Ed Markey

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. I move to strike the last word.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. I thank the gentleman. Oil companies already have the drilling rights to public lands the size of Minnesota on which they are not producing oil. Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes, and the area oil companies already have could be the land of 10,000 wells but they are not drilling on it. And are Republicans saying they should drill on what they have? No. They want to put drill rigs off our beaches in New England, the Outer Banks, and California, all before we have implemented a single safety reform recommended by the independent blue-ribbon BP spill commission. Today, five of the largest oil companies testified in defense of their billions of special tax breaks. ConocoPhillips said today it would be un-American to take away Big Oil's tax breaks. Well, it's not un-American. It's unbelievable that Big Oil has the arrogance to continue to defend its tax breaks as consumers are being tipped upside down at the pump. And how are these tax breaks for Big Oil paid for? I will tell you how. The Republicans are planning to put a drill rig on top of the Medicare program. Republicans are building an oil pipeline into the pocketbooks of our seniors for tax breaks for the oil companies. The Republican agenda is to cut checkups for Grandma and cut checks for Big Oil. They want to cut health care for Grandma and give welfare to the Big Oil executives. The Republican plan is tax breaks for Big Oil and tough breaks for our Nation's seniors. Vote ``yes'' on this recommittal motion.

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, we have no objection and we urge swift passage.

Mr. MARKEY. I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, in the first quarter of this year, the oil companies were actually able to make $35 billion in profits; but in my amendment, we are able to say to them, because of a flaw in leases in the 1990s which required them to pay no royalties on public lands--taxpayers' lands--for oil they're drilling for right now and charging $100 a barrel, $4 a gallon at the pump, that we think there is something wrong when the taxpayers don't get anything back. And so what my amendment says is that they can't apply for any more leases on taxpayers' land unless they're willing to renegotiate the mistaken leases that were given to them that, by the way, will allow them to escape having to pay $53 billion in taxes, in royalties. That's another word for taxes, ``royalties.'' When you're talking about oil, ``royalties'' is the word we use to describe taxes. This blank check to the oil industry is absolutely undeserved. The Republican approach to offshore oil royalty policy is to treat the Big Oil companies like royalty and to treat the consumers and taxpayers like peasants. They're just going to give away all these breaks to the oil industry. You know, Prince William and Kate Middleton just left on their honeymoon. Their royalty honeymoon is just beginning. But for the oil companies who are drilling for free on public land, they have a royalty honeymoon that has been going on for way too long, and today, we're going to give the Members of the House a chance to end the honeymoon on the royalties that the oil industry has to pay. Now, what are the Republicans going to do? They're going to oppose it. They're going to say, no, we need more tax breaks, $4 billion worth of tax breaks, for the oil industry. And so where are they going to find the money for those additional tax breaks that they want to give to the oil industry? Well, they looked around and they decided that the best place to find it was in Medicare, that is, in the health care that we give to Grandma and Grandpa. And so what they have done is they've set up a drilling rig for the oil industry on top of the Medicare program so they can drill into the pockets of Grandma and Grandpa to find the $4 billion in tax breaks, and then on top of that, protect them against having to pay the royalties, the taxes on where they're already drilling for free on taxpayers' land in our country. Now, that's an unbelievable combination, and they do it while cutting the renewables budget by 70 percent. Can you believe this? It's 2011. The Republicans have already passed a bill cutting the renewables budget--wind and solar, biomass, geothermal--by 70 percent, and they're setting up an oil rig on top of the Medicare program of Grandma and Grandpa to drill for even more tax breaks for the oil industry. This is just an unbelievable debate that we're having. And they say over here, ``Well, you know, we're the all of the above party; we want to do it all.'' But the truth is that they're really the oil above all party, and that's what this debate is all about, how can we get even more for the oil industry. So what my amendment will do is to just give people an opportunity to reclaim that $53 billion from the oil industry and give it to Grandma. Of all the people who don't need a break, a subsidy this year, it's the oil industry. You know who needs a break? You know who needs a subsidy? It's Grandma. Let's not cut Medicare. Let's not cut her health care in order to help the oil industry. Vote ``aye'' for the Markey amendment. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. MARKEY. Could the Chair tell me how much time we have?

Mr. MARKEY. We have a big choice here. We can reclaim $53 billion from the oil and gas industry that they owe to the American taxpayer and put it into wind and solar and all-electric vehicles and the revolution that we need to transform our country's relationship with OPEC. We should be able to tell OPEC, We don't need your oil any more than we need your sand. This is a chance here to reclaim the $53 billion in windfall profits by escaping royalties that the oil industry owes, and put it into a new technology innovation agenda that talks about the future of wind and solar and electric vehicles that will transform our relationship with the rest of the planet.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. I thank the gentleman. So here's where we are. The Republicans--this is unbelievable--are blocking any legislation from passing that is going to have new safety rules for drilling off of the beaches of the United States 1 year after the BP spill. They're blocking any new safety legislation to make sure that the United States, which has four times the fatality rate of countries in Europe in drilling off our shores, has rules that are put on the books to make sure that those worst of all safety violators, these companies that drill off of our shores, have those new safety rules. Number two, the Republicans are fighting any attempts to take away the $4 billion in tax breaks which the American consumer gives to the oil companies each year, even as the oil companies report ExxonMobil, $10 billion; Shell, $8 billion; BP, $7 billion; Chevron, $6 billion, et cetera, for the last 3 months. That's how much money they made. The Republicans think that's not enough money, even as people get tipped upside down and have money shaken out of their pockets at the gas pump. No, not enough money. They also need to give the oil companies tax breaks. That's the Republican perspective. What else do they do? They also slash the renewable energy budget, the clean energy budget, by 70 percent. So you're a kid out there in America; you're in the sixth grade; you're looking to America for the 21st century. Here's what the Republicans are doing: They're slashing the solar and wind budget by 70 percent; They are saying to the oil companies, you don't need any more safety off of the beaches to drill; They're saying that your profits are not windfall profits, which, of course, they are in the oil industry. But instead, here's what we're going to let you do: We are going to let you drill off of the beaches of California for oil, off of the beaches of Florida for oil. We're going to let you drill off the beaches--3 miles off of the coast, by the way--off the beaches of Cape Cod, of Georges Bank. We're going to turn Georges Bank into ExxonMobil's Bank. We're going to turn, not shellfish into a product that we sell, but Shell Oil will be out there. That's the agenda for the Republican Party. This is almost surreal that they want to take the tax breaks that the oil industry has, fight like the devil to protect them, even as they want to cut Medicare for Grandma and cut wind and solar as the energy sources for the future. It's almost like they think it's 1958 and gasoline is 28 cents a gallon and we're all cruising around pretending that we're not part of the rest of the world. This debate today is kind of a microcosm of what's wrong with Republican policies. That before, I think; people want themselves to see oil rigs off of their beaches in California and North Carolina, in Massachusetts and Maine, the least I think that you owe these people is that you have new safety rules that reflect what happened. You have that BP commission report implemented. But you guys are just running ahead as though nothing has happened. By the way, do you want to know what else is really wrong here? We know because of Goldman Sachs that this $20 to $30 a barrel of oil of increase in price over the last 11 weeks comes from speculators. What you're doing is you guys are trying to kneecap the speculator cops on the beat so that they're not even out there policing these speculators, and you're trying to reduce the budget for the speculator cops, the people who will be chasing down these speculators. So it's all so ExxonMobil, it's all so Shell and BP and Chevron and ConocoPhillips--and, by the way, at least you're true to your colors. At least this is really what you believe in. You don't believe in wind and solar, so you're cutting that budget by 70 percent, and you want to open up the beaches as well for drilling in the States that don't want oil rigs off their beaches. I mean, my goodness, this is something that at least you should be able to respect. You also disapprove the using of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as a weapon to tell speculators, you could go bankrupt because we're going to use the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the 700 million barrels of oil that the U.S. has stored. This is a very important debate to have. I'm glad we're having it today because this ``Drill, baby, drill'' just says, yeah, your policy is not all of the above; it's oil above all. Everything else gets defunded.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Madam Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. I yield myself 5 minutes. Ladies and gentlemen, we are at a historic juncture in our country's history, as northern Africa and the Middle East explode. And what we have, of course, is a real instability in the oil marketplace, and we have to do something that fundamentally responds to that challenge. In the first 3 months of this year, Exxon-Mobil made $10 billion off of the American consumer--in January, February, and March of this year. Shell reported that they had made $8 billion. BP reported that they had made $7 billion. So what are these companies asking for? These companies are now asking that we open up the beaches of California to drill for oil, we open up the beaches of Florida to drill for oil, we open up the beaches of New Jersey and New England to drill for oil. I will tell you right now, in most of those places--actually, in all of those places, the only oil the people who live near those beaches want is the suntan oil that they use when they're out on those beaches. They don't want oil coming in the way it did in the Gulf of Mexico. And why are they concerned? They're concerned because the oil companies, exercising their power--and right now, those oil companies are centered down in the Gulf of Mexico--those companies have exercised their power to block any new safety reforms from being put in place that would protect against another catastrophic spill. So the temerity of these oil companies is that they are coming out here today, and they're saying: No safety; no lessons learned from what happened in the Gulf of Mexico, devastating the beaches of the gulf. Now we want permission to drill off of the California coast, the Florida coast, the New England coast, the New Jersey coast without any new safety. And by the way, although we've made a fortune just in the last 3 months, with the skyrocketing prices that people who travel here to Washington--they've been coming down all of the highways towards our Capitol, watching the price of gasoline go up even as they are traveling, heading up to $4 and, in some places, $5 a gallon--they're saying that the Congress shouldn't take away their tax breaks. Don't even touch those tax breaks, the oil companies are saying. Cut Medicare for grandma. Exxon-Mobil and Shell, they are advocating cutting Medicare for grandma, to take that money and to give it to the oil companies as tax breaks to put on top--kind of like a cherry on top of the sundae--to put it on top of all of these profits that they are making off of the American consumer. That's what they're trying to do, and that's what this debate is all about. So what we're saying as Democrats is, let's implement the safety recommendations to make sure that the drilling doesn't endanger the beaches of the east coast and the west coast the way they did in the Gulf of Mexico. The oil companies are coming in here, with the Republicans as their advocates, saying, Don't worry about it. Yes, we're going to block any safety measures from being put on the books, but that's our prerogative because we have the votes here. The Republicans are going to make sure that the votes are there to block any safety--we want to keep the tax breaks; the Republicans say fine. We don't want any new safety regulations; the Republicans say fine. By the way, we don't even like the idea of this competition from wind and solar, so we would like to ask you, as the Republican majority, to cut the solar and wind budget by 70 percent--and they did it, believe it or not. It's 2011. We're watching the Middle East explode, and the Republicans cut wind and solar in the United States by 70 percent. Keep the tax breaks for the biggest oil companies, and ask grandma to take a lower Medicare benefit to pay for it all for the oil companies. This is 2011, ladies and gentlemen. This is a message. It is so dangerous for our country. We have to oppose this bill because, first of all, they already have 60 million acres of American land--the size of Minnesota they already have to drill on, that they haven't drilled on yet, which has about 11 billion barrels of oil underneath it and an equivalent amount of natural gas. So vote ``no'' on this Republican bill. It's just a giveaway to Exxon-Mobil and Shell, and they're the last people in the world right now that need a handout.

Mr. MARKEY. I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell).

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. I thank the gentleman from New Jersey very much, and I thank him for his leadership on these issues. We're partners in this effort to try to move toward a new energy direction. So last week we had a debate on the issue of whether or not the $4 billion that the oil industry gets in tax breaks per year from the American consumer should be taken away at this time when ExxonMobil reported $10 billion worth of profits in the first quarter, that is just January, February and March. Shell reported $8.8 billion; BP, $7.1 billion; Chevron, $6.2 billion; ConocoPhillips, $3 billion. That's in the first 3 months of this year. But you know what the argument is, from the Republican side, is that they would be punished if the consumer, if the taxpayer didn't also give them an additional $4 billion in tax breaks. So let's just look at this chart. This is how much they made as people are pulling up to the pump paying $3.80, $4, $4.20 all across America. Now, you know what the oil companies could do? They could say, You know what? I think we made too much. I think what we should do in the first quarter is just lower the price at the pump so we don't make so much. Maybe we don't have to have the consumer paying $4 a gallon. Maybe we, ExxonMobil, maybe we could have made 9.7. Maybe Shell could have made 7.8, maybe BP could have made only $6.1 billion, maybe Chevron could have made only $5.2 billion. In other words, maybe they each could have made $1 billion less, and that would be $4 billion in the first quarter. But, no. They decide that if the war in Libya is going to take 1.2 million barrels of oil off the market, if the Saudi Arabians are going to take 800,000 barrels of oil off the market, that that's a free market. And so if the price goes up to skyrocketing heights, we have a right to take all that extra money out of the consumers' pockets. That's the free market. The war in Libya is a free market. Saudi Arabia taking 800,000 barrels off the market, that's a free market. Now, the American consumer, they look at it and they say that's not a free market. The American taxpayers, they look at it and they say that's not the free market. We're sending over more bombers. We're sending over more troops. We're adding more to the defense budget of the country. Why would we do that? What does that have to do with the free market? What does this increase in defense expenditures and the number of young men and women that we send over to the Middle East to protect this cordon of oil tankers coming into the United States have to do with the free market? But nonetheless, that's the argument of the Republicans and, by the way, of ExxonMobil and Shell and BP. They deserve these profits, they say, just for 3 months. By the way, you can multiply each one of these numbers by at least four, at least the next three quarters of 2011 as well, and project ExxonMobil making $40 billion this year and Shell 34 or $35 billion, et cetera, et cetera. But the Republicans say they still need the extra $4 billion from the taxpayer pocket. So they dip into one pocket, the consuming pocket, and they tip the consumer upside down, and they take all this money out of their pockets. And you don't see any restraint on the part of the oil companies taking advantage of the war in Libya. And then they want to dip into the other pocket of the consumer, the consumer as a taxpayer, and then they say you can't take away those tax breaks either. So that's a very interesting position to have to defend at this point in time, especially since they're saying that they want to cut back on the benefits for Grandma on Medicare. They want to cut back the budget by 70 percent on wind and solar, on geothermal and biomass. They want to cut back the budget to help Grandma stay in a nursing home with Alzheimer's. But one thing you should never touch, and that's the $4 billion for ExxonMobil, Shell and BP from the taxpayers, even as they're reporting the largest profits in the history of the world that any corporation's made. And now, today, they have the temerity to come out here on the floor and they're looking for more. What this first bill that we're about to consider does is it legislates possible intimidation of Federal safety reviewers and puts a time clock on looking at the most controversial leases. Now, mind you, just 1 year ago in the Gulf of Mexico we were looking with amazement at the worst single environmental disaster in American history, and that is BP with no idea about how they were going to stop 4 million barrels of oil going into the Gulf of Mexico. They had no idea how to stop it. And the American people, the world was tuned into the spill cam, almost, you know, fixated on this complete lack of safety, complete lack of preparation to protect the life and the livelihoods of the people who live around the Gulf of Mexico. So what's the response of the Republican Party 1 year later? Is it to pass a safety bill? Is it to implement the recommendations of the BP Spill Commission, this blue ribbon panel of experts that identified that there are systemic failures in the safety precautions built into drilling in the United States? Is it to deal with the fact that they identified that there are four times higher fatalities on American rigs as there are on European rigs drilling off the shores of Europe? No. All that legislation is stopped dead in its tracks. What they argue is we have got to give, you know, kind of a shot clock. You know how in the NBA, when you're watching TV and you only have 24 seconds to shoot a basketball, and so that creates a real intensity or else you lose the ball? Well, that's kind of what they want to say now to the Department of the Interior. We're putting you on a shot clock. You have 60 days. You have 60 days to decide: Is that drilling rig safe? Have the precautions been put in place to ensure that a catastrophic accident can't happen? And if you don't make a decision in 60 days, Department of the Interior, on a rig that's out there at 3,000 or 5,000 or 10,000 feet and off the shore miles and miles and you can't figure it out, Department of the Interior--now, mind you, this is the same company that couldn't figure it out a year ago, and they're amongst the wealthiest companies in the world. But if you, the Department of the Interior, if you can't figure out what we can do, we the company can do in 60 days, we get to have the lease and we get to go ahead. It is kind of like the NBA, except the consequences aren't that your home team loses; it's that your home team loses its job, your home team loses its environment because another catastrophic accident has occurred. That's what they do with this bill. They put a shot clock on it. So I think if the American people are looking at the absurdity of this situation with these companies, look at the companies that are lobbying for this: ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips. These are the companies that 1 year ago said that they could evacuate walruses from the Gulf of Mexico. They had an emergency response plan in the event of a spill. Well, the problem was, of course, that they each had put it in writing; they had each put it in as an application to the Department of the Interior to drill in the Gulf of Mexico. But walruses, as every sixth grade child knows, have not lived in the Gulf of Mexico for 3 million years. So these are the companies that we are now supposed to trust. Put it on a shot clock, they say. Just let the Department of the Interior try to figure out everything that we are planning for Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas. And, by the way, the way the gulf stream works is pulling a lot of that pollution, if it's bad, in God knows how many directions, and the fish that get exposed to it put into the food chain with endocrine disrupters, cancer-causing agents, potentially harming families. But 60 days is all you have got. It's kind of like the NBA, when we think that's how oil drilling should be, too, because we trust these companies. They are obviously the most safety conscious companies that this world has ever known, because we can see how really responsible they are in dealing with consumers. They had a chance not to charge $4 a gallon because we are having a war in Libya and the Saudi Arabians took 800 barrels off the market, believe it or not, our friends the Saudis, over the last 6 weeks. But now we are just going to pretend that they are really good and responsible companies, and for them, so they can get all the leases that they want, they are on a shot clock--60 days. Good luck to the Department of the Interior. Good luck to the environment. Good luck to the consumer. Good luck to the taxpayers if another accident occurs. So, ladies and gentlemen, we are going to have an incredible debate here on this issue, because these are the same people that just passed the budget that cut the wind and solar budget by 70 percent. You know, if you are a kid in America and it is 2011 and you are looking at this debate, you're saying to yourself: They cut the solar and wind budget in 2011 by 70 percent, and they are giving the oil companies unlimited profits, unlimited tax breaks, and unlimited access after 60 days to wherever they want to drill off of the coastline? Now, that's an upside-down agenda. And you have already heard some of the denigrating comments about wind and solar, which does reflect, I hate to say it, a deep-seated attitude about these renewable energy resources. But, you know, politics. And I think America is all about the future, and the future is about wind. It's about solar. It's about moving to all electric vehicles. It's about the agenda that they just pretty much defunded in their budget that they had the votes here on the House floor. So I would urge that we would defeat this piece of legislation. And their legislation, they say it's all of the above, but do you want to know what it is? It's oil above all. That is really what it is all about. Give the oil companies everything they want, and slash the budget for renewables. Slash the budget for all the other new technologies that we need to enhance our future.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes. Mr. Chairman, 1 year has passed since the Deepwater Horizon accident. Yet BP, Transocean, Halliburton, and Cameron continue to argue in court which of them deserves more blame for the 11 deaths and environmental devastation. BP continues to fight the estimates of the amount of oil spilled in order to minimize its liability. And more than 1 year after the beginning of this disaster, Congress has still not passed any legislation to improve the safety of offshore drilling and ensure that the lessons of the BP spill are incorporated into future drilling. The co-chairs of the independent BP commission have testified before the Natural Resources Committee that the accident could have been prevented, and the commission found that the root causes of the disaster were systemic to the entire industry. Their extensive reports documented numerous specific failures of the cementing, well design and testing and maintenance associated with the Deepwater Horizon well. And recently, the Department of the Interior's contractor, Det Norske Veritas, released its report on the forensic investigation of the Deepwater Horizon blowout preventer, and here's what they found: the results indicated that the drilling pipe inside of the blowout preventer had buckled due to the force of the blowout; and the cutting devices, therefore, couldn't fully sever the drill pipe and seal off the well. According to the forensic report, contrary to the claims of the oil industry that blowout preventers are fail-safe devices, it seems unclear whether blowout preventers can actually prevent major blowouts at all once they are underway. But here we are today with the Republicans bringing out legislation that has no meaningful safety protections for the industry. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. MARKEY. I yield myself 2 minutes. Mr. Chairman, here is the BP Blue Ribbon Commission report that was conducted to investigate and to make recommendations as to what the causes were and what can be done to prevent it from happening again. Right now, nothing that is in this report has been implemented in terms of legislation here on the House floor. So I will tell you what my bill does. It will require multiple lines of defense against a blowout and ensures that these defenses are redundant so that failure of one does not lead to cascading failures of the entire system as occurred with BP's Macondo well. First, the amendment sets minimum standards for blowout preventers, including a requirement that blowout preventers operate as intended even when the force of an ongoing blowout shifts the drill pipe out of position. The amendment also requires new standards on safe well design and cementing to ensure multiple redundant barriers within the well against uncontrolled oil or gas blow that could lead to a blowout. The amendment also requires independent third-party certification of blowout preventers and well designs. Finally, the language ensures that if the Department of the Interior finds by some other measures that it has or may one day require would provide an even higher level of safety, that the Secretary can substitute those better alternatives instead. This is the direction we should be heading in. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the remaining time. I agree with the gentleman from Louisiana; I am not an expert on drilling. We are congressional experts. And that is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms, like ``jumbo shrimp'' or ``Salt Lake City night life.'' There is no such thing. We rely upon real experts. Here are the real experts: The Blue Ribbon Commission put together to study what went wrong and what needs to be done, and that is what my amendment will do. My amendment is very close to the legislation that passed 48-0 out of the Commerce Committee last year and was later adopted by the House. So all we are doing is just reflecting what all of these experts recommended and were finally incorporated. So we can ignore the experts, but then we roll the dice. And, once again, a part of our coastline could be held hostage to an oil company that was trying to save money but at risk of endangering the lives and the livelihood of millions of people off of the coastline off of our country. I urge an ``aye'' vote for the Markey amendment.

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. I thank the gentleman very much. The oil companies are making windfall profits right now. Look at what just happened in the last 3 months: ExxonMobil made $10 billion; Shell, $8 billion; BP, $7 billion; $6 billion for Chevron; $3 billion for Conoco. Yet the Republicans oppose allowing the Democrats to bring out here a motion that will take away tax breaks that are meant for companies that make toasters or aluminum foil, but not the oil industry. The oil industry does not need a subsidy from the American taxpayer as they are tipping consumers upside down at the pump every single day. We need to take back those tax breaks and use them; use them to reduce the deficit, use them to help grandma with Medicare, use them for things that are important, but not for oil companies at this time. So, what have the Republicans decided to do? The Republicans instead have decided to squeeze--to squeeze Medicare, to squeeze the program for grandma, so that they can find the revenues to give tax breaks for oil companies. I will tell you, the GOP has set up a legislative drill rig on top of the Medicare program to poke holes in our seniors' safety net. That is right, Mr. Speaker, the Republicans are building a pipeline into the pocketbooks of our seniors so that they can pump them dry. No money for Medicare, but plenty of breaks for the oil companies. And they are going to deny the Democrats the ability to have a vote here on the House floor on those tax breaks for oil companies here today. There is one thing that we can do in order to ensure that the speculators in the marketplace are told there is a cop on the beat, and that is to deploy the Strategic Petroleum Reserve right now. In 1991, Bush the First used it. The price went down 33 percent. In 2000, the President used the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, President Clinton. It went down 18 percent. Bush the Second used it in 2005 after Katrina. The price went down 9 percent. That is the weapon we can use right now, and send a message to Big Oil, to OPEC, and to the speculators that we mean business. What the Republicans are saying here today is we are going to cut Medicare in order to have tax breaks for the wealthiest oil companies in the history of the world. That is not what the American people want to hear at this time of high energy prices in our country, with a dagger pointed right at the heart of the American economy, and that is what OPEC and the speculators and Big Oil are doing to our country. Vote ``yes'' today on the previous question to give the American taxpayers the relief they need from these gifts which we give to Big Oil. Vote ``no'' on the rule and ``yes'' on the previous question.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. I yield myself such time as I may consume. One year ago today, we were 2 weeks into the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. We were 2 weeks into what would ultimately become the worst environmental disaster in our Nation's history, with more than 4 million barrels of oil spilling into the Gulf. And since that disaster, we have learned many things about the safety of offshore drilling. We learned that the blowout preventer that the oil industry touted as fail-safe could in fact be sure to fail if an actual blowout was under way. We learned that the only technology the oil industry had been relying upon in the event of a spill was a Xerox machine. The spill response plans for major companies were so similar that they contained plans to evacuate walruses from the Gulf of Mexico even though the walruses had not called the Gulf home in more than 3 million years. And they were such dead ringers for each other that they contained the same name and phone number of the same long-deceased expert. We learned that the oil companies had neither the resources nor the ability to stop a deepwater blowout. BP spill response included an attempt to shoot golf balls and bits of rubber into the well. When we were told that the industry was relying on the most sophisticated technologies, we assumed that they meant technologies developed by MIT and not the PGA. And we learned from an independent BP spill commission that the root causes of the Deepwater Horizon disaster were ``systemic'' to the entire oil and gas industry. And yet here we are debating legislation that would do nothing to improve the safety of offshore drilling and could actually make drilling less safe. The legislation before us represents a return to the pre-spill mentality of speed over safety. H.R. 1230 would force the Interior Department to rush to hold new lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico by ``deeming'' the shoddy environmental analysis conducted by the Bush administration's Mineral Management Service before the BP spill as sufficient for future lease sales in the Gulf. Just looking at some of the conclusions contained within the Bush administration's 2007 environmental analysis exposes the absurdity of deeming this work as sufficient for new leasing in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. In its 2007 multisale Environmental Impact Statement completed in April of 2007, the Interior Department determined, ``The most likely size of an offshore spill greater than or equal to 1,000 barrels that is predicted to occur is 4,600 barrels'' of oil. The BP Deepwater Horizon disaster led to more than 4 million barrels spilling into the Gulf. That is 1,000 times the size of the largest spill this analysis concluded was likely to occur. In 2007, MMS analysis concluded that the total volume of oil that would be spilled from all spills in the central and western Gulf over the next 40 years would be roughly 47,000 barrels of oil. That is less than what was spilled in the Deepwater Horizon in 1 day. MMS concluded that, in 2007, a worst-case scenario, only 19 to 31 miles of Gulf coastline would be impacted by a spill. The Deepwater Horizon disaster resulted in oil reaching over 950 miles of Gulf coastline. And MMS determined that a deepwater blow-off would not present a cleanup problem because the oil would rise in the water column, surfacing almost directly over the source location, but in fact the oil spewing from the ocean floor remained in enormous subsurface plumes that spread across the Gulf. The Obama administration is already moving forward to hold these lease sales in the Gulf later this year and early next year, and they are going to be more responsible. Even the Congressional Budget Office analysis of H.R. 1230 concludes, ``CBO estimates that implementing the bill would have no significant impact on proceeds from lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico because the proposed schedule is similar to the plan included in the DOI's budget for 2011.'' So, really, all the majority is accomplishing with this legislation is ensuring that we don't do any new environmental review of the impacts of these lease sales. Instead of actually reviewing the lessons of the BP spill, the majority wants to lessen the environmental review. In addition, this legislation would force the Department to move forward with a lease off of the coast of Virginia within one year. Well, I have very bad news for the majority. The overwhelming majority of the area that would comprise this lease sale would infringe on critical training areas for the U.S. Navy. The Department of Defense concluded that 78 percent of the area offered in the Virginia lease sale would occur where military operations would be impeded by drilling structures and related activities. Moreover, much of the remaining area is comprised of a major shipping channel. This bill is really a solution in search of a problem. The bottom line is that oil production is at its highest level in nearly a decade and natural gas production is at record levels. We should instead be debating legislation that would protect the lives and the livelihoods of the people in the Gulf and that could actually help consumers at the pump this summer. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. MARKEY. I yield 2 minutes to the ranking member of the subcommittee, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt).

Mr. MARKEY. I yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from Santa Barbara, California (Mrs. Capps).

Mr. MARKEY. I yield the gentleman 30 additional seconds.