Scott McInnis

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker. It gives me great pleasure to recognize the city of Trinidad, Colorado as the city celebrates its 125th anniversary. Throughout Trinidad's town history, the city has been a melting pot for various cultures. In its defining years, Trinidad was a bustling city founded on coal mining and cattle ranching. Trinidad was also a stopping point for the railroad as it progressed westward. Today, it is a city of rich historical significance and livelihood located on the western slope of Colorado. The 125th anniversary of Trinidad presents a wonderful opportunity for many residents to recall the valuable memories that have shaped this dynamic community. For others, it highlights historical notes that illuminate an era when Bat Masterson was the town marshal in the 1880's and when Trinidad was frequented by such famous western legends as Kit Carson, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and Billy the Kid. Mr. Speaker, I would especially like to commend the men and women who have impacted the city of Trinidad and made it the delightful place it is today. For example, Felipe Baca was an early businessman who built and resided in the notorious Baca Mansion. Sister Blandina was a pioneer for the Catholic nuns in the territory and Father Charles M. Pinfo was the first Jesuit pastor of Holy Trinity Catholic Church, erected in 1886. These are just a few of the many personalities that have molded not only the city of Trinidad, but also the western territory in general. Mr. Speaker, as the members of this historic community reminisce of days gone by and anticipate those yet to come, I am proud to honor and congratulate the residents of Trinidad on their anniversary. It is truly a remarkable accomplishment to celebrate 125 years of prosperity and good fortune.

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, I am a little surprised by the previous speaker and her unrelenting attack against the Salvation Army. She apparently got the merits for this attack from one newspaper article. I have heard the gentlewoman previously speak from here. I think she is well-educated. She comes generally with numerous sources when she speaks. That is why I am very surprised that she takes one newspaper article and launches an attack against the Salvation Army, which I would like to say to the gentlewoman has helped millions and millions of people throughout the history of this country. I think such an attack is unfounded, and I think you should hear the other side of the story. I would advise the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia to immediately go to a TV, turn on CNN on the half-hour, or some other broadcast, and she will find that the other side of the story has come out. In fact, I just spent some time, I was not looking for the story, I was grabbing a snack and watching the other side of the story being played out, and once the gentlewoman sees that, she will moderate the comments against the Salvation Army. I do not disagree with her point, I want to make this clear to the gentlewoman. I do not think any kind of secret deal should be made. But I do not think the Salvation Army went out and made a secret deal to discriminate against people, contrary to the laws of the United States. And I think that in all fairness to the Salvation Army, as well as the President of the United States, that both sides of the story should be read, both sides of the story should be analyzed, and then the concluding remarks that the gentlewoman has could then be made on the House floor. Now, that is not the purpose of my comments this evening. My real focus this evening is on natural resources. But before we go to natural resources, I want to spend a couple of moments also on the comments of another speaker. Unfortunately, as my colleagues know, we have one speaker at a time. We only have one speaker at a time that gets the opportunity up here. So I have heard some of these, and I heard another attack regarding the energy situation in the State of California. So I want to reiterate a couple of points that I think are important for the energy situation that we have in California. Remember that the energy crisis that exists in California does not exist in 50 States. In fact, in 49 of the 50 States, they are not having the kind of problems that California is having. In other words, the problems in California are as a result of a combination of a number of different factors that have come into play, not the least of which is that the State of California has refused to help itself, has refused to help itself, by allowing power plants to be built over the last 10 years, by allowing natural gas transmission lines to go into their State, by allowing electrical transmission lines to go into their State. California has paid a very dear price. Of all 50 States out there, of all 50 States, California has been the lead State opposing any kind of energy transmission in their State, opposing power plants. They are the ones where the old saying, ``Not in my backyard,'' it is out of that State that that came. So I do not think a speaker, I do not think one should stand up here and make California look like some poor innocent victim in the Western United States who somehow is picked out of 50 States and is the only State in the kind of crisis they are in, and then have one stand up here and accuse the power companies of theft. I do not know whether there has been theft or not, but let me tell you, the problem is much broader than a power company like Duke Energy. The problem that you have got out there is you have to face a couple realities. Number one, conservation is absolutely critical, and it is going to be a critical component about how California, and, frankly, the rest of the Nation, can avoid getting into the same spot that California got into by adopting some pretty simple methods of conservation. Conservation does not mean you have to suffer in your life-style. There are a lot of very simple things that you can do in your life- style that do not give you a negative impact, that do not serve as an inconvenience for you. Just think of them: Shut the lights off when you leave the room; make sure your fan is turning in a clockwise fashion in the summer; make sure you change your oil when the owner's manual tells you to change the oil on your car, instead of being marketed into changing your oil every 3,000 miles by the quick-lubes. There are a lot of things we can consider. Conservation is very critical for California. The second thing that is very critical for California is you have got to get over that habit, I guess you would say, or almost an idealism that you have locked into, and that is ``not in my backyard.'' In other words, let the other 49 States build the power plants, let the other 49 States worry about electrical transmission lines, let the other 49 States worry about natural gas exploration and oil exploration, et cetera, et cetera. You cannot do that, California. California, you are going to have to help yourself. You are going to have to help pull yourself up by the bootstraps. Now, let me say, I am a fan of California. I like the State of California, and California is a State. We have 50 States. We are unified like brothers and sisters. We should not abandon California. I do not think we should stand up here and bash California. But we need to be frank with each other. California, quit pointing the finger at everybody else. California, quit saying it is everybody else's fault. You know what you need to do is help pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. And we should help, too. I do not think California should be left to die on the vine out there, so to speak. California, after all, if it were a country, it would be the seventh most powerful country in the world. It is huge in economics for this country, and every State of the Union is dependent upon good economic health in the State of California. But I think it is grossly unfair for any of my colleagues to stand up here and make it sound like it is everybody's fault but California's, and that everybody ought to pitch in but California, and that California has been abused here and California has been abused there. There are a lot of good minds in California, and a lot of those people will say, you know, we have to have conservation, number one; and, number two, we have got to have power plants. The fact is we need electricity in our everyday lives. We need oil. We need gas. We need it in a balanced fashion. And, to California's credit, although in many cases they may have gone overboard, in many cases California has been the leading State in demanding that the energy production be clean production, in demanding that we have higher efficiencies, and, to California's credit, just here in the last month or 2 months, California is responding to conservation. My understanding is their conservation has resulted in about a 10 percent decrease in the demand for energy that that State is having. So, the only reason I am making my comments, which are a little off the subject of which I wanted to talk about this evening, water, although when we talk about water, we are going to talk about energy and the renewable energy of water and its resource, my purpose in commenting is I just think somebody has to stand up here when some of my colleagues take this microphone and talk about ``poor old California'' and how it is everybody else's fault. You know, California, what you try to do, I will tell you what got California in this mess. They had a new theory of deregulation, and they went out to the customers in California and said, we will keep your price the same, no matter what happens out here in the market. We will buy on the spot market, and, regardless of what happens, the average will always allow us, even though it goes up and down, the average line in there will always allow you to be sold power at the same price. Something for nothing. That is exactly what they promised, something for nothing. For a little while it worked. Forty-nine other States did not adopt that policy. Forty-nine other States did not think they could get something for nothing. Forty-nine other States allowed power production to be built in their State. Forty-nine other States allowed electrical transmission lines. Forty-nine other States allowed natural gas transmission lines. But California thought they discovered something new, and that is by denial, by guaranteeing flat rates, and by shoving the obligations on the other 49 States, they thought they could sail through this, and they have not been able to. Now, what is happening out there, I think that the Governor finally, I notice a couple of weeks ago he went over and cut the ribbon for a new power generation facility. Finally they are going to allow some generation to be built in that State. Finally this ``not in my own backyard'' is going to be adjusted, not eliminated, because I do not think it should be put in every backyard, but it is going to be adjusted, and California is going to get back on its feet. I do not think California is in for the kind of crisis that some people on this floor think it is going to be in for. It has been a good lesson not just for the State of California, but a good lesson for all 50 States, that, look, we need to plan for our future. We have an obligation to have some kind of vision into the future, to talk about what the energy needs are not only of today's generation, but what we can do for energy for tomorrow's generation, and that means serious discussions on alternative energy, although, as you know right now, do not be led down the path that alternative energy today is the answer. If you took all the alternative energy in the world, all of the alternative energy in the world, and devoted every bit of it to the United States, it only supplies 3 percent of our needs. So do not exaggerate what alternative energy can do for us today. But we should focus on what alternative energy can do for us tomorrow. All 50 States should do this. What happened in California was a warning shot to the entire Nation, and that is, we need to have an energy policy. That is exactly what has been missing here in the last few years. During the Clinton administration we had zero energy policy. I am very interested, by the way, to read the newspapers. I cannot find a newspaper, and maybe there is one out there, maybe the Wall Street Journal, but I cannot find much coverage or any kind of criticism of the Clinton administration for not having an energy policy for the last 8 years. But we can pick up any newspaper on a daily basis and see criticism against the current administration because they are trying to develop an energy policy. We need to put all of these things on the table. We need to discuss and debate and analyze exactly what it is that we have put on that table. We need to add things or take things off. But in the end we need a product that is called an energy policy that will allow us and instill upon us a vision for the future of this country, that will allow us to avoid the very kind of crisis that California got into, that will allow us less dependency on foreign oil. But we will not get that without some type of policy, and we will not come to that policy without some kind of debate. But instead, they are criticizing the debate; instead they are criticizing the administration in trying to put an energy policy together to put some ideas on the table and let us have discussions on this floor. Do not continually, colleagues, come to this floor and criticize. Everybody is to blame for California. Do not come to this floor, colleagues, and try and let all of us believe that the answer to this, the sole answer to this, is alternative energy or more conservation. All of those factors have to come together for the answer that we need. As much as you want to deny it, the fact is we are going to have to have more electrical generations. I think we are going to be responsive to that. In fact, in the rest of the Nation, in the other 49 States we are going to have a number of States that will have an electrical glut in about a year. Part of the problem is we do not have the electrical transmission lines to move that electricity. But my point is this, and that is that it is unfair for my good colleague from the State of California to speak at this microphone and act as if California's problems belong to the energy companies in the other 49 States. This was a problem that was brought upon themselves. It is a problem that all of us should help them get out of, but they have got to lead. They have got to have a little self-help. They have got to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. And for the rest of us, colleagues, we have to sit down and work with the administration and come up with an energy policy that gives us vision for the future. Let me move from that subject to another subject. A subject that is near and dear to my heart. It is going to be a boring subject to my colleagues. I know that many of you will probably find yourself snoring or not find this of particular interest, because it is about water. Water is one of the most wonderful things of our life. It is one of the more wonderful creations of God, if one believes in God, which I do. It is something that obviously we all know sustains life. It sustains a number of different factors in life. Water is pretty boring. Why? Because we have been blessed in most cases with plenty of water. As long as water runs out of the faucet, as long as the toilet flushes, as long as there is drinking water out of the sink it is not such a big issue. It is when it stops that all of the sudden it becomes a big issue. Just the same as energy, I think we need to have a vision for water in the future. Frankly, we have had from the generations and generations of people that have preceded us, we have seen vision for water. We have seen different types of utilizations of water and different planning for water for future generations. But in order for us to continue that kind of vision, we need to understand what water is about and what it has that is so valuable to our everyday lives. So I thought I would start out and visit just a little about the importance of our water. Let me say, first of all, in the State capital, my district is obviously in Colorado, my district is the highest district in the Nation, so I am at the highest elevation in the Nation. Up in my district, it snows year-round up on top of those mountain peaks. It is cold up there. It gets high. That is where a lot of this Nation's water comes from, are off the mountain peaks in my congressional district. So I think I know a little about water. In our State capitol of the State of Colorado, if any of my colleagues ever have an opportunity to go visit, go take a look at it. It is a beautiful building to start off with, but it has a number of different murals throughout the capitol building. Do you know what you see in every mural in the State capitol building in Colorado? Somewhere in that mural, you will see water, because water is the lifeblood in the West. Water is the lifeblood everywhere; but in the West, we are in a unique part of this Nation. There is a distinct difference between the eastern United States and the western United States. Mr. Speaker, one-half of the Nation is blessed with a lot of water. In fact, in the eastern United States, you see lawsuits or disagreements about: hey, put that water on my neighbor's land. I do not want that water. In the West, the suits are just the opposite. In the West, there are range wars fought, not only over sheep and cattle, but over water. They say water out there in the West does run like blood, and it is fought over with blood, and that it is as valuable as blood. That is the importance of water in the West; and there is a distinction, as I said. But in the State capitol there in Colorado, there is this language: ``Here is a land where life is written in Water. The West is where the Water was and is Father and Son of old Mother and Daughter following Rivers up immensities of Range and Desert, thirsting the Sundown ever crossing a hill to climb a hill still Drier, naming tonight a City by some River a different Name from last night's camping Fire. Look to the Green within the Mountain cup; Look to the Prairie parched for Water lack; Look to the Sun that pulls the Oceans up; Look to the Cloud that gives the oceans back. Look to your Heart and may your Wisdom grow to power of Lightning and to peace of Snow.'' That is Thomas Hornsby Ferril. That is a saying in our capitol. That is why water is so critical. Let us look over a few statistics that are important. First of all, the interesting thing that I found about water, if we look at all of the water in the world, all of the water in the world, 97 percent of the water is the salt water; 97 percent. So only 3 percent of the water we have in the world is drinking-type of water, is nonsalt water, is clear water. And of the remaining 3 percent, if we took 75 percent of that 3 percent, that is all tied up in the ice caps up in the polar ice caps. So when we take a look at the amount of water worldwide, without the technological advances that perhaps the future will bring us for salinity and desalinization, we find that there is not really a large amount of water that we can use out of that big pot of water out there. When we take a look at our country, we can see that stream flow in the United States; and as I said earlier, there is a difference between the eastern United States and the western United States, but 73 percent of the stream flow in the United States is in the eastern United States. It is not in the western United States. So we have 73 percent in the East, and then in the Pacific Northwest we have another 12 percent, and then the rest of the West, which makes up over half of the Nation. Remember, the West is vast in quantity of land. If we take the West, minus the Pacific Northwest, which consists of more than half of the Nation, we have 14 percent of the Nation's water. So in other words, more than half of the Nation has 14 percent of the water to provide life. That is pretty amazing. So we should understand that it is important that our water does not come on a consistent basis and it does not come in the same amount of quantity every year, year after year. In fact, day after day, the quantity of water that we have varies in the West, and it is not at all consistent. Some years we have great snowfall; but it gets too warm in the spring too early, and it runs off before we can use it. Some winters we do not get great snowfall, so we have drought. In much of the West right now we are facing drought conditions. The critical issue to remember about the West when we talk about water is that in the West, we have to store our water. We are going to talk about the mighty Colorado River. The State of Colorado is called the ``Mother State of Rivers,'' and we will go into that. It has four major rivers that come out of Colorado. In fact, the Colorado River out of the State of Colorado provides drinking water for 25 million people, 25 million people. So my good friends in Phoenix or Las Vegas or Tucson, you are totally dependent upon the Colorado River. In Los Angeles, you are almost totally dependent on the Colorado River. The thing to keep in mind is that in the West, since we do not have consistent rainfall, we have very low rainfall. In fact, in the State of Colorado, we get about 16 inches a year, 16 inches a year. In some of the communities here, they get 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 18 inches in a heavy rain storm in a day, and that is pretty remarkable. So in the West, we have to be able to store our water, because when we do have a lot of water, we do have a lot of water during one period of time generally, and that is called spring runoff. When the high snows come into the mountains in the wintertime and it accumulates and accumulates and accumulates, and then in the springtime, when the flowers start to pop up, everything starts to green, the snow starts to melt, and very rapidly, and for about 30 to 90 days, for about 30 to 90 days, really probably 30 to 60 days, we have all the water we need in the West. It is called the spring runoff. We have all the water we need. But the problem is, for the balance of the year, we do not. That is in part one of the reasons we need to store our water in the West, why we need to have dams in the West. Now, in the East there are some radical environmental organizations, Earth First and some of the groups like that. Frankly, the national Sierra Club, which has never supported a water storage project in the history of that organization, they would like to make people in the East believe that in the West, a dam is an abuse of the environment, that these dams are nothing but atrocious toys for construction companies. We are totally dependent in the West. Mr. Speaker, any family or friends that we have in the West, they are totally dependent on our capability to store water. By the way, you know when the first dam was that we could find on the Colorado River? One thousand years ago. One thousand years ago the Anasazi Indians down at Mesa Verde, Mesa Table, Verde Green, the Green Table, down in Mesa Verde we found proof that the Anasazi Indians were the first ones to come up with a dam; and they had reservoirs and they had canals, and then the Indian tribe, the Anasazis went extinct. We think the reason they went extinct was because they did not have enough runoff to store the water. So after hundreds of years, a period of time, the Anasazi goes out, we think the reason they became extinct was because of the lack of water. So those are some very interesting things. Let us look very quickly here, I covered here pretty much, so I think this is the critical point here: there is only 14 percent of the total stream flow to be shared by 14 States which make up over half of the Nation's land use. Now, let us talk, just for a moment, because I think this next chart I want to show really was stunning to me. I found it fascinating. I had no idea how much water is required in our everyday life. I am not talking about showers or using the restroom or drinking water. I am talking about water for agriculture. This is about water for agriculture. I watched with some interest the fact that out in the West the Federal Government has shut down farmers because they need to protect the sucker fish. I do not know enough about the dispute to argue on either side of that, but it has been on the national news the last few days. Watch and see how critical that issue becomes. It is critical for life out there in the West. Look at this chart. See if the Members are as interested in this as I am. Direct use of the water. This is water we would use every day. The average person uses two gallons to drink and cook in, two gallons of water. Imagine, at the grocery store, we all have an idea what a gallon of milk jug looks like. Two of those are necessary just for the drinking and cooking. For flushing the toilet for one's own personal use, we need about five to seven of those gallons of water. We have the grocery cart. We have two gallons for drinking and cooking. Now we have to put six, between five and seven, so say six more gallons for the use of the toilet. If we do wash that day we will have to put 20 more gallons into the shopping cart. Now it is time for a second shopping cart. If we use the dishwasher that day, we will need 25 more gallons into that shopping cart. Then, if we take a shower because we sweated so much from putting all of that water into the shopping carts, it is another nine gallons. Now take a look at what growing food takes, because growing food is what uses the most water. But what is the most beautiful aspect of water? What is the key ingredient of water? It is a renewable resource. One person's waste is another person's water. I remember years ago in Colorado when they came out and said that what we need to do, they demand that we go and lay concrete in all the ditches; line the ditches, because that water seeping into the ground is a huge waste of water. Do Members know what happens when we line a ditch and stop the seepage of the water within that ditch? We may be drying up a spring of somebody 3 miles away. Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, we do not have the technology today to look underneath the Earth and see where every little vein of water goes and how it connects. The generations that will follow us will find it fascinating, because they will have the technological apparatus to take a look and say, gosh, this ditch provides for this spring, which is 10 miles away, and this aquifer, which has been under the ground for thousands of years, it provides a stream to this aquifer which connects over here and pops up in a spring somewhere. Those are the kinds of things that this future generation will be able to see that we cannot see today. But what we do know today is that water is, number one, renewable. It is not like gasoline, where we use a gallon of gasoline and it is gone forever. It is not like natural gas, where we turn on the heater and bring the natural gas through. It is gone forever. It is not like nuclear with uranium, it is gone. Water is renewable, and that is why it is so important. Take a look. Most of the use of water is in agriculture. Now, it is interesting to me. In fact, I had the privilege, really the privilege, of being up in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I happen to think I have the prettiest district in the Nation. I have resorts, Aspen, Durango, I have all the Rockies, almost all the mountains in Colorado, but Jackson Hole comes pretty close. I was up in Jackson Hole. It was just beautiful, gorgeous. Of course, there is the national park, Yellowstone, the Teton National Park. I would love to discuss, and I intend to one of these nights soon, talk about the national parks and how important the national parks are for our Nation, and how many millions of people enjoy our national parks every year. But what was interesting is that we were looking out at Jackson Lake, which is north of Jackson Hole. As we were looking out there, they have a dam on Jackson Lake. That is what created the lake was the dam. I was listening. Somebody said, ``Well, the unfortunate thing about this dam is that the Idaho farmers, the Idaho farmers get the top 36 feet. They get the first 36 feet of storage. It is let out into the Snake River and it goes to the farmers in Idaho. That is really bad.'' I thought, bad? This person is probably going to eat a potato for lunch. This person was probably going to eat lots of agricultural products during her day that were provided by water. Agriculture is not a bad thing, but we have to make the connection. We could not have a lot of agriculture in the West if we did not have the water storage to provide for it. In fact, what we would do is have very, very little agriculture in the West, very little way to sustain life in the West. The same thing with the Anasazi 1,000 years ago. When they ran out of the capability to have water for storage, the storage would not hold enough for them, they became extinct. That is why water is so important. That is why, when we look at a dam, we should look at what all it provides. Take a look at agriculture. This is amazing. One loaf of bread, I will bet Members did not know this, one loaf of bread, from the time we cultivate the soil to raise the wheat and to be able to process the wheat, to be able to turn it into a loaf of bread, we will have gone through 150 gallons of water, 150 gallons of water. That is what is necessary to have the final product of one loaf of bread. One egg, this is almost unbelievable, 120 gallons for one egg. We have to raise the chicken, give the chicken water, the chicken has to have the water on a regular basis, the egg has to be cleaned and processed, there is water within the egg, et cetera, et cetera. It is 120 gallons. To produce one quart of milk, we have to have 223 gallons of water; for one quart of milk, one quart, 223 gallons; for a pound of tomatoes, 125 gallons; a pound of oranges, 47 gallons; a pound of potatoes, 23 gallons. So here is what happens, just so we have a comparison here. If we put 50 glasses of water, 50 of these glasses of water out, of these, how were they used? Forty-four glasses of that would be used for agriculture, for our food products, 44 of those 50 glasses. Three glasses would be used by industry, two glasses would be used by cities, and half a glass would be used in the country for rural areas. Water is critical. Mr. Speaker, this gives us somewhat of an idea of just how important it is for all of us in our everyday life. Let me focus us back, Mr. Speaker, to the State of Colorado, because Colorado is a very unique State. As I said, it is the highest point in the Nation. It is also the only State in the Nation out of 50 States whereupon all of its water runs out. It has no incoming water for its use that comes into the State of Colorado. It all goes out. This gives an idea of the quantity of water that goes out of Colorado, the average annual outflow of major rivers through 1985. Now, this chart is old, so these numbers are off a little, but they are not off by a lot. They are still pretty close. These are acre feet. An acre foot is how much water it would take to put one foot of water on an acre of land for 1 year, 4,540,000 acre feet right out of the Colorado River. Up here off the Yampa River in the green, 1,576,000. Every point that we see here, here is the South Platte that goes into Nebraska, almost 400,000 acre feet of water. Down here on the Arkansas River, 133,000 acre feet. Over here on the Animas River, 700,000 acre feet. Here, of course, is the mighty Colorado. This chart right here, Mr. Speaker, gives us an idea of the State of Colorado, which is a critical State for the West. Of all of the States in the West, I cannot think of any State that is more important for the water supply of the West. Remember, this is not just water for agriculture but it is water for hydropower, hydroelectric, whether Lake Mead or Lake Powell, Glen Canyon or the Hoover Dam, water for recreation, et cetera. Here Colorado is the key State because of its high elevation, because of its snowfall, which provides the flow of water. Colorado is really divided here into four major water basins: the Missouri; here we have the South Platte River; the Arkansas, we have the Arkansas River that goes through here. We also have down in here the Rio Grande, the Rio Grande River, which goes down near Alamosa, Colorado. Here on the Western side of the State we have the mighty Colorado River. Remember that, regarding the rivers in the West, as well as in the East, in the old days we used to have to live close to the rivers, but as man has evolved with technology, we can live further and further away from the rivers. So while the Colorado River, of which 70 percent of the water within that river basin is provided by the State of Colorado, and by the way, the Colorado River is one of the longest rivers in the Nation, but because of the technology, that water is moved. For example, in Colorado it is moved from the western part of the State, my district, which has 80 percent of the water resources. There is a good quantity of water that is moved from our part of the State to the eastern part of the State, which has 80 percent of the population. It is the same thing in Arizona. We have the Central Arizona Water Project, where we move water away from the basin into the cities, like Phoenix and Tucson or Los Angeles. We have the water project down in Los Angeles. So we move water from these basins. We have to have the capability to divert. This real quickly just gives us an idea. I mentioned that the Colorado River is one of the longest rivers in the Nation. This gives us an idea. Now, out here we have the Gulf of California, but in actuality most of the water that is left, when it enters Mexico near Baja, it is used by the country of Mexico. It is interesting that when the Colorado River was first divided up, they figured there were about 15 million acre feet of water a year that came down the Colorado River, 15 million acre feet. So they divided it, and in about 1922 they had what they called the Colorado River Compact. That is a very important compact for the West, and probably of all the water compacts in the West, that is the most critical. It divided what we called the Upper Basin States and the Lower Basin States. The Upper Basin got 7\1/2\ million acre feet, and the Lower Basin got 7\1/2\ million acre feet of water every year. But unfortunately, when those calculations were made, they were made when we had a very unusual year. We had the highest flow in any number of years. They were recorded at the highest record of flow. So in fact, we really do not produce 15 million acre feet of water on an average year out of the Colorado, which means that a lot of the Colorado River water is overappropriated. Now, on top of the 15 million acre feet, here is an interesting story for us. In World War II, the United States was concerned, as was the country of Mexico, that the Japanese would try and invade the United States through the country of Mexico. So the Mexican authorities and the United States, the American authorities, got together. Mexico wanted the defense of their country. The Americans did not want the Japanese in Mexico, so the Americans agreed to supply reinforcements or troops to the country of Mexico to defend Mexico if the Japanese invaded. The Mexican government, being the better negotiator of the two, said that we should want to keep the Japanese out of their country, and it is nice of us to protect them, but we ought to give them something for it, like 1\1/2\ million acre feet of the Colorado River. So that is exactly what happened. In 1944, the United States government agreed to give the country of Mexico 1.5 million acre feet, 750,00 from the Lower Basin States, 750,0000 from the Upper Basin States, of the surplus waters. Of course, there is a dispute over ``surplus,'' which is going on between the Upper Basin States and Lower Basin States. They are getting too technical right now, my comments, but suffice it to say that the Colorado River Compact is really the point I want to make here. That is what has taken one of the longest rivers of the Nation and has divided it between the States that benefit from it. The Colorado River supplies drinking water for about 25 million people. One of the first people to explore, and we have all heard this name before, was John Wesley Powell. He explored. This, of course, had been discovered before by the Spanish, by the Anasazis, et cetera, et cetera, but John Wesley Powell and his party mapped and explored the Colorado River. They used wooden boats, and Mr. Speaker, I am sure some of my colleagues have rafted in Colorado. We think we have some of the best rafting, if not the best rafting, in the Nation. It is pretty scary. Imagine before those rivers were controlled by dams, before we had flood control, imagine the kind of rafts back then. They were big wooden barges, as we would see them today. That is what he went down on. Think of the disease and unknown territory. In fact, some of them probably still believed the Earth was flat. It was a pretty challenging thing. You died at a young age if you wanted to go out and explore the West. But John Powell and his parties did exactly that. In 1869 he described the roil and boil of the rivers that pass through the treacherous passages, like the Grand Canyon, and the hard labor of the boat crews just to keep it going. But John Wesley Powell mapped the Colorado River, and talked in his journal, in his diaries, and explained much of what he saw in the Colorado River. The result of the Colorado River, by the way, is what has provided absolute beauty, the Grand Canyon and the canyons in Utah. Mr. Speaker, if Members have never been out to the West, go to Colorado first, and of course spend money in the Third District, but go little further West and go into Utah and see those gorgeous canyons. Go into Arizona and see exactly what this mighty river has carved over all of these hundreds and thousands of years. Here is a good example. The Colorado River carved many of the gorges and canyons in the Colorado plateau. Dead Horse Point State Park in eastern Utah preserves the natural state of Meander Canyon, aptly named for the fantastic twists and turns the river etched into the soft sedimentary rock of the plateau. When Members stand from this position, where my pointer is, and they look out, these are huge canyon walls. We can see where the river is from the green that goes through, that cuts through all of this. This was all cut by the Colorado River. It is a fabulous study, our history of this Nation and what it has provided for us. But it is also critical for the life-style of the people out there. Now, my colleagues will find that there is focused attention on the West. Remember that almost all of the Nation's public lands are in the Western United States. They are not in the Eastern United States. Let me very quickly kind of give a brief history on how that occurred. When we first settled our country, most of our population was on the eastern seaboard, and this country, this United States of America, wanted to grow. But back then, to grow, you had to buy land. And if you bought the land, the title did not mean much. If you had a deed, you had a deed that said, hey, you own the State of Colorado or you own out there in the West this chunk of land, these millions of acres, but it did not mean much. The only way that you could obtain your land after you bought it was to get out there with a six-shooter on your side and possess the land. That is where the saying came from, the old saying that ``possession is nine-tenth's of the law.'' That is exactly what happened that created public lands in the West and almost no public lands in the East. Why? Because our leaders in Washington, D.C. knew we needed to settle the frontier. We had gotten the Louisiana Purchase, we had gotten a number of other lands, and we needed to somehow give incentive to the population in the east to go west. ``Go west, young man, go west,'' as the saying went. So they decided to have land grants. They decided to have the Homestead Act, where if a person went out to Kentucky, and that was west to them, Kentucky was west, or go out to Missouri and Kansas and even to eastern Colorado, 160 acres back then could provide for a family. So they gave this land to the citizens of the United States who would go out and occupy the land, or possess the land on behalf of the United States of America. And after so many years, 5 or 6 years of working that land, you would own the land. Well, the problem was when they got to the Colorado Rockies, guess what happened? One hundred sixty acres did not even feed a cow. So they came back to Washington and said people are going west but when they hit the mountains they are going around trying to figure a way to get to the ocean side, the Pacific Ocean, but they are not staying in the mountains. How do we get them there? Somebody said maybe we should give them an equivalent amount of land. We give 160 acres in Kansas or even in eastern Colorado, let us give them what it would take, the equivalent amount of land, let us say 3,000 acres in the mountains. Somebody else said, no, no, we cannot politically do that. There is no way we could give out 3,000 acres to a particular individual and survive politically. So somebody came up with the idea, well, let us just go ahead in the west and let us let the government go ahead and hold the title in our name, the government's name, and let the people use the land. Let us have a concept called multiple use, ``a land of many uses.'' Let us have the West be a land of many uses. That is how we can get around that. We can get people to settle there. We will say, look, you do not get to put the land in your name, but you get to use it for yourself. Now, in recent times, that has been misinterpreted in many cases by some of the more extreme environmental radicals in the country, who say, look, the land in the West was intended to be set aside for all future generations. While we are comfortable here in the East, they should set that land, those public lands in the West, aside. And they are doing the same kind of thing for the water. Clearly, we have to have a balance. And thank goodness we had somebody like Theodore Roosevelt, who took a look at Yellowstone and with awe and a great deal of thought and, frankly, a great deal of brilliance put that into a national park. We have wonderful national parks on those public lands. We are pretty proud of those public lands. My district has huge amounts of public lands. But we have to be able to utilize those public lands, and it is the same thing with our rivers. We have to have dams in the West. My point in speaking tonight is not to just have my colleagues walk out of here with some book knowledge on the topic of water, but to understand the difference between the Western United States and the Eastern United States when it comes to water and the necessity of water resources and the necessity to store water and the necessity to use hydropower. By the way, in all of our discussions, especially of the last few months, when we have had debates and so on about the energy crisis, remember the cleanest energy producer out there is water. We do not need fuel to put water into a hydroelectric facility. All we do is take the energy of the water as it drops, turn a turbine, and we create electricity and then we can move the electricity. My real focus here this evening in front of my colleagues, especially those from the East, is to ask you to remember that life is different in the West. Sure, we are all American citizens and we are not saying we are being picked upon but we are saying there is a difference. There is a difference between night and day. A part of it is caused by the fact that most of the public lands are in the West. They are not here in the East. It is very easy, colleagues, to put regulations on us in the West, on public lands, because those in the East feel no pain. The East does not have any public lands. Well, there are the Appalachians, and a chunk down there in the Everglades, but, in essence, when we talk about public lands in the East, we are talking about the local courthouse or the property around the courthouse. When we talk about lands in the West, we are talking about 98 percent of some of our States, like Alaska. In my State alone, in my district alone, now get ahold of this, in my district I have over 22 million acres of public lands. And there is water on there. And that water is absolutely essential, one, for diversion, and, two, for the protection of the environment that we have. But my focus here this evening is that I hope, as my colleagues leave and that as I conclude my remarks, that everyone understands how important water is in the West; that we are arid out there in the West. We have over half of the Nation's land in the Western United States, over half of it, and we have 14 percent of the water. That means that I think my colleagues have to approach us with a little more open mind. When we talk about water storage projects in the West, when we are trying to stop a bill, for example, backed by the national Sierra Club, that we understand their number one goal is to take down Lake Powell. Now, Lake Powell and Lake Meade, those dams provide 80 percent of the water storage for the West, yet the national Sierra Club wants to take out almost half, almost half of our water storage in the West because they do not like dams. That is their number one goal. I am not making this up. It is in their publications. Their president's number one goal is to tear down Lake Powell, the second largest recreational, just behind Lake Mead for recreation, the second largest recreational facility in the West, despite the hydropower that it produces, the amount of water it stores for us out there. So, colleagues, when the national Sierra Club comes and talks to you and wants you to sign on to taking down Lake Powell, please, please understand that life in the West, when it comes to water, when it comes to public lands is different than back here. Listen to our side of the story before you sign on to any of these bills that take fairly dramatic steps not in your area of the Nation but in our area of the Nation. Before you sign on as a sponsor or cosponsor, take a look at the impact it creates on us. Take a look at what it does to your colleagues; take a look at the history of the Nation. I have 25 charts here that I can walk through depicting life in the West since the Anasazi Indians and since the Spanish explorers. We can walk through the time of John Wesley Powell and about how the West has managed those resources. And with all due respect, I would venture to say that many of us in this room, many of my colleagues in the room, especially those from the East, have no idea of the kind of life-style that is required in the West, and the natural resources and our use of the natural resources and our conservation of the natural resources. So, please, colleagues, do not let some of these organizations convince you that all of a sudden you are an expert in western water law. Do not let these experts or groups like the national Sierra Club convince you that you should become an expert and cosponsor a bill to take down Lake Powell, which is exactly what they want to do, or to stop the Animus La Plata water project, which was promised to the Native Americans 30 or 40 years ago. Those issues are critical for us out there. This is a Nation where the Eastern United States should understand the problems of the West and understand that the water situation here is different than our water situation back there in the West. My whole point here tonight is to tell my colleagues that in the West, as they say, our life is written in water and water is so, so critical. It has all come together. It all comes together when we begin to understand the geographical conditions, the historical conditions, the political conditions. Then we begin to say, you know, there is another side to this story that is important for all of us to understand. Mr. Speaker, let me wrap up this portion of my comments about water by just simply reiterating one point, and that is that there is a difference between the Eastern United States and the Western United States when it comes to natural resources. There is a difference between the Eastern United States and the Western United States when it comes to public lands. There are very few public lands in the Eastern United States. There are vast quantities of public lands in the West. The concept of multiple use, a land of many uses, that is how I grew up. When you would enter the government lands, which we are completely surrounded in my district, I have over 100 communities, I have a district larger than the State of Florida, and every community except one is completely surrounded by public lands, and when we enter the national forest and so on, if any of my colleagues have ever been out to the national parks or public lands, it says something like, ``you are now entering the White River National Forest.'' And there used to be a sign under that that said, ``a land of many uses.'' A land of many uses. Now we are seeing groups like the national Sierra Club or Earth First or more radical environmental groups coming out and saying they want to take that sign, ``the land of many uses,'' they want to take it off and put on a sign that says ``no trespassing.'' And it is the same thing with our water. The quickest way to drive people out of the West is to cut off their water. And it is not complicated. In the Eastern United States it would be very complicated to shut off the water. You have a lot of it. It rains all the time. In the West, all we have to do is take down a couple of dams. Go ahead, let the national Sierra Club take down Lake Powell. You take down Lake Powell, and you will shut off a large portion of the west. You would take away life, the human population, and, by the way, a great deal of vegetation and animal population out there because we have been able to utilize that water and store that water so we can use it beyond the spring runoff. So keep in mind in the west life is written in water. Let me use my final concluding remarks on a topic that is obviously totally unrelated, but I want to go back to my remarks at the beginning of this and that is on this energy thing. By the way, I heard some comments earlier today that we have no free market in the energy, that we need to have the government run the energy business in this country. Nothing would be worse than inviting the government into our front doors to begin running our energy companies for us. Nothing would be worse than allowing the government to intercede in the private marketplace. Now, I am not speaking about stopping antitrust, where intercession is necessary. According to Adam Smith, and he is right, a monopoly is a dangerous tool to management. But to intercede and to actually become almost socialistic like, where we would have the government supply the power and the gasoline, and we would have the government guarantee it will all come at a reasonable price, we should not buy into this concept that the government is going to be able to give us something for nothing. Take a look, for example, at the government's intercession in lots of other different programs. In almost every case, when the government takes over or begins to think that it can do better than the private marketplace, we end up with lots of regulation, we end up with subsidies, and we never get something for nothing. This energy is a problem that we all have to work through. The way we work through it is we put several components together. One of those critical components is conservation. Now, not every citizen can go out and find natural gas, not every citizen is going to be able to build a transmission line out there, and not every citizen can build a generation plant, but one thing that every citizen in our Nation can do is to help conserve. And if we want to keep the government out of our lives, we only need to help conserve energy. Because the more energy that we waste, the more energy shortages we then have, the more temptation there is to have the government come in as a quick fix, as some kind of waving of the magic wand that the government is going to be able to deliver to us any kind of product at a cheaper price. The private marketplace does pretty good if we can all help. So to conclude this portion of my remarks, let me say that I think it is incumbent upon every citizen in this country, and I speak through my colleagues, that we have to go out into our districts and encourage our constituents. Because if there is one thing that every citizen in this country can do to help alleviate the energy crisis, that exists primarily in California but is a warning shot to the rest of the Nation, it is to conserve. And we can all do it by simply shutting off our lights, changing our car oil when the owner's manual says it instead of when the lube market tells you to do it. I am optimistic about future energy of this country. Slowly but surely we are building an energy policy, and conservation is going to be an important part of it. You cannot conserve your way out of the situation that we are in. Alternative energy is an important part, but do not overplay it. As I said earlier, if you took all of the alternative energy in the world and delivered it all to the United States, it would only supply 3 percent. Certainly this young generation behind us, their brilliant minds will be able to make that much, much larger because they will find ways to take energy out of water. The first and most immediate thing we can do is come up with an energy policy as a government. We can urge our constituents to conserve. But the worst thing we can do is propose that the government put on price controls, that they take over industries, that they seize power plants and the government becomes your local electric utility. It would be the most inefficient operation in the history of our government. Do not let them do it. You cannot get something for nothing out of this government. If it is the government running it, you usually pay a higher price than if you as a community can have the private sector with checks and balances. I have spoken primarily about energy, about water. Mr. Speaker, one last shot on water and then I am done. That is keep in mind in the East and West of this Nation, there are differences in water and differences in public lands. I would urge all of my colleagues in the East and all of their constituents in the East to please take the time before signing on a petition to take on Lake Powell or kick people off public lands, take a look at both sides of the story. If you take a look historically, politically, environmentally at both sides of the story, I think you will have a better understanding of what I have said tonight and a much deeper appreciation for our message from the West.

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to pay special tribute to La Veta, Colorado on its 125th Birthday. For over a century, the people of La Veta have contributed a rich heritage and cultural diversity to the state of Colorado. I would like Congress to wish the citizens of La Veta a very happy 125th birthday. In 1862, Col. John M. Francisco, a former settler with the US Army at Fort Garland, and Judge Henry Daigle built Fort Francisco on land purchased from the Vigil-St. Vrain Land Grant, significantly south west of most of the San Luis Valley bound traffic. When Col. John Francisco looked down on the future site of La Veta in the mid 1850's he said, ``This is paradise enough for me.'' The town of La Veta was incorporated on October 9, 1876. As more settlers moved into this beautiful and fertile valley, the Fort increased in importance as shelter from Indians and as the commercial center for the area. The first Post Office, named Spanish Peaks, opened in the Plaza in 1871. By 1875 the Indian threat was almost completely gone. In 1876 the narrow gauge railroad came through La Veta several blocks north of the Fort on its way westward through the newly surveyed La Veta Pass. In 1877 the permanent rail depot was built beside the rails and the business community slowly moved north toward it. For many years, this stretch of the line between La Veta and Wagon Creek was the highest in the world. The old depot building at the summit is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The mountains of the Sangre de Cristo Range were long known by the Indians of the Southwest. Relics of the Basket Weaver Culture have also been found within the county. The Spanish Peaks are a historic landmark to travelers--from the early Indians to the vacationer. Besides being the railhead, La Veta has also been the center of local agriculture and coal mining. - Mr. Speaker, the citizens of Colorado are proud of La Veta's 125-year heritage. It is an area rich in culture, history and heritage. For that Mr. Speaker, I would like to wish La Veta happy birthday and wish its citizens good luck and prosperity for the next 125 years.

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, I stand here before you today to honor a man that has made significant contributions to the artistic community, John L. Ninneman. John has not only created a legacy with his photography, but he has also shaped the future with the minds he has taught at Adams State College. John is currently the Dean of Arts and Sciences at Fort Lewis College. He started his extensive education at St. Olaf College; he then went on to earn a Master's at North Dakota University. After completion of his Master's Degree, John received his Ph. D. at Colorado State and his Post-doctoral training at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. With his vast knowledge John became an accomplished research immunologist. His time spent in Colorado created a love for the State, and John eventually returned to Colorado to become a professor at Adams State College. John proved to be a great professor, and was loved by both students and fellow professors. During his time there he served as Chair of Biology, and Dean of the School of Science, Math and Technology. In the little spare time that the John had he developed a love photography. John started what would be an illustrious career in photography by documenting one-room schoolhouses in and around the San Luis Valley. He then began to photograph the rock canyons and mesas in the Four Corners Region. His photography has won numerous awards, and helped make others aware of the beauty in Colorado that needs to be preserved. John's artistic ability does not stop with his photos; he is also a talented violinist who performs with chamber groups, and at fundraisers. It seems that John's talent and ability is boundless. The contributions that John has made to the artistic community of the State of Colorado, not to mention the nation, is why I believe, Mr. Speaker, that John Ninneman is worthy of the praise of Congress. The black and white photos that he has taken will live forever as a reminder to all how beautiful the United States is to all that view them. I thank John for sharing his amazing talents with the public.

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to offer my congratulations to a couple that has taken extensive efforts to promote land stewardship, wetlands conservation, research and education in the Monte Vista area of Colorado. Mike and Cathy McNeil have truly exemplified the ideals honored with the 2001 National Wetlands Award of the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the U.S. Environmental Protections Agency and the Environmental Law Institute and I would like to add my thank you and appreciation to their labors. Nestled on the edge of Rock Creek just south of Monte Vista and neighbored by the Monte Vista National Wildlife Refuge, the McNeil ranch persists as a fourth-generation operation. Understanding the importance of responsible development and the intersection with environmental preservation, the McNeils launched the Rock Creek Heritage Project--an effort which protected nearly 15,000 acres of farm and ranch land in the Rock Creek Watershed. This collaborative effort, involving 27 landowners, accentuates 5 aspects including land protection, watershed enhancement, training in holistic management, community building and support for value-added marketing of agricultural products. Extending beyond land matters, the McNeils have adopted innovative calving patterns to provide their 800 mother cows warmer birthing periods during June and July rather than throughout the cooler winter months utilized by most ranchers in the area. In all of these endeavors the McNeils have exhibited innovation, excellence and outstanding effort. Mr. Speaker, Mike and Cathy have been united in matrimony for 20 years and have the blessing of their daughter Kelly who is 14 years of age. The teachings of her parents are allowing Cathy to value and preserve the heritage from which she comes. Through the extraordinary contributions of the McNeils, wetland protection and land stewardship has been heralded and an example has been established for others to follow in order obtain ecological health while not compromising agricultural profitability. The National Wetlands Award will be one of many awards that the McNeils have garnered from their hard work-- alongside the distinct recognition of being the Colorado Association of Soil Conservation District's Conservationists of the Year in 1999 and the 2001 Steward of the Land Award issued by the American Farmland Trust. The McNeils deserve to be applauded on a job well done and I, along with my colleagues, thank them for their sustained efforts in this critically important realm and foundation to life.

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, I stand here today to honor a man who stretches the imagination, and who uses paint to express what words cannot about Colorado, and about the beauty of our nation. Stanton Englehart has been providing the world with refreshing insight into nature for over forty years, and has been an active participant in bringing art to communities around Colorado. Stanton Englehart has long been recognized as one of the most prominent painters of the Southwest. He carries the honor of Professor Emeritus of Fine Art at Fort Lewis College, and his popularity and enthusiasm has brought him international recognition. He says, ``I hope my paintings express some of the beauty and mystery of the earth and the sky above it. . . . The paintings are most about energy and its power as a creative force in all things.'' Stanton selflessly shares that energy with just about anyone who asks him. Charlie Langdon of The Durango Herald, says that when asked by an audience member at a lecture if he would be willing to exhibit in more Colorado arts centers, he answered, ``Just call me, and tell me how much wall space you have. I'll pack a show for you and truck it to your door.'' Incredibly, Stanton turns out ``about a hundred paintings a year. Many of them are enormous,'' All told, he has created more than 1200 paintings, some 21 feet wide. To ensure that those without the funds to enjoy his art can do so, he donates many paintings to public institutions. Stanton has made a huge impact in Colorado art, and has brought international attention to the glorious landscapes of Colorado. He works with the art community to act as a model for the young and the old, for the artistic and the admirer. Mr. Speaker, I ask to thank Stanton Englehart on behalf of Congress for his ongoing contributions to this important creative aspect of Colorado. He deserves our congratulations.

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, today I ask to honor a great man whose contributions not only to this country, but to our world, should be looked upon as an inspiration to all. James Samuelson, longtime Glenwood Springs, Colorado resident recently passed away. He served in World War II, flourished as co-editor and publisher of The Glenwood Post, volunteered in his community, and gave his time and money to help those in countries less fortunate than our own. Even before he began his successful career working with newspapers, Jim went into the Army Medical Corps during World War II, where he served in campaigns in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy. Afterward, he married Marilyn, a marriage that would last 55 years until his recent death. Together, he and Marilyn raised a daughter and five sons, and were the proud grandparents to fourteen and great-grandparents to three. After the war, Jim pursued his journalism and management talent. Donna Daniels of the Glenwood Springs Post-Independent writes of Marilyn's memory about how much more difficult it was to communicate, and how the biggest contact to the outside world was the daily paper. Jim used his skills working as co-editor and publisher of The Glenwood Post with his brother, John until 1966, after which he earned his masters of education from the University of Wyoming. Jim was an active man all through his life. He skied, fly fished, and played and watched sports. He also volunteered with the Lions Club, American Legion, and the Mountain View Church. He even traveled to Haiti and twice to Mexico to help establish medical clinics there. In 1962 he received a fellowship to attend a three-month seminar for journalists in Quito. He and Marilyn also traveled to Europe, Israel, and Turkey, making their last trip just three years ago. Mr. Speaker, Jim Samuelson contributed throughout his life to his community, his family, and to his world. He acted beyond expectations to make a positive impact where he saw the need, and for that, I ask to pay him tribute on behalf of Congress.

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, I ask today to honor Ed Smith, a true hero, on behalf of Congress. Ed served as the Centennial football coach, as school district administrator, and he served as a model for how to win, how to lose graciously, and how never to give in. He was also a man devoted to his family up until his recent death just months before his 100th birthday. Professionally, Ed was revered by his colleagues. Central coach, principal and teacher John Rivas told Loretta Sword of The Pueblo Chieftain, ``He was the godfather of it all, you might say, and he was always there to help me if I had a problem or a situation I didn't have a handle on.'' Ms initiative helped ensure that the Dutch Clark Stadium had the financial and community support necessary to be built. Also, he made certain that the annual All-Star games were properly organized when they were in Pueblo, and that everything went smoothly and safely. For his success, he was even named honorary meet director and was honored for the work he did in the athletic arena for the community. Ed was a gifted athlete himself, and he never lost his love for competition, or his skill at it. When he was 91 years old, he shot a hole-in-one with thirty-year-old golf clubs he received as a retirement gift. During his life, Ed received many honors and awards, including having his name on the rolls of the Greater Pueblo Sports Association Hall of Fame and the Centennial Hall of Fame, but his greatest reward was that, as former coach Sollie Raso attested, ``I honestly think . . . [he] and his wife, they were at peace with one another, their family, and their God.'' Indeed, Ed was a dedicated husband up until his wife, Margaret Boyer Smith's, death. He also devoted himself to his two sons, Dr. Dean B. Smith, who preceded him in death, Dr. E. Jim Smith, and to his sixteen grandchildren and nineteen great-grandchildren. Clearly, Mr. Speaker, Ed Smith was an inspiration to his students, colleagues, family and friends throughout his life. I am proud to have this opportunity to pay tribute to such an amazing man.

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker I would like to take this opportunity to honor a life spent serving others, the life of Jack Fowler, Jr. Jack was a man that selflessly dedicated his life to protecting the lives of others. On Sunday, June 24, 2001, Jack was killed on his way home from a training session with the Volunteer Fire Department of West Pueblo. Jack was born in the nearby community of La Junta. He graduated from La Junta High School, and started his career as a firefighter at the La Junta Volunteer Fire Department, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather. After moving to Pueblo West in 1978, Jack then joined the Pueblo West Volunteer Fire Department where he was quickly promoted to Lieutenant. After serving only two short years on the Pueblo West squad, Jack was named Captain. Not only did Jack fulfill his duties as Captain, but went above and beyond these duties, by taking many courses that enhanced his career, Highway Emergency Response, Colorado Division of Disaster Emergency Services, and Emergency Response to Hazardous Materials Incidents to name a few. With all the extra time Jack put into his position at the Pueblo West Fire Department, he was the obvious choice for Fire Chief in 1983. The dedication to his community did not stop with his position on the Fire Department, Jack also volunteered with the Columbine Council Girl Scouts and spent time at the local schools. Jack loved to spend time with his daughters, Allison and Caitlyn, so he never missed an opportunity to volunteer for activities the girls were involved with. Jack balanced his commitment to his community and his family well. This charismatic man was loved by all that knew him. His dedication to Pueblo West and its citizens has left a lasting mark on the community, not to mention the State. A life dedicated to the service of others, is why I stand before you today, Mr. Speaker, asking Congress to give this man the recognition he so justly deserves. He will be greatly missed by friends, fellow fire fighters and his family, but the State of Colorado will also feel the loss of this man. I would like to offer my condolences to his wife DyAnn and his daughters Allison and Caitlyn, and assure them that Jack Fowler, Jr. will not be forgotten by Pueblo County and the State of Colorado.

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, before I start this evening on the main subject of which I intend to spend the majority of my time on, I want to tell you that today I had a visit from the Future Farmers of America, several young people from Delta, Colorado; Cortez, Colorado; Dove Creek, Colorado. As many of you know, my district is the Third Congressional District of the State of Colorado. That district basically consists of almost all the mountains of the State of Colorado. It is refreshing to have young men and women like this and young men and women of the different groups, not only Future Farmers of America but the different groups that come in to see us, the leadership groups and so on. It does tell you that there is a lot of promise with this new generation, that there is sure a lot more going in favor of that generation than there is going against it. So I felt pretty good. It recharges somebody in my kind of position to see that the generation following behind us, which is something that we become very dedicated to, because, after all, whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, regardless of where you fall down on the issues, if you really looked at the heart of why most of us are here, it is because we do care about the greatest country on the face of the earth and we do care about being able to hand this country over to a generation that will deliver the same kind of promise to this great country as have the previous generations. With that, Mr. Speaker, I want to address this evening energy. We have got to talk about energy. I will tell you why I am concerned about what is happening with energy. We are actually seeing energy prices begin to drop. In fact, energy prices are dropping rather dramatically here just in the last couple of weeks. My concern about energy becoming more affordable, which of course benefits all of us, is that we begin to forget the shortage of energy that we have had in the last several months, that we begin to forget the necessity to conserve and to continue to conserve, not just for the period of time that we had the shortage but for the sake of future generations like these Future Farmers of America that were in my office today. I think that we have to adopt permanent conservation methods for future generations as an investment. It is an investment in the future. I think we have to stand up to some of the realities of the shortages that were created over here in the last year. Why did they come about? What is happening? What are we going to do to secure this Nation's future as far as its energy needs? As the price begins to fall, people begin to take energy and push it off their plate. It is not such a priority. Gasoline alone has fallen 20, 30 cents a gallon in my district. By the way, if my colleagues happen to be anywhere in the United States where gasoline has not dropped in price, they better take a look at the operator, because somebody is making a lot of money. Natural gas prices have begun to drop fairly dramatically. Electric prices have begun to drop rather dramatically. Why? Because, number one, we are coming out of the winter season, obviously we are into summer right now but, two, the supply is beginning to catch up with the demand. Why is it beginning to catch up with the demand? One, we have had increased production overseas, and, two, people are beginning to exercise energy conservation, so the demand and the economy has brought that demand down. In other words, conservation and the slowness of the economy have begun to bring the demand down while the supply goes up. So as supply and demand come closer together, that is where your price matches. If in fact at some point it looks like supply will exceed demand, in other words, you have more than you can sell, prices drop rather dramatically. So this summer the good news is we are going to have reasonable gasoline prices so that you can go on your summer vacations and you can go to work, et cetera. But I do not want that to hide the necessity for each and every one of us in here to continue to take a look at what is necessary for this country to conserve and to continue to look for resources that we think are necessary so that this country can stay on an even keel with the needs that it has in the future. It would be a dramatic mistake, a dramatic and serious mistake, for us to assume that everything is fine once again and we go whistling off into the forest. In fact, that was a warning, a warning shot that was fired over our bow, so to speak, in the last few months. It was a message to us that we need to look with an approach utilizing common sense of, one, how can we conserve, number two, probably more important than anything I have discussed so far this evening, the importance of having an energy policy for this Nation. Let me spend just a few moments on the energy policy for this Nation. The problem in the last 8 years under the previous administration is that we really never had an energy crisis. During the Clinton days in office, there never really was an energy crisis. So as a result, that administration never really did set forth on trying to come up with some type of energy policy. Why? When you decide to come up with some kind of energy policy, that is controversial. You take a lot of heat. Because if you want to have a good energy policy for this Nation, you need to put all of the issues on the table. You need to talk about hot subjects like ANWR. You need to talk about hot subjects like nuclear utilization of energy. You need to talk about hot subjects of where you store waste. You need to talk about and have some discussions with the auto manufacturers about increasing the mileage that we get on our cars. A lot of those conversations are going to be the subject of very heated debate as this administration, the Bush administration, begins to put together an energy policy. So it is a debate that any smart politician would like to avoid. Why take the heat when you do not really have to? If the energy prices are reasonable, in fact, they were not only reasonable over the years of the Clinton administration, they were cheap, why take on the heat of dragging this country through the debate of an energy policy? Well, things have changed. We know, of course, in the last 5 or 6 months, it seems only a few weeks after President Bush and Vice President Cheney took office, that we began to feel a shortage. They did not run from it. That is important to note. I have seen a lot of criticism lately of our President and our Vice President, most of it quite unjustified but nonetheless it is out there. Criticism about how dare they say we go and look for future energy resources. How dare they say a program that has not worked in 20 years have its budget cut? What is this new administration thinking by putting on the table the different areas of energy and energy reserves in this country and at least asking the question, should we or should we not drill, for example, in those particular areas? Should we or should we not begin to take a second look at nuclear and say maybe we ought to consider it, like France, by the way, of which most of the energy in Europe, by the way, is generated by nuclear. Some of the conservation methods. It is controversial to go out to those car manufacturers and say, we need better mileage for those vehicles. But this administration was willing to do it. Not only because they have had to. And, by the way, now that energy prices are dropping, the political heat on coming up with an energy policy is not near as great as it was just 3 weeks ago. Just 3 or 4 weeks ago when the prices were still up there, the heat was fairly extensive in these chambers. But what really will test us is if we are willing to continue to work with the President and the Vice President in putting together an energy policy despite the fact we are not under a lot of heat in these chambers to do exactly that. And I think we have an obligation to do that. Because, as I said, in those last few months what came over the bow of our ship was a warning shot. It did not hit the side of the ship. Our economy did not sink as a result of this energy. We have had some blackouts in California but that really focuses more on negligence by the leadership out in California. It did not occur in 49 other States, by the way, which does make California stand out, saying, ``California, 49 States must be doing something right. You must need to adjust something you're doing.'' The key here is that while we got a warning shot, let us not ignore it. I have got some ideas this evening and some things I would like to go over with my colleagues. This evening, my remarks really are going to focus on what I call common sense and resource development. It does not read common sense of resource development. It reads common sense, resource development. In other words, we have got a lot of conservation, for example, and that is the first one I have got down here. Conservation. Let us talk about conservation for a couple of minutes. There are a lot of commonsense things in conservation that we can use. And it does not create a lot of pain with the American people. As I have said numerous times on this House floor, the average American driver that owns an automobile, you do not have to change your oil every 3,000 miles. Now, you may have been convinced by marketing efforts that your engine is going to fall out of your car or the engine is going to blow up if you are not down there at Quick Lube getting your oil changed every 3,000 miles, but the fact is if you read the owner's manual, you are going to discover that your car only needs its oil changed maybe every 6,000 miles. In some cases 7 or 8 or 9,000 miles. Now, you can begin to become a participant in this conservation by simply changing your oil when the owner's manual tells you to change it. That is not painful to the American people. It is not painful to my colleagues. That is what I call common sense. That is an example of common sense approach to our resource development that we need. Part of that resource development is conservation. There are a lot of other things. Of course the simplest thing that anybody can think of which absolutely causes you no pain is shut off the lights when you leave the room. Shut off the lights when you leave the house. I said the other day in Europe, when you go into a hotel in Europe, you actually have a little card. When you walk into the room, you slide that card into a slot. As long as that card is in that slot, your hotel room lights are on. But as you leave the hotel, you pull the card out and the lights go off so you do not forget to leave lights on in your hotel room. Does that cause you any pain? No. Does it impact your life-style in a negative fashion? No. In fact, it will actually save you money if you do this in your own home, watch out to turn out those lights, and it also helps you become a reasonable and responsible participant in conservation efforts. That is a key part, I think, in resource development. Some people would like you to believe that the only way you can have resource development is to exclude conservation, that when the President and the Vice President talk about resource development, that they have ignored conservation, they have drawn a line through it. That is just political propaganda. That is all that is. It is bogus. I have talked to the Vice President. I know what the President's policy on energy is and conservation plays an important part in it. But the President and the Vice President have had enough courage to say, look, you cannot do it on just one of these elements alone. You cannot make up the gap that we have or the gap that we might have in the near future simply through conservation. You can make a significant dent in it, but you cannot make it up with just simply conservation. Nor can you make it up with alternative forms of energy. I want to point out that if you go all throughout the world, you pick every alternative form of energy you can find, solar, wind, other types of renewable energy generation, take a look at that. If you took all of that renewable alternative energy in the world and you applied it all to the United States, in other words, only the United States got that alternative energy, that would only meet at the most 3 percent of our needs. That is not going to be an answer, but it is an important part of the answer. It is a critical piece of the puzzle when combined with conservation. Then you have got to take a look at other renewables. What is a good renewable source out there that generates electricity and provides recreation and provides fisheries and prevents flooding and allows us any other number of benefits? Hydropower. Now, I speak of hydropower with great admiration because I come from the West. My family has had many generations on both sides out of the mountains in Colorado. The mountains in Colorado, believe it or not, it is an arid area. I think almost half the geographical area of the country only gets about 14 percent of the water. Out here in the East, in some areas you sue to get rid of the water. You try and shove the water over on your neighbor's property. Out in the West we need storage. We have about 6 weeks every year out in the West, out in those Rocky Mountains, you have all been out there, you have skied in my district, Aspen, Vail, Telluride, Beaver Creek, Steamboat, Glenwood, Durango. You have skied out there. You think the snow never ends. You think there is lots of moisture out there. First of all, we do not need the moisture in the winter. We need the moisture primarily for agriculture, municipal use, et cetera. For about 6 weeks as that snow melts off those high mountain peaks, and my district happens to be the highest district in the Nation, as the snow melts into that cold water and comes rushing down, for about 6 weeks we have all the water we want. But we do not exactly, because we have not figured out that direct connection with the good Lord, we do not know how to time that. We cannot control the timing of that. Sometimes it comes early, sometimes it comes late. Mostly it comes early. So we have to have the capability to store it. So while we are storing that water, water which we have to have, remember that in the West we have got to store it, not only just for flood control but for our drinking water. So why not while we are storing the water use the renewable assets of the water and generate electricity. I am going to show you exactly how hydropower works here in just a few minutes. It is probably the cleanest energy generator we have got out there. What we do is we take the water as it drops, we grab that energy from the water as it goes down, we spin a generator and we create electricity. Keep in mind one thing with hydropower, when we have a generator, a turbine, that is natural gas. We use a fuel. We have to use natural gas. So we consume one part of our environment to create the electricity. Same thing with coal generation. On coal generation facilities, we burn coal to spin that turbine to create electricity, but hydropower is different. On hydropower, we do not use any fuel. We do not have to consume any natural gas. We do not have to consume any coal. It is in the water, and it is in the drop of the water. That is where we pull our energy from so it makes a lot of sense. You keep going on here, oil and gas. I read a very interesting poll today, or saw a poll. I do not know whether it was taken today but I looked at it on the computer. By the way, speaking of computer, if you want to help conserve just go on to search and hit ``conservation ideas.'' I pulled up 19,000 hits. I did not look at each hit but up came 19,000 hits on conservation ideas. So your computer really at home can help you help us conserve energy in this country. I took a look at the words that have negative thoughts to them in regard to energy-related. I can say that oil and gas has a pretty negative connotation to it. Same thing with coal, same thing with nuclear. There are some people out there, again using strict rhetoric, political rhetoric in a lot of occasions, will lead you to believe that, look, exploration for oil or natural gas or nuclear generation for electricity or hydropower, that that is bad; that we can get our power by simply conserving or simply using alternative or solar. Do not buy into this argument that solar is going to replace at least in the near term, and near term meaning the next 10 to 20 years, do not buy into that argument that solar alone is going to do it. The reason we all do not have solar generation in our homes today, although a few of them have it with those panels on the roof but it is not very efficient and it is not very effective. That is why most homes do not have it. I can assure you that once somebody masters how to put that solar energy into a home to generate, for example, your electricity or to provide the energy needs that you have, we are going to go solar. That is where the market will take us. That is the beauty of the capitalistic market that we have. It will go for the best product but right now it is not the best product, and you are being led down a path without a good return at the end when people say that solar, or renewable energy, or other factors or even conservation will solve our problem. The fact is, we have to have oil and gas until we are able to make some fairly significant technological advances in solar and other alternative fuels so that at some point in the future we can replace oil and gas, but today you need oil and gas. We have to face up to the fact that we have to have further exploration. Here is a chart to give you an idea. This is energy production. It is a flat line at our growth rates last year, flat line energy production. This is energy consumption, the red line. Look at the angle of the red line compared to the flat green line. You say, all right, Scott, there is the energy consumption. There is the energy production. What fills in the gap? Well, what fills in the gap, of course, is foreign oil. We become more and more dependent on people like Saddam Hussein to provide for that gap. Let us take a look. How do we close that gap? What do we do to minimize, to minimize this gap, to bring consumption in with production? That is, by the way, what brings your price down. Well, we can conserve and conservation will make a significant dent in that. Vice President Cheney has said that on a number of occasions. The President himself has talked about the importance of conservation, but it will not wipe out this gap. Here is my angle with my pointer, conservation maybe brings it down maybe around like that. It will take care of a good chunk of that gray area but it will not take care of the biggest portion of it. Then if we take a look at alternative energy like the solar and so on, maybe a little tiny fraction. Certainly, the technological advances we have today, for example, on solar or other alternative energy will not make at all the kind of dent that conservation will make but it will help a little. So after you take that into consideration you still have a significant gap here. What does that significant gap represent? Well, it represents energy. It represents whether you have air conditioning for elderly people. It represents whether we have refrigeration for storage of food. It represents vehicles and I am not just talking about your car. I am talking about the ability for everything, to run ambulances, to drive semis, to move food from one point in the country to the other point in the country. I do not have to say what needs we have as far as oil and gas, but we cannot pretend to let it always happen in the other person's backyard. We cannot pretend that we do not really need to drill for oil and gas, that somehow oil and gas pipelines are going to fall out of the sky because we need it and we do not have to go through the pain of having to look for it. The fact is, in this country, we have to continue to do that or we can make a conscious decision, as they did in California over the years, we can make a conscious decision not to explore for that and become dependent on other sources. In other words, in the United States we can make that decision not to continue to explore for more oil and gas and to continue to become more reliant. The trade-off is we then become more reliant on foreign oil. Now there are all kinds of risks to that and we ought to be aware of that. What happened in the State of California is they adopted a policy for many, many years, in fact ironically today the governor or yesterday the governor of California, Mr. Davis, switched on a new power plant. First one I think they have had in 13 or 14 years. Well, it is about time, California. It is about time, Governor, because the policy that California adopted was, look, let us deregulate and we do not have to build any generation in our State. We do not have to have natural gas transmission lines in our State. We do not have to have it in our backyard. Let somebody else do it. We will become dependent on somebody else. So that is a conscious decision that the leadership in California, by the way on both sides of the aisle, but today it is headed by the Democrats, but that was a decision made many years ago and it has been continued through the years, hey, let us not drill in our State; let us not build electrical generation in our State; let us not put a gas transmission line in our State here in California; let us depend on somebody else. They did that and look what happened. It went along real well for awhile until the person they depended on decided they wanted a little more for their energy and then pretty soon they wanted a lot more for their energy, and pretty soon the market changed. The reason they wanted a lot more for their energy is if California did not want to buy it somebody else was willing to pay that price to take it. That is the risk of us in this Nation and for the future generations of becoming dependent on foreign oil. We can do it, but remember what happened in California could happen to all 50 of the States if in fact our dependency on foreign oil is some foreign dictator who overnight decides he is going to shut off the oil tab. That is why it is important within our boundaries to continue to explore our reserves. Now does that mean explore our reserves at any cost? Of course it does not. You cannot go into Yellowstone or into a national park, into the Black Canyon National Park or up on the Colorado Canyons National Monument or the national conservation area. You cannot go up in there and explore. There is a lot of country, though, however, that we can drill in this country. I know it has a negative connotation to it. The easiest thing you can do on this House Floor is to stand up and say, we do not want to drill here; we do not want to drill there; we are against drilling; we are against any kind of exploration. Leadership, however, requires that you stand up here and say, we need conservation; we need alternative fuel, but we do have to continue to explore for oil and gas. We need to do it in an environmentally sensitive method, a responsible method, which not only mitigates the impact to the environment. The days of mitigation for the environment are pretty well gone, where you go in and you have a project and you are supposed to mitigate for the environment. Those days are pretty well gone. We have now accepted the responsibility for future generations that we have a higher standard, not just mitigation but enhancement, enhancement of the environment. We have done this with wetlands. We have done it with our endangered species, any number of different things. We have actually, because we are concerned about the environment for future generations, we have lifted it to a higher standard, a standard which we think will be of benefit to future generations while at the same time allowing utilization, say, of a resource. Well, let me go on here. We have a very negative connotation based on coal. Coal generates a lot of power in this country and it generates a lot of jobs in this country and it can be done in a doggoned responsible way. Now you have to exercise oversight over it. I am not too sold on taking off a mountaintop, for example. I am not too sold on burning coal without the most modern efforts we have, the smoke stack technological instruments that we have, technological instruments that we have to clean that coal, to make sure that the area that comes out has a minimum impact on our environment if we are going to burn coal. What we can do today? We can do a lot of that. Now some of my colleagues, because coal has a negative connotation to it, say shut it down. My guess is they are not relying on coal. My guess is they do not have jobs dependent on coal. My guess is they have never been in a coal-powered generation facility. That is a responsibility that each and every one of us have. In fact, it is incumbent upon us to go out when we talk about these things, when we talk about hydropower or when we talk against hydropower we ought to go look at a dam. You ought to go out and see what kind of impact, both negative and positive, it might have. We have to weigh it out. That is exactly what the President and the vice president have said on their energy policy. Put it all on the table. Put it down on that table. Then let us debate it. If it does not work, take it off. But everybody has an obligation to put their idea on the table so that we can have this debate, so that we can develop some kind of energy policy for this country. As I said earlier, I am concerned that because energy prices are dropping that us, Mr. Speaker, in leadership positions will begin to say well, that is not as important as it was three or four months ago. Prices are down. Our constituents are not concerned. The complaints are not out there. Let us move on to something else. We cannot do that. We just got a warning shot. Do not let that go unnoticed because of the fact that our energy prices have dropped. Let me just reemphasize right here. I know I brought this chart up a couple of minutes ago but I just want to reemphasize one thing. That is our production. That is energy production today. That is demand. Now demand came down just a little but the fact is this is our projected shortfall, right there, projected shortfall. Every one of us can make that projected shortfall. We can drop that through conservation. We can drop it somewhat through alternative energy like solar, and we can also drop that shortfall by allowing continued exploration in this country under reasonable oversight, using common sense an enhancement to an environment. Now, it is very interesting to hear about people. I mentioned this the other day when I was making comments because I find it kind of ironic. I, of course, get out in the mountains. I love the mountains. Most of you who visit the mountains can understand that, but I have a lot of heritage and I feel a lot of deep bonding to my district, as do all of you with your districts. So I get out in the mountains all the time, and I was out talking with a mountain biker the other day. Now I mountain bike, too. I ride my bike and so I enjoy the sport a lot, but I was talking to a colleague of mine who was riding a mountain bike and they were complaining about the fact, boy, we cannot continue to drill, we cannot continue to use oil and gas, very negative about mining; you have got to get mining out of here; we cannot have mining. It is interesting comments from somebody on a mountain bike made of titanium. I said to my friend, I said that bike you have got is one of the most technically advanced bikes in the world. That thing you can lift it, no matter how strong you are, even a child can lift that thing up it is so light. But you know why that is? Because we have mines, we have minerals. We are able to have oil and gas production. We are able to come up with things like this device which, by the way, utilizing your bicycle is a good way to conserve. In fact, by using that resource we in the long run can use less of it by developing something like a bicycle that is comfortable to ride and a bicycle of which people can recreate on without having to use a gasoline-powered engine, for example. The fact here is, look at this, our demand for product, this is our demand for product right here. U.S. crude production, these bars right here of production, that is production, 1990, 1991. This right here is the petroleum demand. Take a look at what demand has done to production. When you have that kind of gap, your price skyrockets. That is the kind of gap that begins to lead to a crisis. Now we did not have an energy crisis this last few months, with the exception maybe in California, blackouts in New York. New York City may face some. We do have a drought up in the northwest on the Columbia River. Mr. Speaker, the fact is 49 out of the 50 States were in pretty good shape. We had an energy crunch, not an energy crisis. That energy crisis is just sitting out there waiting to fire right into the center of us, unless we do something to prepare for it. I mentioned earlier if we make the conscience decision, which we are free to do, that is why we are on this floor, that is why we have this debate, if, in putting our energy policy together, as the President and Vice President have said we need to do, we need an energy policy, if my colleagues out here make a conscience decision not to have further exploration of our natural gas and our oil reserves in this country, only one thing can happen, you cannot fill the gap in with conservation. It helps, but it does not fill the gap. You cannot fill the gap in with solar energy. The only way you can fill in the gap between supply and demand, when you decide not to drill or further explore in our country, is right here, foreign countries like Iraq. Take a look at our dependence on Iraqi oil exports to the United States. Take a look at that line. The more you decide not to find alternative resources, the more you decide not to conserve in our country, so you have more consumption, the more you try and mess with the market, like price controls, and I am going to talk about that in a few moments, the more you become dependent on people like Saddam Hussein over here in Iraq. That is not the answer. That is not the answer. That is what is going to lead us from an energy crunch to an energy crisis. Mr. Speaker, let us talk for a moment about the State of California. I told you that I love the State of Colorado. I am very proud of the State of Colorado. I want you to know that I like the State of California. California is a beautiful State and California has a lot of wonderful people in it. But, frankly, the California leadership has done a pretty poor job of planning for their energy needs. The governor of California and other elected officials, you are going to hear them blame everybody else for this. But the fact is, there are 49 States in this country that are not in the predicament that California is in. Lightning did not just strike California and they got picked out of the bunch for this to occur. California brought it on themselves. We have several things we ought to discuss since California brought it on themselves. Number one, a fair question for us to ask to California, to ask the governor of the State of California, ``what are you doing to pull yourself up by your bootstraps?'' In other words, that word called self help, what are you doing, California leadership, to pull your people in that State out of the energy crisis that you have? We have to be careful. I am critical of the governor of California, whom, by the way, has blamed everybody else but himself. I never heard him once say that he accepts at least a part of the blame for their shortage out there. That is why I am so critical of the leadership of the State of California. I want to tell all of my colleagues that we are very dependent on that State. It is not a foreign country. We should not walk away from California. It is a State. We have an inherent obligation to help California. That help should not come without some kind of matching grant, so to speak, matching effort. They have to make their own effort, but when you look at it from an economic point of view, California is the sixth most powerful economy in the world, we better not walk away from them; not only do we have what I think is an obligation to help California because they are a State. They are our brothers. They are our sisters. They are our neighbors. They are a State of the United States. We do not walk away when another State is in trouble, so we also cannot walk away from California, because California is the sixth most powerful economic unit in the world. What does California have to do to get help from the rest of us? First of all, California, and I hope the governor of California has an opportunity to visit with me at some point, you have a lot of power generation facilities to be built in your State. You cannot continue to demand energy and have energy demand continue to grow while at the same time say ``not in my backyard.'' You cannot continue to depend on people outside your State lines to supply your generation inside your State, unless you want to subject yourself to the ups and downs of price fluctuations. That is exactly what happened. California deregulated, well, not really deregulated. They called it deregulation. They sold their generation outside. Outside owners run it, because they thought they could save money by buying the spot market, which means the prices go up and down by the hour in power, by the hour in electrical power. They thought they could outsmart the market. What did they do? They bought spot power. The people now control the power, the price goes up. You have to be able to build your own resources within the State of California. I know that California is now looking at that. They opened their first power plant in 13 years, as I understand it, as I mentioned earlier in my comments, yesterday or today. That is good; not enough, but it is good. You are headed in the right direction. Mr. Speaker, I want my colleagues from California to know that the rest of us feel an obligation to help your State. But, by gosh, California, you have to help yourself. You have to allow some natural gas lines. You have not allowed a transmission line, not natural gas to your house, but a transmission line to move large volumes of natural gas in 8 years. You have put price caps. That is one of the problems I am going to go through in a little more detail. Let us just real quickly go to that while we are on the subject. Let us talk about price caps. I can tell you in fairness of disclosure, I am a student of Adam Smith, the Wealth of Nations. That is the capitalistic system where you have supply and demand. You have to have some oversight so you do not have monopolies, but you have to be careful of abuses, and I understand that. You have to understand, especially in the government, we are not business experts in the government. None of us are business experts. In fact, a lot of us in these chambers, I happen to have been, but a lot of the people in these chambers have never operated a business. Where do you think we develop the expertise to go into the marketplace which has been tested in this country for hundreds of years? Where do you think we can go into it and decide that government manipulation of the market is for the benefit of the consumer, then, in the end, how to beat the market? The government never beats the market. Let us take a look at how they think they can. Price caps. You know what makes me upset about price caps right off the bat? I am a big proponent of conservation. Price caps encourage waste. Price caps do not encourage conservation. It is like leasing. I will give you an analogy here. It is like you own a house and you rent the house to a tenant. You rent it to somebody and you say to the person you are renting to, look, you pay me $500 a month rent for the house, and, by the way, I will pay all the utilities. Do you know what is going to happen with the person that is renting your house since you are paying their utilities? The air conditioning will be set at 50 in the summer, and the heat will be set so high in the winter you will look over at your house and you will see the windows open so they can get rid of the heat. Price caps encourage waste of energy. Take a look. Price caps are bad for consumers, the economy and the environment. The polling in California, and maybe throughout the country, but 70 percent of the American people say they like the idea of price caps. That is where leadership comes in. That is where we as leaders have to say, look, on the short-term basis, you are asking for a short-term return and a long-term risk. The risk is substantial. The risk is substantial that more waste will occur. Mr. Speaker, the risk is substantial that you cannot artificially hide prices. I know it is painful. Let me say we do not have price caps in Colorado. Do you know what has happened to my wife and my family here in the last 6 months? We have conserved energy. Why have we conserved energy? Because we did not have price caps. Do you know that not having price caps what happened to our bill? Our bill went through the ceiling with our natural gas bill. We were stunned. We got a $500 natural gas bill one month and you want to bet that we did not start conserving immediately. Of course, we did. If we would have had a price cap where it said, look, no matter how much you use, we are only going to have to pay a cap of this amount, it defeats the purpose. It is a manipulation of the market. That never has happened in the history of this country. I know it is popular. I know it is popular. Seventy-five percent of the people support it. I am telling you, take a look at the history. Seventy-five percent of you supported it, but there has never been successful price caps in the history of this Nation ever. It is always popular when it is suggested, because, of course, it is only suggested when prices go up. But it has never, ever worked. That is where we have a leadership obligation to at least stand up to the popular opinion and say, I know we want to jump on board, but before we do jump on board, take a look at what the long-term risk of putting price caps on it does. Price caps impede energy conservation and drive away new energy supplies. Some have called for regionwide price caps, including costs- of-service ratemaking. That is part of California's effort. Simply put, wholesale and retail price caps prevent markets from working properly. It is a manipulation of the market and is a politically expedient solution that has exaggerated problems that they are supposed to fix. Price caps create an imbalance between supply and demand by preventing utilities from passing along market prices. Retail price caps disrupt the natural relationship between supply and demand and prevent markets from operating efficiently. It eliminates incentives for conservation and harms the environment. Retail price caps eliminate consumers' incentives to conserve in times of tight supply, because consumers are not paying the true cost of the electricity, for example. Without incentives to reduce consumption, older, dirtier plants are kept running longer. Let me say that price caps sound good, but think about it. If you artificially keep the price low, you are not putting the investment out there that you need for further supply and reserves for further supply exploration. If you keep price caps, you have no encouragement at all for people to conserve because they are not feeling the pain in the price. As I mentioned earlier, the primary reason I would like to say is because we wanted to do the right thing and so on. In fact, I think all of us would admit that the primary drive outside of the State of California, where you do not have price caps, the primary drive for conservation was the fact that because we did not have price caps, our bills went through the roof. You can bet that the energy conservation immediately went into place. Mr. Speaker, I hope that as prices begin to drop that all of us continue our responsibility for energy conservation. Let me just summarize my position on California. California is a very important State. We cannot walk away from them. They are a State after all. They are the sixth most powerful economic power in the world, but California has to deploy or employ their own self help. They should not look at the other 49 States, which, by the way, are not in the situation California is, because they did not say ``not in my backyard,'' because they did not refuse to allow generation plants in their State, because they did not refuse to allow gas transmission lines in their State, but California cannot expect the other 49 States to bail them out. We ought to help, but California has to pull itself up by its own bootstraps. California, from an agricultural point of view, from any number of different point of views, is critical for the economy of this country, but, by gosh, the leadership out there in California has to quit shifting the blame to everybody else and accept the fact that this is going to be a painful process, that you are going to have some trade-offs. You are not going to get electricity without electrical generation plants. You are not going to have natural gas without natural gas transmission. That is the point I am making about California. Let me talk for just a moment here about another common sense approach, and that is hydroelectric, hydropower electricity conservation combined with common sense. Worldwide, 20 percent of all electricity is generated by hydropower. We are the 2nd largest producer of hydropower in the world. Canada is first. Hydropower makes a lot of sense. Let us take a look at how hydropower works. It is really pretty simple. Here is a dam. You have to have a dam. As I mentioned earlier in my remarks, out in the west, for example, we have got to have the capability to store the water. Here in the east, you need dams to control flooding. You also need storage water. But in this country, our dams provide us a lot of generation of electricity. Remember, with hydropower, we do not have to have a coal burning facility. We are not using natural gas. In fact, we are not using any fuel at all to generate electricity. This is a renewable resource. What we are grasping, what we are grabbing is the energy that is created as a result of the fall of the water. You put the water here, it end up here, and the energy that is created between the two points is what we grab to spin a turbine to create electricity. That is exactly what hydropower is about. That is the beauty of the nature of this thing. It is a renewable resource. The storage of the water that is necessary provides for recreation. In fact, our largest recreational water body in the West is Lake Powell. That provides for a tremendous amount of family recreation. It provides for fisheries. It helps us control floods, et cetera, et cetera. So the water comes in, the water drops through, turns the turbine here, and the turbine generates the electricity, and out it goes on these power lines. But do you know what? You have got to be able to let these power towers come. You have got to be able to allow transmission lines come into your area. You cannot always think that the burden is going to be on your neighbor's property. You cannot always think that the burden is going to be on every other State of the union, which is exactly the policy that the leadership in California adopted. That is why one out of 50 States has got a real serious problem. Now, up in the northwest, of course, the Columbia River is way down because of the drought. I think, frankly, going back to California, you have got to commend the people in California. In the last month, we have seen a tremendous amount of conservation in California. I think because they have some of these price caps and they are also selling bonds, they are indebting future generations to pay for this generation's use of power. Talk about unfairness. For years here, when I was in the Congress, we talked about how future generations do not deserve the debt that we are putting on them, that we should balance the budget. In the State of California, they are using the power today, and they are selling bonds, they are indebting their State and letting future generations pay for the power. That is not right. We ought to absorb the pain as we go. It is the same thing with hydropower. You have to have transmission towers. There is a lot of common sense that can be deployed here that will give us results where one State does not suffer at the expense of other States, where some people do not suffer at the expense or benefit at the expense of other people. There is a lot we can do. Let us take a look at, real quickly, hydropower. This is a very important statement that I wanted to cover. Take a look at what utilizing hydropower does, this first statement. Hydropower is clean. It is clean. It prevents the burning of 22 billion gallons of oil or 120 million tons of coal each year. The hydropower that we have in place in this Nation, we are the second largest user in the world, Canada is the first, our utilization of hydropower saves us and prevents the burning of 22 billion, 22 billion gallons of oil, and 120 million tons of coal. That is a lot of coal that we do not have to burn because we have used a common sense approach and we have built hydropower. Now, as with exploration of coal, as with conservation, you need to use a reasonable approach and you need to use an approach that is sensitive to the environment. I do not propose for a moment that we go out and build a dam anywhere we want to build a dam, but I do propose that we do not reject it on its face. I do propose that hydropower be something that we consider, that it go on the table for this energy policy that we have all determined is absolutely necessary for future generations of this country. Our leadership obligations require us to begin and complete the process of an energy policy. Take a look at what it does. Hydropower does not produce greenhouse gases or other air pollution. We have heard a lot about air pollution. We have heard a lot about greenhouse gases. Hydropower does not produce that. Hydropower leaves behind no waste. Think about it. When you burn gas or oil or any other resource, you leave some waste. Hydropower, you do not leave any waste. The water goes through, turns the turbine, generates the electricity. Reservoirs formed by hydropower projects in Wisconsin, for example, have expanded water-based recreation resources. It is renewable, and it is common sense. That is the kind of policy that we have to put in place for energy in this country. Let me just kind of summarize my comments this evening and what I think is essential. First of all, I pointed out at the beginning in my remarks energy prices are beginning to drop. In fact, it is my prediction that we will actually have an electricity glut, an electrical glut here in the next year or so. Believe it or not, last year we had 158, now this is not in California, but throughout the rest of the Nation, we had 158 new generation plants come on-line last year, 158. What you have been reading in the media or hearing from some of the political rhetoric is that there had not been any electrical generation facilities. We had 158. In fact, if we build out everything that is planned for the next 5 years, if you take weekends out, we will have a new generation facility open every day for the next 5 years if you do not count weekends and if all of those projects that are planned are built out. We are going to have an excess of electric generation, but that is part of the market. It will work itself out. But the key is this, you cannot have good energy policy by having artificial price on the product. You cannot have price caps. I know it is popular. I know it is the politically correct thing to be talking about. I know I am going against the wave of popular thought, but the reality is, by going out and selling bonds or by putting an artificial cap or a price, one, you do not help at all in conservation, you encourage waste; and, two, somebody has to pay for it. Remember basic accounting. Every time you have a debt, you have a credit. Every time you have a credit, it has got to balance out. Every time you sell something at an artificially low price, you have to subsidize it. Somebody is paying for it. In California, they are selling bonds to raise the cash to buy the electricity that is being used today. Those bonds are going to be paid by the working people of tomorrow. A little unfair, a little inequitable in my opinion. But to come back to my main point, we have an obligation to help California. California has an obligation to help itself. We have an obligation in this country to conserve. That is part of it. Probably the most important poster is this poster right here because I think this diagram illustrates our energy production if it is going to remain flat, I think it will go up a little, but if it is going to remain flat, and our energy consumption is going to continue to climb at that angle, we are going to have this projected shortfall. Common sense will allow us to fill in that shortfall. Remember, we have got to fill in all the blue on this chart. Common sense allows us to do it. How do we do it? Conservation will fill in a part of that chart. Alternative fuel like solar generation or alternative generation will fill in a little gap of it. But the rest of it, it is going to have to be filled in by further exploration of natural gas resources or nuclear resources or coal resources. We can combine. Our answer is not any one of those things I mentioned, not coal, not nuclear, not conservation, not solar. None of those standing alone can solve the energy crisis that we could have in the future. Certainly it is not solving the energy crunch that we have today. But combined, when you combine conservation with alternative fuels, with renewable energy like hydropower, with further oil and natural gas exploration, when you put that combination, you can construct a model. You can construct a model that can deliver the energy needs to this Nation without requiring undue sacrifice on the lifestyles of the people of this Nation. You can create a model that will provide energy for future generations. After all, our discussions on this floor, our discussions are not just focused on this generation. This generation has an obligation to think about future generations. We have an obligation to provide energy just as much as we have an obligation to provide a strong defense, just as much as we have an obligation to provide a strong educational system. It is no less of a responsibility to take a look at our future energy picture than it is to take a look at education or health care or any other issue you want to talk about for future generations. We have that opportunity today. So I would urge my colleagues that, even while the price of energy is dropping, we have an obligation to continue to urge people to conserve. We have an obligation to continue to try and assist our colleagues in California and every other State in this country, to say just because energy has become more affordable does not mean that our energy crunch does not still exist. We have got to plan for the future. We had that opportunity today in our hands. Now it is going to require leadership. It is going to require an energy policy which we have not seen for 8 years. We have got a President. We have got an administrative team and many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle that are prepared to put together an energy policy. That debate has already begun. Now we need to take it to its logical conclusion, and that is to come up with a policy for this generation and future generations of this country in regards to energy.

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to take a moment to recognize a woman that has made numerous contributions to the State of Colorado and the United States. Jane Norton has served the State in various capacities over the years, and is currently being recognized by her alma mater Colorado State University for her varied accomplishments. As her friends, family and classmates gather to honor Jane Norton, I too would like to pay tribute to Jane. Clearly her hard work is worthy of the praise of Congress. Jane Norton received her Bachelor of Science in Health Sciences from Colorado State University in 1976. She went on to earn her Masters in Management from Regis University. After graduation Jane held many positions in the government. Most notably Jane was the regional director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, under the administrations of President Ronald Reagan and President George Bush. While serving as the regional director, Jane received the U.S. Public Health Service Assistant Secretary's Award for Outstanding Accomplishment for increasing immunization rates. This is only one of many awards Jane received during her tenure as the regional director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Currently Jane runs a number of broad-based health and environmental protection programs ranging from disease prevention, family and community health services and emergency medical services and prevention. Jane is also Secretary of the State Board of Health, a Commissioned Officer for the Food and Drug Administration, and serves on the Board of Directors for the Regional Air Quality Council and Natural Resource Damages Trustee. Throughout her distinguished career, Jane has been and still is known to her friends and colleagues as a team player. Jane is not only a bright and intelligent woman, but also a woman with incredible people skills. As Jane receives distinction among her former classmates, Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to thank her for her service to the United States of America. She has worked hard for this country, and her hard work is deserving of the recognition of Congress.

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to commend Linda Engelhart for working selflessly to improve the lives of the elderly, especially the work she did at Columbine Manor in Salida, Colorado. Linda believes, as Arlene Shovald of the Mountain Mail quotes, that if everybody ``would do one kind thing a day,'' then ``it would be a better world.'' Linda, whose actions demonstrate her commitment to such kindness, has improved this world for many. Linda, who has also worked for Area Agency on Aging, has acted as admissions and marketing director at Columbine Manor for three years. In order to ensure that each resident always has something to look forward to, Linda initiates many projects at the Manor. For instance, she holds a weekly meeting called ``Conversations with Linda,'' to which she brings a tasty cuisine like lemon meringue pie or crab cakes to spice up the normal meal schedule. The meeting offers more than just a delicious treat, however. Each Tuesday, according to Linda, the residents ``share beautiful stories about their past.'' In addition, she has involved herself with a committee that plans activities for residents and their families such as Operation Christmas Child, which creates shoeboxes full of gifts for small children. Also, she helps hold a party for every holiday, and a barbecue every month. Linda, always a good listener, makes sure that her events bring what her residents desire. For instance, she says, ``Today, we're helping the residents make potato salad . . . . They wanted homemade potato salad, so we let them do it.'' Linda has helped transform the Columbine Manor into a rehabilitation center, sending home about 40 percent of its residents within a month or two. Perhaps the rehabilitation rate at Columbine Manor is so high because Lisa has treated her job as an opportunity to increase morale, to work alongside, and to generally get to know the residents there. As you can see, Mr. Speaker, Linda Engelhart has acted with compassion, and has served as a model for the young and old of our nation. Today, I would like to thank and honor her on behalf of Congress for all that she has done for her residents and for humanity.

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, I stand here today to honor and remember Elmer A. Johnson, who gave of himself throughout his life to serve his country and the citizens of Colorado. Elmer was a patriot, a giving man, and a man blessed with outstanding leadership and business skills. Elmer, a devoted husband and father, was married to Philomena Mancini for fifty years until her death. He gave his wife, his son, Robert, and his two granddaughters much to be proud of. His patriotism drove him to enlist in the Army Air Forces in 1941, where he eventually served as master sergeant in the China-Burmuda-India theater during World War II. He then began running his father-in-law's printing business and edited a weekly newspaper. Then, in 1958, he was elected for the first of three times to the Colorado House. He earned a distinguished reputation with those who knew and worked with him there, including former state Rep. Wayne Knox whom the The Denver Post quotes as saying, ``He was a very well- respected, reasonable, moderate legislator'' and ``a nice guy, a very good guy.'' Elmer had the honor of chairing the House Finance Committee and served on the Joint Budget Committee as well as on the Legislative Council. His drive to serve didn't stop there, however. In 1963, he began working as a city official as manager of revenue and director of budget and management. He also served on the executive board of the Colorado Municipal League, and became its president in 1970. Incredibly, he also found time to serve on the executive board and as president of the Colorado Municipal League, become a board member of the Regional Transportation District, and become a member of the Sons of Norway. In addition, his leadership stretched to serving for a term as the international president of the Municipal Finance Officers of the United States and Canada. Mr. Speaker, Elmer Johnson was a distinguished veteran, a devoted father and husband, and a selfless leader. Today, I would like pay him tribute on behalf of Congress for his lifelong dedication to honest leadership and to the people of the United States.

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, I stand before you today on behalf of Congress to pay tribute to a brave man, and a man who gave of himself to improve the lives of others. Mr. Speaker, the people of Colorado and of our nation lost an amazing man with the passing away of Granby Mayor Dick Thompson, but his heroic efforts will never be lost, because his actions and his character have helped shape his city and country in a positive way that can never be revoked. In 1949, Dick married his wife Thelma, and eventually became a fantastic father to five children, Larry, Ron, Brenda, Gary, and Linda. A fine businessman, Dick started Thompson Excavating, and later, when his sons decided to join him in his successful business, changed it to Thompson and Sons Excavating. Dick Thompson believed in self-reliance, freedom, and trust, and he took action to see these values implemented in his community, nation, and family. Dick learned firsthand the meaning of sacrifice at age 18 when he served in the South Pacific during World War II on the U.S.S. Hazard. He never forgot how to serve for the sake of the many, as he gave over 20 years on the town board without a single regret. Eventually, Dick took his political leadership skills to another level when he was elected Mayor in April of 2000. He won the community over with his common sense and his obvious interest for the well being of others. Middle Park Fair and Rodeo, who honored him as Pioneer of the Year, quotes him as saying, ``We've always had a lot of good people in this country.* * * That's why I like to stay involved. I like the people.'' His positive energy shone through, and helped contribute to his success and to the success of Granby. It is without a doubt, Mr. Speaker, that Dick Thompson has earned our utmost respect and thanks for his exemplary service and honesty. Today, I ask you to join me in honoring one of Colorado's finest leaders.

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, this evening I want to devote my comments to a focus on energy and the energy shortage that we have. On one hand I think in some areas we have an energy crisis, on the other hand I think at times we really have an energy problem. In either case, whether an energy crisis or an energy problem, the fact is we need to apply an ingredient called common sense. There is a lot of areas of common sense. We can find a lot of common sense, like conservation. Issues like conservation, when applied to energy, can be done without a lot of pain. It does not affect our life- style. In fact, it is a contribution to our country's energy woes, so to speak. So I will visit a little about conservation this evening. I also want to address where we are, what kind of problem we are facing in future generations. I think it is incumbent upon us, as leaders, to exercise some leadership not for today, which obviously we have to do, but for the future. Our questions about energy should not be questions about energy today exclusively, but should in fact include questions about energy for tomorrow. Of course issues like conservation and issues like alternative power, solar and other types, wind power, et cetera, are a part of our leadership obligations to help address or at least help prepare some answers for future generations on their energy problems. I thought it would be very good this evening to take a look at what common sense does for us. For example, hydropower. Hydropower does not use coal. Hydropower does not use electricity. It generates electricity. Hydropower does not require natural gas. Hydropower does not require fuel. The fuel that generates hydropower is the natural flow of water. So we are going to talk a little about hydropower. We are going to talk about why hydropower is important for our environment. In our mad rush to supply energy, regardless of the source, we always have to consider what is the impact to the environment and how can we mitigate the environment. In some cases, not just mitigate the environment, and in fact mitigation of the environment may be old news, the new news for the environment may mean that we have to enhance the environment, a step higher than mitigation of the environment. But I want to stress here this evening that mitigation or enhancement of the environment is not an exclusive set of its own. In other words, we can have the environment, and we can have power production regardless of the source. In fact, through utilization of common sense, we can have protection of an environment and production of energy resources that every one of my colleagues in this room and every one of their constituents is dependent upon. Something a little interesting happened the other day. I like to mountain bike. I like to ride bikes, though I am just learning. My wife, Lori, Carey and Bruce are trying to get me educated on riding these bikes in a little more sophisticated form, but I saw someone the other day on a mountain bike and we were talking and this individual said to me, he says, You know, mining is so terrible and the energy companies are so terrible, look what they are doing. So I said, You know what, that bike you have got, that bike you paid $3,000 or $4,000 for, has titanium in it. It is interesting to me you criticize on one side but you take advantage on the other. My reason for using this example this evening is to tell my colleagues that I think this mountain biker can have a titanium bike because I think we can have production of the metals and production of the energy we need while maintaining a balance with the environment. If we do not think, and if that individual does not think, we can, then that individual should give up his titanium mountain bike. I think we can, and I think common sense will allow us. Of course, the most basic thing that common sense can do for us is conservation. Mr. Speaker, I have addressed my colleagues any number of times about conservation, things that do not impact one's life; for example, making sure that your ceiling fan is going in a clockwise motion so it draws the cool air up to the ceiling. If it is going counterclockwise, it defeats your purpose. We talked about the fact and I recommend to people across this country, take out your owner's manual on your car and take a look at the people who designed that car, who test drove that car, who manufactured that car, who sold that car; take a look at how often they say you should change the oil on that car, and then take a look at a quick lube recommendation, and I am not referring specifically to any quick lube. They will tell you change your oil every 3,000 miles. Guess what the manufacturer, the engineer, the salesman of that car, the owner's manual of that car will tell you? You do not need to change it every 3,000 miles. You can change it every 6,000 miles, and they will warranty the car. They will still warranty the car for 3 years or 24,000 miles. It is not painless to turn off the lights in your house when you leave. In fact, in Europe in many of the hotels, you actually have to have a card. When you go into your hotel room, you take a card, there is a slot, and before you can turn your lights on, you slide in the card. What happens, when you leave, as you pull the card out, all of the lights go off in your hotel room. Now you can program it in such a way that if for security purposes you needed a light on, it would leave that single light on or a couple of lights, but it helps you remember to turn them off. These are common-sense approaches on conservation. The good news is conservation can be employed by all of us without a lot of pain in our life-style. The bad news is conservation is not the answer. Conservation is a part of the answer. Imagine that we are putting a model together. Conservation is about 10 percent of that model. Maybe we can push it to 20 percent of that model. Alternative energy, exercising leadership in the future will allow us to go from 2 or 3 percent of alternative energy to making that a bigger part of our model. But in the meantime, we have to go to what we have been doing, and that is we have got to continue to explore for oil- based resources. There is no other way around it. You can have all kind of pie-in-the-sky wishes. You can have all kinds of people lecture from a podium like this to you saying alternative energy is the answer. It is not the answer. Conservation is the answer. It is not the answer. It is a part of the answer. Alternative energy is a very important part of the answer. Take a look. If you took all of the alternative energy known to mankind today throughout the world, and you put that energy exclusively for the use of the citizens of the United States of America, it would supply 3 percent of our needs. Three percent. That is assuming you take all of the alternative energy from around the world. We need to increase that percentage; but it is not the total answer. It is part of the answer. Conservation, look at what happened in California. In California the people conserve not because Governor Gray Davis, who is trying to play like a guardian angel in this situation, and he is not, nor are some Republicans, but frankly the leader of California is trying to come across as the leader to take the people of California out of this crisis. In my opinion, he largely led them in there. The fact is they are not conserving in California because of their Governor, it is because prices went up. It is the same thing with my wife and I. My wife and I have really been conserving on energy. Why? Not because Gray Davis out of California is having a problem. It is not because I read some government program that said you ought to conserve, it is because of the fact that my gas bill doubled, and that has a way of forcing conservation. Off the subject for a moment, that is one of the problems with price caps. When you go out to the consumer and say, no matter how much of this energy you use, no matter what time of day you use it, whether it is during peak usage or off-peak hours, it does not matter, you are going to pay the same price regardless, do you know what that does? It encourages use and discourages conservation. What encourages more conservation than any other factor in the last 6 months? Price. The market. Supply and demand. What has happened in California, and by the way, when you talk about California, let me point out a couple of things. I am not one of those people that thinks that California should die on the vine. I do not think we should walk away from California. California is a State, and we are the United States. But that does not mean we should not say to California, hey, you are going to have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. You are going to have to employ self-help. Part of the way you are going to have to help yourself is to be honest, elected officials, and go to your consumers and say this is the true cost of energy. Do not shield it and pretend that it does not exist by subsidizing it with State dollars. The Governor is subsidizing your electrical costs. You are not paying the true costs. Does that mean you will never have to? Do not kid yourself. Soon it will come back to bite you. Right now California is spending billions and billions and billions of dollars by selling bonds and raising money to pay this. They are keeping the prices capped to a large extent. In the short run it sounds great, and in the short run it is a political recipe for success. They think you are the greatest guy in town. In the long run, trying to artificially alter the market, in the long run it has been proved since the days of Adam Smith when he wrote the book The Wealth of Nations, every time the government has stepped in on rent control, on gas control, on energy control, energy price caps, it always backfires. It has never worked. It has never worked in the history of the country. Let us go back to California. Now, remember, California, especially the Governor of California, and I am not trying to be particularly terse up here, but I have heard the Governor time and time and time again blame everybody but the people of California, blame everybody except the leadership of California. It is because of Congress. It is the utility companies. Ironically, the Governor of California wants to run for President someday, so he blames the power companies in the State of Texas. It is those villains down there in Texas. You know what, California, we have 50 States. We have 50 States. One State is in your predicament. Why? Because California leads this country in the philosophy of do not build it in my backyard. California leads this Nation in the philosophy, no, we do not want natural gas transmission lines. Do not talk about electrical transmission lines in our State, or generation facilities in our State. California, you are too important to this Nation for you to take those positions. California is the sixth most powerful economy of the world. If California was a country of its own, it would be the sixth most powerful economic country in the world, much more powerful from an economic point of view than the country of France. We need, whether you like California or not, and I happen to like it, we need California. We need them healthy, and I want them to come out of this energy crisis; but let us not come out of here with some artificial wave of the magic wand and think everything is right. We have to sit down and put everything on the table. We have to come up with an energy policy. Why do I mention energy policy? Do you know why? Because in the State of California, they had an energy policy, kind of partial deregulation. Their energy policy was sell the generation plants, tell the consumers they will not have any increase in the prices; no matter how much they use the energy, no matter how short the supply, the price stays the same. California decided not to buy long-term contracts on the electrical market, but instead to buy on the spot market, which means you go out tomorrow and you say, what is the price? I will buy it. If the price goes up, you are stuck on Wednesday. If the price goes down, you benefit on Thursday. If the price goes up, you are stuck on Friday. That is what California decided to do. They decided to roll the dice. Well, the consequences of that are that California got itself into this energy crunch. Can we get California out of it? The answer is, yes, of course. Do we have an obligation to help California? In my opinion, yes, of course. But California has got to pitch in. I want California to be successful, but California has got to help us on conservation, and kudos to the people of California. In the last month, I saw a number the other day where the California people have conserved a 10 percent increase in conservation. That is a significant number. That is a big help. That shows us and the rest of the Nation that the citizens of California are taking this energy crisis seriously, and they are taking a look at this so-called energy policy that they have. They realize, most citizens of California, that it needs to be amended, but amended in such a way that your energy policy works for future generations. Mr. Speaker, my focus here this evening is as much for future generations as it is for this generation. So California needs an energy policy that is realistic in price, that is realistic in alternative energy, that is realistic in conservation, but it is also realistic in exploration and allowing electrical transmission lines and allowing generation plants to be built. At the national level can we stand up proudly and talk about the energy policy we have coming out of Washington, D.C.? There is no energy policy. There is none. For 8 years under the previous administration, we had no energy policy. This President, and I commend the President and I commend the Vice President, Vice President Cheney, President Bush, they have made some tough statements. They said we have to put everything on the table. It does not mean that it stays on the table. But ANWR, and of course the publicity that you have seen about Alaska is so negative, I cannot imagine how they can get enough votes out of here. But controversial or not, the President's energy policy said let us put it on the table. Let us put together an energy policy because we owe it to the future generation and our own generation and our colleagues like the State of California to come up with an energy policy that is going to work. And that is why I am speaking tonight, because I think all of us, putting our minds together, we have the greatest mind in the world in this country, we can resolve this. It is not really the kind of crisis that some people say. Sure, we have rolling blackouts, and sure it is a crisis for an individual like a senior citizen who loses his air conditioning or a farmer whose fans go off for his chickens or turkeys. It is the warning sign. It is a shot over our bow. It is saying to us when Washington, D.C. is the leader of this country, you have an obligation, Washington, colleagues, we have an obligation to put together an energy policy. The first thing we have to consider when we put together an energy policy is we have to make sure we do not buy into this pie in the sky that conservation alone is going to do it. Conservation will not. It will not do it alone. It is a part, it is a very important part, of our solution. Alternative energy will not do it alone. It is a part. Do not buy this pie in the sky that we can walk right out of this without drilling another well for oil; without drilling another well for gas; without putting another electrical transmission line in place; without putting a natural gas transmission line in place; we can go ahead and get ourselves out of this and protect future generations, and I will repeat, and protect future generations by simply adopting alternative energy. Hopefully, in 50 years or 20 years or less we will have that available; but today, for our leadership today, we need to look at what tools are there. Conservation is a part. Alternative energy is a part. Exploration is a part. Hydropower, which we are going to talk about in more depth in a few minutes, is an important part. We can put these parts together on a model, put it there, stick it here, put it together; and it is an energy policy. It is in that energy policy that we can take our leadership roles. It is that energy policy that we can employ in this country so that not one State ends up in the kind of situation that the State of California is in. Because our country is much too strong a country to allow even one State like California or any State to get into the kind of crunch they are in. But, like I said, California. I am a big fan of California. I love California. But I want you to know, it is like talking to your son or your daughter, tough love, you have got to help us out. There has got to be a little self-help involved here. Let us look at the fundamental thing that we need to take into consideration as we begin to construct this model of energy policy. Let us take a look at growth in U.S. energy consumption. Obviously, we know that growth in consumption is outpacing production. This is the energy production, 1990 to 2000, so this is a 10-year growth rate, the green line. That is the projected. That was the production. This red line is energy consumption. Take a look at how this line, look at the angle of it versus the angle of our production, energy production. In this country, by the way. In this country. So my colleagues say, Scott, that's fine, you've got production here, you've got energy consumption there, this country would be in collapse. You're not meeting your demand. You've got too big a gap, this huge margin. How do you meet that gap? I will tell you how. We meet that gap because we are becoming by the day more and more and more dependent on foreign oil. In other words, the leaders like Saddam Hussein, the leaders in different countries throughout this world who are not necessarily friendly to the United States, they will bargain with the United States with money, green; but they are not necessarily our friend. They can shut off the tap anytime they want to. We are becoming more and more dependent. As long as this blue space continues to grow in width, it means we are becoming more dependent, not on alternative energy as we should, not on consumption as we should, but on foreign oil as we should not. If we could apply to this line energy consumption and we could put in some serious conservation, and by conservation I do not mean you cannot drive your car anymore. I do not mean that you have to walk to the grocery store, that you cannot have a mountain bike that is not made of titanium, or you cannot have a boat made for you so you can river raft on the river or a lawn mower, these different things, refrigeration in your house and so on. I am not saying you have to shut that off, although if you have an extra refrigerator, by the way, in your garage, empty it. More likely than not you are not even using it. You could save yourselves $17 a month. That is just a little conservation hint there. So we can lower consumption. But the fact is this: we can with conservation lower this a little. The demand will continue, but we can lower consumption through conservation there. Alternative energy helps us. It does not lower consumption, but it gives us a different method, a different angle of consumption. Those are answers, but they do not come anywhere close to filling the gap, which means we become more and more on a daily basis dependent upon foreign oil. That is not good energy policy. Now, let us take a look at power plant generation. There seems to be a phobia out there that we are not building generation facilities anywhere in this country, that we have completely ignored electrical generation facilities. That is not true. Remember that primarily the problem that exists today is in the State of California. One State. There are reasons that that specific State got into trouble versus the other 49 States. There are problems up in the Northwest. That is not because of a failure of planning or a failure of leadership. It is because they are having a drought. The Columbia River is way short on water. They do depend on hydropower up there. But in fact when you take a look at what we have coming online, believe it or not, last year we had 158 generation plants come online. Obviously, they came online in most of the States except for the State of California, which did not have them in California. They were not building generation. But we are throughout the rest of the country. So I wanted to point out, last year 158 new power units were completed nationwide, or three plants a week. Three generation facilities a week last year came online. Construction this year is slated to set a record for new power generation. A March report by the firm Energy Ventures Analysis found that power units already in operation or under construction will add 51,805 megawatts in 2001, enough to power half the homes in the Nation. In fact what this suggests is we may very well in certain areas of this country within the next 12 to 18 months actually have an electrical glut, an energy glut. Can you imagine, after what we have been through the last 3 months that actually we would go into a glut-type situation? That is possible. Let us go on. Utilities and generators have announced plans for equally ambitious additions for 2002 through 2004. According to the filings, the electricity industry expects to build 1,453 new power units during that 4-year period of time, taking time off for weekends. So if you take weekends off, that amounts to one new plant a day for 5 years running. Not all of these may ultimately be built, but the point is this: we are now building generation plants; we will have the generation plants that are necessary for us to meet electrical demand. This is not oil consumption. This is electrical demand. But there is another factor to this. You may have a lot of power plants in the State of Texas, but you have got to have the ability to share that power, move that power among transmission lines. So you cannot just build an electrical generation facility. You have got to be able to put in transmission lines to distribute that to the areas where the demand is high and the supply is low. But I think there is pretty good news in the future, especially for future generations, as far as our capability to generate electricity. I think even California, that the market, once you get to the market, the less you try and artificially manipulate the market, the more market common sense comes into play. What do I mean? If a town closes its own hamburger shop, the only hamburger shop in the town, and there is a demand for hamburgers, what tends to happen? You not only have it replaced by one hamburger operation, you end up with two or three hamburger operations. It is the same thing here. If you do not artificially toy with the market, I think we are going to have adequate supply. But that means that we have to have capability to put that supply where the demand is. That means, Governor of California, you have got to build transmission lines in your State. Frankly, every other State has got to do the same, because we are not in California's situation today. Forty-nine States are not. Forty-nine States in my opinion did more appropriate planning. The reason that we are not in that crisis is because we planned for today. But the big question is: Have we planned for tomorrow? Every State should pay attention. Let us learn from the painful lessons that California has suffered. Let us take a look at what our own energy demands are. What can we do for conservation? What can we do for electrical generation? Where can we put transmission lines? Where can we put natural gas transmission lines? Those are the questions that an energy policy brings up. Earlier I mentioned to you that the predominant problem was right here in the State of California. And of course we have explained why. California has tried to artificially toy with the market. They tried partial deregulation. They did not do full deregulation. They put on price caps promising the consumers that for at least a 3-year period of time, no matter how much energy they used, no matter what time of the day they used it, no matter where the generation or transmission was, the price would not go up. California continued to toy with the market. California continued to manipulate in an artificial fashion the market. That is why California is one of 50 States that now has that problem. The rest of the States are not problem-free. I mentioned earlier the Pacific Northwest, the Columbia River. They are very dependent on hydropower. Texas actually has an ample supply of energy, in part I think because of what their previous Governor and their current Governor, Rick Perry, has instituted; but we do not have the transmission lines that we should have to move it out of Texas to other parts of the country. I think that will be answered within the near future. In the mid-Atlantic, most of these States have planned very well for the energy problems that they have got. You have got an isolated problem in New York City, although New York City has not hesitated. As soon as the Mayor of New York realized, Mayor Giuliani, that there were problems with electrical supply, they not only tried to slow down demand through conservation but they also figured out slowing down demand through conservation is not the only answer, it is a part of the answer; the other part is we have got to put in some temporary generation facilities to get us through the summer until we can put our energy policy in place. That is what New York has done. It appears that New York is going to have much less of a problem getting through this summer than everyone originally anticipated. As I mentioned earlier, there are a number of different alternatives that can provide energy that I think utilize the factor of common sense. There are a lot of things if we slow down enough to assess what kind of situation we are in and how we want to go out of it, i.e., an energy policy which this President, frankly, has decided to put forward, despite the criticism, despite the controversy, it has brought up the debate onto this House floor, which is going to be healthy for all of our constituents. The issue here is, What are some good, commonsense ways of producing the energy that we need? One of them, of course, is hydropower. Let us talk about hydropower for a moment. Hydropower electricity. Conservation combined with common sense. Conservation combined with common sense, the two C's. Worldwide about 20 percent of all electricity is generated by hydropower. In our country it provides about 10 percent of our power. We are the second largest producer of hydropower. Canada is the first. Now, keep in mind that every time you talk about hydropower, or you talk about new hydropower, you are going to have the radical environmentalists, the ones who in many cases are very hypocritical, hypocrites. They come to work; they drive up to the meeting to protest hydropower. They go home and use their lights. They have all kinds of recreational vehicles, whether it is a mountain bike, a motorcycle or whatever. They are very dependent on the energy market, and they are dependent on hydropower. Yet it is the radical environmentalists that are not using common sense. It is the commonsense environmentalists that are helping develop and deploy an energy policy that will work for this country. Let us move and talk for a moment about hydropower. I know my colleagues have an understanding of hydropower; but to some of them out here, they are in areas where they are not dependent on hydropower. Out in the West we are very dependent on hydropower. In fact, Lake Powell provides a great deal of hydropower. Ironically, the national Sierra Club, the radical environmental policy of that club, not all Sierra Club members, but the radical policy of the national Sierra Club is to tear down Lake Powell. That is not a commonsense approach. Let us take a look at how a hydroelectric dam works. You have the dam. Here is your dam that has to be built. Behind the dam obviously you end up with a reservoir. That reservoir does a number of things. Environmentally, while some of the radical environmentalists will tell you that all it does is damage the environment, in fact at Lake Powell, it has provided lots of water and habitat for species. It has become very important. It is one of the major recreational areas, if not the major recreational facility, in the entire west of the United States. We talk about being able to bring family and unite families. You go down to Lake Powell. That is the family recreation spot of the West. So you get a lot of benefit out of the reservoir. What you do with the reservoir, you drop the water through the reservoir. It turns the turbine and this is your generator. The turbine goes up to your generator and produces electricity. Hydropower plants capture the energy of falling water. It is the fall of the water, the creation of that energy. It is that that generates the electricity. We do not have to use natural gas here. We do not have to use coal. We do not have to use gasoline or oil. It is a part of nature. We are able to take water, drop it at a steep enough angle; and that water, the power, the energy of that water, generates that electricity. It supplies 10 percent of the needs of this country. Imagine what we could do if we could have smart, environmentally sensitive hydropower plants and reduce our dependence on oil coming out of the ground. We could do a lot with hydropower. Hydropower is probably the cleanest energy of which we use a major component. In other words, natural gas generators, obviously we are using natural gas. Coal generation, we know that we have an impact there but hydropower has a lot of positive attributes. So my point in bringing up hydropower is I wanted to talk about how we can use hydropower in a commonsense approach and not hurt the environment, mitigate the impact to the environment. Hydropower is clean. When you use hydropower, it prevents the burning of 22 billion gallons of oil. Listen to this. The hydropower in our country, which provides 10 percent of the power of our country, because we use the energy off the drop of that water it saves us from having to burn 22 billion gallons of oil, or 120 million tons of coal each year. Imagine that. Because we have been able to capture the energy from the drop in that water, we do not burn 120 million tons of coal. Think of that. You want to talk about cleanliness for the environment. We save and do not burn 22 billion gallons of oil. So the next time you have a radical environmentalist come up to you and talk to you about how evil hydropower is, say, wait a minute. If we did not have the hydropower but we continue to have the need for the electricity, how would you meet that need? Now, sure, conservation helps; and, sure, some alternative solar helps some. Wind, it helps but not much. How do you meet that margin, Mr. Radical Environmentalist? Why do you want to do go back to burning 22 billion gallons of oil? Do you want to go to 120 million tons of coal? Hydropower has a lot of positive benefits. It does not produce greenhouse gases or other higher pollution. Hydropower leaves behind no waste. Reservoirs formed by the hydropower projects in Wisconsin, for example, have expanded water-based recreation resources; and they support diverse, healthy, and productive fisheries. In fact, there are some catch rates for game fish like walleye and smallmouth bass are substantially higher on hydropower reservoirs than natural lakes. It comes back to the point that I am trying to make. We have renewable energy and it is utilized with common sense. Hydropower is the leading source of renewable energy. It provides more than 97 percent of all electricity generated by renewable resources. Now, what are the other resources? The other sources include geothermal, wind, and biomass and solar is in there, too, but that only counts for 3 percent. The 97 percent of our renewable resources, in other words we can drop that water and drop that water, 97 percent of it in this country is hydropower. I will very quickly just show you an illustration of hydropower. Take a look at that hydropower. The next time a radical environmentalist comes up to you and says, Hi, we should not have a dam, we should not use hydropower, that it is evil for some reason. And you say well, what is the alternative? Well, the alternative is let us rely on the other renewable energy. That is it, that is what they are telling you. They are telling you that instead you can drop this hydropower and replace it with this little tiny sliver. Now there is no doubt, as Vice President Cheney has said on occasions, numerous occasions, and the President has said, we need to expand this if we can, this red slice of the pie make it bigger and bigger, come up with other alternative energy but today it is not realistic and tomorrow it is not going to be realistic, but maybe for future generations we can put it on the right track and it can become more realistic. I thought this was very interesting, and I wanted to point it out to my colleagues. This is the average power production expense per kilowatt hour. That is how you measure electricity, per kilowatt hour. Here is fossil fuel steam, generating steam. In other words, you burn coal, you create steam and the steam drives the turbine. Right there, those are the costs. Now the green represents the amount of fuel you have to consume. How much coal? Remember that 127 million tons of coal? How much fuel do you have to use? That is maintenance to keep the turbine, to oil it, to make sure it is running correctly and in operation, your operational expenses. For fossil-fueled steam, there is operation, there is maintenance, and there is the cost of fuel. For nuclear, the operational expense, because of the safeguards they have to deploy, are extensive in nuclear. Here is maintenance and right there is the cost of fuel, nuclear fuel. Now remember that we should not say that any of these are not efficient. We are going to need a combination of all of these in combination with conservation, in combination with solar and so on. Look at hydroelectric. Hydroelectric has operation. It has maintenance, but there is no fuel expense with hydroelectric generation. Why? As I have said earlier, the fuel for hydroelectric generation is the result of the energy that is created with the drop of the water. That is what this chart shows you. Here is the gas turbine. Look how much energy it takes, how much fuel it takes to turn that gas turbine to create that generation of electricity. That is why hydropower is important. That is why when you hear comments by people that say take it out, dams are terrible, keep in mind that dams do a number of things. One, they provide recreation. Two, they provide fisheries. Three, they provide flood control. Four, in the West, as you know, in the West it is arid. Out where I live, we get all the water we could possibly use for about 5 weeks. It is called spring runoff from the mountains. I live at the highest elevation in the country. My district is the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Now, for 6 weeks we have all the water we can use. Unfortunately, most of the time it comes when we are not using it. So what do we have to do? We have to store it. For 6 weeks we are okay, but we have to get through all of those other weeks in the year. We have to go through 46 or whatever other weeks are left we have to go through those weeks, and we have to have storage. So the dams provide storage. So if you are going to go ahead and provide storage and you are going to provide recreation and you are going to provide flood control and you are going to provide fisheries, why not generate electricity? Why not use hydropower to the extent that we can? That is not speaking to the elimination of nuclear. In fact, most of France is generated, their electricity is nuclear. It is not to say we should not use natural gas. It is not to say we should not use the coal generated or oil generated, but it is to say that when combined with conservation, when combined with alternative energy, this commonsense approach of putting hydropower is a major factor of generation in this country of electricity in this country, is something we simply cannot ignore and we should not ignore it. Let common sense dominate every other approach we are using in here. Time allows me to bring up another chart here. Let us talk about it, the primary purpose or benefit of all U.S. dams. So this chart takes a look at all the dams in the United States and figures out in a pie chart exactly what is that dam utilized for. Remember, I told you that you will often hear the radical side of environmentalism, the radical side, not the commonsense approach, not the approach most of us use, but the radical approach will say no dam is a good dam. For example, the national Sierra Club, the radical environmentalist leadership of that group that exists are the ones who want to take down Lake Powell, have never in their organization's history supported a dam storage project. Well, can you find out very many situations where never is always the answer? Never have hydropower? Never have conservation? Of course not. There is a balance in there. Somewhere there is a balance. Take a look at what the balance does. Irrigation, 11 percent. Do not discount what irrigation means. In the West, as I told you, most of our water comes in a very short period of time. We do not have heavy rainfall. In fact, it was not until I left the mountains and came out here to Washington, my home is in the mountains but this is my work station, I could not believe the rains you guys get back here. It is incredible, but back there we have to store it. And a lot of what you ate today is a result of somewhere water being stored so the crops can be irrigated. Recreation 35 percent. Most of my colleagues here, somewhere during their year they will enjoy recreation provided as a result of storage of water, in some sport, whether it is sitting on a houseboat, whether it is fishing, et cetera, et cetera. Stocked farm ponds, very important, again storage of water. Flood control. Now, in the West that is huge. Anywhere it is huge. Flood control, take a look at what happened, the devastation of floods before we were able to control floods, before we were able to get a hand on water and control it. Public water supply, 12 percent. Now when you buy on, when somebody comes to your door and they do this all the time, some of the radical environmentalist approach is to come to your door with a petition and they ask for a contribution, by the way. It is usually a money raising racket but they will come to your door and they will say, hey, help us stop the terrible oppression of the environment, because they want to build a hydroelectric. What your response should be is, first of all, I care about the environment. I want that environment protected. On the other hand, we are enjoying lights and our municipality needs water. When you are at your home, we kind of take for granted, especially when you live in a city, anywhere really but I guess in a city you kind of take for granted you turn on the water in the city you better have the water running. The city supplies the water. It comes out of city hall. It is clean. It tastes good and it is there whenever we want it. Know what? The way the cities, most cities in this country, are able to provide that is because they have stored it somewhere, because it does not rain equally every day. It does not rain necessarily when you need it. So you have to store it. So when people ask you to sign a petition and want to lead you down the path of the London Bridge for sale in the U.S. by telling you that there is no need for dams or hydropower, step back, use common sense and say, in some cases a dam may not be right and in all cases that it is right, the environment must be mitigated or enhanced. It cannot be ignored. In the past, I would be the first to admit that in some cases it was ignored, and we have paid for that and paid for that. We cannot allow it ever to happen again, but somewhere in the middle there is common sense. Somewhere in the middle this energy warning that we are getting in California, it is more of a crisis than it is anywhere else in the country. Let us listen to the message that is being sent to us and that is we, as mature leaders, we have an inherent obligation, it is inherent and it is an obligation, it is a fiduciary responsibility to provide for the future generations and to exercise leadership for today. The way we do that is we take a look at the energy package as a whole. We put everything on the table. We put conservation on the table. We put energy exploration on the table. We put alternative energy on the table. We put the environment on the table. You know what? Common minds with a little sense can put together common sense, and that is how we are going to be able to do this. As I said, and I want to reiterate a couple of very important points, I have a chart here on conservation, I have a couple of charts on conservation, I said earlier in my comments this evening I complimented the people of California. Now I have been harsh on the people of California, particularly the elected leadership of the State of California, because frankly they are trying to make believe that there is an easy way out of this. Well, it is too good to be true. If it sounds too good to be true, it is. So I have been critical to the leadership. I have been critical of price caps, which are great on a short-term basis. I am sure that the Governor of California will continue to lift his numbers up in the polls because artificially he is telling people no pain in the short run. He will not be there in the long run when the pain begins to develop. The fact is, and what is important here that I want to compliment, is that the people in California have in the last 30 to 40 days, not as a result of their Governor, not as a result of their elected leadership, but as a result of the market, have begun conservation more seriously than they have in many, many years. And the rest of us, taking a look at California's pain that they have suffered, have decided too maybe we ought to conserve. Look, I am the first one to tell you, I am the first one to step forward and tell you last year at this time, when natural gas was plentiful, when electricity was plentiful, I ran the air conditioning probably cooler than I needed it. I probably had it running when I ran out to the grocery store. I probably did not check to see what direction my fan was running to make sure it was cooling the house instead of defeating the purpose. But you know what? I saw what happened in California. I have an obligation. All of us have an obligation, and we can do it without a lot of pain to help conserve. But while we conserve, and again I compliment those people of California who have done that, and throughout the rest of the Nation, do not kid yourself. I remember once when I was young, my father told me, my father and mother both sat us all down, they are wonderful people, both are alive and well in Glenwood Springs, they sat us down and said to us, The last person you ever want to fool is yourself. Don't fool yourself. Don't pretend that what is happening is not happening. Figure out what is happening and figure out how you are going to adapt to it. That is exactly my point here this evening. Let us figure out what is going on. We know we have an energy shortage, but do not buy into the pie in the sky that we can resolve it all through conservation, because we cannot. Do not buy the pie in the sky that we can do it all through alternative energy, at least today. We cannot. Do not buy that all we need to do is build and build and build power plants and put oil wells wherever they want to put them, because that is not common sense. That does not work, to destroy our environment like that; and I do not know anybody that is seriously proposing anything like that. But what we have to do is meet in the middle. We have to use a combination of conservation. As I said earlier, we have to use a combination of conservation, alternative energy, exploration and transmission. We have got to be able to move the power that we produce from the supply point to the demand point all at the same time. When we deal with demand, conservation helps lower demand. Alternative energy helps answer demand, like hydropower. That is why I focused this evening on hydropower. There is an energy production facility that does not use fuel. It does not need coal, it does not need natural gas, it does not need oil-generated steam to produce electricity. Hydropower produces it without fuel. Now, that does not mean every river or every location is good for a dam. Obviously, as I said earlier, and I want to stress it again, because there is misinterpretation that is often taken advantage of when you speak like this, hydropower and the environment can go hand in hand, and there will be times where the protection in the environment overrides the need of hydropower in a particular location. But it is just as crazy to say that the environment will always prevent hydropower as it is to say that the environment should never be a consideration and hydropower should go wherever we want to put hydropower. Again, coming back to the theme of my remarks this evening, in the middle, as I think our President and Vice President have attempted to say, in the middle we need to have an energy policy; and in the middle of America, meaning the people, not the geographical location, but the middle of common sense, we as a people can figure out how to provide, without a dramatic change in our life styles, because I do not think it is necessary, we can provide the energy needs on one hand for the people, the demands that they have, while at the same time protecting and enhancing our environment, while at the same time reducing our dependence on foreign oil. That is not a dream, but it can only be accomplished if we have an energy policy; and we have not had one in the last administration, 8 years. We had plenty of gas; we had plenty of oil and plenty of transmission. We did not plan for the future. We should have been planning then, but we have got to plan today. And despite all the criticism and all the controversy that is being heaped on the President and the Vice President, primarily, by the way, by the Democratic operatives, not by the conservative Democrats on this House floor, but by the Democrat operatives, by the people who are more focused on the election of the next President than they are on the needs of this Nation, those are the people that are really developing the criticism and manipulating it and marketing it in such a way that some people can be convinced we should not have an energy policy that involves any type of electrical generation, any type of exploration. They simply are not aware of what I have tried to emphasize this evening, and that is it will always demand a combination, a combination of protection in the environment, combined with exploration, combined with alternative energy, combined with conservation. So, in summary, Mr. Speaker, I intend to continue to come to you, to urge that we as a body come up with commonsense solutions. It may sound repetitive, but I have got to drill it in and drill it in. We all need to drill it into each other. This country demands and deserves that its leaders provide an energy policy. We should follow the direction of the President and the Vice President in trying to put one together. It does not have to be his, but at least we ought to have this debate that we are having tonight.

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to honor a woman that is the picture of courage, Melissa Holley. Melissa is an inspiration to all, with her determination and desire. She has overcome an enormous obstacle and although the struggle is far from over, Melissa continues to push herself. On June 25, 2000 Melissa's life was permanently altered. Melissa was involved in a rollover accident on U.S. Highway 550 a mile south of Ridgway, Colorado. The car damaged Melissa's vital spinal nerves and crushed two vertebrae. Melissa lost all feeling below her chest. The doctor's at St. Mary's Hospital in Grand Junction, Colorado said that her paralysis was irreversible. After a 48-hour search, her father, Rob Holley, found a radical new procedure that regenerates nerve cells, It was a long shot at best, but Melissa showed her courage by saying, ``Only shot I had, what have I got to lose.'' On July 9, 2000, Melissa was flown to the Sheba Medical Center in Tel Aviv, Israel and underwent surgery. The doctors braced her spinal cord, and injected her with microphages to promote healing. Melissa's recovery from surgery has been a slow and painful process. She continues to use a wheelchair, and exercises twice a week in a swimming pool. There has been a visible improvement, and Melissa now stands for an hour each day. This remarkable young lady is returning to college this spring at Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas. Melissa has not only managed to take a long shot and turn it to her advantage, but this year she helped prepare another young man for this procedure. Throughout this experience Melissa has managed to stay upbeat and determined. She has impressed doctors with her attitude and perseverance, and inspired many with her strength of character. Melissa has shown courage that is rare, and for that, Mr. Speaker, she deserves the praise of Congress.

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Let me move on from there. I had an interesting talk in Massachusetts not too long ago. Of course, as my colleagues know, my district is the Rocky Mountains of the State of Colorado. It is the highest district in the Nation elevation-wise. It is a district with great beauty, huge mountains. We have 54 mountains over 14,000 feet, by far more than any other district in the country. It is a district that many, many people visit, Aspen, Telluride, Beaver Creek, Steamboat Springs, Durango, Glenwood Springs down in the San Luis Valley, Rocky Mountain National Park, Great Sand Dunes, Colorado National Monument, the Black Canyon National Park. Most of my colleagues have all been probably at one point or another been into my district for a vacation. Going back to my point, I was in Massachusetts. I was talking to a wonderful couple named Tony and Cathy Frasso and their son David. We were talking about public land. We were talking about some of the differences between the State of Massachusetts and the lands in Massachusetts versus the lands in the West. There is a dramatic difference between the lands and the way the lands are governed, for example, between the way decisions are made on lands in the East and lands in the West. That is really where I want to start my comments and focus my comments on natural resources this evening. Let us take a look at just what I mean by that. Obviously, we have here a map of the United States. We will see in this map that the color over here represents government lands. So on this map, what this map depicts, is wherever color is seen on the map that says that that is owned by the government, that land is owned by the government. If we will notice, my district, by the way, is right here in the State of Colorado, right along this border. That district geographically, that land mass right there, is larger than the entire State of Florida. We will notice how interesting it is that in our country primarily in the East, in other words from my eastern border on the third district in Colorado to the Atlantic Ocean, and from Canada to Mexico, there is very little government land in these areas. Look at some of these States. They have little dots of public lands. Some of these States hardly have any government lands at all and yet when we take a look at this eastern border and come West to the Pacific Ocean or again go from Canada down to Mexico, we see massive amounts of government land. Well, there are a couple of questions about that. Number one, from a historical point of view, why the difference? Why does the government own big chunks of land in the West and, relatively speaking, very little land in the East? What kind of impact does it have on decision making? And what is it like to live when you are completely surrounded? You see in these colored areas, there are communities, millions of people live out on these lands, or they are surrounded by these government lands. The public ``public lands'' is not an often spoken word out in some of these States. In my district, it is spoken about all the time. Let us talk and give an answer to the first question I asked, what is the historical basis for this massive amount of government land in the West, and yet very little government land in the East? It is really pretty simple, and it goes back to the frontier days of our country. When our country was being settled, we were making acquisitions of land. It was our dream in this country to expand our boundaries, to go out and go west. Remember, going west was just a little ways west of Washington, D.C. back then. But the dream was to go out into the new frontier and claim new land for this new country that we had, to make our country great, by growing it in size. But in order to do that back in those days, you did not just get a deed. For example, when we purchased Louisiana, made the Louisiana Purchase, simply having a deed to the property did not mean a whole lot. In fact, in those days, possession, as the old saying goes, possession is nine-tenths of the law. You really needed to be on the property, in possession of the property, with a six-shooter on your side. That is a lot, the law of how the land in the West was settled. So, what happened, the government had to figure out, they had to occupy this land. Your elected leaders in Washington, D.C. had to figure out how do we get people to go west? How do we get people to possess this land? How do we get people to till the land and to put the land to good use so that we continue to build this fine country of ours? The answer came up that most people will leave the comfort of their home, or at least a good number of people will leave the comfort of their home, if you promise them what every American dreams of, owning their own piece of land, having a piece of property that is in their name. So the government decided the way to bring the people off the East Coast here and bring them west was to promise them land. They called that the Homestead Act, I think about 1862. And the government said to the American people, go out into this frontier, find a piece of property, put your stakes in the ground, and, if you farm it for a period of time, generally 3 to 5 years, we will let you take title to maybe 160 acres or 320 acres. You see, back then, in Kansas, for example, or up there in Nebraska, or over in Iowa or Mississippi or Missouri or some of those areas, 160 acres was adequate. A family could live off 160 acres of farmland. But the problem was when they hit the West, when these settlers came out, they started getting into the West, where 160 acres does not even feed a cow. The people came back to Washington, D.C. and said we have a problem. Our idea of encouraging people to move west and settling the frontier through our Homestead Act is working in this part of the Nation. But when we come to the West, where the land is much more arid, for example, much more rugged terrain, where those mountain peaks in the Third District of Colorado go beyond 14,000 feet, at that point people are not stopping. They are not tilling the land. In fact, 160 acres will not even feed a cow in this new land we are in. So they gave some thought to it in Washington, and somebody came up with the idea, well, what we should do, if we give 160 acres, say, in Kansas or Nebraska, maybe what we ought to do is give like 3,000 acres out in the Rocky Mountains, so that they can have a comparable amount of acreage that will feed a like number of cows or a like number of livestock. But the problem was, they said look, realistically and politically we are not going to be able to give away large amounts of land in the West. Somebody else then said I have got the answer. What we should do in the West, just for formality, let us go ahead, the government, and keep title to the land. Let us go ahead and own the land in the West, and we will let the people use it. A land of many uses. It is called multiple use. That is where the concept of ``multiple use'' came from, a land of many uses. This land, the reason it is in government hands, is not, contrary to what some of your radical environmental groups like Earth First may want you to believe, that this land was acquired for all future generations, and we should have hands off, and that for some reason, if you are out here in the East and happen to get there first, you are entitled to utilize and live off the land, but when you come to the West, you are not entitled to those kind of privileges. The government did not intend this as one huge national wilderness area, for example. The only reason the government retained the ownership of this property was because, realistically and politically, they could not give that much land away to one person. But if you look back historically you will see very clearly that the government intended for the people to still continue to come to this area and they would be able to use the land in many different ways. Today we have lots of different uses for this land. Obviously, we use our land just the same as you do in Kansas or Nebraska or Florida or Missouri or Vermont. We use our land very similar to that. But we also have lots of different uses. We have National Parks, just like others. We have open space, environments and critical forests. Our water is very important, and our water in the West, remember, water in the West, which I am going to get into in some detail, the West is an arid area. In the West, we sue. We fight. Water is like blood in the West. In the East, in a lot of places, you have to fight to get rid of the water. Shove it over on your neighbor's land. In the West, you try and grab it on your land. So there are some differences there. This points out for you what we face in the western United States, and that is that oftentimes in our land use policies, on our really everyday life out in the West, whether it is our highways that come over Federal lands, whether it is our power lines, whether it is our water, whether it is our tourism industry, our ski areas, our river rafting, mountain bikes, hiking, our kayaking, all of this, we all of a sudden have a landlord who is in a little tiny town here on the Potomac, Washington, D.C. Very few of these States in the East, when they decide what they want to have for hiking, or where the mountain bikes are going to go, or, obviously most States do not have ski areas, but what other kind of recreational things they are going to do, they do not have to go to Washington, D.C. for permission. A lot of what we do in the West, we have to come east to the population area of Washington, D.C. to get permission to do it. So my purpose tonight in kind of explaining the difference between the western United States and the eastern United States is to tell you that when you hear those of us in the West talk about public lands and talk about the impact of, say, wilderness areas, or logging, you listen to us, that you will give us a little time to tell our side of the story. Over the years, we have gotten pretty good managers of this land, both from an environmental point of view, both from what we have learned from a technical point of view, both of what we have learned on how to manage our resources. And I think it is safe to say that there are a lot more people in the West that know about the land in the West than there probably are in the East, but sometimes in the West it is felt that they are being dictated to by people who have never experienced the West, or by people that do not feel the pain because they do not live on public lands. In my district, for example, I think with the exception of one or two communities, every community in my district is completely surrounded by government lands. We have to get government permission for highways, we have to get government permission for recreational uses, we have to get government permission for open space, for endangered species, for water usage, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So there is a difference. Let us move on and kind of focus in from a national picture. Actually, before we move to the State of Colorado, this is probably a good chart to take a look at, a comparison of some western and eastern States by the percentage of land, public land usage. In 11 western States, and we picked 11 eastern States to compare side-by-side, so that those of you in the States of New York, for example, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Vermont, et cetera, we are kind of doing a side-by-side comparison in the West. So you have an idea of how public lands impact us much greater, to a much, much greater degree in the West than it does you in the East. Again, the primary reason that we are impacted in the West and you escape the impact in the East is that historical knowledge that the only way they could encourage people to go in and use large amounts of land in the West was for the government to retain ownership. Let us take a look. The State of Nevada, 82.9 percent, almost 83 percent of the State of Nevada is public lands, 83 percent. Connecticut, less than one-tenth of 1 percent, one-tenth of 1 percent is public lands. Rhode Island, about three-tenths of 1 percent. New York, seven-tenths of 1 percent. So colleagues from Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Maine, Massachusetts, 1.3 percent. And this is where my friends, the Frassoes, Tony and Kathy and Dave, live, and I told them, 1.3 percent of your lands are public lands. Take a look at what Colorado has. Thirty-six percent of Colorado is public lands. By the way, most of that 36 percent is in my Congressional District, the Third District of Colorado. Look at the State of Utah. Sixty-four percent of the State of Utah belongs to the government. Those are public lands. Idaho, 61 percent. Oregon, the government owns over half that State. Wyoming, the government owns almost half that State. Arizona, almost half of the State of Arizona. Just under half of the State of California. Again, I just mentioned Colorado. Let us go back over here. In the State of Ohio, a very large State, less than 1.3 percent of your State is owned by the government. So, for my colleagues here from the State of Ohio, you need to listen when somebody like our colleagues from the State of Nevada, who have 83 percent of their State owned by the government, come to speak to you about public lands. Listen to them. I know most of my colleagues do. But we need to have a better understanding of the difficulties that we face in the West, because they are unique to the West. Our everyday lives, the things that impact us because of government lands are unique to the West versus the East, I think this chart pretty well indicates some of that. Now, let us go ahead and take a brief look at who some of the major government agencies that have these holdings are, major U.S. landholdings. The Federal Government owns more than 31 percent of all the lands in the United States. So if you take all the lands of this country, the government owns just under one-third of them. State-owned, for all purposes, 197 million acres. Federally-owned, 704 million acres in this country are owned by the Federal Government. The BLM owns about 260 million acres, the Forest Service owns 231 million acres, and other Federal agencies own about 130 million acres. The Park Service has 75 million acres. The Native American tribes have about 45 million acres. That is a lot of land. Most of us, when we talk about buying a new home, we think you are doing pretty well if you have a home that sits on a one-acre piece. Imagine, 704 million acres owned by the government, and the majority of that acreage, by far, the strong majority of that acreage, is in the West, where we live. Now let us focus down on the State of Colorado. A very similar analogy applies to the State of Colorado between eastern Colorado and western Colorado. Now, they are very similar in that eastern Colorado is rural and western Colorado is rural. But if you go down the line, which basically is the Third Congressional District, you will see out here, go back here, in the colored areas, brown, green, blue and so on, those are government lands. Take a look at western Colorado, right here, versus eastern Colorado. Eastern Colorado, there are very few public lands. In fact, the public lands really literally in some of these counties are the courthouse. Down here you have some grasslands. You got national grassland up here, in an area over there; but primarily, most of the western slope of Colorado, most of it is owned by the government. That means that the people that live out in this area have to adapt to living and cooperating and working alongside the owners of the property, which is the government. And that has some huge impacts. You can see why people in the West get a little defensive when somebody from the East starts dictating to them how the land in the West should be handled, especially when the people from the East speak of little experience, especially when the person from the East has never lived this. For example, I always used to get aggravated when Clinton and Gore, when they spoke to us, they spoke to us about the West; and they would go out and make these grand announcements or by executive orders take large blocks of land and, in essence, put them off limits. Why was I was upset? Not necessarily because of the fact that some of these moves were not good moves. In fact, some areas did deserve that, the executive order, not many, but some of them did. What bothered me the most is that the President and the Vice President outside of a vacation day or outside of a campaign had never spent a night in the West. They did not know what our life was like. They did not know what the experience was like having to get government permission, for example, for the water you own, to use that water that you own. It goes on and on and on. So I think at this point what I want to do is break down and go from our comments about the public lands and what impact the public lands have on the West to talk about a specific asset that we have got in the West, and it is very unique to the West, as far as the law is concerned, as far as the amount of it and the recycling of it and that is the subject of water. Water is very unique. Water is one of the few resources we have in this country that is renewable. Remember that you often hear people talk, look, let us have conservation on water. Remember water is the one resource, it is the one resource out there that one person's waste of water could very easily be another person's water. Let me give you an example. Years ago they came out with the idea, well, let us go and let us line all the farmers; ditches with concrete. And that way we will save water from being seeped into the ground. What some did not realize is that the water that leaked out of the one ditch may very well have been the water that popped up as a spring in a piece of property miles away. Water, we do not understand today but we have a pretty good idea; but 20 years or 30 years from now, we will be able to actually track- specific water and see all the millions of veins that it goes in underneath our earth's surface, and how it benefits one party and yet hurts another party, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But in the meantime, let us talk a little more about it. It is the only natural resource with automatic renewal. After falling from clouds as rain and snow, it may run into streams, lakes, or soaking into the ground. Eventually, it will evaporate and continues the cycle forever. Now, here is some interesting statistics. If you take a look at all of the water in the world, all the water on the earth, 97 percent of that water, 97 percent of that water is salt water, and 75 percent of the remainder, so if you take the 3 percent of the earth's water that is not salt water, 75 percent of that 3 percent is actually water that is contained in the polar ice regions as ice caps. As we put here, only .05 percent, only .05 percent is fresh water in streams and lakes. So when you take a look at the earth's surface under today's technology, the majority of water is salt water; or it is tied up in the polar ice caps. So that makes water a pretty precious resource. Here is another interesting number. Seventy-three percent of the stream flow, so almost three-fourths of the stream flow in this country, is claimed by States that are east of a line drawn north to south along the Kansas-Missouri border. In other words, in the eastern United States, remember where I explained the differences here, in the eastern United States, 73 percent of the water in the streams in this entire country, three-fourths of the water is over in this area of the country, over in the eastern part of the country. This is an arid part of the Nation, these government lands, the western States. Twelve percent is claimed by the Pacific Northwest. This leaves 14 percent of the total stream flow to be shared by 14 States which are over half the land area. What I am saying here is that 14 percent, 14 percent of the stream flow of water resources in this entire Nation, 14 percent of it has to be shared by over half of the Nation in the western States. So geographically over half the physical size, over half the size of the country only gets 14 percent of the stream flow. So that shows you why water has become such a precious resource in the West. One of the interesting things about water, and I know to some of you, the subject of discussing water gets pretty boring. In fact, I am going to have a sip of it right now, because we all expect water to be there when we turn on the tap. It is kind of a boring subject until water no longer comes out of the faucet, then it becomes somewhat more of an issue. And as we begin to make huge advancements in water quality, as we begin to make huge advancements in aquatic life in our water, in better ways to utilize our water, in more efficient ways to utilize water, water becomes more of an important subject. But I have some very interesting facts which I thought I would present this evening to my colleagues so that you have kind of an idea of how much water is required in our everyday lives, not water just for drinking, but water for our clothes, water for our food, water for our vegetation, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I think one of the best charts I have seen is this one on water usage. This is the per-person drinking and cooking every day. Every person in America uses about 2 gallons of water to drink and to cook with. Flushing the toilet takes 5 gallons to 7 gallons. Now interestingly enough, the Europeans, and I am not a big fan necessarily of some of the Europeans' technology, but some of the technology, especially when it comes to toilets they now have a dual flush toilet, a flush when you go one way, a flush when you go another way. That is a pretty smart idea. It helps conserve water. They use excess water to complete the job, so to speak. The washing machine uses 20 gallons when you turn on your washing machine. A dishwasher to wash your dishes takes 25 gallons; taking a shower, 9 gallons. Now, take a look at this. I find this part of the chart fascinating, take a look at how much water it takes, for example, for one loaf of bread, for one loaf of bread that you buy off the grocery store shelf, it take 150 gallons of water to bring that seed up, to process the wheat, to bring the flour, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It takes 150 gallons of water to produce one loaf of bread. Take a look at one egg. This is unbelievable, one egg, to have one egg produced, you go through about 120 gallons of water. Thank goodness water is recyclable. Thank goodness it is a commodity that is rechargeable. One quart of milk, to get 1 quart of milk, you need 223 gallons; or to get 1 gallon of milk, you need 1,000 gallons of water, a thousand gallons of water to produce 1 gallon of milk. These are numbers that most people never heard of before. A pound of tomatoes, it is 125 gallons of water. A pound of oranges is 47 gallons. A pound of potatoes takes 23 gallons of water. Now, what happens? This gives you a pretty good idea in the use of our country where the primary use of water is, water that is consumed for human consumption. What happens to 50 glasses of water? If we have 50 glasses of water in our country that we were going to use for human consumption purposes, this is not water left in the stream or et cetera, this is water for human consumption, 44 of those 50 glasses of water are necessary for agriculture. That points out to you just how important water is for our agricultural base in this country, three glasses of it is used by industry, two glasses are used by the cities and a half a glass is used out in the country for the people that live out in the country. Pretty interesting statistics. Well, let me move from the charts that we have here and talk just a little bit more about the State of Colorado and the rivers that we have in Colorado. First of all, I thought it would be appropriate in our capitol in Denver, Colorado. By the way, it is a beautiful building if you have an opportunity. If you are in Denver, stop by the State capitol. I have many good friends that work out of the State capitol. I served there myself. One of the best sayings you will find in the capitol is by Thomas Hornsby Ferril: ``Here is a land where life is written in water. The West is where water was and is father and son of old mother and daughter following rivers up immensities of range and desert thirsting the sundown ever crossing a hill to climb still drier naming tonight a city by some river a different name from last night's camping fire. Look to the green within the mountain cup. Look to the prairie parched for water lack. Look to the sun that pulls the oceans up. Look to the cloud that gives the oceans back. Look to your heart and may your wisdom grow to the power of lightning and peace of snow.'' I think that poetic piece says it pretty well. In the West, water is like blood. In the West, our entire life is dependent on this resource. We need to understand it. We need to take care of our water resources. We need to keep people from preventing us from using water in a balanced fashion. We need to be smart enough to keep our water clean and to figure out how to put our water to the best possible use. We need to be fair in our usage of water. Take a look. In Colorado history, the first dam. Now, you hear lots of criticisms about dams, especially by organizations that generally are way off the spectrum, as far as balance is concerned. In the West, we are very dependent upon dams. In the West, we do not have lots of rainfall. In fact, I think in Colorado I can tell you exactly in Colorado. In Colorado I think we average about 16 inches of precipitation a year, 16 inches a year. Take a look at what happened in Houston last week. Now, I know that was a freak storm; but what did they have, 40 inches in a storm, 3 days or 4 days? We do not have 16 inches in an entire year. The critical thing about water in the West, because we do not have a continual flow, because we do not have lots of rain in the West, we have to store the water that we have, primarily in the Rocky Mountains. We are dependent on our snowfall, the heavy snowfall that we get in the winter time; and then it is that spring runoff that comes off the mountains. A lot of times the runoff may come too early or the runoff may come in too great a surge, so we have to have the capability to store that water, to help us with flood control, to help us so that we have those resources in the months that we do not have any snow, in the months that we do not have spring runoff, in the months that we do not have much rainfall. So storage of water is critical for life in the West. Now, that is not to say that we should store it at any cost. It is to say that we can store water in a smart and balanced fashion. It is interesting to hear that, that, for example, the National Sierra Club, their number one goal, or at least their number one goal last year was to take down the massive water projects in the West, Lake Powell, which is also one of our largest hydroproducers. Give me a break. The West could not survive without reservoirs like that. In the West, we need to store that water. Understand, in the East, in many cases, you need to get rid of it. In the West, we need to store it. And our first dam actually in Colorado, our first storage was by the Mesa Verde Indians, and it was that ancient irrigation system. They actually discovered that around 1,000 A.D. that the Indian groups there stored water, the Native Americans at Mesa Verde, they figured out that they had arid months. In fact, it is often thought that the extinction of that tribe down in that part of the State was a result of a drought, was a result of the fact that they could not store enough water to get themselves all the way through. So there is a lot of history to the Rocky Mountains, and there is a lot of history to our water use in the Rocky Mountains. We have what they call Colorado the Mother of Rivers, that is what they call the State, because we have four major river basins in the State of Colorado. The first river basin is called the South Platte; the second, the Arkansas; the third, the Rio Grande; and the fourth, the Colorado River. I am going to really focus on the Colorado River basin this evening with the time that I have left. Remember, rivers east of the Continental Divide, most of the Continental Divide is in my congressional district. We have all heard, colleagues, of the Continental Divide. Rivers east of the Divide flow into the Gulf of Mexico. Rivers west of the Divide, like the Colorado River, drain into the Gulf of California and the Pacific Ocean. The Colorado River is a pretty unique river. First of all, the Colorado River is 1,440 miles long. It provides water for 25 million people. The Colorado River provides water for 25 million people, and that river which drains and provides millions of acres of agricultural water, it also provides clean hydropower. And in Colorado, we put in about 75 percent of the water resources for the Colorado River, although actually only about 25 percent of it is allowed to stay. So the reason that water is so critical for us, aside from the fact that we have to store it, aside from the fact that we do not have much precipitation in our State, is that our water from our agriculture, our water for our recreation, we do everything, from our wild and scenic streams for tourism to our kayaking to our rafting to our snow making, we are very, very dependent on a very limited supply of water in the West. And so I thought that it would be good this evening to talk about water in the West. I started this evening's comments by talking about the vast amounts of government land that sits in the West, and then transitioned into water in the West, which is one of the key ingredients. I intend in future comments to talk in a little more detail about the public lands, about the need for wilderness areas, about the need for grazing areas and the need for public interest areas, about the need for national parks and State parks, and about the need for open space. So my discussions this evening about water are just one segment in an educational series of how life in the West really is different than the East. Now, my comments are not meant to put a divide between the East and the West. It simply is to explain the divide that already exists as a result primarily because of geographical differences, and that is where we have that. So this is my purpose. Water is our subject this evening. I want to give a couple of other comments about water that I think are pretty interesting. First of all, as many of my colleagues may know, we have wonderful trout streams in Colorado. In fact, in the State of Colorado we have over 9,000 miles of streams; 9,000 miles coming off those great big mountains, those high mountains of the Colorado Rockies. We also have about 2,000 lakes and reservoirs. We are not like Minnesota or Michigan with those massive lakes, but considering the height, the elevation of the Rocky Mountains, Colorado is a really fairly unique State. We have a lot of fun things in Colorado. For example, we have 13 different streams, called Clear Creek. But the key is that while there are differences in the United States between the east and the west, those differences also exist in the State of Colorado between eastern Colorado, primarily the cities, and western Colorado. My congressional district, for example, the third district of the State of Colorado, that district has 80 percent of the water resources in Colorado, yet 80 percent of the population resides outside that district. So within our own boundaries even in the State of Colorado there is a constant balancing requirement that is necessary. How much water should be diverted from the western slope to the eastern slope? What amount of water do we need to keep in the streams to preserve our aquatic life or the quality of the water? These are issues we deal with every day in the West. My purpose in being here this evening, especially to my colleagues east of Colorado, to the Atlantic Ocean, is to request of them that when they hear about or have an opportunity to vote on water issues facing the West, ask some of us in the West about it, because the implications in the West on water in many, many cases are dramatically different than the implications on a water vote when we are discussing water in the East. Now, tomorrow evening, or later this week, I hope to talk a little about energy. Because energy, of course, involves all of us. It is very important. I also want to talk about public lands in some more detail, the different uses of public lands, the different ways the government manages public lands. We have lots of different management tools with public lands. When our government said, as I mentioned earlier in my comments, that in the East we would let the people own the land, but in the West the government would keep the title for the land simply to avoid the political embarrassment of giving away too much land, when the government did that, they decided that they were going to retain and manage this land. And over the time, through technological management, through better land management, through more knowledge, we have developed a vast array of tools, and we can use any one of these tools or a combination of these tools to help us manage these public lands. Many of my colleagues are aware of some of these tools, the names of these tools, such as national parks, for example, national monuments, special interest areas, conservation areas, et cetera, et cetera. Well, what we need to do to properly manage these massive Federal lands is not to make a rule that one shoe fits all, because one shoe does not fit all in the West. What we need to do is custom manage these public lands, but we cannot custom manage public lands unless we talk to the people who live there. We cannot custom manage public lands unless we talk to the people who are directly impacted by it. Now, it is true, and I hear this argument constantly from my colleagues here on the floor that land belongs to all the people in the West, so those of us in decision-making authority here in the East have every right to make decisions on how people in the West live and how they use that land. That is not how we get a balanced approach for the management of public lands in the West. The way to do it is to go to the local communities. For example, today in front of the subcommittee that I chair, the Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health of the Committee on Resources, we had a Native American who spoke about the years of history of his family and the traditions regarding the uses of the forest and the uses of government lands. We had an expert on forest that talked about the health of different public lands. Both of these people stressed in their comments the importance of having local input, the importance of bringing in the people who are impacted by these public lands. So tomorrow night I will go into a lot more detail. I will talk about probably the most extreme use, the strongest tool we have, called wilderness designation. And by the way, I have probably put more land in wilderness than anybody currently seated in the House of Representatives. And then I will go clear to the other extreme, where the land is not properly managed, where the land is kind of a free-for- all, which is as much a disservice as an extreme on the other end. There are lots of different tools and lots of ways that we can preserve these lands for future generations while at the same time having the right to live on them and enjoy them in this generation. This generation is not under an obligation to save everything for the future. There are a lot of things that we can use. And if we use them smartly, we not only mitigate our impact to the environment, in many cases we can enhance the environment. And that is where our obligation is, to help enhance our environment. I will talk a little more about that tomorrow evening. For my final few minutes, even though I will address it later in the week, I want to talk a little about energy. We have talked this evening about a number of different things. First of all, we started with a few comments on the Patients' Bill of Rights, and I want to restress to my colleagues that it is important that patients have rights in this country. It is important that we do not have gross mismanagement of our medical services in this country. It is important that we have a balance out there. And when we hear in the press and we see documents that say the Patients' Bill of Rights, we should take a look at the details. It may work out to be just what we are looking for. It may be an answer for some of the problems. But we need to read the details before signing on to the document. We need to read the details before casting our votes, because we have an obligation in these Chambers to be aware of the impact that these bills will have and to take a look at what might be the unintended consequences of actions that we might take. So we have spent a few minutes talking about the Patient's Bill of Rights, and then, of course, I moved on and talked about public lands and water resources. Now, colleagues, I know that that is kind of a boring subject. I know this evening's walk through the differences between the East and the West in the United States, where in the West we have massive amounts of Federal Government land ownership and in the East we have very little government land ownership, and the differences that can even be pared down to the State, where we talk about differences in water and differences in government-owned lands and public lands, but while it is boring, it is very important. Life in the West is also important for those in the East, because we are totally dependent upon an understanding so that we can help preserve and utilize in a proper fashion these resources. Finally, now, I want to visit for a couple of minutes in my remaining time about energy and the need for energy. First of all, I am a strong believer in conservation. I think there are a lot of things that the American public can do to help conserve. I was at a town meeting yesterday in Frisco, Colorado, when somebody brought up the fact that they were in Europe recently, and mentioned that when they went into a room, in order to keep the lights on, they, naturally could turn them on, but in order for them to stay on, they had to take a card and put the card in a slot. Now, I had been in Europe, too, and I remembered that as he said that. When leaving the house, once you pulled the card out to leave the house, the lights shut off. It is a tremendous energy saver and it is of no pain. We do not have to have our lives inconvenienced at all. One switch shuts them all off. Now, of course, I imagine that if you need a security light and so on, that can be worked out. But there are little ideas like this, like changing our oil every 6,000 miles on our cars instead of every 3,000. There are lots of simple conservation ideas that we, the American people, can employ today. For example, as we prepare to retire this evening, make sure we do not have on the bathroom light, the closet light, and the bedroom light. When we are in the kitchen getting ready to have a drink of water before going to bed, shut off lights. We can turn down our heaters, if we do not need them. We can keep the air conditioner turned up if we do not need it that cold in rooms. One of the things that helps us do this, that helps us conserve, is the marketplace. Now, I have heard a lot of talk about, well, we need to artificially support these prices. But the thing that has driven more conservation in the last couple of months has not been some action by the government, it has been high prices in the marketplace. If we were to freeze the price of energy, which some of my colleagues recommend we do, i.e. price caps, that does several things. One, it encourages people to use more of the product because they know that the price will not go up on them. Two, it discourages innovation. What drives innovation is that when prices go up and demand stays the same or goes up, people look for more efficient ways to do things. So energy and conservation are very important. I agree very strongly with people like the Vice President, who I think, although it may not be politically correct in some audiences in our country, makes it very clear that conservation alone will not answer our shortage of energy in this country; that conservation alone will not lessen the dependency we have on foreign oil; that conservation alone, while it is a very, very important factor, it is not the sole answer. We have got to figure out ways to use and to gather more resources for energy for future generations. Energy is a big issue for us. I actually think that the energy shortage that we are in really is kind of a wake-up call for us. It is not a crisis for the entire country where the economy has collapsed, but it is a wake-up call. It is the alarm going off saying time to wake up, time to take a look at what kind of dependency we have on foreign oil, what kind of conservation we are employing or deploying in our country. So I think from that aspect it has done us some good. Let me kind of conclude these remarks, because I intend to go into more detail about energy, by asking my colleagues not to let people convince them that the needs of this country can be met simply by conservation. On the other hand, do not let anybody convince you that conservation does not have an important role to play. We can conserve. And a lot of people throughout the world, but more particularly in this country, can conserve without pain. In fact, a lot of the ways we conserve actually save us money, like shutting the lights off when we are not using them. Change your oil less frequently, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You actually save money as a result of that, colleagues. So conservation and exploration are necessary elements for this country to meet the demands that the people of this country have come to expect. And I think we have an obligation to do that. A lot depends on energy. Our lives are dependent on energy, whether it is energy from hydropower, to drive our vehicles, to air conditioning, refrigeration, et cetera, et cetera. Energy is an important policy. What this wake-up call has also done, we have had more energy debates and comments on this House floor in the last 6 weeks than we have had in the last 6 years. The Clinton administration had absolutely no energy policy. What President Bush has done, what the Bush administration has done, is said we have to have an energy policy. Let us put everything on the table. When you put some things on the table, people squeal like a stuck pig. We do not have to accept it, but we ought to debate it and think it out and determine what ought to stay on the table and come off the table. That is how you develop policy. It is debate on this House floor that helps form policy. Mr. Speaker, I agree with the Bush administration that this country needs an energy policy. We, the American people, colleagues, the people that we represent, deserve to have an energy policy. That means a policy that has thoroughly investigated the resources, including conservation, the resources out there for us. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the time that I have been able to share with my colleagues this evening. I look forward to sharing further and having further discussion about public lands and talking more about energy.

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed listening to the comments of the previous speakers. This evening, I want to really focus the majority of my comments on differences between the East and the West in the United States, differences between the East and the West in the State of Colorado and really talk a little about natural resources and water and so on, but I cannot help but have listened to the comments, the preceding comments. I would point out that I think, for example, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) who cites an example of a constituent of his who needs a bone marrow transplant, I think those stories are very appropriate. I think it helps us focus in on the debate. What I question and what I intend to challenge, and my colleagues understand this, what I intend to challenge are some of the stories that I am beginning to hear. This evening I heard from one of the preceding speakers that a young man apparently fell on a nail, was taken to an emergency room. The emergency room refused to treat him even though he apparently was, quote, in dire straits, because he did not have the right insurance and that as a result of that young man being refused in an emergency room because he did not have the right insurance, he was transported to another hospital and as a result of the transportation resulted in the amputation of his leg. If this is true, it is a pretty remarkable story, very sad story. What I think tends to happen, what I think tends to happen when we get in a very emotional debate, is that some of these stories get exaggerated. Now I have often heard people say, well, someone is refused because they did not have insurance, they were dying, they were hauled to the emergency room from a car accident and the emergency room doctor said, sorry, you do not have insurance and we are not going to treat you. That is not true. If it is, let me know about the particular case, Mr. Speaker. My colleague, who by the way is from Texas, I hope he provides me with the details and the names of those people because I would like to investigate the case. If we have emergency rooms in this country who truly reject someone who necessarily needs emergency treatment, number one, it is against a Federal law if they accept any Federal funds at all, and there are very few hospitals in the country that do not accept Federal funds, so if they are doing that they are violating the Federal law. Number two, my bet is that once we hear the other side of the story, that many of the stories we are about to hear as this Patients' Bill of Rights begins to pick up momentum, let me put it this way: I think we, on this floor, have an obligation to be accurate in our statements, especially when we are dealing with human life and especially when we are dealing with human suffering and especially when we are attacking, for example, some hospital who theoretically rejected a young man who was in, quote, dire straits and as a result the young man got his leg amputated. That is pretty serious allegations. Maybe it is true. As I said, I kind of question it, but I would like to look into it. Furthermore, I know that Patients' Bill of Rights sounds good. I would just urge my colleagues, remember that saying, the devil is in the fine print. You stand up, you go out on any street in America and say, hey, do you agree with a Patients' Bill of Rights? And they are going to say well, sure what is wrong with that. Sounds good. It does sound good, but before you sign, Mr. Speaker, the American people to this contract you better take a look at what the fine details say. I can say to my colleagues, it is a bunch of hogwash for them to believe for one moment that this Patients' Bill of Rights is not going to result in lots of lawsuits. America is a country of litigation. America is a country of intense legal wrangling. Give the trial lawyers an opportunity to prosecute cases, they are going to go after it like a kid goes after cookies. Let us be up front. Now I am not saying that there are not cases where there should not be lawsuits but let us be up front when we talk about this. Do not pretend more lawsuits are not going to result. Of course more lawsuits are going to result. Let us debate whether they are justified or not justified. At least let us be open on the front end and say this Patients' Bill of Rights will result in trial lawyers filing lots of lawsuits in this country. If these lawsuits are not justified, it is the consumer who will pay for them. Let us take a look, as we have, and I want patients to have rights, all of us do, but do not pull the wool over their eyes by saying here is a bill of rights that in the end costs them more money and as a result more money to get insurance and as a result less people get insurance because insurances become more costly because my colleagues, on this House floor, decided they are going to ride in on their white horse and save the American patient from, as described earlier, gross abuse. There are unique cases of abuse and those should be addressed, but be very careful about what you are going to sign on to. Do not let the emotional thrill or the emotional warmness or the cuddliness of the word of a bill entice you into believing that this is the answer for our medical crisis in this country. There are a lot of good doctors in this country. We happen to have a pretty darn good medical delivery system in this country. Sure, we need improvement. Sure, we would like to figure out how to get more people insurance. Sure, we would like to figure out the prescription costs in this country. But do not take that little bit of bad and throw out all the good. Do not, in an attempt to fix the bad, end up making its spread worse and actually doing damage to the good things that our medical health delivery system in this country does for us. When the West Meets the East

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Madam Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Madam Speaker, this evening I want to talk about the energy situation that we have in the United States. Really, the theory of my discussion this evening is about reasonable solutions by reasonable people. We have heard on this floor for any number of weeks now constant attacks against the administration, constant attacks against the U.S. Congress, constant attacks on why this energy crisis has come about, but we are real short on hearing much about solutions. This evening I want to talk a little about, number one, just how widespread especially the electrical shortage is in this country. I want to give my own predictions on where I think we are going to be in a year or two in regard to the electrical generation shortage we have in this country; and I will visit a little about California, which seems to be the State, frankly, that did the least amount of planning and is in the most amount of trouble. There is a correlation between not much planning and lots of trouble. We will discuss a little of that this evening. We will talk shortly about New York State and the other 48 States and what the other 48 States have done and what kind of a situation we are in. I want to start at the very beginning of my remarks by saying that I do not have an anti-California bias. I know some of my colleagues are upset, and I think that there is some justification to these people being upset, with the situation in the State of California. But there are a lot of us on the Republican side, and I am sure on the Democratic side, outside of the State of California, who live outside the State of California, who happen to believe that we need to help California; that California, while it primarily got itself into this mess on its own, it cannot get itself out of this mess entirely on its own, although, frankly, California is going to have to put its boots on by pulling itself up by its own bootstraps. So there is a lot of responsibility that falls on California. But we have got to remember that California is the sixth most powerful economic factor in the world. Not in the United States; it is not the sixth most powerful economic State in the United States. If it were a country of its own, it would be the sixth most powerful country in the world from an economic point of view. Frankly, what is bad for California is bad for the United States when it comes to economies. California produces a tremendous amount of our agricultural products, the foods that you buy at the grocery store. So we are dependent on California, and California is dependent on us. This is a union, you know, the United States of America, so when one State generally gets in trouble, the other States feel the impact; and in my opinion, the other States have an obligation to step up to the plate to help their colleague. But that does not mean that as you step up to the plate to help a fellow State you ignore how you got there in the first place, or that you take some of the more radical positions, or that you accept some of the radical ideals of how to approach this. It all comes back, in my opinion, to a reasonable approach by reasonable people. Let me talk just very briefly here about the California energy crisis. I have a number of charts this evening. I think, colleagues, they will help me walk through my points with you. Let us take a look at the State of California. First of all, remember that in California, this is a State where predominantly you saw, and I know this may ruffle some feathers, but the fact is you predominantly saw in that State an attitude of ``do not build it in my backyard.'' We predominantly saw an attitude in the State of California where the political leaders seemed to believe that anything that California needed in the way of a new power source, that they could either get it from renewables, alternatives, or conservation. Now, most of my discussion this evening is going to be about conservation. Conservation is a very, very, very important factor in helping California and helping the entire Nation. One, use our energy more efficiently; and, two, make sure that the other 40 States avert an energy crisis. But we have to be realistic, and I am afraid that some of this realism never really existed or it was ignored in California, the realism that you cannot get yourself out of this energy shortage by conservation alone. I note that the Vice President has been criticized on numerous occasions because the Vice President stood up and said exactly that; that, look, no matter how hard we believe in conservation, no matter how much we exercise, we still need to come up with additional power generation. We still need to take into consideration that this Nation is becoming more and more and more dependent on foreign nations for our oil resources. So as the Vice President agrees and as I strongly advocate, as do most reasonable people, it is some kind of combination of answers that will help the State of California out of its energy crisis; that that combination would contain conservation; that that combination would contain other types of alternative energy; that that combination would contain exploration of further oil resources; that that combination would contain additional electrical generation. That is how we are going to get an answer for our colleagues, for our fellow State, the State of California. Now, remember, in the last 8 years there has not been the approval for a natural gas transmission line. I am not talking about the natural gas line that goes from Main Street into your House. I am talking about a major transmission line, to move the natural gas from one location to another location. I can tell you that it seems to me that every time there was an effort at putting in some type of project, whether it was natural gas transmission lines, whether it was electrical generation, all you continued to see was that nothing would work; no generation plant in California would satisfy the people near it; no gas transmission line through California would work. In fact, every single project, to the best of my knowledge, in the last 8 or 10 years in California involving nuclear energy, involving electrical generation, involving natural gas transmission, every one of them was aggressively opposed, as if it would bring an end to society as we know it if we dared build that type of project. That is one of the reasons that our fellow colleagues in California are in this kind of shape. Let us look at the second point, place price caps on the rate that electrical providers could charge to consumers while doing nothing to discourage demand. You know, this is a misconception that deregulation, true deregulation, actually took place in California. True, they called it deregulation, they gave it the label of deregulation, but what California did was not true deregulation. What California did in their State was they allowed the electrical utility companies to sell their generation facilities to an outside party, and then, retaining oversight on the utility companies, the State of California prohibited the utility companies from raising their prices on the consumer in the State of California. By not raising your prices to the consumer, it is very similar to renting. If you are a landlord renting an apartment to a tenant and you pay for the utilities, what happens in that kind of case? What will happen is you will go see the people that are renting from you, if you are paying their utilities, in the summer their air conditioner will be at 50, and in the winter they will have the windows of the apartment open trying to get rid of all the heat they are generating in the house because they have the thermostat turned up to 80 or 90 degrees. It does not work. Economically it does not work. Allowing a price freeze for consumers instead of a price that reflects what the markets demand, you create an artificial floor. You do not have to walk very far on that artificial floor if you do not have supports for it before somewhere you are going to fall through. That is what happened, because California did not have true deregulation. Let us go on. No new coal-fired power permits in the last 10 years. I am a little discouraged to see that just in the last few days, number one, the State of California has panicked and is now proceeding through their Governor Davis, who has attacked almost everyone else, the blame game, blame it on them, blame it on them, blame it on them, but never point a finger at the political leaders in California, the State political leaders, never point a finger at the Governor of California. Point them at everybody else. The difficulty is that now in the last few days we have seen some pretty rash reactions by the political leaders within the State of California. The first thing, the Governor apparently, and this is what I read from the media, I obviously have not had a conversation with the Governor, but the Governor apparently has now agreed to sign long-term contracts for electrical generation. Long-term contracts. You know where that electrical price is today, folks? Do you know where that price is? You are at the top of the market. You are at the top of the market in what you are paying for electricity. Now is not the time to sign long-term contracts to buy that power, but the Governor of California has decided that it is. I will point out here just exactly how many power generation facilities we have coming online in this next year. In this next year we will have three generation plants a week coming online throughout the rest of the Nation. Believe it or not, it is my prediction that in the next year to year and a half, maybe 2 years at the outmost, we are going to have an electrical glut. We are going to have more electricity in this country than we know what to do with. We may have trouble with transmission, and, again, looking at the State of California, ask California when is the last time they allowed a major transmission line to go through their state. You can generate all the electricity you want, but if you cannot move it from point A to point B, and sometimes that point from A to B is a long distance, the electricity does not do you much good, because, you see, once you generate electricity, as we all know, you cannot put it in a little bottle; or, like a bag of potato chips, eat half the bag and wrap it up and eat the rest of the bag the next day. You cannot do that with electricity, and time you do not generate is time lost. So I actually think that we are going to have an electrical surplus. But California's responsibility is to help itself, and we have a responsibility to help California. I do not think we should continued to heap on California, continue to bash California, but I think we should be willing enough, all of us, to say where are the shortfalls? What do we need to do to help our colleagues? Let us go on. Now let me say that on the coal-fired, as I started to say, the coal- fired plant permits, another thing that has discouraged me in the last few days, which is caused by panic and by poor planning, I understand now in California the Governor has lifted restrictions on some of the dirtiest or most polluting electrical generation plants in the State for special hours when they run short of electricity. What brought that about? A shortage. But what brought about the shortage? The fact that it now has California reducing or diluting their tight standards for pollution, it is because they have refused to approve anything. Nothing satisfied the regulators out there in California. Nothing satisfied the people that opposed electrical generation plants or electrical transmission lines or natural gas transmission lines. Now, as a result, when they get in a crisis in the State, they see the environment in my opinion kind of taking second seat because they have to have that energy. What is going to come first, the environment, or having electricity to the local hospital? The environment, or being able to power the refineries so they can continue to produce gas? There is give and take in everything we do. We cannot possibly live on this Earth without taking something from the environment. We have to eat, sleep, et cetera. The same thing in California, but now the give and take is kind of out of proportion because, in California, they did not plan. They did not say, all right, we may not like electrical generation plants, we may not like coal-burning plants, we may not like transmission lines, those big towers with those big wires that are kind of ugly. We may not like to even begin a discussion on nuclear energy, but the fact is, we have to do some planning. That is what is missing from the California solution, from the California deregulation effort. Now we see not a discussion, a good, thorough discussion by reasonable people about, what do we do on deregulation so it does not repeat itself. Instead, what we are seeing primarily from the elected State officials there in California, primarily the Governor of California, we are seeing the blame game: ``It is your fault. It is your fault. It is your fault.'' Come on. We have to come up with a solution here. Let us look at a couple of other things. One is, no inland refineries have been built in 26 years. California's power capacity is down 2 percent since 1990, while demand is up 11 percent in that same time period. That is a collision. That is a collision waiting to happen. They drop capacity down at the same time they bring demand up and they are going to have a collision. That is what has occurred in California. Let me say that the Governor of California speaks as if all of the States in the Union are in this kind of problem. I have to tell the Members, there is a reason that California stands alone in this energy crisis. There is a reason that California is in worse shape than everybody else. It is not because they got the bad draw out of the hat. It is not because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It is because they put themselves there. There are a lot of States in this Union who have said, we may not like it in our backyard, we may not like electrical transmission lines, we may not want to see a generation facility, but the fact is for our citizens in this particular State we need to plan for our future energy needs. Now, that includes, by the way, conservation. I must say here, Madam Speaker, California has demonstrated a solid move and solid progress towards conservation. In the last month alone, the State of California has dropped their energy demands in the electrical market as I understand it by 10 percent, not because they brought additional production on, although, as I said, they are going to have to, but because they have begun to conserve. We are going to go over some conservation ideas tonight that I think will be an easy sell to my colleagues, because my ideas and ideas that I have gathered of other people's for conservation are conservation without pain. Does it sound too good to be true? It is not. It is just some simple, commonsense ideas about conservation that will reduce the demand, which, by the way, in the long run will also reduce the price, and also, it is good policy not to waste energy. Let us go on. I just mentioned how ironic it is that the State of California really has its biggest problem. The dark days are ahead in California. Now, remember that California is an importer. They are bringing in electricity because they cannot, under the regular course of events, under a regular course of events, generate enough electricity to supply their State. The same thing, by the way, in the United States. Under a regular course of events, this Nation has become more and more dependent on foreign countries across the oceans to answer our needs because, in large part, we have not had exploration. Let us take a look at the United States. We are going to find out that the Governor of California, by the way, has taken great delight in criticizing Texas simply because, in my opinion, he wants to run for President in 2 years, and the President happens to be from Texas. But if we put the political biases aside, the problem that Texas has is Texas frankly has done good planning. It has plenty of power for its State. The difficulty is Texas, which really has surplus power, they, in other words, are on the another end of California, and they have power they can export out of their State, but they do not have the transmission lines, for example, to take much power into the eastern grid or into the western grid. I think that is going to be resolved pretty soon, because then Texas can help other States. New York City has been unable to generate enough energy for its demand. They had blackouts, as we remember, in 1965 and in 1977. But they are in the process of allowing facilities to be built in New York. They are not a State that has refused to allow electrical generation to be built in their State for 10 years. They are trying to keep up with demand, and they are being more aggressive about it as we speak. New York, my guess is this summer New York blackouts will be at a minimum because New York is racing to come up with a solution, understanding that conservation alone will not give them the answer, although conservation is going to be a critical part of the solution. Now, in the Pacific Northwest we have heard about possible power shortages up in Washington and Oregon. These are not because Washington and Oregon have refused to allow generation facilities. These shortages are not because they are naysayers, because they have that NIMBY attitude, not-in-my-back-yard attitude. Their problem up there in the Northwest is they have a drought. In fact, that contributes to the problem in California, because California is dependent upon the hydro power, which of course means water, which of course, when we have a drought, we do not have, out of the Pacific Northwest. The Pacific Northwest, primarily the Columbia River, which has dried up fairly dramatically, that is nature, that is an act of nature. We have to do what we can do to help these States, but I think that will resolve itself. Our droughts usually come to an end. I think we will see some resolution. Now let us look at California. There could be as many as 34 or more blackouts in the State of California, although, again to the credit of California, because of the conservation methods they are now exercising, California may drop that fairly dramatically. California may have less of an energy crisis. They will not eliminate it until they accept the fact they have to have additional generation, but I think they are going to have less of an energy crisis than we thought even just 2 weeks ago because of the fact that the people in California are seriously accepting conservation methods. So in California, the primarily problem with California is lack of planning and lots of pretending, lack of planning and lots of pretending. That is what has happened in California. They pretended that they really had deregulation. They pretended that they could say to their citizens, you will never have a price increase. We are going to cap it. They pretended that while demand for power went up, there was no need to provide additional generation to answer that. They pretended that conservation and alternative energy standing alone could meet the additional demands of the citizens of California. That is what has happened. That pretending has created the problem in California. But I think we can get it resolved. I am going to show the Members some other ideas I have. This cartoon I just saw today in the paper. I wanted it made up. The fact is, as I have said repeatedly throughout my comments this evening, reasonable people can reach reasonable solutions, but we have to have people who are not hypocritical. We have to have people who do not say one thing on one end and do something else on the other. I think this editorial cartoon out of the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel pretty well depicts exactly some of what has gone on. Here we are in a Volkswagen van. It has solar power on the roof. It says, ``Make love, not power plants. Save the Earth. No nukes.'' On the back, it has a California license plate, racing right by the ``last chance'' energy gas station. Then the cartoon down there shows the Volkswagen bug running out of gas. Now it shows the driver of the bug with a gasoline can in his hand walking back saying, ``It is all Bush's fault.'' That is exactly what we are seeing a lot of out there, people who oppose generation: ``Not in my backyard. No more exploration. No electrical generation plants, no transmission lines.'' But then the minute they run out of power, they go and blame everyone else. We need to avoid that, because we can come up with solutions, all of us working together. We have to face the fact that no matter how good a solution we come up with, we are always going to have 10 percent over here on this extreme that might, for example, say, ``Drill at any expense.'' That is crazy. We all cherish our environment too much to have that, to buy into that. We have 10 percent or 15 percent over here who say, ``Do not drill at all. We do not need additional power,'' et cetera, et cetera. But in the middle there is a large segment of people who believe, one, in conservation, and believe in exercising responsibility in their own lifestyles for conservation, while at the same time acknowledging that we have to become less dependent, not more dependent, on foreign countries, and that we have to have generation facilities sometimes within view of our homes, sometimes within view of our communities. Sometimes we have to sacrifice a little of that so we can have the supply, the energy supply, that we need. Let us talk about our homes. As we all know, the electricity in a home travels through the house in wires. These wires lead to light switches and outlets which power the televisions, computers, lights, and most everything else in our homes. Think about how dependent we are on energy. Our heat is dependent on energy. No matter whether we use natural gas or propane, we have to use electricity. The air cooling, whether it is refrigerated air or a humidifier type of air or just simply fans, is dependent on electricity. Obviously, the lights, the security system, is dependent. When we take a look at our houses, just how dependent are, it is incredible just how much we depend on electricity. Electricity makes our homes comfortable to live in. It is not free. Electricity is not free. We cannot have electricity brought to our homes without some type of sacrifice. We cannot have electricity in our homes without some type of impact to the environment. The key on the impact is that as we look at the impact, is it a reasonable impact? Is it a balanced impact? Is it an impact that is sustainable as far as mitigation to the environment? Let us go on. Before electricity gets to our homes, some type of fuel must be used. It can be coal, it can be nuclear, or even a dam on a river. We give up certain parts of nature to enjoy electricity, so we must do our part to conserve electricity. For example, if we leave the light on in the room after we leave it, we are using electricity we do not need. To conserve electricity, shut off lights in rooms we are not using. Now, that sounds pretty simple. Gee, here is the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. McInnis) telling us to turn off our lights. We know that, it is common sense, turn off the lights on the way out of the room. I will make a little confession here: Up to about 3 months ago when I went to my office the first thing in the morning, I turned on every light in the office. I put on the coffee, turned on the lights. I went to the sink, ran the hot water until the water got hot, started to put it in the coffee pot. We do it differently now in my office. Now I do not turn on lights in the office, all the lights. I turn on the light that I need to read by, but I do not turn all the lights on until the office personnel shows up, until we actually need the lights. If we as a Nation would only turn on that light switch when we actually needed the lights, that would help. Light we use for security purposes, for example, we may have a timer that turns on a bedroom light, especially while we are away on vacation, or a garage light that a timer turns on at 2 or 3 in the morning. Just go up to that light and replace it with a lower wattage light and we are helping save energy. These are simple ideas that cause no pain. The fact that I go into my office and do not turn on all the lights does not cause any pain. It helps the situation. The fact that we use a lower wattage bulb does not impact the security at all. Shut off the TV when nobody is watching it. Keep the computer in sleep mode if we are not using it. Shut off the monitor. Unplug appliances like curling irons and clothing irons right away. Letting them sit while turning off wastes electricity, and on top of that, it is unsafe. I know the Members are saying, well, this is all pretty basic stuff. We have heard this before. The whole reason, the whole reason that I am visiting with the Members this evening is we have all heard it before, but we have not all used it before. We have not exercised our responsibilities to help with conservation. If we are going to get to the bottom of this problem, we have all got to pitch in on conservation. Let us continue. Here are a few steps you can take to immediately, this is immediately, help this Nation conserve on fuel, on energy. Do not let the hot water run while you are washing your hands, brushing your teeth, or shaving. I have done that before. I get ready to shave. I turn on the hot water, I walk over, I get the shaving cream or something, water is running, and I casually look in the mirror. You can save a lot of hot water, plus you can save the water. Water is a little more complicated, because it is a renewable resource. But the electricity to heat is not renewable, and we can conserve on that. Use smaller appliances such as microwaves, toaster ovens, and crock pots. Use cold water to operate your garbage disposal, this saves energy. And, frankly, it helps the unit to dispose of grease more efficiently. Wash your clothes in cold water. If you use ceiling fans, blades should rotate clockwise, keep that in mind, that in the summer, your ceiling fans have to turn clockwise. Make sure it is turning clockwise, otherwise it is defeating the purpose. If it is turning counterclockwise, it works to help heat the home. If it turns clockwise, it lifts the cool air up, and it helps cool the home, very simple, no pain. It does not cost you any more money. It does not require you to sacrifice the lifestyle that you have. All it requires you to do is reach up and pull the chain, that is all it requires, and you can help our Nation conserve. Keep doors closed as much as possible, especially on refrigerators. Do not circle a parking lot over and over instead, take the first spot available. How many of us do go to Wal-Mart, we go down to the grocery store and go through the parking lot three times or four times and see if we can find a parking spot that is 15 feet closer to the front door? Take the first available parking spot you saw, number one, walk into the store. It actually helps you get a little more exercise, takes off a few calories and you are wasting less energy. For somebody that goes down where there is parking, having a tough time finding parking in shopping centers, over a year period of time, you actually would be surprised how much consumption of gasoline you would save by simply taking the first parking spot available. Again, back to conservation. Here are some others. Now, this is one that is really a pet peeve for me. If you take a look, and I am asking all of my colleagues to pay special attention to this, because this is a significant conservation move that we can take that is totally and completely painless. What am I talking about? Tonight when you go home, colleagues take a look at your owner's manual in your car. Go into the glove compartment and pull out the owner's manual. Before you look at the owner's manual, remember a couple of basic things. Number one, that people who drafted it, who put that owner's manual together are the people who designed the car, the people who tested the car, the people who sell the car. If you look in there, go in there and see how often the people who know the most about your car how often they tell you to change the oil. My guess is that most of you will see in your owner's manual that your personal car oil only needs to be changed every 5,000 miles to 7,000 miles. Now, take a look at the campaign that has gone on over the last several years. There are a lot of people out there that want you to believe that if you do not change your oil every 3,000 miles, your car motor is going to be ruined. It is a very clever marketing ploy, and it has worked very successfully. There are hundreds of thousands of people in this country who religiously change their oil every 3,000 miles even though the owner's manual says change it every 5,000 or every 6,000. Let us say that if half of those people that change their oil every 3,000 miles now do what the owner's manual tells them to do and change it every 6,000, look what kind of savings you have. Look what you do to demand. Over a year period of time, you are talking about, you are talking about millions of barrels of oil, millions of barrels of oil. Yet, if we do this, there is no pain. Your car is not going to run any less efficient. You are not going to be restricted from driving anywhere. Life goes on just as it went on before, except now you are helping us reach some kind of solution. You are a reasonable person coming to a reasonable solution. You are a contributor to the solution. Let us go on. Make a grocery list and take fewer trips to the store; use public transportation or ride your bike or walk when you can; turn down cooling levels for your refrigerator or freezer; keep all exterior doors tightly shut and avoid frequent in and out traffic; lower the temperature of your hot water heater to 120 degrees. This is a pretty interesting one, because a lot of people do not know about this. Colleagues, tonight when you go home, take a look at your hot water heater, take a look at the hot water tank. On the bottom of the tank you are actually going to see a thermometer and you might find, to your surprise, that your thermometer is on high. I can tell you if you think, put your thermometer on low at about 120 degrees, that water is still too hot for you to stand in; 120 degrees is still too hot. You actually save energy, there is no reason to heat the water to 190 or higher. Heat it to 120. Move that little gauge to lower. And guess what? You are one of those reasonable people who help with a reasonable solution that has not impacted your life-style one iota. It has not impacted your life-style one bit. Very important you are part of the team. Take shorter showers. Now I know I have that on there. I can tell you it was snowing in my district. By the way, colleagues, as you know, my district is the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. We are at the highest elevation in the country. And after it snows in the middle of June, you like to go home and have a long hot shower. So I do not know, maybe that impacts life-style a little too much, but if it does not impact your life-style, go ahead and cut down your hot water showers. Let me tell you just the conservation elements that we have gone through to this point. We have not had to use millions of dollars of taxpayers' dollars to research whether these work or not. We have not had to put taxpayer credits out there, so that you have the money and you get credits to use against your taxes to see whether these work or to make them work. I can tell you, in my opinion, if the American people would follow the recommendations I have made this evening, we will have made more progress towards conservation, in my opinion, than any of these solar tax credits or other tax credits, we have spent hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars at the Federal level trying to find a Federal solution which generally does not work. Let us go on. Conservation. This is pretty interesting. I did not know this until about 3 weeks ago when I was researching it. Preheat your oven only when it is necessary to preheat it. Do my colleagues know that foods that take over an hour to cook do not require a preheated oven? In other words, if you have a roast and it is going to take more than an hour to cook it, do not preheat your oven, it does not do you any good. And not only does it not do you any good, if you do not preheat your oven, guess what happens? You save money. Because preheating an oven takes a lot of energy. You actually cut your own electrical bill. You improve your life- style, because you bring home more money at the end of the month. If your water heater, and this is important, was purchased about 1992, use a blanket around it. You can buy that blanket at a local convenience store. It probably pays for itself over a 6-month period of time. After 1992, there is some question as to whether or not the blanket is really going to help you with your hot water heater. A full refrigerator uses less energy to cool. If you have a refrigerator, and you just have a couple of cartons of milk and cheese and maybe 120th of your refrigerator has food in it, put some water bottles in there, occupy the space. It actually saves energy, and you have cold water to drink. Some of this stuff may sound mundane. Some of it he just keeps talking about conservation. He just keeps talking about conservation. Every item I have told you tonight is something that each and every one of us can utilize. This chart does not belong to one class. This chart does not belong that only one in one State can use it. This chart is for another. Every chart I have showed you on conservation hints or conservation suggestions work no matter where you use it. It works in California. It works in New York. It works in Florida. It works in Montana. Conservation, paint and decorate in light colors. Dark colors absorb light. Light colors reflect light. The lighter colors you use the less artificial lighting is required. You think we would all know that. But if you have a room with white walls, you are going to use a whole lot less electricity to light that room up than if you paint it with dark walls. Defrost food in the refrigerator instead of defrosting it in a microwave where you use a lot of extra energy. Place it in the refrigerator 24 hours before you need it. So tomorrow if you know that you are going to have, you have some frozen burritos in the freezer, instead of 5 minutes after you come home from work and 10 minutes before you have dinner stick it in the microwave to thaw it out, simply the night before, place it in the refrigerator. By the time you come back the next day, they would have thawed out on their own and ready to go right in the oven. It is a very simple step. Imagine if we had 200 million people going home from work and they were not defrosting in the microwave, you want to know something? That would help conserve electricity? Good idea. Every time your iron heats up, you burn more electricity than leaving your lights on for 4 consecutive hours. Try ironing all of your clothes at one time. This simple practice can make a surprising difference in your water and power bill. Clean the lint filter after every load. It says that on your dryer, clean that lint filter. Every time you turn that iron up, it is like lighting for 4 hours. That iron uses a lot of electricity. I am not saying do not use the iron. I am not saying that at all. What I am saying is, hey, let us do all of your clothes at once so you do not have to continually heat it up. Mr. Speaker, let us talk about a couple other simple things. Replace 60-watt bulbs that are left out overnight with two 15-watt bulbs. We talked about that. We talked about the use of the lights that use compact fluorescent bulbs. You have probably heard that. Here is another conservation, replace 150-watt bulb operating 5 hours a night with a 35-watt compact fluorescent bulb. Same lighting impact, no impact on life-style, but yet you are helping conserve in this country. Let us look at this one, here are some other easy steps, unplug or get rid of that refrigerator in the garage. Do you know how many people have an extra refrigerator in the garage? Millions. Do you know how many people have a freezer in the garage that does not have much in it? A lot of people. You probably do not really need it and if you figure it out, the average refrigerator, the extra refrigerator you have plugged in your garage uses about $16 a month in electricity. You figure out what kind of foods you have in that refrigerator you may have a couple six packs of beer and figure out at $16 dollars a, you figure how much, what that, about $192 dollars a year, just to be able to refrigerate it in the garage. Make a little more room in the refrigerator, put your beer in there. You are going to save a lot of electricity, and you are going to save yourself a lot of money. Use your dishwasher only when you have it full, the same thing with your clothes washer. If you have to cook a hot meal, wait until later in the evening until it is cool. That one is maybe kind of a little impractical, but it is not impractical for you to take a look and see if you really need that refrigerator in the garage. Let us look here. While on vacation, there are a lots of us colleagues that are going to be taking vacations this year. Here is some ideas, completely painless. It will not affect vacation. Set your air conditioner at 35 degrees at 85 degrees, excuse me, not 35 degrees, you get the opposite result, 85 degrees when you leave the home. My wife and I left this last weekend, and we have refrigerated air. Every air conditioner in our house we have three separate thermometers, three separate air conditioning units, one system, but three units and each of those units, that thermometer was at 90 degrees on all three of them. When we came home, it only inconvenienced us for about 15 minutes. The house was hot for about 15 minutes before that refrigerated air began to cool that home, and within half an hour, we were at the exact temperature we wanted to be. But in the meantime for 48 hours instead of those air conditioners running about every 20 minutes, they didn't run at all. That probably saved my wife and I $20 or $30 for the weekend. So you save money, you help conserve. We have talked about several basic things that we can do for conservation. Let me reiterate a few of my points and with my last 17 minutes, let me just kind of recap what I have said this evening. First of all, take a look. Cleaner air. We are making progress. Do not become distressed about the entire picture. There are certain areas that we really need to do something or we are going to have a lot of problems. One of them is our dependency on foreign oil. Our second one is to ignore conservation. We cannot ignore conservation, and we cannot continue to build our dependency on foreign oil. But some of the good things that are happening is, one, people in this country are willing to conserve. If we can help give ideas, tell your neighbor, talk about it at coffee. In California, they are in a crisis. Now they did not conserve because the Governor of California told them to conserve. They did not conserve because, all of a sudden, they felt like good citizens overnight. They conserve because they had a crisis. They conserve because they got their monthly utility bill. But none the less, their conservation cut electricity demand by 10 percent in the State of California last month alone. That is pretty good. That is positive. I want my colleagues to know that if one takes a look, cleaner air, energy consumption has risen while emissions have declined. We can make better cars. We can make cars with cleaner emissions. Now, the answer for our automobiles, for example, in my opinion, is not to eliminate the automobile, we would never do it on a practical aspect, and not to make such outrageous demands on the automobile manufacturers that the automobile they produce cannot go more than 30 miles an hour, cannot go up a hill. I live in the highest mountains of the United States. We have got to have cars that have power. We have to have SUVs up there. We need those kind of automobiles. But we do not need automobiles that get four miles to the gallon. Frankly, the automobile manufacturers had been responsive, not because they are all of a sudden good citizens, but because we the citizens are demanding more efficient automobiles. We are demanding better gasoline mileage; and after this energy crisis, we are going to demand more. But take a look. As I said earlier, mark my word, I think in a year and a half, at the outmost 2 years, we are going to have an electrical generation glut in this country. Let me give my colleagues some statistics. Right now, the power plant industry is in the midst of an unprecedented, unprecedented in our entire history, power building boom and adding more new power than the plant a week that was recently called for. Last year, 158 new generation plants were completed nationwide or three plants a week. The new units had an average capacity of 150 megawatts. That means about 150 homes. Let me just go on here. The electricity industry expects to build 1,453 new power units in the next 3 years. Taking time off for weekends, that amounts to one plant a day for 5 years running. Now, maybe all of these will not get built, but right now the electrical generation capacity plants designs in this country call for a new plant every day coming on-line for the next, as I said, for the next 5 years. So I think we are going to have an electrical generation glut. But that does not mean we have solved the problem. Number one, we have to have transmission lines. We have to move the electricity from point A to point B. Number two, we have got to continue a very aggressive educational campaign on conservation, points like I gave my colleagues, very harmless ways to help all of us, reasonable people bring about a solution for our energy crisis. But probably what is most important this evening, I can tell my colleagues, is it cannot be conservation alone. I am a big believer in conservation. I just spent the last hour going through with my colleagues where I think we can all conserve. The numbers that result from these conservation ideas that I gave are not insignificant numbers. These are not small numbers. These numbers make a difference. But while I say this, while I say that conservation will be of substantial benefit to our energy situation, I must also say that we have got to continue to look for, explore for natural resources, that we have got to continue to allow transmission lines, that we are going to have to have some refineries in this country. We cannot typically say that everything that is being built is a disaster, that everything being built means the end of our life as we know it, that everything being built is going to be a complete and ultimate decimation to our environment. There are a lot of reasonable proposals out there that can be made to work. Now, no project, no project should be approved without mitigation, in fact even higher than mitigation, and that is supplementation to the environment. On the other hand, when the environmental impacts have been mitigated, when the environment has been enhanced in some cases or may be enhanced to a degree in all cases, when we meet that standard, do not continue to say no. Do not continue to say it cannot happen in my backyard. When those standards are met, we as a Nation have a responsibility to the next generation. We have to have enough foresight for future generations to say yes to reasonable projects, yes to reasonable conservation. We have also got to have enough guts, frankly, to stand up here. We have tax credits that are not working, not only in Washington, but Washington is unique. There have been hundreds of millions of dollars wasted in tax credits for so-called alternative energy. Well, what are the results. Do not let people divert us from looking at the bottom line. Are we getting the results that we want simply because of what they call their project: ``My project is the solar project, so do not dare ask me any questions about what is the bottom result.'' Are we really coming out with a product that is efficient for our environment? Are we really conserving energy for the hundreds of millions of dollars we are spending? It was amazing to me how many people criticize the President in his budget when he says this program has not produced. This program sounds good. It has got a great name, especially in an energy crisis. It has got lots of special interest groups in Washington who benefit from those tax credits, pushing, how dare you say no to this alternative or that alternative. But the reality of it is, one, we have to conserve; two, we have to explore and find new resources for our energy; and, three, the money that we are currently spending, the taxpayer dollars, my colleagues' dollars, their constituents' dollars, we have to justify, we have got to treat those dollars as if they were our own. We have an incumbent responsibility, an inherent responsibility to manage those dollars. No matter how nice sounding or how progressively sounding a program is, if it is not giving us results, we have got to have enough guts to stand up and cut it off. In summary, Madam Speaker, I think this energy crisis is limited. Over the long-term, obviously we have issues. We cannot continue to grow in dependency on foreign oil. But California is unique. California is more the exception than the rule. California, a large part, brought this on itself. But California is a large part of the United States. We all want to help California despite the criticisms we have; and some of the whipping that California gets they have got coming. But a lot of it, they do not. Californians I think are exercising responsibility by practicing conservation. But the reality is this, reasonable people can come together and have reasonable solutions that, one, protect our environment; two, conserve for future generations; three, lower dependency on foreign oil; and, four, do not have a negative impact on the life-style to which we have all become accustomed. If we can meet those four, five standards, we have done pretty well. I think reasonable people can do that.

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, it is my honor to stand before you today and pay tribute to the shinning star of the Western Slope of Colorado. That's where John Billings the Grammy Man resides. He is only the second man ever to create, by hand, each gold gramophone statue that is presented at the GRAMMYs. Every year since 1958, that gold gramophone has been handed to some of the biggest recording stars in the industry. John is the only person allowed by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences to make what is arguably the industry's highest honor--the Grammy statuette. When John started in 1977, there were only 51 categories, today there are 100. John spends five months a year casting about 300 awards. ``Its kind of unique that in just 43 years, two of us have made them,'' John said. ``It's a dying art and a lost craft, and somebody's got to keep it alive.'' John grew up in Van Nuys, California during the 1960's, where he used to hang around the garage workshop of his neighbor Bob Graves, the original maker of the Grammy statuette. After Bob began to lose his eyesight making the creation of the statues difficult, he asked John if he would like to become the next craftsman. He would spend the next 7 years learning the craft. ``One of the last things he said to me was `Don't ever let anyone get those Grammys away from you'.'' When John cannot make the award any longer, he will pass the tradition to his son. For the last 25 years John has perfected its design. ``I have sat in the audience for so many years, and I sit there and cry. To see something that I have made to honor this person, and they're standing there holding it up in the air like it's an Olympic medal. There is really a lot of pride in that, and I think that's what keeps me going.'' Mr. Speaker, the statue is a labor of love and a matter of pride for John. Los Angeles may be the real home of the Grammy Awards, but Ridgeway, Colorado is much bigger in the eyes of the music industry. He is truly one of a kind.

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this moment to honor World War II veteran Alford Lee Gray of Olathe, Colorado. Alford endured the terrors of the War, including the Battle of Leyte, in order to help ensure a victory on the side of justice. While mere words cannot express Alford's heroism, I am proud to have this opportunity to honor the valor he exhibited during the war. Even before World War II, Alford was well aware that sacrifice and persistence are sometimes needed for survival. A witness of the Depression, Alford also discovered the necessity of teamwork. He says, ``You relied on your neighbor and he relied on you. Without knowing it, I think we took that feeling into the war with us,'' said Alford in a article from the Montrose Daily Press. Indeed, these lessons seem to have provided him with the means not only to survive, but also to help ensure an American victory. Alford demonstrated remarkable heroism when it was most needed of him. Before the Battle of Leyte, Japanese Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita expected to stamp out the American resistance, and he armed himself with weapons to complete that feat. Kurita's 18-inch guns, Japanese Zeros, and incendiary bombs destroyed several of American Admiral William F. Halsey's ships, including the U.S.S. Kitkun Bay, on which Alford resided. Then, according to Alford, ``A Kamikaze came out of nowhere and exploded on deck,'' resulting in such terrible damage that the men were given permission to abandon ship. Even in this precarious state, however, Alford and others followed the captain's commands to extinguish the fires and somehow got the ship back to Pearl Harbor. ``After the Battle of Leyte, I counted 270 holes punched through the side of our ship. Some of the shells had gone completely through the Kitkun Bay. I don't know why we were still floating after that fight,'' said Alford. In spite of the severe damage to Halsey's ships, American forces destroyed ten Japanese cruisers, four carriers, three battleships, and nine destroyers. Thanks to the teamwork and courage of men like Alford, what the Japanese expected to be an easy victory turned into a cruel defeat. In fact, the Japanese would never recover from this crucial defeat. In recognition of his valor, Alford Gray has been honored with a Good Conduct Medal, an Asiatic Pacific Ribbon with five stars, a World War II Victory Medal, a Philippine Liberation Medal, and a Presidential Citation. Today, Mr. Speaker, I ask Congress to also recognize and honor Alford Lee Gray for his legendary bravery and sacrifice. He is a great American who plainly deserves the thanks and esteem of this body.

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to ask Congress to pay tribute to one of Colorado's leading citizens. Earlier this year 41-year-old Cindy Calerich of Monte Vista passed away unexpectedly. Throughout her life, Cindy donated her time to help others. For that she was named its ``Hero'' for the past year, an award given as an honorary memorial tribute by the San Luis Valley Red Cross. A Colorado native, Cindy moved to the San Luis Valley 5 years ago. For the last two and a half years she volunteered at the San Luis Valley Red Cross. She spent most of her time on call for disaster services and assisted families in the San Luis Valley during emergency situations. Several times a week, coupled with her on call status, she went into the Red Cross office and helped answer phones and entered computer data. During the Sand Dunes fire, Cindy worked three days straight without any sleep to assist in feeding and caring for the families who were relocated, and the firefighters involved in the disaster. Cindy also volunteered for the Alamosa Search and Rescue Service. According to the Red Cross, Cindy will always be remembered as ``someone who was always on call and willing to help.'' Cindy donated a great deal of her time to the Red Cross to help those in need, while managing to raise her son Ben. Mr. Speaker, Cindy is a role model to her friends and family for all that she has done for those families that needed a helping hand. Family, friends, co-workers and the community will miss her. Cindy touched many lives and for that Congress should take a moment to remember her and thank her for her helping hand.

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, I stand before Congress today to pay tribute to a man that put duty, honor and the lives of others before his own safety and well-being. Master Sergeant Roy P. Benavidez, a former Green Beret Soldier, received the Congressional Medal of Honor in 1981 for his service to this country. He has been an outstanding citizen and deserves the thanks and praise of Congress for all that he has done. Roy was born in 1935 in Texas. He joined the Army at the age of 19. Then Staff Sergeant Benavidez served two tours of duty with the U.S. Army's Green Berets during the Vietnam War. On the Morning of May 2, 1968, he heard the cry ``get us out of here'' over his radio. Roy voluntarily led the emergency extraction of a 12-man special forces unit that was ambushed while gathering intelligence. Prior to arriving at the team's position he was wounded in his right leg, face and head. Despite these wounds and heavy fire, he dragged half of the wounded soldiers to awaiting aircraft. Roy was then shot in the stomach and thigh, hit in the back by grenade fragments and stabbed by a bayonet. Roy was still able to return fire, call in air strikes, administer morphine and recover classified documents. His fearless leadership, devotion to duty and fellow soldiers and valorous actions earned Roy the Distinguished Service Cross. In 1981 President Ronald Reagan presented the Congressional Medal of Honor to Roy at the Pentagon. Roy has also been awarded the Combat Infantry Badge, the Purple Heart Medal with two Oak Leaf Clusters, the Vietnam Campaign Medal with Four Battle Stars, the Vietnam Service Medal, the air Medal and numerous other decorations. In June of 2001, the Colorado Springs Parks and Recreation Department will honor Roy by dedicating a park in his name. Mr. Speaker, Master Sergeant Roy Benavidez was a true American hero. He was wounded over 40 times while saving his fellow soldiers. He performed above and beyond the call of duty. His gallantry, loyalty and strong sense of duty far superseded any concerns for his own safety. He promoted patriotism, staying in school and encouraged continuing education. It is for this, that I ask Congress to pay special tribute to this living, breathing American hero.

Mr. McINNIS

Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to pay special tribute to La Veta, Colorado on its 125th Birthday. For over a century, the people of La Veta have contributed a rich heritage and cultural diversity to the state of Colorado. I would like Congress to wish the citizens of La Veta a very happy 125th birthday. In 1862, Col. John M. Francisco, a former settler with the US Army at Fort Garland, and Judge Henry Daigle built Fort Francisco on land purchased from the Vigil-St. Vrain Land Grant, significantly south west of most of the San Luis Valley bound traffic. When Col. John Francisco looked down on the future site of La Veta in the mid 1850's he said, ``This is paradise enough for me.'' The town of La Veta was incorporated on October 9, 1876. As more settlers moved into this beautiful and fertile valley, the Fort increased in importance as shelter from Indians and as the commercial center for the area. The first Post Office, named Spanish Peaks, opened in the Plaza in 1871. By 1875 the Indian threat was almost completely gone. In 1876 the narrow gauge railroad came through La Veta several blocks north of the Fort on its way westward through the newly surveyed La Veta Pass. In 1877 the permanent rail depot was built beside the rails and the business community slowly moved north toward it. For many years, this stretch of the line between La Veta and Wagon Creek was the highest in the world. The old depot building at the summit is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The mountains of the Sangre de Cristo Range were long known by the Indians of the Southwest. Relics of the Basket Weaver Culture have also been found within the county. The Spanish Peaks are a historic landmark to travelers--from the early Indians to the vacationer. Besides being the railhead, La Veta has also been the center of local agriculture and coal mining. Mr. Speaker, the citizens of Colorado are proud of La Veta's 125-year heritage. It is an area rich in culture, history and heritage. For that Mr. Speaker, I would like to wish La Veta happy birthday and wish its citizens good luck and prosperity for the next 125 years.