Lisa Murkowski

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I ask that the unanimous consent request be modified, that my amendment which is at the desk be agreed to, and that the bill be read a third time and passed.

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I do object.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, today is an opportunity for us in the next 45 minutes to talk about a celebration. We have had some pretty serious business under discussion here on the Senate Floor, and today I and my colleague, Senator Stevens, joined by others, rise to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Senate passage of the Alaska Statehood Act, the act which eventually conveyed statehood upon the great State of Alaska after a fight for equal rights and representation that lasted literally decades. After a long and contentious battle, both in Congress and across the country, the Senate passed the Alaska Statehood Act 50 years ago, on June 30, by a vote of 64 to 20. The act was signed into law 7 days later by President Eisenhower, and Alaska officially became a State on January 3, 1959. This was the headline in the Anchorage Daily News announcing, ``We're In.'' Our territorial Governor, Mike Stepovich, President Eisenhower, and Secretary Seaton are in this photo that we look to in our State's very young history with great fondness. This year across the State, there will be celebrations all over put on by communities, by clubs, by businesses, by the State government. To help kick off this celebration, I would like to briefly remember a little bit of the history of a very rough journey toward statehood. The territory of Alaska was bought from Russia in 1867. I know many students, when they are looking at their history books, learn that it was dubbed ``Seward's Folly.'' It was World War II and the Cold War that really transformed the face of Alaska, however. Having a strategically critical location for both wars, Alaska saw a large increase in Federal money and population in the 1930s and the 1940s. While the aspiration for statehood had existed for many years and though Alaska had a delegate to Congress since 1906, it was during this time period that a serious and motivated and modern statehood movement rose up and captured the attention of Alaskans across the State. The Alaska Statehood Committee was formed in 1949. This committee of 11 Alaskans was bipartisan. No more than six could belong to the same party, and at least two members had to come from each of the four judicial districts Alaska had at the time. They were given the task of publicizing and educating the public on statehood, both in Alaska and nationally, as well as framing a State constitution. As early as 1946, though, 3 years before the Statehood Committee was formed, there was a large majority of Americans who were already very supportive of Alaskan statehood. A Gallup Poll that year indicated that 64 percent of Americans were in favor of statehood, with only 12 percent opposed. The percentage of supportive Americans grew to 81 percent by 1950. But even then, nearly a decade still remained in what became a bitter battle against special interests. The wealthy salmon canning industry was the primary lobbying group that opposed statehood at the time. The salmon canners would put fish traps at the mouth of some of Alaska's largest rivers, and they caught nearly 30 percent of Alaska's salmon every year, sending the yearly salmon catch plummeting from 924 million pounds to 360 million pounds over a 20-year period. Alaska was in a tough spot. They were powerless to resist. With 99 percent of the territory's land owned by the Federal Government and with very little control over resource policy, the industry was pretty much free to devastate one of the State's most valuable renewable resources, and that was our Alaskan salmon. This desire for a say in our own affairs only grew the intense desire of Alaskans to attain statehood for themselves. The newspaper the New York Journal-American summed up the situation this way: Alaska wants statehood with the fervor men and women give to a transcendent cause. An overwhelming number of men and women voters in the United States want statehood for Alaska. This Nation needs Alaskan statehood to advance her defense, sustain her security, and discharge her deep moral obligation. In 1950, after years of thwarted attempts to bring an Alaska statehood bill to the floor of either Chamber of Congress despite the strong support of President Truman, a bill actually got a floor vote. It passed the House of Representatives, but it failed over here in the Senate. Frustrated by repeated legislative defeats, Alaskans decided to write a State constitution. This was done in 1955. We decided to do it to show the country that we were politically mature and genuinely ready for statehood. After a 75-day Constitutional Convention at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, a constitution was adopted by the delegates and ratified by Alaskans. It was later described by the National Municipal League as ``one of the best, if not the best state constitutions ever written.'' The way it dealt with natural resources was particularly distinctive and ingenious. The State's natural resources were viewed as a public trust and were required to be developed for ``maximum use consistent with the public interest [and] for the maximum benefit of its people.'' Development based on ``sustainable yield'' was constitutionally mandated. To this day, the State continues to operate on this principle in our fisheries, minerals, fossil fuel development, and our timber. One example of the results of this policy is that Alaska is the only region in the United States that has no overfished fish stocks. Two years after the constitution was ratified and 50 years ago, on May 28, the House of Representatives voted on the bill that would eventually confer statehood upon Alaska. The bill passed the House 210 to 166. The Senate passed it 64 to 20, and then President Eisenhower signed it into law. Over 15 years passed between April 2, 1943, when the first bill was introduced, and June 30, 1958, when the final bill was passed. We were officially a State on January 3, 1959. I have been perusing the Congressional Record to kind of get a sense of the Senate debate at the time, the debate that preceded Alaska's entry into the American Union. I am a born and raised Alaskan. I have found the record absolutely fascinating. It includes enthusiastic and very passionate arguments in favor of statehood but also countered by lawmakers who saw Alaska's entry into the Union as being a huge mistake. There is even an occasional Communist threat reference, a reminder that this debate occurred against the backdrop of the Cold War. Some of the arguments against statehood included the fact that Alaska was not contiguous with the rest of the United States; Alaska was not sufficiently developed economically or politically to be ready for statehood. There was also a reference to the fact that Alaska doesn't produce enough agriculture. There were provisions granting Federal land to the State. They alleged it was a huge Federal giveaway, but keep in mind that the Federal Government still owns over half of the State of Alaska. But really the argument centered around the concern that Alaska would be a huge burden on the Federal Government financially. Senator Richard Neuberger of Oregon, who was a supporter and was presiding over the Senate during the historic Alaska statehood rollcall vote, said that Alaska statehood would afford the United States the opportunity to show that ``we practice what we preach.'' Neuberger said: For decades we have preached democracy to the rest of the world, yet we have denied full self-government to our vast outposts to the north, despite many assurances that such would not be the case. He continued on by saying: The voice of America may talk of democracy, but its message will ring hollowly through the rest of the Free World if America fails to practice democracy. In the crucible of world opinion, we shall be tested by deeds and not words. Statehood for Alaska will be a tangible deed. Among Alaska's greatest friends in the Senate were both Senators from Washington State, Henry ``Scoop'' Jackson and Warren Magnuson. Jackson told his colleagues that the time was ``past due'' for the admission of Alaska to the Union, while Magnuson said it in another way. He said: Alaska has sat impatiently in the anteroom of history for 42 years. These comments represent only a fraction of the Alaska statehood debate which began years before the last frontier became the 49th State, but still they offer some valuable perspective on the challenges and obstacles our forefathers faced on the road to statehood. A few of my colleagues will be joining us over the next half hour or so to help remember and reenact the debate that occurred 50 years ago. I am grateful for their willingness to join me in celebrating our 50th anniversary of the 49th star on the flag. I mentioned that Alaska has been referred to as ``Seward's Folly.'' I don't think many people know that we also were referred to as ``Icebergia,'' obviously a reference to the colder environment up there. But Alaska has since made incredibly significant contributions to our great Nation. I do not think anyone considers Alaska a folly. We provide 55 percent of America's seafood, we attracted 1.5 million tourists last summer to the State, and we have been a stable domestic supplier of U.S. oil needs for the past 30 years. Alaska is proud to be ``the Great Land'' in the greatest Nation in the world. I am privileged to represent its people here in the United States. With that, I yield the floor to my senior colleague, Senator Stevens.

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, it is with great honor and respect that today I acknowledge the 80th birthday of a great friend and leader in Alaska. Governor William ``Bill'' Sheffield has been a leader in business and government for most of the 55 years he has lived in Alaska. He served as Governor from 1982 to 1986, following a business career in which he built a company that became one of the largest private employers in Alaska and the Yukon Territory. Governor Sheffield came to Alaska in 1953 as a regional sales representative for Sears Roebuck in charge of television sales and service. He became one of the top salesmen in the nation during the 1950s and began his leadership in business groups such as the Jaycees and the Chamber of Commerce. In 1960, he purchased an Anchorage hotel, and founded Sheffield Enterprises. In 1964, literally the day before the great Alaska earthquake of March 27, 1964, he opened a new hotel in Anchorage. This began an expansion that eventually saw his company grow to 16 hotels with 750 employees. He sold the company in 1987 to Holland America Line-westours, one of the major players in Alaska's growing tourism market. While in business, Sheffield served as president of the Alaska State Chamber of Commerce and the Alaska Visitors Association. As a candidate for Governor in 1982, Bill Sheffield's theme was ``bringing the state together'', a reference to a pair of divisive ballot initiatives that same year. His message of inclusion and cooperation helped him win the governorship in a landslide. Governor Sheffield then turned his attention to curbing the runaway growth in State government, promoting efficient business-style management of public works projects and saving more of Alaska's energy revenues for future generations. Currently, Governor Sheffield serves as port director of the Port of Anchorage, where he oversees a critical and all-encompassing port expansion. The port is a military strategic port and serves 80 percent of Alaskans with 90 percent of their goods. He is also a trustee of Alaska Pacific University, a member of the advisory board of ENSTAR Natural Gas, and a charter member of Commonwealth North, one of Alaska's leading public affairs forum. He is the past chairman of the Federal Salary Council; recently he received the Lifetime Achievement Award in Business from the Alaska Business Monthly; the former president and CEO of the Alaska Railroad Corporation and now serves on its board of directors. In recognition of his service to the railroad and to the State of Alaska, the Alaska Railroad Depot at the Ted Stevens International Airport was named in his honor in 1999. Governor Sheffield has always believed that wisdom comes with the experience of making your own payroll. He credits his success in business and government from having the experience of workers depending on him alone for their paycheck. Lastly, Bill Sheffield, a lifelong Democrat, is one of the best examples of someone who puts partisanship aside, rolls up their sleeves and works with anyone who is also dedicated to achieving important goals for the greater good. Whether in business, politics, education or many other endeavors that have benefited so many people, he is a leader and example for all of us. I would also be remiss if I didn't mention that Bill is an excellent duck hunter, fisherman and avid outdoorsman. Mr. President, I am proud to call Bill Sheffield a friend and I hope the entire Congress will join me in wishing him well on the 80th anniversary of his birth. Happy Birthday, Bill. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I want to thank my senior colleague for his comments. It is rare that we have an opportunity to speak from such personal knowledge about the battle for statehood. As he spoke, I imagined Senator Stevens sitting up there in the galley watching this debate anxiously as the future of Alaska was being decided. So it is an honor to work with him representing the people of Alaska. But for him to be able to share this historical perspective is wonderful. Our neighbors to the south in Washington have worked with us on so many different issues over the years. As I mentioned in my comments, Senator Jackson and Senator Magnuson were big advocates for statehood for the State of Alaska. I am delighted that our colleague, Senator Murray, has agreed to join us in talking about Alaska's statehood.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, so much discussion has taken place of late about the high price of energy and what it is doing to family budgets. We don't need to tell the American consumer what is going on with high prices. They are living it directly in each and every one of our States. At today's prices, Americans are paying $1.6 billion daily to buy fuel. This is about twice what they paid 2 years ago. The national average price of gasoline passed the $4.08-per-gallon mark, and fuel is consuming about 6 percent of the typical household budget. This eats up the money families need for food, clothing, medicine, education, 6 percent of the average U.S. household budget. In my State of Alaska--you hear me say this all the time--our statistics are a little bit different. I need to let you know what kind of a hit Alaska's families are taking when it comes to high energy prices. Right now, in Anchorage, the State's largest community, it is about 10 percent of the typical household budget that is directed toward energy costs. In the southeastern part of the State, where I was born and spent my early years, they are seeing about 14 percent of their family budget going toward energy costs. In the community of Fairbanks, up in the interior, where I spent my growing-up years in high school and years as a young adult, 22 percent of the household budget is going toward their energy costs. Nearly a quarter of the family budget is going into home heating fuel, into gas at the pump, into keeping their home warm during the long winter months--22 percent of the family budget. As I have said before, people in Alaska are no longer angry about their energy prices. They are very afraid. You cannot continue on a trend such as this with this much of the family budget being dedicated to your energy prices and still survive. There has been great debate on this floor about, How do we fix it? How do we reduce the price of energy for the American family? There are some who imply the way to reduce energy prices is to perhaps punish the oil companies with tax hikes for the current high prices. The second option for some is to punish OPEC for their energy production levels by somehow dragging foreign nations into U.S. courts. I would like to suggest that while maybe it might make some people feel good if they know we are imposing higher taxes on the energy industry, it is probably not a good idea for the 23 percent of individual Americans who own energy stocks or those who have pension funds, 27 percent of which are invested in energy stocks, or those who own mutual funds who have 29.5 percent of their funds invested in energy companies. The problem we really have with additional taxation of the energy companies is, while it is going to funnel more revenue to the Federal Government--we have demonstrated this in the past--it is going to give us in Congress more money to spend on bureaucracy, but it is not necessarily going to do anything to increase our energy supplies, and it will not do anything to lower our energy prices. In fact, by taking money away from the energy companies, they are going to have less money to invest in searching for and producing more energy. Those are the things that will ultimately reduce energy prices into the future. As far as this ``NOPEC'' concept of hauling OPEC nations into U.S. courts, no one has really explained just how this is all really going to work, how we would collect a judgment and still maintain access to world supplies of energy, and more importantly, how that would actually get money back into the pockets of American consumers or how that would keep American companies from being dragged constantly into foreign courts. Asking OPEC to produce more of their energy and then threatening to drag them into American courts if their production levels fall--which is what we have seen in this country--does not make sense to me. Instead, it seems to me the best way we can drive down fuel prices is for us to produce more in America, giving the jobs to Americans, and keep the royalties and tax revenues in U.S. hands. I have said many times on this floor that it is not just all about increased production. We have to do more to encourage energy conservation, to encourage fuel efficiency. We have to do more to promote and develop the renewable energy technologies. Just last week in the Energy Committee, we had a fascinating discussion about a process for using algae to produce hydrocarbons from which gasoline can then be made. It is a ``green crude'' type concept. It is wonderful to be exploring opportunities such as this. Hopefully, we are going to reach an agreement on a compromise to continue the tax aid to encourage wind, solar, biomass, geothermal, ocean energy, and nuclear development. The fact is, we need to do more of everything to promote lower energy prices. We have to do more to promote efficiency, more to promote alternatives, and more to produce traditional fuels in America. One of my colleagues, the fine Senator from Tennessee, has summed it up in four simple words: We have to find more, use less--pretty simple. What a philosophy. What an energy policy. But on the ``finding more'' aspect, we need to produce more from the Outer Continental Shelf. We need to produce more onshore from the Arctic Coastal Plain up in Alaska. We need to do more in the oil shales in the West. We need to produce more natural gas from the OCS but also from the formations in Texas and the Appalachians. We have to protect, but streamline permitting rules so new refineries can be built. We need to be working harder so we can tap America's energy--really our ace in the hole-- which is our vast coal reserves and our vast hydrate resources, and do this in a way that can be done without increasing carbon emissions into the atmosphere. We also need to make sure there is sufficient transmission capacity to move the power to where we need it once it has been produced. Some act as if we in this country cannot produce more energy. They imply that either we do not have anything left to produce or we cannot do it without harming the environment. I think both of those views are just plain wrong. Look at the mean estimates of the undiscovered resources. This is what the USGS and the MMS have on line. We have an even chance of being able to produce 85.8 billion barrels of oil and 419.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. That is 10 times our remaining proven reserves of oil and nearly 15 times our proven reserves of gas. This is a decade's supply of oil for this Nation. America still has a third of all the oil Saudi Arabia has, and it is just waiting to be discovered. That does not include the 1.8 trillion barrels of oil shale or the 1,000-year supply of methane hydrates we possess in this country. In Alaska alone, when we are talking about coal reserves--we say we are the Saudi Arabia of coal--we need to recognize the resource is there. On the floor earlier, there have been claims that I would like to respond to that we do not need to lease more acreage onshore or offshore because oil companies have millions of acres under lease from which they are not producing energy. That claim in part is true, but the part that is left out is exactly why we need to make better lands available for oil development in the country. Clearly, oil companies are not going to spend billions of dollars a year up front to lease lands, for the opportunity to explore and pay yearly fees to keep the leases in place, just to let them sit idle. In most cases, companies are not producing because they are still evaluating the potential of the leases. In other cases, you have oil finds that are so small that they are just not yet commercial to develop without additional oil being found nearby. Up in Alaska, in the National Petroleum Reserve, it may take as many as 14 years for the leases to be developed, while dealing with the environmental permitting and logistics issues you face in an area that is as geographically remote as NPRA is, in order to bring these leases into production. In addition, we have extremely short windows in terms of the exploration and construction season, which we have in place to avoid the impacts on wildlife. But the primary reason is that the companies spend millions of dollars on seismic and exploratory wells but still find very little. Even with the technology, with the 3-D seismic, companies gamble when they bid for leases, and they oftentimes find nothing. So if we made more prospective areas open to exploration, then more oil would likely be found. So this is not necessarily the result of some conspiracy, but the fact is that oil is hard to find. To wrap up, can we be energy independent immediately? No, we cannot. But can we help ourselves produce enough oil to help meet global demand, lowering prices, and keep our families from going broke? Yes, I believe we can. We know how to protect the environment in the process of development. We can protect wilderness. We already have in the State of Alaska. We have set aside an area that is nearly as large as all of Oregon, and this is in wilderness forever, never to be touched. But let's allow some of the land that is likely to contain oil and gas--not just places that don't--let's allow them to be open for exploration and production. So let's put aside some of these preconceived biases that I think both parties and both of our constituencies hold. Let's shelve the campaign rhetoric and actually do something that is good for the short- term and long-term good of the Nation. I believe we can do it. I believe this is change in which we all can believe. I yield the floor.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

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

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, there has been a great deal of discussion on the floor of the Senate today, certainly, about the price of oil and the impacts the high energy costs are having on our States across the Nation. I rise today to talk a little bit about one solution, one aspect of the solution for our energy woes in this country, and that is increased domestic production. Before I begin my comments, I acknowledge it is only one piece of the puzzle as we deal with the high price of energy in this country. Increased domestic production is one aspect of it, but we also have the other components. Certainly we must do more to focus our technologies to advance the renewables and the alternative energy sources in this country. Then the third leg of my three-legged energy stool is the focus on conservation and efficiency. I think it is fair to say that we in this country simply do not do enough yet, and that is something we must move toward and move toward in a dramatic manner. We had a situation in the capital of Alaska about 6 weeks or so ago. The community of Juneau was left without their source of hydroelectric power when a series of avalanches took out the transmission lines that connected the source of hydro to the State's capital. Literally overnight, that community was plunged into a situation where they were going to be powering that community off of diesel. They were looking at a fivefold increase in their energy prices. The communities said: What do we do? We can't do this. All of a sudden we had a community--a population--that said: I can't afford to pay utility bills that are five times what I am already paying in terms of energy usage. So that community came together in a time of crisis and in 1 week's time reduced their energy consumption by 30 percent, and moved on then further in the next couple of months to reduce their energy consumption in Juneau, AK, by about 40 percent. They did it through everything. Juneau, as my colleagues may know, is in a rain forest. It is pretty damp. There is usually not much need for clothespins, but every clothespin in Juneau was snapped up literally as people said: Well, I can't afford to run the dryer. We are going to figure out ways in our households where we learn to conserve. That focus--that very specific focus on conservation now because we are in a time of crisis--produced some pretty dramatic results. I think that community can stand as an example of how we in this country can work together to make a difference to reduce our energy consumption. I wish to talk a little bit this afternoon about the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in the State of Alaska and how opening ANWR to oil exploration and development could help lower the price of petroleum for decades into the future. Over the past couple of days, we have heard several colleagues--well, not several; we have all been talking about the high prices of fuel that people are facing. I have heard a lot from some about encouraging foreign nations, whether it is Saudi Arabia or others, to produce more oil so that we can drive down the price of fuel for our benefit. We have heard that imposing perhaps a windfall profits tax on the oil companies would somehow or other lower prices, but the explanation for exactly why that would occur has been a bit sketchy to me. But I have heard almost nothing--almost nothing--from some of the Members of this body on why America should not produce more oil itself, keeping the jobs in America, keeping the wealth in America for our benefit, America's benefit, not the benefit of Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, or Nigeria. We can pass many laws in Congress, and we can repeal many laws, but we cannot repeal the law of supply and demand. I am not the first person to stand on the Senate floor and say that. If we want to lower our prices, we have to figure out how we can increase our Nation's fuel supplies. On June 5, in the Washington Post, there was an opinion piece by George Will. He talked about the fact that America does have a national energy policy. According to Will: America says to the foreign producers: We prefer not to pump our oil, so please pump more of yours, thereby lowering its value, for our benefit. That was his statement about our national policy. That is a crazy national energy policy. No wonder it hasn't worked. I ask unanimous consent that this full column by Mr. Will be printed in the Record.

Ms. MURKOWSKI. On the floor this week, some Senators have argued that by opening ANWR and causing physical disturbance to just 2000 acres, which is what we are talking about, of the Arctic coastal plain--and this area is about one-sixth the size of Washington Dulles Airport that would likely result in the production of about 1 million barrels of new oil a day--isn't going to have much of an impact on prices. I want to quote the senior Senator from New York, who said on May 13: If Saudi Arabia were to increase its production by 1 million barrels per day, that translates to a reduction of 20 percent to 25 percent in the world price of crude oil, and crude oil prices could fall by more than $25 a barrel. . . . In turn, that would lower the price of gasoline between 13 and 17 percent, or by more than 62 cents off the expected summer regular-grade price, offering much-needed relief to struggling families. Now, earlier this afternoon, the same Senator said opening ANWR would ``have little impact'' on lowering prices. I am not going to suggest that I know what he was thinking there, but I believe what he intended to say was that opening ANWR would have little impact on lowering prices immediately. In fact, if we were to vote in Congress today, this very moment, to open ANWR, we would not actually see the oil down the line into the lower 48 States for between 5 to 7 or 8 years. But I do believe the Senator who made those comments is wrong about both the short-term and the long-term effects of opening ANWR to oil development. He was right when he said last month that adding more oil to the world supply chain would increase supply and help drive down the prices. I think that is just as true in the years ahead as it is today. We recognize that our actions in this Nation, in terms of the statements that we send and what we are willing to do and what we are willing to commit to--if America were to finally tell the world that we are willing to produce more fuel ourselves, that we are serious about producing more of the energy we consume, I believe it would result in lower prices immediately--not in the 5 years it is going to take to get ANWR oil flowing, but it would bring down prices because it would have a psychological impact. In 1995, President Clinton vetoed the legislation that would have opened ANWR. If he had not at that point done that, and we had moved ahead, more than likely we would be seeing an additional 1 million barrels of oil flowing to the market right now. I believe and contend that oil would have prevented the prices from reaching today's exorbitant levels. To go back to George Will's column, he says everyone who has worked to block U.S. oil development over the past several decades is ``complicit in taking $10 away from every American who buys 20 gallons of gasoline.'' We talk a lot about ANWR and the potential out there and the controversy that, well, you can't open something if it doesn't have the support of the American people. I think we are being deceptive if we are saying the American people do not support the exploration in the 1002 area. According to a May 29 Gallup Poll, 57 percent of Americans support ``allowing drilling in U.S. coastal and wilderness areas now off limits'' to development. In Alaska alone, the Alaskans who had expressed their support over the years--it has historically been 75 percent-plus of Alaskans who do support opening ANWR. We are seeing that support grow not only in the State, but we are looking at truly exorbitant prices, and we are seeing it across the country as well. Just yesterday, there was a nice fellow from Indiana who called my office to say he started a petition campaign on his own--just acting on his own volition--to help win support for opening ANWR. He said in just a few weeks he gathered thousands of signatures from citizens, not just in Indiana but in a number of States, in support of opening ANWR. Just last night, I heard a radio commercial from a group, and I didn't even know they existed. They were gathering signatures in support of opening ANWR to exploration and development. I think the American people know what some Members in Congress seemingly don't; that is, the need for America to expand its domestic production, expand that in a manner that we can move as quickly as possible and affect the high prices that we are seeing in this country. Again, it is not just increased domestic production. That is one aspect of it. I spoke a little bit about the Juneau example and how we in this Nation need to be doing more to conserve and achieve greater efficiency. I was home in the State this weekend and folks in Alaska are driving through some pretty rough roads and are driving through tough conditions. People there like SUVs and trucks, but it is not just because they are big and powerful; they are necessary. So driving by some of the lots this weekend, I can tell you just about everything for sale in the lots was the big trucks. People are looking at them and saying: I can't afford to fill up my vehicle anymore. I was in the fishing community of Dillingham on Saturday. They are preparing to go out for their first fish opener on Monday. Some of those boats are not going out because they cannot afford to fuel up. In Dillingham, the spring barge just came in a couple weeks ago. The price of gas at the pump there jumped up over a dollar in 1 day. They are paying $5.50 for unleaded. Diesel is $6.50-plus. It affects everything in the community, not just what is happening when you fill up your car. They are paying $8 for a gallon of milk. They are paying $10 for a carton of orange juice. When I went in to get a cup of coffee, a young woman said: I don't know how long we can stay in business. People from the small villages surrounding Dillingham are coming in because they cannot afford to fill up. The communities are suffering terribly. It is not just anger that we are seeing from the people in Alaska over the high prices that happened this winter. People were angry about what they are paying. Now what is happening is they are scared. They have nowhere to go. When your village cannot keep the lights on and you have to move to the regional hub and you realize there is no place for you to live, it is just as expensive, and there is no way to go, you say: I will go to town, to Anchorage or Fairbanks. But do you know what. The people don't have the money to get the airplane ticket out of town to get to a community where, again, the energy prices are through the roof. We have challenges in this Nation the likes of which I don't know that we have seen before because it is our energy and our ability to utilize our energy sources that keep this country as great as it is. We cannot have rural Alaska and rural America imploding because we haven't helped address the high cost of energy. The answers are there. It is increased domestic production. It is renewables and alternatives and the technologies we can advance. And it is conservation and efficiency. We will keep working on it. I think the people are going to be hearing a lot more about what many of us think is the shorter term solution, and that is increased production. With that, I yield the floor.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I stand this evening to speak about the Boxer substitute to the Warner-Lieberman carbon cap-and-trade bill. I have had an opportunity for several days now to hear discussion from both sides. I think coming from a State such as Alaska where we can see the effects of climate change on the ground in my home State, it is a very important issue for me, and so I feel compelled to share with my colleagues some of my thoughts about what we are seeing up north. We appreciate that there is not quite a consensus in Alaska about what is causing the change we are seeing. Most Alaskans, however, do seem to agree that something is happening. We are seeing a change in the north, and we have been seeing it for a period of decades. The results are having a significant impact on the lifestyle of Alaskans. One of the things we are seeing in a northern State, an arctic State such as Alaska is that our winters are warmer. We are seeing breakup come earlier in the spring, although this spring it has been actually extra snowy, so it is tough to say that it is always that way, but we are seeing breakup coming earlier. Our summers seem to be hotter. The storms we are seeing, particularly along the coastline, are stronger. We are seeing a migration. We are seeing wildlife habitation and migration patterns that are different. The oceans, the lakes, the river ice--we are seeing this form later in the year. We are also seeing that it forms and it is weaker than we have seen. It is melting sooner in the spring. We are seeing permafrost thawing in some places. All of this has an impact on hunting, on fishing, on the roads as we travel, certainly, on the construction that is underway in the State, and sometimes on our very way of life. Last week, the National Science and Technology Council released its latest assessment of what has been happening due to climate change. While this report has already been mentioned by several on this floor already, I wish to concentrate on its findings for Alaska. In that report, it finds that temperatures in the State of Alaska have increased 3 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit on average, and in the winters, what we are seeing is that the winters are 7 to 10 degrees warmer over the past 50 years. That warming has a number of impacts. Mr. President, these are important for all Members to hear. When we talk about the ice in the Arctic sea icepack, the pack ice up north has shrunk by an area which is twice the size of Texas. This reduction in the ice has occurred since 1979. So within this time period, about 30 years, we have seen an area shrunk that is twice the size of Texas. Between the years 2005 and 2007, 23 percent more of the ice has melted. More important, what we are seeing is that the thick, multiyear ice has been steadily thinning, having reduced by about 3 feet from 1987 to 1997, which means more of the Beaufort Sea is open by late summer, which increases the danger of the coastal erosion from the storms. More troubling, it helps to warm the water and thus the environment even more. We have nearly a dozen coastal villages in the State of Alaska that need major assistance. In some cases, it is more than assistance in shoring up an eroding coastline, it is relocation of whole villages to higher ground. This is at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars per village. Ask the residents of villages such as Shishmaref, Kivalina, Unalakleet, and Newtok--to name four--about the changes they have witnessed in the climate over the past two decades. We are seeing that on the coastline. The report says the permafrost base in Alaska has been thawing at a rate of up to 1.6 inches a year since 1992. This thawing of the permafrost impacts the base for roads, pipelines, houses, sewer lines, and other surface features. We also know our lakes are drying up. This is probably because the permafrost that holds their water is melting. We know the Alaskan tree line is creeping northward, moving about 6 miles over several decades. The Federal report, while it predicts more summer precipitation in Alaska, also predicts more summer heat. That is increasing the threat of Alaska wildfires, increasing the threat of high stream temperatures that could harm our salmon, and increasing the threat of new types of diseases entering Alaska. Scientists who have worked on the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change believe the ultimate cause is an increase in manmade carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gases added to the atmosphere since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Yet there is also a great deal of natural variation--Mother Nature at play here--which affects the Earth's climate. In April, the Journal of Nature printed a study suggesting that rising atmospheric temperatures are slowly, and perhaps have already stopped, rising--at least temporarily--and may remain that way for up to 7 more years as the natural variation cycle toward colder weather masks the heat. It may seem counterintuitive to be arguing that climate change is intensifying after a very cold and snowy winter in Alaska. But I look at climate change legislation as an insurance policy, as a policy to take action to cut carbon emissions where we can, without harmful costs to our economy and way of life. The fact that I am a cosponsor of the Bingaman-Specter carbon cap- and-trade bill is proof that I am willing to take action but not necessarily action at any price. I am not afraid of a cap-and-trade system, but let's make sure we have it right. I do support the cap-and-trade concept because I believe it offers the opportunity to reduce carbon, at the least cost to society. The signal about future prices sent to electric powerplant operators will hopefully stimulate spending on low- and zero-carbon renewable energy plants now. A price signal will make gasification technology more attractive as a means of producing petrochemicals for the future. It will spur research and new technology to allow for the commercial-scale plants needed to capture and store carbon underground. I believe a price signal will also generate new technology and new jobs--hopefully, more than will be lost in fossil industries and from an overall slowdown in the economy caused by the potentially high cost of industry buying carbon emissions at auctions and passing the costs on to each one of us. When you listen to all the suggestions and ideas out there, you may think: What is it I am looking for in a perfect carbon bill? I guess my perfect bill would set a price signal only high enough to encourage technological change but without driving the poor and lower to middle- income Americans into a state where they cannot afford to get to work or they have to make choices between paying the heating bill or setting food on the table. My perfect carbon bill would ``front-load'' the research and technology costs, with the Federal Government picking up a large share of that initial tab, until we perfect that new technology that permits the new energy sources to come on line at only slightly higher costs-- prices high enough to encourage energy efficiency and conservation but not so high as to fundamentally alter American society. My perfect carbon bill would set up clear procedures to help finance that new technology and development. Senator Domenici has proposed a clean energy bank concept. This is not included in this measure, but it helps to set up those procedures that can allow us to move this technology forward. It would encourage all low- and zero-carbon technology, especially nuclear power, which is the only technology we have today at scale that can provide baseload power economically without carbon. A perfect carbon bill, for me, would set the guidelines for carbon reductions but only standards that we have the technology to meet. It would not set unreasonable, early guidelines simply to punish the carbon emitters. It would have a workable ``safety valve'' to ease the regulations, if technology cannot come through quickly enough with means for our society to meet the lower carbon standards at a reasonable price. This is where--when you look at the Bingaman-Specter bill and the safety valve they have incorporated in that legislation-- it provides for a level of assurance in terms of how bad is the situation going to be in terms of the cost and the impact to the industry. You kind of want to know how bad the bad is going to be so you have a level of certainty. My perfect bill would generate enough revenue to help States and local governments deal with the costs of adaptation. If the scientists are right on this, the carbon that we have and are going to continue to release into the atmosphere until the new technology can come on line is going to continue to increase for a number of years. There will be costs that come with that. In Alaska, the University of Alaska's Institute of Social and Economic Research has estimated that Alaska's governmental infrastructure--the roads, villages, ports, runways, and the schools-- are already facing about $3 billion of damage due to coastal erosion and melting permafrost. They anticipate that tally, that cost, will rise to $80 billion by 2080, just for the governmental structures. Only the Federal Government has the resources to meet those types of costs. I believe the substitute we have before us is making a major mistake in cutting the funding for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program and in cutting funding for the State-Federal weatherization programs that promote energy conservation. When you look at the current substitute--and I have issues in many areas--these two are ones I am not able to reconcile why, as we are trying to help people around the country deal with high energy costs, we would remove funding for LIHEAP and the weatherization programs. I am also concerned that the substitute's cost-containment mechanisms are not flexible enough to keep companies from having to bid up the price of auction allowances. That will hurt average Americans who cannot afford the current price of energy, much less the future price of energy. People around the country are hurting when they go to the pump, when they heat their homes, when they have to fill up with home heating fuel. We don't need to be adding more to their costs unnecessarily. Regardless, for any climate bill we enact to make a difference, it is going to require that China, which has overtaken America as the world's leading carbon emitter, and India, along with the developing world, participate too. If they are not participating and working with us, the U.S. economy is going to become less competitive, and we will have spent money without any necessary benefits to the global environment. So we have to be in partnership on this initiative. Already on the floor, we have heard about the varying computer models. They are all over the board. They say the average American will pay either $446, $739 or $1,957 more per household for energy in 2020 or $1,257, $4,377 or $6,750 more come 2030 or 2050. You look at it, and you are almost embarrassed to tell your constituent the range is somewhere between $446 per household by 2020 or close to $2,000 per household. We don't know. We simply don't know. My constituents say: Lisa, you have to do better than that. You have to give me some idea because, right now, in Aniak, that village's people are paying $5.53 for their gasoline. It went up this week because the spring barge came in. I am going to say to them we have this legislation that will help reduce emissions in this country, we think, if other nations participate, but I don't know how much it will cost you or how high gas is going to go in Aniak. Right now, you are paying $6.50 for diesel. I have to be able to provide more to my constituents than that. What is important is for the Senate to take its time to understand what the Boxer substitute would do and, perhaps, think more about what would work at the least cost and would actually make a difference in the world's climate. The more I look at it, the more I think the original Bingaman-Specter bill, with changes, is worthy of renewed consideration. I said in a speech last week at home in Alaska that never before have Members of Congress been asked to take action on a bill that could have such a profound effect on our country, with so much difference of opinion about how much this bill is going to cost, and whether it will actually be worth the amount the American consumer will pay because of it. We have to be able to demonstrate that these are the ranges and this is the benefit so Americans can understand what we are doing. How much this bill will cost Americans is purely dependent upon the forecasts, and the Congressional Research Service said in testimony before the Energy Committee a couple weeks ago that all these forecasts should be viewed with ``attentive skepticism,'' especially in the outyears. That is an interesting way to put it. But whether this bill will cost $3.3 trillion until 2050, as the bill's sponsor said last week, or more than twice that amount that other models predict, we know this bill will be the most expensive and complex measure ever before considered by any government on the planet. I do know that, even though my constituents want us to do something in Congress, they are going to want it to be something that works. I don't want to support a bill until I am convinced that measure offers the best possible chance of protecting against climate change impacts but at the least possible cost, while still stimulating new technology--which will make the difference--that is the ultimate solution to carbon emission reductions. I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

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

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, today I bid farewell to a broadcast journalist who has done more to keep Alaskans informed of the happenings in Washington, DC, over the past 21 years than any other single journalist in the State. I rise to honor Joel Southern, the Washington, DC, correspondent for the Alaska Public Radio Network, and to wish him well in his future endeavors. I entered politics in Alaska only in 1998, but by that time I had been listening to Joel's radio reports on Washington developments for nearly a decade. Most of my early knowledge of the political battle over the opening of the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to potential oil and gas development came from Joel's reports, starting in 1987--the year when the environmental impact statement on ANWR first was released by the Department of the Interior. My understanding of the efforts in Washington to change oil spill regulations in the wake of the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989 came from Joel's reporting. Growing up in Wrangell, I knew a good deal about Alaska's southeast timber industry, still Joel's reporting over efforts to pass the Tongass Timber Reform Act in 1991 gave me a breadth of understanding that has been invaluable during my 6 years in the U.S. Senate. I could go on and on and on with other examples. Joel Southern has been the eyes in the Nation's Capital for tens of thousands of Alaskans who live across the far-flung reaches of our State; where local newspaper coverage is sparse, where TV coverage consists of cable coverage sometimes lacking in statewide or local news, and where only public radio is the source of information and public affairs. Joel, a native of Winston-Salem, NC, moved to Washington in 1986, earning his master's degree in journalism and public affairs from American University. While an undergrad student he worked as a student announcer starting in 1981 at WFDD-FM, the Wake Forest University radio station, where he learned to pronounce the names of classical composers for his DJ stints, a skill that served him well when pronouncing Inupiat and Native names, such as Tuntutaliak or Atqasuk or Atmautluak. Formerly an employee of the famed Berns--News--Bureau, a starting point for a number of great journalists, he moved onto the full-time staff of the Alaska Public Radio Network in 1991 and since has provided more radio reports for the network's main news program, Alaska News Nightly, than any other single individual. Over time Joel has learned more about the arcane areas of Alaska public land law, more about oil and gas production, more about commercial fishing and mining and more about the complex arena of politics in the 49th State than most anyone else. Rather than show off his expertise simply to promote his own ego, Joel uses his knowledge to constantly explain complex stories in simple, understandable terms. While he always asks tough, probing questions of politicians and newsmakers, Joel asks them in a fair, balanced and nonopinionated way. He does better at separating his personal opinions from his reporting than most anyone. He has been fair, unbiased and totally objective for the entirety of his two decades of Washington reporting--and that is a record he can be proud of. Over the past 21 years Joel has covered everything from the impeachment of a President to the contamination of Senate buildings by anthrax spores. He has covered the swearing in of three different Presidents, and reported on more changes in political leadership in Congress than veteran journalists twice his age. His range has been shown by both covering more congressional hearings than most any congressional correspondent and by working in subzero degree temperatures while covering the 1996 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Alaska. Along the way he has covered the Supreme Court and specialized in agricultural news, producing the European Community Farm Line in conjunction with the European Union, produced stories for CBC Radio affiliates and the Australian Broadcasting Corp., provided pieces to National Public Radio on a variety of topics, and done some stringing for the AP. He has done interviews for C-SPAN and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio stations. And he has written columns on Alaska oil and natural gas/energy policy for a Canadian publication, Far North Oil and Gas Journal. In between working seemingly constantly, he has found time to marry his charming wife Helene, to be a devoted dad to two beautiful children, and still do more to inform Alaskans about the events in Washington that affect their future and the future of their children and grandchildren than most any other single journalist. And he has done it while displaying a keen curiosity, an impressive intellect, an insightful mind, a balanced sense of fairness and decency and a never- failing sense of good humor that is far too lacking both inside the U.S. Capitol and outside its walls. I will miss his presence in Washington, but I know Alaskans from Kaktovik to Adak and from Ketchikan to Point Hope will miss him even more. I can only wish Joel and his family the very best on their coming European adventure and thank him for having done the best possible service to his adopted State; that of informing the citizens of Alaska with wisdom and wit for over two decades. Thank you, Joel, and God's speed. I suspect I will be hearing your voice from Copenhagen during next year's climate change COP 15 negotiations. Just remember while Alaska is cold, the wind in Denmark's Jutland Peninsula blowing in from the North Sea can be almost as biting as Alaska's North Slope. Again, best wishes and good luck in the future.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, the Kenai Mountains-Turnagain Arm National Forest Heritage Area would be the first Heritage Area in Alaska, and one of a few Heritage Areas in the West. Our proposal encompasses the wide mountainous corridor that was the major gateway to pioneer settlement of the State, extending from Seward through the Kenai Mountains to the upper Turnagain Arm. Here mountain trails developed by indigenous First Alaskans became prospectors' trails and, eventually, the roads and railroad used by the pioneers who settled the last frontier of the United States. Transportation, resource development and settlement in this rugged, often-treacherous landscape provide a powerful reminder of the fortitude and resourcefulness of the pioneers of America's Last Frontier. Historic communities that were developed around mining and early transportation routes have preserved much of their original character. A visit to the Hope Townsite is a visit to a living community that still resembles the gold rush town that it was before the rush to the Klondike. The City of Whittier provides a glimpse of our Nation's intense effort to develop an ice-free port to supply troops who were defending our boundaries in Alaska during World War II. As in the early days, all the signs of human activity in the corridor are dwarfed by the sweeping landscapes of the region, by the magnificence of the mountains, glaciers and tidal fjords and the dominance and power of nature. Turnagain Arm, once a critical transportation link, has one of the world's greatest tidal ranges. This Heritage Area proposal, truly a grass roots product, began in 1997 when the Kenai Peninsula Historical Association asked a group of local community leaders to reach out and tell people about Heritage Areas. They were successful in garnering support from communities throughout the corridor. These local folks have extensive knowledge of the resources; they are personally acquainted with the area; they understand the ruggedness and the beauty of the land, and certainly appreciate the potential economic value this designation would bring to the area. In 2000 these community leaders organized the Kenai Mountains- Turnagain Arm National Heritage Area Corridor Communities Association as a non-profit organization with a board of directors made up of corridor community representatives. Later a congressionally designated grant made it possible for the new non-profit to serve as a local coordinating entity and prove its ability to plan and accomplish projects consistent with Heritage Area purposes. Through their management of the grant, historic structures were preserved, a small museum has opened, parks and pavilions with historic interpretation have been constructed, oral histories have been collected from old- timers and recorded, and an excellent book on corridor history has been published. Since the corridor is within the western part of the Chugach National Forest, the Association has asked to put this Heritage Area under the Secretary of Agriculture. The bill provides for coordination with the Secretaries of Interior and includes the same components, structure and national recognition as Heritage Areas under the Secretary of Interior. Similar components assure that the Heritage Area will not impact private property rights or public land management. A Memorandum of Understanding between the Secretaries of Agriculture and Interior would establish coordination at the Secretarial level. Passage of this bill will be an excellent way to commemorate the recent centennial of the Chugach National Forest. I am proud to lend my support to this grassroots effort by introducing legislation today to designate the Kenai Mountains- Turnagain Arm in Alaska as our most northern and western National Heritage Area, the first National Heritage Area in Alaska and the first National Forest Heritage Area to be assisted by the U.S. Forest Service. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, the Kenai Mountains-Turnagain Arm National Forest Heritage Area would be the first Heritage Area in Alaska, and one of a few Heritage Areas in the West. Our proposal encompasses the wide mountainous corridor that was the major gateway to pioneer settlement of the State, extending from Seward through the Kenai Mountains to the upper Turnagain Arm. Here mountain trails developed by indigenous First Alaskans became prospectors' trails and, eventually, the roads and railroad used by the pioneers who settled the last frontier of the United States. Transportation, resource development and settlement in this rugged, often-treacherous landscape provide a powerful reminder of the fortitude and resourcefulness of the pioneers of America's Last Frontier. Historic communities that were developed around mining and early transportation routes have preserved much of their original character. A visit to the Hope Townsite is a visit to a living community that still resembles the gold rush town that it was before the rush to the Klondike. The City of Whittier provides a glimpse of our Nation's intense effort to develop an ice-free port to supply troops who were defending our boundaries in Alaska during World War II. As in the early days, all the signs of human activity in the corridor are dwarfed by the sweeping landscapes of the region, by the magnificence of the mountains, glaciers and tidal fjords and the dominance and power of nature. Turnagain Arm, once a critical transportation link, has one of the world's greatest tidal ranges. This Heritage Area proposal, truly a grass roots product, began in 1997 when the Kenai Peninsula Historical Association asked a group of local community leaders to reach out and tell people about Heritage Areas. They were successful in garnering support from communities throughout the corridor. These local folks have extensive knowledge of the resources; they are personally acquainted with the area; they understand the ruggedness and the beauty of the land, and certainly appreciate the potential economic value this designation would bring to the area. In 2000 these community leaders organized the Kenai Mountains- Turnagain Arm National Heritage Area Corridor Communities Association as a non-profit organization with a board of directors made up of corridor community representatives. Later a congressionally designated grant made it possible for the new non-profit to serve as a local coordinating entity and prove its ability to plan and accomplish projects consistent with Heritage Area purposes. Through their management of the grant, historic structures were preserved, a small museum has opened, parks and pavilions with historic interpretation have been constructed, oral histories have been collected from old- timers and recorded, and an excellent book on corridor history has been published. Since the corridor is within the western part of the Chugach National Forest, the Association has asked to put this Heritage Area under the Secretary of Agriculture. The bill provides for coordination with the Secretaries of Interior and includes the same components, structure and national recognition as Heritage Areas under the Secretary of Interior. Similar components assure that the Heritage Area will not impact private property rights or public land management. A Memorandum of Understanding between the Secretaries of Agriculture and Interior would establish coordination at the Secretarial level. Passage of this bill will be an excellent way to commemorate the recent centennial of the Chugach National Forest. I am proud to lend my support to this grassroots effort by introducing legislation today to designate the Kenai Mountains- Turnagain Arm in Alaska as our most northern and western National Heritage Area, the first National Heritage Area in Alaska and the first National Forest Heritage Area to be assisted by the U.S. Forest Service. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, today I introduced a resolution designating June 2008 as National Internet Safety Month. The Internet has become one of the most significant advances in the 20th century and, as a result, it affects people's lives in a positive manner each day. However, this technology presents dangers that need to be brought to the attention of all Americans. Consider the pervasiveness of Internet access by children and the rapid increase in Internet crime and predatory behavior. Never before have powerful educational solutions--such as Internet safety curricula for grades kindergarten through 12--been more critical and readily at hand. I-SAFE is one nonprofit organization that has worked tirelessly to educate our youth and our community on these important issues. Formed in 1998, I-SAFE educates youth in all 50 States, Washington, DC, and Department of Defense schools worldwide to ensure that they have a safe experience online. It is imperative that all Americans learn about the Internet safety strategies which will help keep their children safe from victimization. Consider the facts: In the United States, about 35 million school-aged children have Internet access. Eighty-six percent of middle and high school students are online for at least one hour per week. An alarming statistic is that 61 percent of middle and high school youths admit to using the Internet unsafely or inappropriately. Furthermore, at least 12 percent of these students have met face-to- face with someone they first met online and 42 percent of these students know of someone who has been bullied online. Now is the time for America to focus its attention on supporting Internet safety, especially bearing in mind that children will soon be on summer vacation and will spend more time online.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I ask that I be recorded as voting no on S.J. Res. 28, a resolution disapproving the rule submitted by the Federal Communications Commission with respect to broadcast media ownership.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, our Nation is blessed by the selfless service of more than 26 million Americans who come to the aid of their fellow citizens through countless volunteer organizations at the national, State and local levels. Some of these organizations are household names, like the American Legion, Scouting, the American Red Cross, and the American Cancer Society. Others perform their good work in relative obscurity. This week, on the occasion of National Police Week, I rise to acknowledge the good work of a voluntary organization that few outside the law enforcement community may ever have heard of. But for those in the law enforcement community, it is the organization to which families turn in times of tragedy. I am referring to Concerns of Police Survivors, C.O.P.S. It serves some 15,000 surviving family members of law enforcement tragedies. Last year, 181 law enforcement officers were killed in the line of duty. Their names are being added to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial on Judiciary Square this week, bringing the total number of names on that memorial to 18,274. This evening, the annual candlelight vigil is being held at the memorial to honor our fallen law enforcement officers and on Thursday, Peace Officers Memorial Day, another ceremony will be held at the Capitol. These ceremonies are visible to all of us. They are attended by law enforcement officers from around the Nation and the surviving family members of our fallen law enforcement officers. But there is another event that occurs every year during National Police Week that few know about. That event is the National Police Survivors Seminar which is underway at a hotel in Alexandria, VA. I had the privilege of visiting the National Police Survivors Seminar one Saturday morning in 2006. It is a peaceful place and a safe place where families of fallen law enforcement officers can laugh, cry, grieve, and heal in the presence of others who have suffered similar losses. There are special programs for children of fallen law enforcement officers known as ``C.O.P.S. Kids'' and ``C.O.P.S Teens.'' The National Police Survivors Seminar is the outgrowth of a dinner that occurred 25 years ago on May 14, 2003. At this dinner 10 widows of fallen law enforcement officers came together to ask the question, ``What about us?'' During the National Police Week gatherings, everyone focuses on the loved one whose life is lost, but it also is important to focus on the needs of survivors who must rebuild their lives from the ashes. One year later, the first National Police Survivors Seminar was convened. It drew 110 law enforcement survivors. Concerns of Police Survivors was created at that first seminar. Suzie Sawyer was selected to be the first Executive Director of Concerns of Police Survivors, a position she still holds today. Some things have changed though. The National Police Survivors Seminar no longer draws hundreds now it draws thousands. That is both a tragedy and a blessing. It is a tragedy that so many law enforcement families have been touched by a line of duty death. It is a blessing that the volunteers of Concerns of Police Survivors are there looking out for them. This is but one of many programs that Concerns of Police Survivors offers to survivors throughout the year. Tomorrow marks the 25th anniversary of that dinner meeting that launched Concerns of Police Survivors. I rise today to offer a resolution commemorating the 25th anniversary of that meeting and to honor Concerns of Police Survivors for the quarter century of service it has provided to law enforcement families that have suffered a line of duty death. I know first hand of two Alaska families whose lives have been touched by the good works of Concerns of Police Survivors. They have touched families in every one of our States. Concerns of Police Survivors does not seek recognition for its good works and it's not a household name. But it has certainly earned our respect and admiration. On the occasion of its 25th anniversary I am pleased to call this organization's fine work to the attention of the Senate and the American people.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, it is so important that we as Members of the Senate, Members of the Congress, are on the floor discussing the No. 1 issue--the No. 1 domestic issue certainly in the minds of Americans--and that is the price of energy. The folks back home want to know: What are you going to do to fix it? What is the Congress going to do? Tomorrow we are going to have an opportunity to vote on a couple of different proposals. I rise this afternoon in support of the passage of the American Energy Production Act. This is a comprehensive energy bill that was introduced last week by the ranking member of the Energy Committee, Senator Domenici. Americans are at a point where I think their patience is wearing thin, their frustration is showing, but it goes beyond just frustration. I think it is fair to say that many across the country are in true economic distress over the prices they are paying now for gasoline, for their home heating oil, many for their natural gas that they are seeing coming into their home and, unfortunately, the prognosis for the future doesn't look much more consoling to the consumer. All estimates indicate these prices will continue to rise in the future. Look at some of the events of last week in terms of what was happening around the world. The rebel disturbances in Nigeria, concerns about the relations with Iran and production disruptions over there, production disruptions in Iraq--all of this plus many other factors, including the price of the dollar, and what is happening with the Chinese and Indian economies in terms of additional consumers coming on. So many of these factors keep driving the price of oil to the point where last week's closing crude oil price topped out at $126, down to $125 per barrel over the weekend. That hike in price is going to continue to drive the retail prices for refined product even higher, above the $3.62 national average for unleaded regular we reached last week; 52 cents higher than last year. Talking to the folks back home, it is literally one horror story after another in terms of what people are paying. I know there are many places in the country today where fuel is hovering right at $4 a gallon, but in Alaska we are looking at prices that are much higher than that. In Athaca, fuel was costing $8.65 a gallon last week. This is about a dollar higher than the folks there were paying last year. They are used to paying high prices, but I am here to tell you 8 bucks and 65 cents a gallon is really high. In the community of Kiana, it is $6.25 a gallon. It is exactly $1 higher than they paid last year. At these prices, Alaskans and all Americans are having great difficulty making ends meet. Americans need relief from high fuel prices and they are asking for it now. I have so many opportunities, coming from a State such as Alaska that is a producing State, a lot of opportunities to talk about how we can produce more as a nation. But I also am very insistent when we talk about an energy policy for this country that we also focus on promoting energy conservation, we also focus on greater energy efficiency and developing the alternative energy so critical for this Nation. But we also have to make sure when we talk about an energy policy, we recognize there are different components. I liken it to a three-legged stool. You have the conservation and efficiency, you have the renewables and alternatives, but you also have increased production and increased production in traditional energy sources that are done in an environmentally sensitive manner. The amendment Senator Domenici has introduced, the American Energy Production Act, does that in many ways. It proposes to open a couple thousand acres, 2,000 acres--I don't come from a farming State necessarily, but my colleagues from South Dakota and some of the big farm States tell me that 2,000 acres is pretty much the size of a small farm there--of the Arctic Coastal Plain to oil and gas development. We believe this area, the 1002 area of ANWR, is the site with likely the largest onshore oil and gas deposits left in North America. We know if we were to act today to open ANWR tomorrow, it is not going to bring new North Slope oil to the markets tomorrow, but it will affect the psychology of the oil markets. It will show that America is getting serious--finally getting serious--about producing the 40 billion barrels of oil and the hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of natural gas we believe exist in the current moratoria areas. I think we need to recognize--and so many of my colleagues have stated this already on the floor--ANWR is about the long term. I can't tell my colleagues how many times I have heard on this floor: If we had only opened ANWR 10 years ago when President Clinton vetoed it, we would have that pipeline today. That pipeline would now be full instead of half full as we currently see it. But ANWR is about the bridge, if you will. It is a bridge to an energy future that can get us to the alternatives and to the renewables we keep talking about, and those who are so focused on making sure we have a solid environment and a solid environmental base. This is what so many of my Democratic colleagues are talking about. We need to get to the future of energy, which I agree is absolutely the alternatives and the renewables. But you can't flip a switch and have this Nation powered 100 percent by wind or solar or geothermal or ocean energy. We have to allow for that transition, and ANWR, the oil from ANWR, can help us to do that. We have had many hearings in the Energy Committee on the issue of production. But earlier this year we heard from witnesses who said the current runup in world oil prices is due to so many of the factors I mentioned a few minutes ago; clearly, the hike in world demand for oil is led by China and by India; what is happening with the weakening of the U.S. dollar, which is used to pay for all of the oil sales; and oil becoming the new gold--a commodity of interest to investors because of the tightness of the world supplies. Essentially, what it comes down to--so much of the discussion we are talking about--is supply and demand. I suggest that as we look to all these factors that are influencing price right now, one of the ways we can deal with that, one of the ways we can tell the American consumer we are working on this is to produce more energy from non-OPEC nations, to help increase our global supplies, and to help drive down world prices. Robert Samuelson, a columnist, said in a column, which I will submit for the Record, that we need to exert long-term influence on the global balance of supply and demand for energy. I ask unanimous consent that the column be printed in the Record.

Ms. MURKOWSKI. That means we have to actually produce more energy in this country. How do you get from here to there in increased energy production? I wish to take a few minutes this afternoon and talk about ANWR. ANWR has 10 billion to 16 billion barrels of economically recoverable oil, according to the USGS estimates, and 10 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. We recognize that, by itself, that infusion into the energy market is not going to change the world's energy equation. But pair it with the other things we are talking about in this energy legislation Senator Domenici introduced and pair it with the additional barrels that could come from OCS development in current moratoria areas, and the 80 to 100 trillion cubic of natural gas there, and pair it with the fuel from coal-to-liquids development and the oil from U.S. oil shale deposits. Together, all these can start to break the stranglehold OPEC has on us and help to lower the prices. Now, back to ANWR. I had said that--and I have said this throughout my public life--if opening ANWR was going to come at the expense of our environment and our wildlife, I would have to oppose it. But we have technology we have utilized up north in the past 30 years, since we have been in active production pulling oil from the North Slope, that has truly revolutionized what happens in the Arctic when it comes to development of our resources. This chart is a New York Times science chart. It is essentially outlining some of the latest drilling technology in an effort to reduce environmental damage from the oil drilling. Directional drilling. It used to be that you would sink your drilling rig and drill straight down. Under the new directional drilling, what you are literally able to do is you sink it but you ``spider'' out, or ``spaghetti'' out underneath the surface. And you can take this in a direction of up to almost 8 miles in every direction around you, with no disturbance to the surface. So you don't see what is going on down below the caribou that are wandering around and are oblivious to the activity up top. But it is a technique that is in place in the Arctic that helps to literally provide about 100 square miles of habitat for the caribou and musk oxen that are between the well pads. This technology has made the difference for us not only in Alaska in Arctic conditions but truly as we develop our technology for oil exploration around the country. It is difficult to see a lot of the descriptions on this chart, so I will use other maps to show you the ice roads, the pads on the ground, how you utilize a crossing over a river, the 3D seismic technology, how we have been able to reduce the well pads paths. Initially, when drilling in the 1970s, the well pads were about 13 acres in size. Through the use of this technology, you can limit that footprint to about 5 acres. I wish to show you a picture of how we travel across the tundra so we don't disturb it, you don't see man's footprint or the trucks that are going over it. This is a composite mat that is literally laid on top of the tundra in the summer months, so you don't damage the fragile tundra below. Look at a picture of the ice roads. We do not explore in the summer months. Exploring is in the wintertime. This is a picture of exploratory drilling in Alpine in the winter. You will see around the exploration site--you cannot see the ice road from here, but there are no roads around this. There are no roads that will take you to this site. The way you get there is you build out roads on the ice. It is like a big Zamboni machine making an ice road that will take you across the tundra in the wintertime only-- you cannot go out there during the summer--and lay down the ice road, so when summertime comes, you have this. This is Alpine during the summer months. The photo is grainy, and I apologize for the quality of it. You can see you don't have any roads that lead to the exploration site in the tundra there. This is a picture that was taken in the fall. This white box is the well site that is awaiting actual development. We have a picture of rendezvous well No. 2. This is located in the National Petroleum Reserve Alaska. This is done in the winter. You can see this is the ice road I am talking about, which literally goes 4 miles, connecting this site to a road system miles away. We have a picture of the same site. This is in the summer, the same site. We have capped off and removed the rig. So the first one was the exploration, and then once the exploration is complete, they cap it off. There is no sign of impact to the area except for this ``Christmas tree'' valve stem that can be removed if, in fact, there is no production that is ever likely in that area. Again, you may look at this and say: How do you get there? We get there because we are utilizing techniques that allow us and require us to protect the environment, so the impact is as minimal as absolutely possible. The last picture I wish to put up in this series is this one. Everyone talks about the caribou. I think no picture of ANWR is complete unless we have a picture of the caribou wandering around at Point McIntyre Field while drilling is underway. The caribou--the wildlife--have learned to coexist with the level of development that goes on in the area there. Again, I think it is important to point out we have gotten smart over the past 30 years. We figured out how to utilize technology so we can gain access to a resource, while at the same time preserving and protecting an area, a part of the country that we know is fragile. That tundra is fragile territory, and we have to treat it right, with respect, and be able to allow a level of subsistence harvest for the Natives who live up there and live off the land. We have to figure out how we balance it. We have worked very hard to do that. The chairman of the Energy Committee, a colleague for whom I have a great deal of respect and who has worked very hard on so many energy issues spoke a little while ago, and he made the point that to the west of the Prudoe fields, and to the south, we have an area that is known as the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. His point was, why do we need to open ANWR if we have all this area that is potentially available for oil exploration and development? There are a couple things going on with NPRA. It is a huge area. It is larger than the ANWR area itself. As a consequence, the pockets of oil--the areas that would be conducive for exploration and drilling--are further from the infrastructure, the existing pipelines. So that adds enormous costs to already very expensive operations up north. You also have some very environmentally sensitive areas in the NPRA, around the Shirukak Lake, where you have a great deal of waterfowl that come through. So we are sensitive to making sure we are not disrupting, to the furthest extent possible, the wildlife, the waterfowl. That, too, is a point of concern. We also recognize the potential in ANWR for greater intensity, in terms of the oil finds, is that much more real. It is estimated that in ANWR we could get approximately 6,860 barrels per acre as opposed to only 480 barrels per acre in the NPRA. Those are factors to consider when we are talking about NPRA and ANWR. I think it is helpful to put up a map of ANWR, so people can put it into context. The ANWR portion of this bill limits exploration to 2,000 acres of the 19.6 million acres of wildlife refuge. This is just one 10,000th of 1 percent of the refuge. It allows the establishment of critical habitat zones. It requires the use of the best commercially available technology to produce the oil, no matter what the cost is to the company. We believe, truly, this new technology can limit the environmental impact in the north. Look at what we are talking about, the refuge itself. When people talk about ANWR, some might get the impression we are talking about developing in all of the wildlife refuge, all the 19.6 million acres. That is incorrect. The area we are talking about developing is within the ANWR Coastal Plain. That acreage is 1.5 million acres. Still, look at what you have within the refuge. You have a wilderness area, which has absolutely no development of anything at all, 8.5 million acres that is fully established in the wilderness area. In the balance is about 10 million acres and it is the refuge area. So this is the area-- the 1002 we are talking about opening for potential exploration and development. Of that, this tiny little red dot on this map represents 2,000 acres out of the 1.5 million acres. So it is important to put that into context. We have not had the ANWR debate in some months, so I think it is always nice to refresh people's memories of what ANWR is. You will notice ANWR itself is about the size of the State of South Carolina. We are talking big territory here. The amendment that was offered by Senator Domenici and members of the Energy Committee does more than just open ANWR. ANWR is not the sole answer to the high price of oil. ANWR is not the sole answer to a balanced energy policy. ANWR is just one piece of that puzzle. The amendment also permits revenue sharing with States that decide to allow OCS development off their coastlines. For the States that do not want it, this also provides new moratoria powers to prevent drilling, powers that could be gone in just 4 years. This is actually a plus for those who are somewhat concerned about OCS development off their coast. With the new technology we have, the old fears of well blowouts from offshore development should be satisfied. The fear of subsea pipeline leaks should be alleviated by the performances we saw in the Gulf of Mexico during Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma in 2005, category 5 hurricanes, which resulted in no major spills. The fear of water contamination by drilling rigs should be resolved since nontoxic chemicals can now be used. The amendment also removes the moratorium that is imposed on oil shale production in the West. There is great new technology that permits production from in situ piping, not requiring open-pit mining of the oil shale. We recognize we have so much oil shale in this country. They say America is the Saudi Arabia of oil shale, holding 2 trillion barrels of potential oil production. Also, the provision in the legislation regarding coal-to-liquids sets a goal of America producing 6 billion gallons of such fuels by 2022, one-sixth of what we theoretically will produce from biofuel by then. But it requires that the fuel not produce more life-cycle carbon emissions than gasoline and allows for waivers to protect the environment. Given that Alaska alone holds the world's largest potential coal deposit and that America contains about 60 percent of the world's total reserves of coal, it is vital that we find some way to utilize the fuel. Coal is the only fossil fuel we can develop where we know we have the technology currently to capture and store any carbon produced and to keep it out of the atmosphere. We believe that bill could produce another 24 billion barrels of oil--enough to meet our Nation's total needs for 5 years. That will dampen world prices. But if we don't take these steps, we will continue to be in this exact same position of being held hostage by the world's oil cartel for decades until we have new alternative technologies. We have to stop letting ourselves be held over the proverbial barrel by the world's nationally owned oil companies. We understand in this country that there is no good reason, with our technology, our environmental advancements, not to be producing more of the energy that it needs. I do want to add a caveat because I have been talking about ANWR, offshore, and coal-to-liquids, that by passing this amendment, it does not mean we shouldn't move full speed ahead to promote noncarbon- emitting nuclear power, that we shouldn't do everything possible to produce more power from wind, biomass, hydropower, solar, geothermal, ocean energy, and all the other technologies. We need them all. What it does mean is America will finally show the world that we are willing to do our part in meeting our energy needs. There used to be a mantra, if you will, that nations should think globally but act locally. In this country, we should produce more of the energy we consume rather than expect other nations to supply it to us. We have the ability to reduce our dependency on imported energy sources. We just need to get on doing it. I think this amendment will help us cut our prices now, but especially looking out for the long term, help us to avoid higher prices for the years to come. Over the weekend, I was reading through the local columnists in the Anchorage paper. One guy had it right. He said: I think the Republicans need to be more supportive of alternatives and renewables, the Democrats need to be more supportive of increased domestic production, and the American consumer needs to just conserve more. Sounds like pretty sage and wise advice to me. With all of those components--increased domestic production, focus on the future of energy, which is renewables and alternatives, and focus on conservation and efficiency--we have ourselves the start of a pretty good energy policy for this country. I appreciate the time of my colleagues. I yield the floor.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, many of us have come to the floor, certainly this past week--all this year--talking about increasing energy prices. There has been a lot of commentary about whom to blame. What do we do, how do we reduce the price of oil, how do we address the predicament we are in as a nation that is so very heavily dependent on energy for our economic strength? I have certainly done my share of talking about the need to increase domestic production of oil and gas, particularly in the State of Alaska. We believe we have great opportunities up there and can be doing more to address it. What we haven't had an opportunity to bring up in the debate is the potential for a vast reservoir of energy that is available to the United States in the Arctic, in the far north, and the fact that we could lose out to other nations if we are not more proactive in asserting our claims to these resources. I have been on the floor many times talking about the Arctic Coastal Plain and the potential in ANWR. We believe there is anywhere between 10 to 16 billion barrels of economically recoverable oil, the largest remaining onshore petroleum field in North America. But even further to the north, beyond ANWR, off the coast of Alaska and beyond, this is where we believe an unquantifiable amount of resource may lie. It is estimated that the Arctic may hold 25 percent of the entire world's undiscovered oil and gas resources. It is enormous. That number is based on a 2000 assessment by the U.S. Geological Survey. In that survey, they only looked at a few of the Arctic basins. There is going to be a more detailed survey that will be out. The survey is currently underway. The projection is that the amount of 25 percent could be lower--that, in fact, the amount of oil and gas in the Arctic region could go significantly higher. What is the problem with this situation? The fact is, we believe the potential in the Arctic under the ice may be enormous, but we have no legal claim as a nation to most of this oil or gas, unless the United States becomes a party to the convention on the law of the sea. I can tell you, if we are not willing to claim it, if we do not step up to claim it, others certainly will. We had before the Foreign Relations Committee the Convention on the Law of the Sea. It was before us. We have had several hearings on it. It was reported favorably out of the committee on October 31 of last year by a committee vote of 17 to 4. For those who are not familiar with the Law of the Sea Treaty, it allows, among other things, coastal states to exert sovereign rights to all living and nonliving resources within its exclusive economic zone out to 200 nautical miles from its shores. Essentially, it is the Outer Continental Shelf. But, in addition, a nation can exert claim to an extended Outer Continental Shelf if it can show that its continental shelf extends beyond the 200-mile limit. So last year, the Coast Guard Cutter Healy went up north beyond Alaska, up into the Arctic Ocean, to do a mapping of the ocean floor there, to determine where the extent of that continental shelf may extend. Behind me I have a map or chart of the Arctic Ocean that was mapped by the Coast Guard Cutter Healy during this last season of exploration. What the expedition showed us was that the United States could potentially lay claim to an area about the size of the State of California as part of our extended continental shelf. But we cannot do that without being a party to the Convention on the Law of the Sea. So to make it a little more real to the situation--and I know it is difficult to see the map--but what you have here is Alaska. It is upside down, but Alaska is at the top of the world, so we felt it should be located at this angle. Here is the State of Alaska, the Canadian border, all of Canada, Greenland, Norway, and then Russia up through here. The red dotted line indicates the limits of the permanent ice that you have. So much of what you see in the lighter area is continental shelf. What you have with this line--that kind of follows in a very jagged way Russia--this is Russia's continental shelf claim. So they are essentially laying claim to this area from the Chukchi Sea, the East Siberian Sea, and down through here. Norway has its extended continental shelf claim. Here is Norway. They have made a claim that their Outer Continental Shelf should allow them access to the resources up to this green line. Well, what we have here with the yellow line is the Russian extended continental shelf area. So through their mapping, or their determination, they believe--the Russians believe--they could potentially lay claim to all of this area in to the coast of Russia. Where it gets a little complicated is looking at the coastline of Alaska, recognizing that we have claim to 200 miles off the coast of Alaska, but with the mapping the Coast Guard Cutter Healy has brought back, it demonstrates we can potentially add an additional 100 miles offshore from our existing 200 miles of exclusive economic zone, theoretically putting Alaska's claim--and, therefore, the United States's claim--to an area that would be potentially on this side of the Canadian border and coming down through the Chukchi Sea, clearly overlapping where the Russians have submitted that they would have the potential for a claim. So you need to kind of appreciate the dynamics you have here. We have mapping that indicates the U.S. continental shelf could extend out dramatically. When you talk about a mass, an area the size of the State of California, you would say that is hugely significant to us as a nation in terms of our potential for additional resource. Now, I have shown you the lines on this map. There are some who object to ratification of the Law of the Sea Treaty and express concerns about sovereignty. But for those who are concerned about sovereignty, I would suggest that if we are not party to the Convention on the Law of the Sea, there is a good chance Russia's claim to the Arctic--which I have shown you, following this yellow line, which is substantial; it is about 45 percent of the Arctic Ocean--could be recognized cutting into what we believe to be our extended continental shelf. Now, let's talk a little bit about the potential for the resources up there. It is estimated the area that Russia claims as its Arctic Ocean shelf--so this area in through here, as shown on the map--could hold 580 billion barrels of oil equivalent. And 90 billion of those barrels could be in the Chukchi Sea and the East Siberian Sea, so close in to the State of Alaska. That is 90 billion barrels of oil we have the potential to stake a claim to as well, but only, again, if we are party to the Convention on the Law of the Sea. Now, some would take a look at this map and say: Well, Russia is not going to be able to get that. We all saw the cover of Time magazine last year when Russia took a little submarine down and basically planted a flag on the bottom of the seabed, staking claim. It got people's attention. I think folks looked at that and said: Well, they don't have any claim to that ocean seabed. On what do they base that? So you look at this map and say: There is no reason Russia has any greater claim to 45 percent of the Arctic Ocean anymore than the United States or Canada, so it is not going to happen. But for those who would doubt Russia might have success with their claim, I would ask you to look at what has happened. Right now, you have a handful--probably, seven or eight--different nations that have submitted to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf their requests for extended continental shelf claim. Russia submitted their claim back in 2001. Brazil is out there, and they submitted their claim in 2004. Australia submitted a claim in 2004, Ireland in 2005, New Zealand in 2006. You also have a joint submission by France, Ireland, Spain, and the United Kingdom that came about in 2006. Norway submitted their claim--that is going out this far, as shown on the map--in 2006. France has submitted a claim last year, as well as Mexico. On April 21 of this year, the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf confirmed that Australia's claim to an additional 2.5 million square kilometers of continental shelf beyond its existing exclusive economic zone was valid and has moved forward to allow for that extended claim. Now, Australia's claim, again, was submitted in 2004. So the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf is actually moving on these submissions. The claim Australia made--and, again, Australia is an island nation, so they clearly have a great deal they can say lies off their continental shelf area, but 2.5 million square kilometers of continental shelf has now been added to their jurisdiction. This is an area approximately five times the State of France. Now, for those of us who are thinking a little bit closer to home, that is three times the size of the State of Texas. So, again, the jurisdiction that has been extended to the nation of Australia, because of their claim to additional Outer Continental Shelf areas, is significant. Martin Ferguson, who is Australia's Minister for Resources and Energy, noted that the Commission's findings ``demonstrates that Australia's effective engagement in law of the sea matters delivers results.'' Now, I mentioned nine submissions that have been submitted for extended continental shelf claims. All of these have been made since December of 2001, including Russia's claim to half the Arctic and the resources it holds. We see that Australia's claims have been accepted. I believe it is only a matter of time before other claims are accepted as well. I believe--I believe very strongly--it is in the best interests of the United States to be able to submit our claims. We have the mapping. We can establish the extension of the shelf, again, to a considerable area--the size of the State of California. I believe it is incumbent upon us to assert our authority in this area and to have a seat at the table in determining the validity of the claims of the other nations. If we think Russia should not be able to extend their jurisdiction out--as they have requested, with this pretty impressive yellow line-- to 45 percent of the Arctic Ocean, we want to be able to sit at the table and say why we believe they should not have the ability to make that claim. Well, if we are not a party to the treaty, we are not sitting at the table, and we cannot contest the validity of the claims of other nations. We have the opportunity to stake a claim to an area of the seabed that we believe--we believe very strongly--likely contains billions of barrels of oil. We have the research to demonstrate that the seabed is part of our extended continental shelf. But we cannot claim ownership of these resources without being a party to the Convention on the Law of the Sea. There are plenty of other reasons why we should ratify this treaty-- whether it is to ensure that our Navy has the ability to freely navigate in international waters; or to provide our maritime industries with the legal certainty they need to carry out their activities. I believe, again, very strongly, the ratification of the convention is a must. But I think we need to recognize that as we are kind of sitting back on this at this point in time, other nations are moving forward. They are making their claims to greater areas of the ocean and to its seabed. I do not think we should be left behind as a nation and lose out on significant potential energy reserves at a time when we all know that energy is at an incredible premium. I will make the same statement I made in committee when we had the discussion on the Convention on the Law of the Sea. I urge my colleagues to support ratification of the Convention on the Law of the Sea and urge the Senate leadership to bring the treaty to the floor for a vote. With that, I yield the floor.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, today I wish to talk about one of Alaska's greatest newspaper publishers and newsmen. Lew Williams, Jr. was a fixture in Ketchikan, AK, one of the State's largest cities as I was growing up in nearby Wrangell. Lew unfortunately passed away at age 83 this past Saturday, leaving a hole in the fabric of Alaska journalism that may never be fully patched. Mr. Williams was a successful publisher, no simple accomplishment when publishing newspapers in relatively small Alaska towns is expensive, newsprint had to come by barge from thousands of miles away, and advertisers and readers were sometimes far too scarce. But he never scrimped on his product and was fearless in writing strong, clear and always factually accurate and well reasoned editorials. Lew was a champion in supporting statehood for Alaska back in the mid-1950s. Along with Robert Atwood, the former publisher of the Anchorage Times, and C.J. Snedden, the long-time publisher of the Fairbanks News Miner, Mr. Williams was one of the three pioneer publishers and editors in Alaska who did more to establish modern Alaska than most community leaders and politicians. Avoiding the trend to sell his publication to outside chains, his daughter Tena remains as publisher of the newspaper today. He also was a leading light in improving journalism in Alaska, being the founder in 1965, just 6 years after Statehood, of the Alaska Newspaper Publishers' Association, the forerunner to today's Alaska Newspaper Association. He served as president of each organization and later as director of the regional Allied Daily Newspaper Association. Mr. Williams was born in Spokane, WA, in November 1924, the son of two reporters, Lew M. Williams, Sr., and Winfred--Dow--Williams, who worked for newspapers in Tacoma, WA. The Williams family moved to Juneau in 1935, where his father worked for the Juneau Empire. In 1939 Lew Williams, Sr., purchased the Wrangell Sentinel, starting a history of newspaper publishing in Alaska which continues to this day. After serving as a sergeant in the paratroopers in World War II, Lew Jr. ran the Wrangell Sentinel for the family. He married Dorothy M. Baum in July 1954. The couple bought the Petersburg Press and acquired the Wrangell Sentinel from Mr. Williams' parents when they retired. They later sold the two newspapers and bought the Daily Sitka Sentinel--Sitka being the site of Alaska's first pulp mill started after WW II--and also bought an interest in the Ketchikan Daily News. Ketchikan, a sawmill town in the heart of the Tongass National Forest, later saw its own pulp mill develop. The Williams sold the Sitka paper to concentrate on the Ketchikan paper. But Lew was quick to help reestablish small papers in both Petersburg and Wrangell. Like many newspaper publishers, Lew Jr. was active in his community. He served on the Wrangell School Board, as mayor of Petersburg, and on numerous State boards including the Alaska Judicial Council, on the Board of Regents of the University of Alaska and as a member of the Board of Governors of the Alaska Bar Association. He served on the State boards under every State Governor, Democratic or Republican, through his retirement in 1999. He also served as the first secretary of the Petersburg Fish and Game Advisory Board just after statehood, helping to foster the State's strong fisheries ethics that helped salmon to recover from the catch disasters of the 1950s to the all-time records for salmon harvest currently being produced in Alaska. Besides government positions, Mr. Williams was a lifetime member of the Petersburg Elks Lodge 1615, the American Legion, the Pioneers of Alaska, a past president of Rotary, and for 29 years was an adult leader in the Boy Scout program. He also was active in the Democratic Party and was awarded an honorary doctorate of humanities by the University of Alaska Southeast. He also was the founder of the regional Southeast Conference and was named Citizen of the Year by both the Alaska State Chamber of Commerce and the Greater Ketchikan Chamber of Commerce in the early 1980s. He won statewide recognition as the Alaskan of the Year in 1991. But this speech is not meant as an obituary, but as a way for me to state my deepest appreciation for a man who epitomized Alaska during the past 70 years. He was a man who loved the beauty of Alaska, enjoying hunting and fishing on the nearby Stikine River. He also pushed for the development of Alaska from its timber industry in the southeast to the fishing industry around the State. He was a strong voice in favor of the aquaculture movement in the 1970s that helped the State preserve and grow its wild salmon populations. He also was a tireless supporter of environmentally sensitive oil and gas development, first in Cook Inlet and later in northern Alaska. Lew, having lived in the grinding poverty of Alaska long before statehood, always understood that Alaskans needed and still need good jobs and a strong economy so that the State can develop an economy strong enough to support good educational institutions, community infrastructure and allow the development of good health care and social service programs. He knew that Alaskans could grow the economy and protect our wildlife and environment. He never set up an artificial confrontation between the two goals. After his retirement, Lew wrote with the late Evangeline Atwood, the book ``Bent Pins to Chains: Alaska and its Newspapers.'' The 2006 book is a lively history of Alaska as described through the development of its newspaper industry. The book, better than most, tells the tales of life in both the territory and State of Alaska as seen through reporters, editors and publishers. Lew, undoubtedly wrote the book as a way of honoring the many talented writers and editors that have practiced in Alaska over the past 49 years since statehood, many of them reporters he helped recruit out of journalism schools, and helped mentor and train once they arrived. As his obituary earlier this week in the Ketchikan Daily News said, ``He believed the editorial was the heart and strength of any newspaper. He editorialized for Alaska State, for the creation of the state ferry system, for the trans-Alaska pipeline, for power development, in support of the timber and fishing industries, and for airports, harbors and roads.'' Alaskans have seen countless columns and editorials explaining to Americans--who never wanted to really understand the issue--why it was fully proper for some of Alaska's Federal highway funds to go for construction of a bridge from downtown Ketchikan to the city's airport, so that those who needed to fly out of the State's fifth largest city could actually get to their flights when high winds or low tides rendered the ferry system to the airport inoperative. For those who needed to catch emergency medivac flights, a bridge was no expensive trinket, but a life-saving link to the outside world. Lew always championed Alaska. I can only say to his wife Dorothy, to his daughters Christena--Tena for short--and Kathryn, his son Lew III, and his daughter-in-law Vicki, and granddaughters Kristie, Jodi, and Melissa Williams, and great- grandson Milan Browne, all of Ketchikan; and his sisters: Susan Pagenkopf of Juneau and Jane Ferguson of California, how much he will be missed. Those in public life will miss his balanced and fair editorials, his prodding and his support. We will miss his ethics and deep-seated sense of fair-play and ethics. And we will miss his wise counsel and thoughtfulness and compassion. Alaska, and the Nation, has lost a great citizen. Goodbye Lew, we will never forget you.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I rise this morning to talk about what everyone is talking about, which is the price of energy today. I was home in Alaska over the weekend. Everywhere I went, the price of gasoline was the main topic. Everyone wanted to talk about it. Here in the lower 48, as we are looking at high crude prices hitting the $120- per-barrel mark yesterday, or nearing that mark, recognizing that we are seeing a nationwide average of gas prices at $3.60 for a gallon of regular-- this is up just 4 cents over the weekend--we all agree that prices are high, far too high. But in a State such as mine, we consider the prices to be in the stratosphere. In Bethel over the weekend, the price of gasoline was at $4.98 a gallon. I just met with a constituent coming over here. We were talking about prices in Fairbanks, about the national average. But up in Allakaket, which is a pretty remote little village, the prices they are looking at for their gasoline are over $7 a gallon for regular gasoline. In Valdez, which is the site of the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline, the terminus of our gas line, they are finding regular selling there for more than $4 a gallon. I think we would all agree these prices are not just high, but for many they are absolutely unbearable. We can talk about why the prices are high. It is important to understand that. But Americans are tired of hearing, when we talk about the world demand, the world using 85 million barrels a day, that there is very little surplus oil production capacity left. They are tired of hearing of the weakness of the dollar that is driving investors into buying oil as a safe haven against inflation. The truckers who were gathered around The Mall yesterday in protest of the high prices--I have to wonder if they care that we, in Congress, in 2005 and again in 2007, passed legislation to promote energy conservation that requires an increase in the vehicle fuel efficiency standards. That is going to begin to improve their mileage in about 7 years. They do not necessarily care we have funded the research and the demonstration of alternative energy technologies, whether it is for geothermal or for ocean energy. They do not care about the loan guarantees we intend to make for nuclear and solar and wind and biomass as we try to make our biofuels go even further. What people care about--what they want to know--is: What are you doing, Congress? What are you going to do to make the price I pay at the pump go down? I suppose we can halt filling up the Strategic Petroleum Reserve-- something we certainly are looking at. I think at this time of very high prices it makes some sense. But we need to recognize that is only going to add 70,000 barrels a day to the nearly 21 million we are using. We could also reduce the Federal gas tax, which is currently 18.4 cents, and dedicate the nearly $5 billion we gained in OCS lease sales this winter from sales up in the Chukchi Sea in Alaska and from the Gulf of Mexico to help offset the losses to the highway trust fund. But, again, that would only offset the revenue losses to transportation projects for probably a few weeks. So the question the consumer is asking is: What can you do that could make a difference in this country? I believe one of those things we need to do in America is to produce more of our domestic oil and gas supplies to help increase global oil supplies and, thus, drive down the prices. We would do this at the same time we are working toward renewable fuels. We would do this at the same time we are focusing on a level of conservation. It has to be this kind of three-legged stool approach. But we cannot stick our head in the sand and say increased domestic production should not be part of that comprehensive strategy. Now, some have suggested we do not have enough oil in this country to make a difference. But look at what we in the Federal Government have done through regulation and through moratoria. We have prevented exploration in many of the places where oil and gas are most likely to be found in this country. If you take the areas that are covered by the OCS moratoria--the Atlantic coast, parts of the Gulf of Mexico closest to Florida and the Pacific coast and you throw in the Arctic Coastal Plain and parts of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska--you have nearly 40 billion of the Nation's 112 billion barrels of remaining undiscovered oil which has been put off the table for consideration. That is nearly enough to power over 20 million cars for 60 years and heat nearly 10 million homes for the same period. Last year, I came to this floor--actually, I come to this floor quite often--to urge my colleagues to consider greater oil development in my home State of Alaska. Earlier this year, I came and I urged that we simply allow--just allow--us winter-only exploration in northern Alaska to confirm that the oil we believe is there is truly there. Last year, when I spoke, the price of oil was at the $60 mark. At the same time, I warned that if we continued to do nothing, the prices would only continue to climb. I have never been one of those people who relishes the ``I told you so'' approach, but I am here to say it is time for this country to snap out--snap out--of its lethargy and actually explore for and produce more of our Nation's fuel needs. It was about a month ago, Senator Stevens and I introduced new legislation to open a tiny part of the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas development. Opening a few thousand acres--we are talking about 2,000 acres--of Alaska's Arctic coast to oil and gas production could produce up to 16 billion barrels of economic oil by current Government estimates. To some, that might not seem like much. But without opening ANWR, we are going to have to import between 780,000 and 1 million barrels of additional oil each day. That is only going to continue to help drive up the world price of oil. Without ANWR, American domestic oil supplies fall sharply. The EIA predicts Alaska will be producing about 270,000 barrels a day, next decade, from our existing oil fields up in Prudhoe Bay. This is compared to the nearly 800,000 barrels a day the State is currently producing. The bill we introduced will automatically open the coastal plain of ANWR in the northern part of the State if the world price of oil tops $125 a barrel for 5 days. In return, what it does is allocates all the Federal revenues that would come from that oil to both alternative energy development and to programs to help improve energy efficiencies and to those in need. What we anticipate, in terms of revenues, would be an estimated $297 billion--$297 billion--to help fund the wind technology, the solar, the biomass, the geothermal, the ocean energy, the landfill gas--everything that was covered in those Energy bills that were passed in 2005 and 2007, plus it would provide funding for LIHEAP, for weatherization, and for the WIC Program. The bill incorporates protections so that while we do the exploration and the production, we are also protecting the environment. We mandate that the exploration occur only in the winter, when no animals are on the Coastal Plain to be disturbed. It requires the use of ice roads that disappear in the summer to protect the wildlife. It allows for special areas to be designated to protect the key habitat. There are dozens of stipulations to guard against noise and flight disturbances, spills or land use problems. Opening ANWR does so many things. It makes us, first and foremost-- and most important--less dependent on foreign sources of oil. It cuts our balance of payments deficit. It improves our economy. It keeps our jobs at home, not exporting them to foreign oil producers such as Venezuela. But, more importantly, I think it signals that we are finally serious about helping ourselves, that we will do it here first, that we can produce oil from ANWR, and we recognize this will help to drive down the psychology and the speculation that is currently acting to drive up world oil prices. I will be the first one to admit to you that opening ANWR tomorrow will not produce more oil tomorrow. We recognize that. But we do believe it will dampen the price speculation that is helping to fuel higher prices. We have to talk about true and meaningful solutions: not only increasing alternative energy--which is a must--not only doing more to improve our energy efficiency and our conservation--absolutely important--but we need to get on now with also increasing our domestic energy supplies. ANWR is one way to demonstrate we are serious about doing that. I do hope we will seriously look at the current merits of opening ANWR to exploration and development. With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, today, I join with my colleague Senator Murray in introducing legislation that will help bolster childhood immunization in those parts of our country where immunization rates are much too low. Since the beginning of the 20th century, vaccines have completely eradicated the once frequent killer smallpox and almost eradicated polio. Vaccines save lives, avert communicable diseases and reduce health care spending for preventable diseases. We must continue in our efforts to achieve childhood immunization rates of 90 percent by 2010 and with passage of this bill, we can do just that. Vaccines are one of the most effective tools for prevention of disease. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for every $1 spent on vaccines, America saves $18.60 in both medical costs and societal costs. But more important than the cost saving is the weight and value we must place on ensuring that children are fully vaccinated. We must not lose one more child to a vaccine preventable disease. Childhood vaccines prevent over 10 million cases of infectious illness and nearly 34,000 childhood deaths in America every year. Clearly, vaccines are a tried and true way to not only reduce health care costs, but also to keep our children healthy. The legislation Senator Murray and I are introducing today authorizes funding for effective interventions recommended by the Task Force on Community Preventive Services and helps to achieve childhood immunization rates of 90 percent by 2010. First, the legislation authorizes additional funding for a demonstration program allowing Women, Infant and Children clinics, also known as ``WIC'' to play a greater role in childhood immunizations. This is achieved by recommending vaccines to WIC recipients, coordinating care or immunization services, or employing an immunization coordinator. More than 45 percent of U.S. infants receive benefits through WIC clinics. A 2002 study by the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases recommended coordinating government benefits to keep children up-to- date with their immunizations and noted that WIC programs have successfully accomplished this in numerous communities. Our legislation would enhance such efforts and would even go a step further to require that any grantee using these funds have access to the State Immunization Information System to better coordinate immunization screenings and services. Second, this legislation authorizes additional funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to conduct public, age appropriate immunization awareness campaigns and immunization education and outreach activities. Research shows that outreach, coupled with the coordination of immunization and WIC clinics, can increase childhood immunization rates by of approximately 12 percent. Lastly, this legislation establishes a sense of the Senate concerning the importance of electronic record coordination by both the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, and that these leaders should work together to improve the integration of immunization information systems with electronic medical records, health information systems, and health information exchanges. Vaccine preventable diseases will continue to be a threat to our Nation's most vulnerable population if we do not ensure proper vaccination among infants. Through this legislation, we can work to achieve the Healthy People 2010 objective of vaccinating 90 percent of all children by age two. To take a quote from a former First Lady of the United States and a cofounder of the organization Every Child by Two ``No child in America should have to get sick from a vaccine preventable disease. It's time for us to redouble efforts to protect the 20 percent of preschoolers who are routinely not being immunized on time.'' The Infant Immunization Improvement Act will be a vital first step to increasing vaccination rates and will serve as an important safeguard against the spread of communicable diseases. I would like to thank the Partnership for Prevention for their input on this legislation and the 156 members of the 317 Coalition for endorsing the Infant Immunization Improvement Act. I urge my colleagues to cosponsor this legislation--because leaving a single child unprotected is one too many.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, today, I join with my colleague Senator Murray in introducing legislation that will help bolster childhood immunization in those parts of our country where immunization rates are much too low. Since the beginning of the 20th century, vaccines have completely eradicated the once frequent killer smallpox and almost eradicated polio. Vaccines save lives, avert communicable diseases and reduce health care spending for preventable diseases. We must continue in our efforts to achieve childhood immunization rates of 90 percent by 2010 and with passage of this bill, we can do just that. Vaccines are one of the most effective tools for prevention of disease. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for every $1 spent on vaccines, America saves $18.60 in both medical costs and societal costs. But more important than the cost saving is the weight and value we must place on ensuring that children are fully vaccinated. We must not lose one more child to a vaccine preventable disease. Childhood vaccines prevent over 10 million cases of infectious illness and nearly 34,000 childhood deaths in America every year. Clearly, vaccines are a tried and true way to not only reduce health care costs, but also to keep our children healthy. The legislation Senator Murray and I are introducing today authorizes funding for effective interventions recommended by the Task Force on Community Preventive Services and helps to achieve childhood immunization rates of 90 percent by 2010. First, the legislation authorizes additional funding for a demonstration program allowing Women, Infant and Children clinics, also known as ``WIC'' to play a greater role in childhood immunizations. This is achieved by recommending vaccines to WIC recipients, coordinating care or immunization services, or employing an immunization coordinator. More than 45 percent of U.S. infants receive benefits through WIC clinics. A 2002 study by the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases recommended coordinating government benefits to keep children up-to- date with their immunizations and noted that WIC programs have successfully accomplished this in numerous communities. Our legislation would enhance such efforts and would even go a step further to require that any grantee using these funds have access to the State Immunization Information System to better coordinate immunization screenings and services. Second, this legislation authorizes additional funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to conduct public, age appropriate immunization awareness campaigns and immunization education and outreach activities. Research shows that outreach, coupled with the coordination of immunization and WIC clinics, can increase childhood immunization rates by of approximately 12 percent. Lastly, this legislation establishes a sense of the Senate concerning the importance of electronic record coordination by both the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, and that these leaders should work together to improve the integration of immunization information systems with electronic medical records, health information systems, and health information exchanges. Vaccine preventable diseases will continue to be a threat to our Nation's most vulnerable population if we do not ensure proper vaccination among infants. Through this legislation, we can work to achieve the Healthy People 2010 objective of vaccinating 90 percent of all children by age two. To take a quote from a former First Lady of the United States and a cofounder of the organization Every Child by Two ``No child in America should have to get sick from a vaccine preventable disease. It's time for us to redouble efforts to protect the 20 percent of preschoolers who are routinely not being immunized on time.'' The Infant Immunization Improvement Act will be a vital first step to increasing vaccination rates and will serve as an important safeguard against the spread of communicable diseases. I would like to thank the Partnership for Prevention for their input on this legislation and the 156 members of the 317 Coalition for endorsing the Infant Immunization Improvement Act. I urge my colleagues to cosponsor this legislation--because leaving a single child unprotected is one too many.