time on the floor talking about the problems with this because I fear that if you don't do anything, we are going to end up passing the largest tax increase in the history of America. Even the Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, said: Coal is my worst nightmare. He also said: Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe. That is the Secretary of Energy for the Obama administration who said that. He also said: What the American family does not want is to pay an increasing fraction of their budget, their precious dollars, for energy costs. He said further: A cap and trade bill will likely increase the costs of electricity. . . . This is the Secretary of Energy under President Obama. He said: These costs will be passed on to the consumers. But the issue is, how does it actually--how do we interact in terms with the rest of the world? If other countries don't impose a cost on carbon, then we would be at a disadvantage. . . .We should look at considering duties that would offset that cost. Then, of course, the chairman of our committee, Senator Boxer, said: The biggest priority is softening the blow on our trade- sensitive industries and our consumers. I just want you to know that that's the goal. I am glad she is saying that is a goal. Senator McCaskill weighed in--and I agree with her--saying: We need to be a leader in the world, but we don't want to be a sucker. That is a good statement. And if we go too far with this, all we're going to do is chase more jobs to China and India, where they've been putting up coal-fired plants every 10 minutes. That was Senator McCaskill from Missouri. She is a Democrat. Yet she has very strong feelings that this would chase off our jobs to foreign countries. She mentioned China and India. They are cranking out two new coal-fired plants every week in China. Let me do this. Three weeks ago, in our Committee on Environment and Public Works--I want to commend the Director of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson--I asked her this on the record, on TV: If we pass the Waxman-Markey bill as it is written right now, as it came over from the House, and it were signed into law by the President, what would be the result of that in terms of reducing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere? She thought for a minute, and then she said something that surprised me: It wouldn't reduce emissions at all. In other words, even if we pass this largest tax increase in American history on the people, we are still not going to reduce the amount of CO2 that goes into the atmosphere. In fact, you could argue--and it has been argued--that it would increase it because it would chase the manufacturing jobs to other countries. They are estimating 9.5 percent of the manufacturing jobs would be sent to China and other countries, where they have no emission restrictions, and that would have a net increase of CO2. With that, I see several colleagues coming to the floor. In deference to them, I will yield, but before I yield the floor, let me make one last request. I want to do this. I have been concerned--and I don't know that the Senator from Florida was here when we were talking about Gitmo. I was frustrated when we were unable to get my amendment on the Defense authorization bill that would have the effect of keeping Gitmo open. The only thing left for me is S. 370. At this time, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. 370.

Mr. INHOFE. I thank the Senator from North Dakota and I assure him that if someone comes down with an amendment, I will cease and yield to them. Cap and Trade In the meantime, there is another subject I wish to speak about. I have been doing this now for 10 years every week. It is safe to say that at 3:09 a.m., on June 26, most of America was asleep. While they slept, Democratic leaders in the House were creating a nightmare. In the early morning hours, Speaker Pelosi and her deputies were pushing the largest tax increase in American history. In the dead of night, with no one watching, they engaged in full- scale arm twisting, back-room dealing, and outright pork-barreling to garner support for a massive bill few, if any, had actually read or understood. You have to keep in mind there are about 400 pages of this bill that weren't printed until 3 o'clock in the morning of the morning the bill was voted on. When America awoke, they found Democrats talking about green jobs and the new clean green energy economy. They spoke of free markets and innovation and energy independence. All of it sounded so appealing. Yet none of it was true. That is because Waxman-Markey is full of regulations, mandates, bureaucracy, and big government programs. Waxman-Markey is, to quote John Dingell, ``a tax, and a great big one'' on small businesses, families, and consumers. I don't blame the Democrats for selling cap and trade as something it is not. This is a political imperative for them because the American people now know what cap and trade is and they don't like it. According to independent political analyst Charlie Cook: Many Democrats getting back to Washington from Independence Day recess reported getting an earful from their constituents over the `energy tax hike' . . . Further, Cook noted--and I am quoting Charlie Cook right now: The perception is that this is a huge tax increase at a time when people can ill afford one. Hence, Democrats, whether they supported the bill or not, are getting battered, increasing their blood pressure. Let me say this. This is an issue we are going to be talking about. I have been on the Environment and Public Works Committee since I came to the Senate in 1994. I was the chairman of that committee back when the Kyoto treaty was considered. At that time, as everyone else, I assumed manmade gases, anthropogenic gases, CO2, methane, were causing global warming. Now people are careful to say climate change and not global warming since we are in about the ninth year of a cooling period. But at that time I assumed it was true. That is all everybody talked about. Until the Wharton School did a study and the question was posed: If the United States were to pass and ratify the Kyoto treaty and live by its emissions requirements, how much would it cost? The range was between $300 billion and $330 billion a year. It was at that point that I decided it would be a good time to look at the science behind that and see if, in fact, the science was there. We are talking about 10 years ago. After looking at it and studying it, we found scientist after scientist who was coming out of the closet and saying this thing was started by the United Nations, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the reports they give are not reports from scientists; they are reports that are from policymakers. Consequently, on my Web site, the Web site inhofe.senate.gov, I have listed over 700 scientists who were on the other side of this issue and now are on the side saying: Wait a minute. This is something that is not real, and it certainly is not worth the largest tax increase in history. I remember when Vice President Al Gore was in office, the Clinton- Gore administration, and at that time they decided they wanted to come out with a report, in order to sell the idea of ratifying the Kyoto treaty, that they would come up with a report to say how much good could be done, how much the temperature could be lowered over a 50-year period of time if all developed countries, all developed nations ratified and lived by the emissions requirements, how much would it reduce the temperature. The results--and the man's name was Tom Quigley. Tom Quigley was the foremost scientist at that time. He said it would reduce the temperature over a 50-year period by .07 of 1 degree Celsius in 50 years. That is not even measurable. I wish to inquire if the Senator from Florida wishes to speak as in morning business or on this bill?

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I would only respond to my very good friend from North Dakota--in fact, we were recently talking about how in agreement we were on some of these things, the potential we have to explore in the United States. I have talked to the leadership to try to bring this up and have not been able to do it. I guess you get to the point where you are frustrated and you know that two-thirds of the American people want to set something in place to keep these terrorists from coming into the United States. All I ask is to get my bill up. I will be trying to do that in the future. I wish to ask the manager of the current bill on the floor, the minority manager, if he desires to have the floor for the purpose of the consideration of the bill.

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I want to spend a little time on a bill that has to do with one of the three major interests we are going to have during the recess. One of the issues is one I feel very strongly about; that is, what is happening right now at Guantanamo Bay. Some refer to it as Gitmo. I have some very strong feelings about that. I do not know why our President has this obsession that he is going to turn loose or bring these detainees, these terrorist detainees, back to the United States. If you do that, either to try them or to bring them back here, they become magnets for terrorist activity. We have detained about 800 al-Qaida and Taliban combatants at Gitmo. We have to understand that a terrorist combatant is someone different than you would normally--we are not talking about criminals here. We are not talking about even people who represent countries. We are talking about terrorist combatants. To date, over 540 have been transferred or released, leaving approximately 230 at Gitmo. Here is the problem we have. If I were making this talk, as I was, about a month ago, I would say we had about 280 detainees at Gitmo. The problem is, you cannot get rid of them by asking some country to take them because the countries will not do it. You do not want to bring them back to the United States because, as I said, that becomes a magnet. So our President has been, one by one, trying to bring these back, putting them in our system for trial here in the United States. It is important to understand the rules of evidence are different. If you are in a military tribunal, you can dispose of these people. But you cannot do it--for example, hearsay evidence is not admissible in the courts in the United States. So it would not fit in our Federal system. President Obama has ordered the Guantanamo facility be closed. He has recently given an extension to that. In 2007, the Senate voted 94 to 3 on a nonbinding resolution to block detainees from being transferred to the United States. It said: Detainees housed at Guantanamo Bay should not be released into the American society nor should they be transferred stateside into facilities in American communities and neighborhoods. Well, that is very specific. In fact, I had the amendment to do that on the Defense authorization bill only last week. Quite frankly, it was blocked by the Democratic majority. On May 20, 2009, the Senate voted 90 to 6--that was my and Senator Inouye's language; it was a bipartisan amendment--to prohibit funding for the transfer of Gitmo detainees to the United States. We are hitting them two different ways. One is, we are saying you cannot bring them over here. Second, you cannot try them over here. And now, thirdly, we are not going to pay for any relocation of these people. Unfortunately, the supplemental appropriations conference deleted that provision. That was a provision that passed 90 to 6, authored by me, Inhofe, and Senator Inouye, the senior Senator from Hawaii. But they took it out. So that means it is not there right now for trials. But the law does block funding for permanently transferred detainees from Gitmo to the United States for the 2009 budget year, which ends on September 30. The House Appropriations Committee will vote this week on language contained in a manager's amendment proposed by Representative Jerry Lewis of California prohibiting the administration from spending any money to move prisoners to U.S. soil. Last Thursday, the Senate Democrats again blocked an attempt to consider an amendment that would have permanently prevented the detainees from being transferred from Gitmo. That was my amendment. It was part of the Defense authorization bill. When President Barack Obama took office, there was one free bed at the supermax prison in Colorado, with a typically long waiting list to move high-security prisoners into supermax. To understand what this is, the supermax prison is one with the very highest level of security, a place where they might argue that you could put a terrorist there and that terrorist, regardless of how serious he was, is one who would be secure. The problem they are overlooking is, if they are located in the United States, they become a magnet for terrorism. I know President Obama, at one time, was proposing some 17 sites in America where we could put these Gitmo detainees. One of those happened to be in Fort Sill, in my State of Oklahoma. I went down to Fort Sill to look at our prison facility down there. There is a master sergeant-- no, I am sorry, Sergeant Major Carter was her name. She was in charge of the prison. That prison was set up as a normal military prison but certainly not suitable for detainees, not suitable for terrorists. It happens that Sergeant Major Carter--you can call her and ask her about this. She had two tours at Gitmo, and she said: Why in the world are you guys in Washington and this President trying to close Gitmo? It is an asset we need. It is a place where they can be secure. It is a place where they have treated them humanely over the years. Well, anyway, so when you look at what we have here, there are no places that are appropriate. Assistant Attorney General David Kris testified at the same hearing of the House Armed Services Committee that both civilian and federal jails and military prisons are being considered for potential future incarceration for prisoners facing criminal prosecution, military tribunals or long-term detention without trial, more than 50 have been cleared for release, and an administration task force is sorting through the remaining 229 prisoners to determine their fate. What we are saying is we have already picked the low-hanging fruit. We have already taken care of the problem of those individuals who either a country won't take back or you can find someplace to put them. But the remainder are the real tough guys, the bad guys whom we don't want in our society. Government lawyers in both the Obama and the Bush administrations have said that an unspecified number of detainees should continue to be held without trial, stating that some of the evidence against them will be classified or thin, and the government fears these most dangerous detainees could be released should they be given their day in court; that is, their day in court in the United States. If you look at the facility they have down there, it is made for this type of detainee. It is one that will allow the security of evidence so it doesn't threaten other people, and it is something that cannot take place in this country. Johnson also said the Obama administration has not yet determined where it will hold newly captured al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners for extended detention after the Guantanamo Bay prison closes, if it should close. Of course, my effort is to keep it open. So far the only Guantanamo Bay detainee brought to face trial in a U.S. criminal court is Ahmed Ghailani. He is the Tanzanian whom we sent to New York and faces charges in conjunction with the two bombings. We remember the two bombings in Tanzania and Kenya. Federal prosecutors said last Friday they no longer plan to hold Mohammed Jawad, who threw a grenade at a U.S. convoy in 2002, as a wartime prisoner, a signal that the Obama administration intends to bring him to the United States before a criminal court. Last week, Democratic Members in the House and the Senate said Michigan prisons set to close because of the State budget crunch could take the high-profile prisoners from Gitmo, creating jobs lost in the auto industry. Let's stop and think that one through. These are elected representatives from the State of Michigan, the two Senators and Representative Stupak, who are suggesting that we could put those prisoners, these high-level, high-security terrorist detainees in prisons in Michigan and that would cause them to have to go through there and provide jobs to update the prisons. Let's stop and think that one through. Why not just go ahead and do something with the individuals who are there, leaving them where they are right now, and get into a public works program where at least they could be spending that money on roads and highways. Let me do this. I have almost given up--in fact, I did give up-- trying to put the language in the Senate Armed Services Committee's Defense authorization bill to preclude the President from putting these individuals into the United States. There is only one vehicle left. That is my Senate bill 370, S. 370. It is a one-page bill. I have 22 cosponsors. It merely says we cannot pay to transfer any of these detainees to the United States, and we are not going to be able to try them here. So it is the final answer to this matter. Madam President, at this time, I ask unanimous consent that S. 370 be brought up for immediate consideration.

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

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. I will finish this last sentence, if it is all right. We must not impose new burdens. This is a procedure that is necessary for us to put ourselves in a situation where we can become energy independent, and I encourage all my colleagues to look very carefully at the one thing that is going to give us that independence, and that is this procedure called hydraulic fracturing. I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, a surprise to a lot of people as to what we can do in the oil and gas business when we are concerned right now about the problem we have--our dependence on foreign countries for the ability to run this machine called America--is that we actually could resolve that problem. We could produce enough oil and gas and all the other resources I mentioned earlier so we would not have to be dependent on the Middle East for anything. Increasing attention has been given to hydraulic fracturing, a key production method which aided in U.S. production of oil and gas from more than 1 million wells and continues to aid in the production from over 35,000 wells a year. Hydraulic fracturing is a system that forces water into the ground to release oil and gas coming up. In fact, there are two things that open our potential. One is horizontal drilling and the other is hydraulic fracturing. It is a 60-year old technique. It has been responsible for 7 billion barrels of oil and 600 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The National Petroleum Council reports that 60 to 80 percent of all wells in the next 10 years--most of these are gas wells--will require hydraulic fracturing to remain productive and profitable. The first use of hydraulic fracturing was near Duncan, OK, in my State, way back in 1949. Since that time, companies such as Oklahoma's Devon and Chesapeake have perfected the practice. Very simply, it is the temporary injection of mostly water with sand, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and other additives to fracture and prop open a ground formation to improve the flow of oil and gas through the rock pores and increase oil and gas production. Mr. President, 95 percent of the fluid is water; 99 percent is water and sand. We are talking about putting in the water and sand that would already be there. Hydraulic fracturing is used for both oil and gas production, but I would like to focus mostly on natural gas. I have kind of good news and bad news. First, let me tell you the good news. The Potential Gas Committee at the Colorado School of Mines reported in June that the United States has--it is kind of hard to talk about figures such as this--1,836 trillion cubic feet, or 1.8 quadrillion cubic feet, of technically recoverable natural gas. This is the highest reserve total ever reported by this organization in the last 44 years. When the U.S. Department of Energy proven reserves are added to the total, the future natural gas supply of the United States is over 2,000 trillion cubic feet. At today's rate of use, that is enough natural gas to meet demand for the next 100 years. Only 1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas can heat 15 million homes for a year or fuel 12 million natural-gas-powered vehicles for a year. T. Boone Pickens is often quoted in this Chamber. He characterizes the reserves this way: 2 quadrillion cubic feet of gas is equivalent to Saudi Arabia's total petroleum reserves. I guess what we are saying is people are complaining we are importing from the Middle East oil and gas, and then they find we have it all right here. We don't have to do it. If the argument is, we don't want to use oil and gas which we think pollutes--which it does not--if that is their argument, then why are we willing to import it from Saudi Arabia and the Middle East? We can produce it right here in the United States. Much of the increase noted in the news report comes from estimates of shale gas found in formations throughout the United States. In fact, shale gas accounts for one-third of America's total gas reserves. Again, we are talking about natural gas, which is very low in fossil fuels, burns very cleanly, very inexpensively, and certainly, as we can see by this chart, is very abundant. The U.S. Department of Energy reports that by 2011, most new reserves growth will come from nonconventional shale gas reservoirs. The American Petroleum Institute forecasts that unconventional gas production, such as that from coalbed methane, or CBM, and shale will increase from 42 percent of total U.S. gas production to 64 percent in 2020. However, shale resources are largely only economically and technologically available due to hydraulic fracturing, that technique of forcing the gas out of the ground. The good news does not only involve oil and gas reserves, it also means good news for jobs. For example, the 10,000 wells producing in 14 counties in north Texas, Barnett shale--Barnett shale is the type of shale that is characteristic in the northern part of Texas--in 14 counties, they are responsible for 110,000 jobs and $4.5 billion in royalty payments. That is the people who own the land. That is a property rights issue. They account for 8 percent of the personal income, 9 percent of employment, and over $10 billion in increased economic activity in north Texas. The Haynesville shale in Louisiana has created 33,000 jobs, $2.4 billion in business sales, $3.9 billion in salaries, and $3.2 billion in royalty payments. This is the economy we are talking about. We are talking about two separate issues: one is making us independent, the other is doing something for the economy. People look at these things and say: Why in the world will the Democrats in this Chamber not allow us to drill offshore, won't allow us to get into shale production in the Western United States, and yet they complain about the fact we are importing our oil and gas from the Middle East? The IPAA reports that the Marcellus shale in Pennsylvania and New York contains 516 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, which is enough to satisfy the U.S. demand for more than 35 years--in two States, Pennsylvania and New York, enough to satisfy our needs for the next 35 years. A 2008 report on the Marcellus shale attributes production in the Marcellus to two key methods. One is hydraulic fracturing, again, the system used to make sure we are able to retrieve, to produce this shale. Oil and gas development employs more than 26,000 and continued development in the Marcellus shale is forecasted to create over 100,000 jobs. These jobs pay more than $20,000 above the average annual salary in Pennsylvania. We have New York and Pennsylvania, two States--they do have economic problems. This is a way to produce 100,000 jobs, and those jobs average $20,000 a year more than the average job in Pennsylvania and New York. The Walton School of Business at the University of Arkansas recently completed an economic forecast of the Fayetteville shale. It estimates a business and capital investment in the area of $22 billion, the creation of 11,000 jobs, and new State revenues of more $2 billion by 2012. We are talking about just in the State of Arkansas. In my State of Oklahoma, we have the Woodford shale, which is pictured here and extends through southwest Oklahoma. In Oklahoma, exploration of natural gas accounts for 80 percent of the State's energy production and over 50,000 people are directly employed by the oil and gas industry. One in seven jobs in Oklahoma is directly or indirectly supported by the crude oil and natural gas industry because we rank fourth in the Nation for natural gas production and fifth in crude oil. Oklahoma received $1.3 billion in taxes directly from oil and gas production in 2009. In fact, oil and gas account for 25 percent of all taxes paid in my State of Oklahoma. These reserves mean domestic energy production and jobs, but now I have bad news. Another reason hydraulic fracturing has received increasing attention is because some Members of Congress want to subject it to new Federal regulation, specifically the Safe Drinking Water Act, by claiming the practice endangers drinking water sources. This Congress, House Members from Colorado and New York and Senate Members from Pennsylvania and New York have introduced legislation imposing new Federal regulation. Some of these Members claim that allowing the practice is a loophole in the Federal law and that it is free of regulation. Last Congress, at a House hearing, the current chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee complained about hydraulic fracturing: Oil and gas companies can pump hundreds of thousands of gallons of fluid--containing any number of toxic chemicals-- into sources of drinking water with little or no accountability. This is completely false. Nothing could be further from the truth. As former chairman and the current ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, I have a history of working on environmental and energy issues. I can tell you new Federal regulation of hydraulic fracturing would be a disaster. The Safe Drinking Water Act was enacted in 1974. It was enacted to establish drinking water standards and to control permanent disposal of waste by underground injection. By 1974, hydraulic fracturing had been in commercial operation for 25 years. This law was not designed nor intended to regulate the practice, and the legislative history demonstrates that. The 1974 conference report states that none of the act's underground injection provisions are to ``needlessly interfere with oil and gas production.'' That was in the law in 1974. The 1980 amendments were probably the most significant until 2005 for clarifying the act's application to oil and gas operations. The 1980 amendments created a new section 1425 to allow States to regulate underground injection from two types of oil and gas operations known as injection wells and disposal wells. However, given the chance to additionally address hydraulic fracturing, Congress declined. In the 2005 Energy bill, Congress specifically clarified the act is not intended to apply to hydraulic fracturing. Everything all the way up from 1950, all the way up to the present time was saying the act was not intended to apply to hydraulic fracturing. There are a myriad of Federal statutes, such as the Federal workplace rules, the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act, among others, which regulate the storage and disposal, transporting, handling, and reporting of chemical use. Federal law requires disclosure of any release to the environment. Those statutes overlay State laws which also include extensive rules permitting oil and gas drilling and production. No state has been required to regulate hydraulic fracturing under the Safe Drinking Water Act with the exception of Alabama. The Eleventh Circuit Court in Alabama issued an opinion in 1997 ignoring legislative history, oil and gas industry practices, and the clear text of the law, finding that Alabama should subject hydraulic fracturing in coalbed methane production to the Safe Drinking Water Act. However, hydraulic fracturing has not been subject to the Safe Drinking Water Act and is not correctly governed by the act. I am not alone in this opinion. President Obama's energy czar agrees with me. In 1995, as EPA Administrator--during the Clinton administration--Carol Browner wrote in response to litigation that Federal regulation is not necessary for hydraulic fracturing. She correctly made the point that the practice was closely regulated by the States and ``EPA is not legally required to regulate hydraulic fracturing.'' Most importantly, she further wrote that there was no evidence that hydraulic fracturing at issue resulted in any contamination or endangerment of underground sources of drinking water. Now, this is Carol Browner. That is the current energy czar serving in the White House. Following the 1997 litigation in Alabama, I introduced legislation in 1999 with Senator Sessions and again in 2005 clarifying that hydraulic fracturing is not correctly regulated by this act. In March of 2002, the Senate spoke on this issue voting 78 to 21 on Senator Bingaman's amendment, which I cosponsored, to study ``the known and potential effects on underground drinking sources of hydraulic fracturing.'' That amendment ultimately did not become law, but in June of 2004, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency gave us the answer. It issued its lengthy report, which EPA began in late 2000 to determine if underground drinking water sources have been or are endangered from the use of hydraulic fracturing from coalbed methane production. The EPA study of coalbed methane wells is particularly important because the CBM wells are shallower, meaning they would be closer to the underground drinking water sources than other conventional or unconventional oil and gas well production. In other words, the other production is down much deeper than that which uses the technique of hydraulic fracturing. These are deep wells. In fact, most ``fracked'' wells--that is what they are called--are hundreds of thousands of feet deep and well below drinking water sources. In this 2004 report, EPA conducted a review of all 11 major coal basins across the country and of 200 peer-reviewed publications. It reviewed 105 comments in the Federal Register. It requested information from 500 local and county agencies in States where CBM production occurs. It interviewed 50 local and State government agencies, industry representatives, and 40 citizens groups which alleged drinking water contamination from hydraulic fracturing. After completing its 4-year study--a 4-year study--the EPA concluded: The injection of hydraulic fracturing fluids into CBM wells poses little or no threat to underground sources of drinking water and does not justify additional study at this time. EPA had planned to study contamination in a two-phase study. Following these findings, the EPA did not even initiate the second phase of the study. In fact, it was so strong that they didn't even do the next study. This is a very strong statement. In fact, in hydraulic fracturing's 60-year history there has not been a single documented case of any kind of contamination. Mr. President, that is 60 years. As early as 1998, the Ground Water Protection Council conducted the first survey of the 25 States in which hydraulic fracturing for oil and natural gas production occurs for any complaints of underground contamination. The survey reported no instance of contamination from the practice. In 2002, the IOGCC, representing 37 States, conducted its own survey making the same findings. On June 12, the Oklahoma Corporation Commission addressed the issue of hydraulic fracturing again in correspondence with these 37 States. The Corporation Commission wrote that it has been regulating oil and gas drilling and production for 90 years, which has included tens of thousands of hydraulic fracturing operations over the past 60 years. The commission wrote: You asked whether there has been a verified instance of harm to groundwater in our state from the practice of hydraulic fracturing. The answer is no. States have been regulating oil and gas exploration and production for years. The Department of Energy and Ground Water Protection Council released a report in May titled ``State Oil and Natural Gas Regulations Designed to Protect Water Resources,'' where it described State regulations which require multiple barriers, casings, and cement reinforcement to protect against groundwater contamination. Fracturing involves removing thousands of gallons of waters from the well which includes the fracturing fluids. Once these fluids are returned to the surface, regulations require they are treated, stored, and isolated from groundwater zones. All these processes together work to significantly reduce the risk to groundwater. This DOE and Ground Water Protection Council report ultimately concluded that Federal regulations on fracturing would be ``costly, duplicative of State regulations, and ultimately ineffective because such regulations would be far removed from field operations.'' Equally interesting, the report also concluded--and keep in mind this is the report of the Department of Energy and the Ground Water Protection Council--the ``only alternative to fracturing in reservoirs with low permeability such as shale would be to simply have to drill more wells.'' In other words, if we are not able to get these wells to produce a lot of shale, we would have to drill a lot of wells in their place. These findings mirror the EPA's 2004 report of hydraulic fracturing in CBM production. EPA noted that fracturing involves the removal of thousands of gallons of ground water. This removal includes the fracturing fluids and the possibility that fracturing chemicals affect ground water. EPA also concluded that the low permeability of rock where hydraulic fracturing is used acts as a barrier to any remnant of fracturing chemicals moving out of the rock formations, as has been proven. None of these findings are new. In the 1980 amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act, Congress acknowledged that ``32 States that regulate underground injection related to production of oil and gas believe they have programs already in place to meet the requirements of this Act. States should be able to continue these programs unencumbered with additional Federal requirements.'' We need to recognize that in considering additional Federal regulation we are experimenting with disaster. In January, the DOE released a report by Advanced Resources International, which evaluated the economic and energy supply effects on oil and gas exploration and production under a series of new regulatory scenarios. One scenario evaluated the effects from new Federal regulation of hydraulic fracturing. According to the report, the largest cost for new unconventional gas wells would be from any new Federal regulations on hydraulic fracturing. The report concluded these costs would amount to an additional $100,000 for each well in the first year alone. Among other factors, this report concludes that increasing Federal regulations on hydraulic fracturing would reduce unconventional gas production by 50 percent over the next 25 years. Even more recently, the American Petroleum Institute released a report in June which only evaluated the effect of increased Federal regulations and the effect of eliminating the practice of hydraulic fracturing altogether. The report determined that through duplicative Federal regulations, the number of new oil and natural gas wells drilled would drop by 20 percent in the next 5 years. Should hydraulic fracturing be eliminated, new oil and gas wells would drop by 79 percent resulting in 45 percent less domestic natural gas production and 17 percent less domestic oil production. It would be a disaster to impose new Federal regulations. They are talking about doing that now. They talked about it a few years ago. Every report has discouraged that from happening. Again, I am not alone in this opinion. Colorado Governor Bill Ritter recognizes the value of the practice. In the Denver Business Journal, the Governor characterized the bills pending in Congress imposing new Federal regulations on hydraulic fracturing as ``a new and potentially intrusive regulatory program.'' That was Governor Bill Ritter. A Colorado newspaper recently reported a number of Colorado counties have adopted resolutions against the pending Federal bills. States are passing their own resolutions opposing new Federal regulation of hydraulic fracturing. For example, in March the North Dakota Legislature passed a concurrent resolution--I say to the Senator from North Dakota--to not subject hydraulic fracturing to needless and new Federal regulation. North Dakota is home to the Bakken shale, where oil wells are reported to be producing thousands of barrels a day. America has tremendous natural gas reserves. The exploration and production of these reserves using hydraulic fracturing has been regulated by the States and conducted safely for 60 years. The oil and gas industry contributes billions in State and Federal revenues each year and billions in salaries and royalty payments. The oil and gas industry employs 6 million people in the United States. When the United States is approaching 10 percent unemployment, and when we want energy security and independence from foreign energy, why would we want to go out of our way to restrict an environmentally and economically sound means to extract our own resources--a means that has demonstrated effectiveness and safety for 60 years? The oil potential in ANWR would produce 10 billion barrels or 15 years' worth of imports from Saudi Arabia. The RAND Corporation has reported that the new potential production in just Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming would be around 1 trillion barrels of oil. That is three times Saudi Arabia's oil reserves and more oil than we are currently importing from the entire Middle East. But the Democrats will not let us produce. We are currently the only country in the world that doesn't develop its own resources. In fact, the President's budget imposes $31 billion in new taxes on oil and gas development. We must not impose any new----

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I have three subjects I think we need to talk about during the August recess. I want to touch on each one. The Senator from Arizona has already touched on the health care issue that is out there. I don't think Arizona and Virginia are all that different from my State of Oklahoma. That is all people talk about when I go back. They want to know: Am I really going to have a government bureaucrat standing between me and my health provider? So those are huge issues. I never thought we would be dealing with that in this country, but we are. What I want to pursue is, I get very upset when I hear people on the other side of the aisle say we have to do something to stop our dependency on the Middle East for our ability to run this machine called America. Here are a couple. Many people don't want to drill, don't want oil, gas, nuclear, or coal--they don't want all these things. If you don't want them, how do you keep the machine going? The answer is that you cannot. The day will come when maybe wind energy or solar energy or renewables will take care of our needs, but that is down the road. That will be 30, 40, 50 years from now. In the meantime, we have to produce the energy to run this machine called America. One of the things is a little bit technical, but I think that since it is looming out there, it needs to be talked about. Of course, I am sensitive to this issue, being from Oklahoma, which is an oil State; we produce oil. I have looked at one of our systems that is used to get the most oil and gas out of oil. At this point, I will yield to the Republican leader, and then I will continue my remarks.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, first, I thank the minority leader for his comments. I said before he came in that there is no issue more meaningful to our people in Oklahoma than health care. I think there is an awareness. If you look at the polling data that was given by the Senator from Arizona, people are now aware this is not the way we should go. We do have good ideas on this side of the aisle in terms of the health savings account, medical malpractice, and small businesses getting together to resolve this problem.

Mr. INHOFE

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

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that we set aside the current pending amendment for the consideration of Inhofe amendment No. 1559.

Mr. INHOFE. A couple minutes.

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I look at this issue and think about not just the hours and days and months but years we have talked about this. A lot of people have changed their mind and have gone back and forth on it. I think at the time Senator Warner was here, he actually took a couple of positions. I look at it simply. I have been concerned about the funding and about some of what we need to have. We all had different ideas on the additional F-22s. I look at this and I see that the only current U.S. military aircraft with a new engine source is the F-16. All the rest have single engine sources. It has worked well, and there is no military requirement for the alternate engine. I have come to the conclusion it would cost over $5 billion to fund the alternate engine and, over the next year, it will cost the program--I have seen estimates from 50 to 80 aircraft, according to the program manager. Congress has directed three studies on the alternative engine, and we have gone over studies in our Armed Services Committee. Two out of the three studies of the alternate engine stated there would never be any cost savings associated with the competition. There has never been actual data--only anecdotal--that proves there was ever any cost savings brought about by what someone called the ``great engine war'' on the F-16s. It seems to me it is a savings without the alternate engine, which will allow us to have more capability, more aircraft. I strongly support the Lieberman-McCain amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I know almost everything that can be said has been said. Having served on the Armed Services Committee for quite some time and having watched this, what is kind of worrisome to me is that when we started out the F-22 program, the fifth generation fighter program, at that time they were talking about 750. Then the numbers started coming down and approached, I guess, 243. The Air Force officials have repeatedly stated that no fewer than that would be sufficient with a moderate level of risk. My concern has been the same concern I have when we are talking about ground capability, when we see countries such as China and Russia passing us up in areas. I will not bring up the NLOS cannon right now. But there are many places where our prospective enemies have better equipment than we do. We do know China has their J-12s; and Russia, I believe they are calling theirs the T-50s. We do know those are fifth- generation fighters. It is very disturbing to me that we would consider stopping at this point when this is not going to be adequate to get us out of the medium-risk category. So I certainly support the effort to maintain those seven. Quite frankly, when Senator Chambliss offered the amendment to expand it by seven, I was thinking we should really be shooting for more, and I think he agreed with that. However, apparently with the exports out there and with the additional seven that were put in, in the committee, that would be enough to keep the line open. So I strongly support the effort to keep those numbers where they are. I yield the floor.