Bill Nelson

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Without losing the floor, yes, I yield.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. I thank the Senator, and I thank the distinguished chairman. I take the distinguished chairman at his word, but this Senator cannot evaluate any language unless he sees it. For some reason, it is being shared with everyone in the Senate except this Senator from Florida. So the Senator from Florida is going to proceed with the explanation of why this is so critical to 18 million Floridians.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. The Senator from Florida has the floor.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I believe the Senator from Florida has the floor.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, we have been discussing this Energy bill. At 10 o'clock this morning, I had discussions with the chairman of the committee and the ranking member. They were trying to work out some language to solve the problem with regard to drilling off the coast of Florida, and it is 6\1/2\ hours later, and I still don't see any of that language. So I was going to go on and continue to explain the background on this amendment, unless the chairman of the committee had something he wanted to share. I will yield to him without giving up my right to the floor.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Florida for an excellent and comprehensive statement where he has touched on the things that threaten Florida--not only the environment, not only the economy, particularly the pristine beaches, or our guests who come as tourists, the military, but he has given an overview that I think is excellent, and why in the process of debating this very important Energy bill we need to come to a resolution that the existing moratorium in the Outer Continental Shelf will not be lifted. Senator Martinez and I represent the State of Florida, but there are many other coastal Senators--I will name one whom I had breakfast with this morning, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who also has an economy in part based on tourism, the Myrtle Beach area. It is well known. Does he want oil rigs off the coast of South Carolina? Of course he does not. We will find on the Pacific coast, on the Atlantic, as well as us, concern about this eastern planning area, which includes this lease- sale 181, that there are a bunch of Senators who see this as a direct threat to us. Interestingly, the geology shows that there is not much oil and gas there. We have had innumerable dry holes in the attempts at drilling out in the gulf. So I wanted to take the opportunity to thank Senator Martinez for an excellent statement.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. I object.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. I object.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Since the Senator from Florida still has the floor, I thank Senator Reid for working this out. I acknowledge that the chairman of the committee has had enormous pressure. But as the Senate Rules provide, each Senator has an opportunity to stand up and fight for the interests of his or her State. That is what this Senator, as well as my colleague, intend to do. I agree to the Senator's request, and I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Without losing my right to the floor. I thank the leader. It is merely what I had asked. I have been waiting for 6 hours and 45 minutes from when this request was initially made and was not provided any language. I thank the distinguished Senator from Nevada.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Is it my understanding you are saying there is some language at which the Senator would be able to look?

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, this is what we have in Florida, and it is one of the things we are trying to protect. This is one of the things that could result. There is a $50 billion-a-year tourism industry. This, we cannot withstand. This is what we want to protect--some of the most pristine waters, some of the most pristine beaches. That is what can happen to our tourism industry. That is not what we want. As has been stated before by the Senator who is the Presiding Officer and this Senator, we also have a military conflict. Drilling for oil in the eastern gulf is incompatible with weapons testing and combat training. We have a statement that has been made by the Secretary of Defense. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld stated to the Senate Armed Services Committee: Encroachment is a problem that is real, it is serious. The United States needs bases, it needs ranges, it needs test ranges. And it cannot provide the training and testing that people need before they go into battle unless those kinds of facilities are available. To further quote: Each year that goes by, there are greater and greater pressures on them. This was testimony by the Secretary of Defense to the Senate Armed Services Committee. It is, in fact, the case. This is where major military training occurs. It is in the Gulf of Mexico off the eastern seaboard, just with regard to our State. There are other places in the country. One can see all of this eastern area of the Gulf of Mexico is, in fact, restricted airspace for military aircraft training. This has taken on an increased importance since the Navy Atlantic Fleet training that used to occur down in the little island of Vieques off of the big island of Puerto Rico--at the request of the Puerto Rican Government, the Navy shut that down, and a lot of that training has come here. A lot of that training is occurring out of these military bases. Plus, the aircraft carriers come into the Atlantic region for training as well as they come into the gulf and do training with other surface warfare ships, coordinated with U.S. aircraft. It is this Senator's contention, and has been stated likewise by my colleague from Florida, Senator Martinez, that it is an incompatible activity to have oil and gas rigs on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico underneath where all of this military training is occurring. That has been recognized all the more in plans by the Department of Defense. Whereas, the student pilot training is now being concentrated at Pensacola Naval Air Station and at Whiting Field, northeast of Pensacola, north of Milton, the training for the Joint Strike Fighter, which will be used by all branches of the military, that F-35, they will train those pilots at Eglin Air Force Base, near Fort Walton Beach. The new stealth fighter, the F-22, will have its pilots being trained out of Tyndall Air Force Base, near Panama City. Why are those three major training commands--one Air Force, one a joint military fighter, and then student pilots, where they train not only Navy but Coast Guard, as well as Air Force--why is that in that location? It is because of this national asset that we have, which is called restricted airspace, which has become so much more important now that the Navy is denied training down in the Caribbean and that training, in large part, is being done right there. So is it any wonder, then, that drilling for oil in the eastern Gulf of Mexico is incompatible with weapon testing and combat training? It is. I would not have to underscore, very much, the delicacy of Florida's environment to tell you about the extraordinary sensitivity of the mangroves, the sensitivity of the estuaries, the bays where the rivers flow. Here in the State of Florida, down in this portion, Ten Thousand Islands--they are all mangrove islands. They border the Everglades. Up in this section of Florida, the Big Bend--again, no sand beaches because it is a part of our ecology that is so delicately balanced, where all of the water life comes in and reproduces in those shallow waters. It is a place where one of Florida's major rivers, the Suwannee River, dumps into the Gulf of Mexico. Likewise, up here near Apalachicola, a place where the major river of Florida, the Apalachicola River, comes in and dumps into Apalachicola Bay, is a place where it produces extraordinary, world-famous Apalachicolan oysters because of the unique environment and brackish water that allows these delicacies of oysters to be able to grow and then be harvested. In fact, there is a reason why this part of the gulf you see does not have any drilling in it, when, in fact, an imaginary line, directly down from the Florida-Alabama line, everything to the west of there is where you see the drilling. One of the first reasons for that is that, in fact, that is where the oil and the gas is. That is where the mother load of oil has been and is being drilled. You can see the color here on this map. Less so off of Texas; very much so off of Louisiana; likewise off of Mississippi; and likewise off of Alabama. It was this 1.5 billion acres, in what was a part of Lease Sale 181, that was agreed to by the Governor of Florida, back in 2001, that it would not cross the longitude line that separates the border of Alabama and Florida.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. I would yield without losing the floor.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. The Senator from Florida will yield the floor when I see a good-faith effort of sharing the language. The Senator from Florida has been waiting for 6\1/2\ hours. I have made innumerable requests to the Senator's staff, both majority and minority. It has not been provided to me. The Senator from Florida is going to continue to talk until it is.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I am glad the Senator clarified that. I think it is curious why, since this Senator made the initial request and did so last Thursday when I told the chairman of the committee I would not object to the motion to proceed, and did so yesterday in my conversation with the Senator on the telephone, and I did so in a personal conversation with Senator Bingaman. Again, at 10 o'clock this morning, I renewed both of those requests. I think it is curious that language is being shared with other Senators and not with this Senator. It is 6\1/2\ hours after we had these conversations on the floor. So one starts to wonder, is someone traipsing around trying to avoid showing this Senator from Florida the language which was going to be agreed to by all of us? So it is my intention--if we are not going to have the sharing of this information with this Senator, then this Senator clearly wants to continue explaining the emergency nature for the 18 million people of Florida. So I would just continue to do that. I wish to show again what--

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Reserving the right to object, respectfully, I would request of the Democratic leader, would there be an opportunity under his unanimous consent request that I be allowed to make an opening statement after the two managers of the bill have made their opening statements?

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Well, of course I want to work with the chairman. Over the weekend, this Senator sprained a muscle in his right leg, and the last thing he wants to do is have to stand on his feet with this injured leg for hours and hours. So I want to work in good faith with the Senator from New Mexico in working out the colloquy. This Senator would clearly want that colloquy to come sooner rather than later, as soon as our staffs finish it. I, of course, will yield for Senator Dorgan to make his statement, since we are going out in just a few minutes. I will just conclude by saying, I don't think there are many Americans who do not know the beauty and the fragility of the Florida Keys and the coral reefs there. That is another one of the reasons we have to be so sensitive about drilling off the coast of Florida. So at the chairman's request, I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. No, I want to yield.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. I will yield to the chairman. You caught me in midsentence. I was about to talk about the fragility of the Keys of Florida, but I want to yield to my chairman because he is such a great chairman and he is such a good friend.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I will address some initial comments to both the chairman and the ranking member of the committee. Senator Bingaman and the chairman of the committee, Senator Domenici, have been very kind as we have discussed what is in the interests of my State and other coastal States. I will lay out my case. I want everyone to understand this is the initial laying out of the case. I hope the version I will give, over the next 15 or 20 minutes, will be the only speech I have to give on the subject of oil drilling off the coast of Florida. I hope we are not going to have to address this issue. I hope I will not have to address this because somebody--a Member of this Senate--will not be coming forth with an amendment to change the existing moratorium on oil drilling off the Outer Continental Shelf. The United States is depicted on this map in green; the Outer Continental Shelf area subject to the moratorium is off the Pacific coast from Washington in the North down to the southern end of California; on the Atlantic coast, off the tip of Maine all the way down to Florida; and the Outer Continental Shelf off of the gulf coast of Florida. This area depicted in blue is where there are existing, active leases for oil and gas drilling off of the coast of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. A better description of this is depicted in this map. Before I get to the details, I hope this Senator from Florida and this Senator's colleague from Florida, Senator Martinez, do not have to give lengthy speeches. We are prepared to utilize the rules of the Senate in order to keep this moratorium in place. It is not only the Senators from Florida who are interested in this, but the Senators from Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, and all the way up into New England, as well as the Senators from California, Oregon, and Washington State. There are a lot of Senators who, particularly when the geology shows there is not much oil and gas, have other interests we have to face in a tradeoff. What are those? In Florida, obviously, it is the extraordinary $50-billion-a-year tourism industry, as evidenced by some of the most pristine beaches in the world which spawn a major part of the attraction to our guests that come to Florida to enjoy this kind of environment. Or this kind of environment: An extraordinary place of clear water, of beautiful beach sand--places that people love to come to for vacation and to enjoy the bounty of our extraordinary nature in our State. That, of course, is one reason we do not want oil rigs out there. We do not want oil rigs because of the chance of despoiling that environment. Think of the Senators from Georgia. They have a place called Sea Island. They have a place called Jekyll Island. They have a National Park in a place called Cumberland Island. Beautiful beaches. Imagine the Senators from South Carolina looking at the extraordinary part of the economy of their State that comes in from those beautiful beaches they have. Myrtle Beach is an example. Or look at the Senators from North Carolina, the extraordinary beauty they have. Guests to their State, including their own citizens, want to go to beaches like that. Oil rigs off the beaches are not compatible with keeping a site like that or like that. But there are many more reasons I will get into. I hope this is the only speech I will have to make. I take the chairman and the ranking member at their word, that they have, in fact, been dealing with me in good faith. We are trying to work out the language of a colloquy that assures the Senators from these coastal States that the leadership of the committee handling the bill before the Senate would not support a lifting of the moratorium that allows the drilling. However, it is particularly important to me and to Senator Martinez from the State of Florida because the place the administration wants to drill is a place called Lease Sale 181, a place drawn back years ago, including about 6 million acres. In 2001, along with then-Senator Graham, this Senator from Florida, the Governor of Florida, the Governor negotiated a line that is the Alabama-Florida line, an imaginary line due south from the border of Alabama and Florida, near Perdido Key, and that there would not be any part of that lease sale that would be agreed to. Thus, as to that 6 million acres in Lease Sale 181, 4 years ago in 2001, what was agreed was there would be approximately 1.5 million acres offered for lease but this would be off the coast of Alabama, not off the coast of Florida. Since then, that 1.5 million acres has been offered for lease and that is proceeding through exploratory wells. However, it is not off of Florida. Why are these coastal Senators so exercised, especially the two Senators from Florida? Because the administration wants to expand now into the rest of that 4.5 million acres that begins what we see as an inevitable march toward the coast of Florida. That was not the agreement in 2001. But the administration is now trying to change that agreement. That is where we are prepared, as the Senators from Florida, to take our stand and not allow additional drilling. I return to where I started. I hope this is the only major speech I have to make in the Senate on the discussion of the Energy bill, other than other amendments I am involved in. This Senator and his colleague, Senator Martinez, are prepared to use the rules of the Senate-- including extended debate, if necessary--in order to prevent drilling off the coast of Florida. It is instructive to look at the entire Gulf of Mexico on this map generated by the Minerals Management Service, MMS, that shows in green the active oil and gas leases. As this shows, clearly, they are west of the State of Florida. There is a reason for that. The reason, primarily, is that the geology shows this is where the oil and gas is located. We can see by the darkness of the green that a lot of that is right off the coast of the State of Louisiana. There is also a reason we do not see this area with active leasing off the coast of Florida. Because where there were leases, they have been bought back, either under agreements with the administration and the Governor of Florida, as in the case of the Destin Dome, which is right here off Pensacola and Fort Walton--although there are two tracks or blocks there that are still available for lease after the year 2012. There is a reason why we do not see any here. All of those leases off the southwest coast of Florida have been bought back under the administration of the previous President Bush. There is another reason we do not see any, and that is because of the geology. They have done a bunch of test wells in the eastern gulf and they have come up dry. And there are more reasons. In the course of my explaining all of these reasons, let me say this is not the first time this Senator has been involved in trying to keep drilling off the coast of Florida. When this Senator was a Member of the House of Representatives, in the middle 1980s, representing a district that included east central Florida--Orlando, Cape Canaveral, my hometown of Melbourne, this general area of the east coast of Florida--there was a Secretary of the Interior named James Watt, under President Reagan, who was bound and determined he was going to offer for sale leases for oil and gas drilling from Cape Hatteras, NC, all the way south to Fort Pierce, FL. This Senator, then a member of the House of Representatives, went to work to defeat it, and defeated it in the Appropriations Committee of the House. But 2 years later, under the next Secretary of the Interior named Don Hodell, they came back with the same plan in the mid-1980s. At that point, they were bound and determined they were going to start drilling. They were going to start drilling off the coast of the State of the Presiding Officer sitting in the chair of the President of the Senate right now. They were going to drill all the way down to Fort Pierce. We finally beat it but it was a tough fight. But the way we did it was we explained that you simply cannot have oil and gas rigs out in the Atlantic where you are dropping the solid rocket boosters from the space shuttle and where you are dropping the first stages of the expendable booster rockets coming out of the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. A major national asset: our Eastern Test Range, where we fire our rockets into equatorial orbit and where, in our manned space program, likewise, we are launching the space shuttle into equatorial orbit. Well, we have a similar reason now of why we want to keep oil and gas rigs on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico because one of the major national assets of the United States is called restricted airspace. It is where we train our military pilots. We have--this area here is just the State of Florida, but the State of Florida is so key, off of the northeast coast of Florida and off of the State of Georgia--restricted airspace, but particularly here in the Eglin Gulf Test and Training Range, which you can see, as depicted by the white on the map, is almost the entire eastern section of the Gulf of Mexico. Why is this a major national asset? Because it is hard to create restricted airspace in order to train our military pilots. When Vieques closed down--that was the little island off of the eastern end of Puerto Rico where the Navy trained its pilots, all for the Atlantic region--when that was shut down because of the government and the people of Puerto Rico wanting it shut down, where do you think most of that training had to come? It had to come right here, and it is operating out of these military facilities all along the panhandle. It includes ranges actually in the State of Florida. But with the advance of technology, computers can now create virtual battlefields on the surface of the ocean--in this case, the surface of the Gulf of Mexico--in which these pilots can then train for their missions. Ladies and gentlemen, you cannot be training by dropping your ordnance in an area of the Gulf of Mexico where there are oil and gas rigs. You cannot have coordinated training exercises with the Navy on the ocean surface, the Navy underwater, and the Navy in the air, if you are having to deal with oil rigs. So it is another reason we simply have to have other considerations when the administration says they want to come in with lease sale 181, which is a place, almost in the middle of this Eglin Gulf Test and Training Range. By the way, why is it that most of the Navy concentrated student pilot training is now at Pensacola Naval Air Station and Whiting Field? Why is it that the joint service fighter, the F-35, training for all branches of the service is being done at Eglin? And why is the training for the new stealth fighter, the F-22, being done at Tyndall Air Force Base? Why? Because they have plenty of restricted airspace in which to train. So that is another reason we do not want to have oil rigs off the coast of Florida. In the lengthier version of my remarks, which I hope I do not have to give, I can give you additional reasons why we do not want it. I can show you all kinds of pictures that are imprinted in our memories of what oil does to a beach, of what oil does to sea life and waterfowl, and of what oil does in spills that are trying to be contained and yet going out of control. In the lengthier version of these remarks that I hope I do not have to give, I can show you plenty of pictures that are not the kind of pictures that any one of us coastal State Senators who now have a moratorium on oil and gas production want to have--none of us. Yet it is real. The possibility is there. So what we are facing is a situation that if we cannot get agreement from the chairman and the ranking member that they will oppose a change in the moratorium on this oil and gas drilling off the coast of and on the Outer Continental Shelf, we have no choice but to use the tools available to us in the Senate rules to prolong debate and to utilize various parliamentary procedures in which to get our point across. I do not think that is going to be necessary because of the good will of the chairman and the ranking member. As I speak, there are negotiations going on with our staffs in order to come to an agreement on colloquy language between Senator Martinez and me and the chairman and the ranking member stating that they would oppose any of these amendments that would allow this expansion of drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf and lease sale 181, which is off the coast of Florida. Mr. President, there is another reason; that is, Florida is this unique environment where all the forces of nature come together along our coast. If it is not the barrier islands that have the beautiful, pristine beaches that you have seen in these pictures, it is the parts of Florida that are the critically delicate estuaries and mangroves such as in the Big Bend of Florida and down south of Marco Island in this incredible area of mangroves called the 10,000 Islands that is so absolutely necessary as a part of the ending of the sheet flow of water that is called the River of Grass, known as the Everglades of Florida-- a unique environmental feature in the world itself.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. I thank the Chairman, but I was asking a different question. I was wondering when we would be able to have some substantive discussion on a future colloquy that we would have on the floor.

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Could the distinguished chairman or ranking member of the committee inform the Senator from Florida at what point-- maybe after the caucus lunch--we will be able to huddle up to finalize the suggested colloquy that we have been discussing?

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. NELSON of Florida

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I am very glad we are passing this resolution. There have been attempts in the past by other Members of Congress, such as my good friend, the former Congressman Tony Hall of Ohio, who had tried several years back to get a resolution of apology with regard to slavery. They never could work out all the details. I am very glad the Senate has come to this point that it could critique itself for this legislative body's failure to enact antilynching laws back at a time when it would have been so important to stop these kinds of mayhem and murderous rampages where mobs would take, supposedly, justice into their own hands. Thank goodness we have come to a point at which we can admit our mistakes, even though this is several generations later, and pass such a resolution as we will do tonight. Interestingly, one of my political heroes is a person who Americans rarely hear about. He was a British Parliamentarian in the late 1700s and the early 1800s named William Wilberforce. Wilberforce was elected to the Parliament at the age of 21 along with one of his best friends, William Pitt, the Younger. And in 3 years, at age 24, Pitt was elected Prime Minister. Of course, Wilberforce could have been in his Cabinet. But at that point Wilberforce had recognized the great evil of the day and dedicated his life to the elimination of the economic order of the day, which was the English slave trade where the captains would take the boats down off the coast of Africa under the guise of friendship, round up native Africans, put them in the holds of those slave ships, and take them to the New World and sell them. Wilberforce is a hero to me because, as a government official, a member of Parliament, he would not even join William Pitt, the Younger's Cabinet. He wanted to devote his life to the elimination of the slave trade. It took him 20 years to do it. Time after time, he was beat back, but he persevered, and he finally won, 20 years later. Then, before Wilberforce died, he saw that Parliament actually abolished slavery. That was some 30 years before slavery was abolished here in America. So it is a privilege for me to be here at long last to join our colleagues to apologize for the Senate's failure in the 1930s to pass legislation outlawing the barbaric practice of lynching. For more than a century, this country presented two realities to its citizens. Enshrined in our Constitution is a government and a legal system designed to protect the rights of all Americans so that our freedom cannot be taken away or infringed upon without due process of law. But for many decades, however, this system of justice and respect for the rule of law did not apply to all of the citizens of this country. In 1857, in the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision, that guarantee in the U.S. Constitution that all men are created equal was not intended to include Blacks by that decision. For many years later, Black Americans found few protections in the constitutional guarantees of liberty and freedom and equal protection under the law. A Black man accused of a crime against a White person found that he had no access to the courts to prove his innocence, he had no access to a fair and impartial jury of his peers. All too often, White citizens, armed with guns and feelings of righteousness, would take the accused, as law enforcement officers stood by, and brutalize them and hang them in a public setting for other members of the community to view and feel avenged. How horrible would that be, a public spectacle that was supposed to intimidate, that was supposed to strike fear. Did it? You bet it did. It was meant to send a message to the members of the Black community that they better remain in their place, to remember that the guarantees of freedom and fairness in the Constitution did not include them. In my State of Florida, there were 61 lynchings of Black Americans between 1921 and 1946, which, of course, represents only a fraction of the total number that were committed in my State. There is no justification or explanation for these horrible acts of violence. As a nation that respects the rule of law and court-prescribed justice, what happened was vigilantism and mob rule. That is what determined ``justice.'' And that is never justifiable. There is a place in Florida called Rosewood. It was the site, in the 1920s, of what many describe as a massacre. That Black community was destroyed by Whites. No arrests were ever made in as many as 27 racial killings in that location. Florida finally passed the Nation's first compensation for Blacks who suffered from those past racial injustices. It was all directed back to the massacres that had occurred at Rosewood, FL. The 1994 Florida Legislature passed the Rosewood Claims Bill to compensate victims for loss of property as a result of the failure to prosecute those individuals responsible. I felt as a Floridian that this acknowledgement was long overdue, and it made me proud to see, at long last, that we addressed the tragedy of Rosewood. Now, as a Member of the Senate, I believe this resolution we are passing tonight is long overdue. In being proud of this event, I am also humbled to stand up as a Member of the Senate and to personally apologize for the Senate's failure to act--a failure to outlaw barbaric acts such as lynchings and racial massacres. I am proud, too, that we can today reaffirm that we are a nation of laws designed to protect the freedom and liberty of all Americans--all Americans--regardless of race. Mr. President, I yield the floor.