Don Nickles

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I am going to speak on the energy bill.

Mr. NICKLES. I will speak on the Kyl amendment as well.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I am going to make a few comments concerning the Senate and then the energy bill that is pending, and maybe a couple of amendments that are pending as well. I am very concerned, as an individual Senator who has been in the Senate for 22 years, about how the Senate is working--or, in some cases, not working. I am concerned about the pending bill and the fact that I have served on this committee for 22 years and I didn't have a chance to offer an amendment. I am also concerned about how the bill has grown. It started out at 400-some pages. The second bill, dated February 26, had 539 pages. The bill we have pending, dated March 5, has 590 pages. This bill never went through committee and didn't have a committee markup. I didn't have a chance to amend it, to read it, or to improve it. The full Senate failed to have this opportunity as well. Twenty members of the Energy Committee didn't have that chance, either. So we now face the situation where we are amending on the floor; we are significantly rewriting it on the floor. There were provisions that didn't belong in the bill in the Energy Committee on CAFE. That belonged in the Commerce Committee, but they didn't mark it up there, either. We had to amend that on the floor and fight that battle. Those provisions on CAFE standards would have impacted every automobile user, consumer, every person in the country. It would have made automobiles less safe, and it would have cost thousands of jobs and thousands of dollars per automobile. But we didn't have that debate in committee. We didn't have a committee report to say what the impact would be. We didn't have the committee report dealing with the energy bill, either. We didn't have minority views and majority views, which we usually do. Some people said it had been done before. It hasn't been done in the Energy Committee. I have been on the committee for 22 years. Every major substantive piece of legislation in the Energy Committee has been bipartisan and has gone through the legislative process. Deregulation of natural gas comes to mind. That was a very complicated, comprehensive bill. We had both Democrat and Republican support. But we didn't take these steps this case. We find ourselves rewriting this, discussing it, and educating Members on the floor. I noticed that Senator Daschle, when he was referring to the Judiciary Committee, made this quote in a news conference on March 6. I have it behind me: If we respect the committee process at all, I think you have to respect the decisions of every committee. I will respect the wishes and the decisions made by that committee, as I would any other committee. Then he said on March 14: Committees are there for a reason, and I think we have to respect the committee jurisdiction, responsibility, and leadership, and that is what I intend to do. That statement, I happen to agree with. It is just that we did not agree with it when it came to the energy bill. So we have been wrestling with this bill now for a couple of weeks. We may well spend another couple of weeks on it. It is because we didn't do it in the committee. And so for the majority leader to say he respects the process, we didn't respect the committee process when we dealt with the energy bill, unfortunately. We didn't respect it when we dealt with CAFE standards, which would have gone through the Commerce Committee. Now we are not respecting the committee process in dealing with the Feinstein amendment. That didn't go through the Banking Committee or the Agriculture Committee. I happened to listen to the debate by Senators Gramm, Enzi, and Feinstein. I concur that most Members don't know much about the issue. I put myself in that majority group of Members. When you start talking about derivatives and futures contracts, and so on, maybe your eyes glaze over and you say: Doesn't somebody else work on this issue? We are going to be deciding that on the floor of the Senate. We never had a committee hearing on Senator Feinstein's proposal. Senator Gramm says it has impacts of $75 trillion. That is a lot of money. That is a lot of contracts. That is a lot of issues. Should we not have committee hearings on that in the Agriculture Committee, in the Banking Committee, where they deal with that issue and where they have expertise? I would think so. We are going to be dealing with an issue of renewables. Senator Kyl has an amendment on renewables. We had an amendment last week that Senator Jeffords offered, 20-percent renewables. He ended up getting 30-some votes. Did the renewable section pass out of committee? No. But we are going to pass a law that is going to mandate that every utility in the country has to come up with renewables of 10 or 20 percent? What is the impact of that? What does that mean to consumers on their utility bills? Is it even achievable? What do you mean by renewables? When we look at the underlying definition that is in the Daschle-Bingaman bill, renewables doesn't count hydro. Most of the definitions I have seen of renewables count hydro. According to this amendment, we are not going to count it as a renewable. We are going to count solar, wind, biomass, and a few other things; and if you add that together, that is about 1.5 percent of our electricity production. We are going to waive a law, or a bill and say, bingo, you have to be at 10 percent, or maybe 20? What does that mean? How much does that cost? Senator Kyl has an amendment saying, hey, let's tell the States, do consider renewables, give them flexibility on how to do it, and count hydro when you define renewables, as does everybody else in the world. Every State counts hydro as a renewable. But it is not in this bill. Wow. That little amendment, the 10-percent mandate for States to have renewables--I have been trying to figure out how much it costs. I have checked with experts. I get one figure of $88 billion over 10 or 15 years. Other people are speculating since it simply depends on which renewable you are talking about. Is it hydro or wind? We subsidized some renewables--a lot. Wind energy right now has a tax credit. I think it is about 1.7 cents per kilowatt. That is the equivalent of 40-some percent of the wholesale cost of electricity. That is a pretty large subsidy. I guess wind energy could take up the balance. Can we take wind energy from .2 percent of energy production up to 10 percent? I do not know. We are going to have hundreds of square miles of windmills if we do. Is that the right thing for our country to do, and can we do it without massive subsidies--we being the taxpayers--paying a significant portion of the energy cost? I do not know, but we are getting ready to vote on an amendment in the next day or two that will mandate this 10 percent. Is it going to be wind energy? Is it going to be solar? A lot of people are getting ready to vote and do not have a clue how much it will cost or if it is even achievable. I support Senator Kyl's amendment, and I hope my colleagues will as well. The Senate is not working and I am critical of the Energy Committee and I am offended because as a member of the Energy Committee, as someone who has invested a lot of time on that committee, for me not to have any input on the composition of this bill is offensive to the process. I read Senator Daschle's comments. He said: I will respect the wishes and the decisions made by that committee as I would with any other committee. The wishes of the committee were not respected when it came to the energy bill. We did not get that chance. We disenfranchised I know every Republican member on the committee. I have only been on the Energy Committee 22 years. Senator Murkowski has been on it 22 years. Senator Domenici has been on it 26 years, maybe longer, plus or minus. That is a lot of years not to have a chance to offer an amendment during a committee markup. When Senator Daschle said he was going to respect the wishes and decisions of the committee, he did not respect the wishes of the committee when it came to this major legislation, one of the most important pieces of legislation we will consider all year long. He did not respect the wishes of the Commerce Committee when it came to CAFE standards because they did not get to mark up the bill. They did not get to vote on it. And I look at some of the other committees. It came to the Agriculture Committee. The Agriculture Committee did report out a bill but, for the first time in my Senate career, it reported out a bill on an almost straight party vote. I think there was one member who crossed over. The committee came up with a very partisan agriculture bill for the first time. In addition, we had a partisan Finance Committee bill. We did not get the stimulus package through. The Senate is not working. The Judiciary Committee last week failed to approve the nomination-- or send to the floor--of Judge Pickering who is now a district court judge. It is the first time in 11 years that the Judiciary Committee defeated a nominee in committee, and 11 years ago is when the Democrats controlled the Senate. I know I heard my colleagues, the leaders on both sides, say: We want to treat all judicial nominees fairly and give them appropriate consideration. Circuit court nominees have not been treated fairly by the Democrats who are running the Judiciary Committee today. They have not been treated fairly. There are 29 people President Bush has nominated for circuit court nominees. They have been nominated to be on the circuit court--29. Seven have been confirmed; two or three of those were Democrats nominated by the previous administration supported by Democratic colleagues. We have done 7 out of 29. One was defeated. We have now had a hearing on two. There are 19 who have never had a hearing--19. There is a tradition in the Senate--maybe I should educate my colleagues--there is a tradition in the Senate that we give Presidents their nominations by and large. If there is a problem with the nomination, fine, let's hold it, discuss it and debate it, but, by and large, Presidents have the majority of their nominations through the Judiciary Committee and through the Senate in their first 2 or 3 years as President. I have a chart that shows President Reagan in his first 2 years got 98 percent of his judges through, including 19 of 20 circuit court nominees. The first President Bush got 95 percent of his circuit court nominees, 22 out of 23. I might mention, that is when the Democrats controlled the Senate. Somebody said: No, Republicans controlled the Senate when Ronald Reagan was President. Yes, we did, but Democrats controlled the Senate when President Bush 41 was President, and he got 93 percent of his judges in the first 2 years and 95 percent of the circuit court nominees. President Clinton in his first 2 years, with a Democratic Senate--got 19 of 22 circuit court judges, 86 percent of circuit court judges, and by the end of his second year, he got 90 percent of all of his judges confirmed. He got 129 judges. He got 100 judges confirmed in his second year. Why all of a sudden now with President Bush we have only done 24 percent? We have done 7 out of 29 circuit court nominees--7 out of 29. That is pathetic. President Bush nominated nine on May 8 of last year. Nine. We have disposed of one--that was Judge Pickering--and seven were confirmed out of that nine. Eight have not even had a hearing. Miguel Estrada, a Hispanic who immigrated to this country from Honduras when he was a young man--he immigrated, frankly, with nothing. He could not even speak English. He graduated with honors from Harvard. He has argued 16 cases before the Supreme Court, and he has not even had a hearing. John Roberts argued 36 cases before the Supreme Court. He was nominated in May of last year. He has not even had a hearing. We have only dealt with one-fourth of the circuit court nominees, while the three previous Presidents had 90-plus percent confirmed. 90- plus percent circuit court nominees in the three previous administrations, Democrats and Republicans, were confirmed, and now we have only confirmed 7 out of 29--that's one out of four. That is not working. The Senate is not working. This institution I love is not working. The Energy Committee did not work. It did not mark up a bill. So now we have to rewrite the bill on the floor. The Commerce Committee did not work. The Agriculture Committee is becoming partisan. We have never had a partisan agriculture bill in decades. The Finance Committee could not even report out a stimulus package. Eventually, we took half a package from the House and adopted it when in the past the tradition of the Senate has always been, whether you are talking about Bob Dole, Bob Packwood, or Russell Long, we had bipartisan tax bills almost every time, and we could not get it done this year. Mr. President, I am critical of the process. I happen to love this institution. I want the Senate to work. I want Members to do what Senator Daschle said: Have the committee process work. It is not working, and it is not working in committee after committee. I urge my colleagues that we lower the partisan rhetoric and do our job in committees and respect Members. I will also make a comment on Judge Pickering. It is unconscionable to me to believe that this fine judge was defeated. It is unbelievable to me to think Members would not confirm a nominee who is a close friend of the Republican leader. I cannot imagine that we would do something like that to the Democratic leader. I cannot imagine that ever happening to Bob Dole. I cannot imagine it happening to George Mitchell. I cannot imagine it happening to Howard Baker. The Senate has really stooped, in my opinion, pretty low. Maybe in a way I am afraid we are trespassing where we should not go. It is very important that we step back and we figure out what is the right way to legislate, what is the right way to consider nominees. If people are nominated to be a district court judge or a circuit court judge, they are entitled to a hearing, they are entitled to a vote whether Democrats are in charge of the Senate or Republicans are in charge of the Senate. I am not saying we did it perfect either when the Republicans were in charge. I do think, by and large, we ought to let people have a vote certainly the first 2 and 3 years of a President's term. Maybe in the last year of their term it is understood they do not get a lot of judges: Let's wait and see how the election goes. Particularly if the judges are nominated in the last few months of a Presidential term, there are legitimate reasons to wait until after the election. Let us come up with a little better understanding. We should not hold people in limbo and maybe hold careers in jeopardy or on hold when we have outstanding people who are willing to serve, and in many cases at a great financial sacrifice. The President has nominated good people and they cannot even get a hearing? Something is wrong. Something is wrong on the Sixth Circuit Court when they only have 8 out of 16 positions filled. In other words, they have half that circuit court vacant. Something is wrong. The Senate is not working. President Bush has nominated several outstanding nominees to the Sixth Circuit and they should have a chance to have a hearing and to be voted on. I am confident that the overwhelming majority would be confirmed. I saw Senator Daschle's comments when he said we ought to follow the Senate committee process. I agree with that. It is unfortunate we have not been doing it. What happened last week in the Judiciary Committee, where Judge Pickering was defeated, I hope people do not go down that road. Right now the Democrats are in control, but barely. My guess is Republicans--I have been in the Senate where the leadership has changed. I think this is the fourth time, and I am sure I am going to be in the Senate where it is going to change again, and maybe again and again. Who knows? So people should recognize they can be in the majority, they can be in the minority. So to treat nominees the way they are being treated now, because they happen to be a circuit court nominee, is not right. I will also tell my colleagues on the Democrat side I will make the same statement when Republicans are in control. I do not think we should hold people indefinitely and not give them hearings. I do not think we should confirm 24 percent of the circuit court nominees. I think that is pathetic, and we need to do better. We need to do much better, and I hope and expect that the Senate will. I ask unanimous consent that short biographies of the eight nominees who were nominated on May 9 for the circuit court of appeals be printed in the Record.

Mr. NICKLES. I yield the floor.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Bond), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms), and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Kyl) are necessarily absent. I further announce that if present and voting the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms) would vote ``yea.''

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Brownback), the Senator from Montana (Mr. Burns), the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Craig), the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Frist), the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Helms), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. McConnell), and the Senator from Texas (Mrs. Hutchison) are necessarily absent. I further announce that if present and voting the Senator from Montana (Mr. Burns) would vote ``yea''.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Specter) and the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Santorum) are necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Wyoming (Mr. Enzi) is necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from Wyoming (Mr. Enzi) is necessarily absent.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 1 minute.

Mr. NICKLES. Madam President, for the information of our colleagues, we are going to be voting momentarily. I appreciate the cooperation of my friend from New Mexico for postponing the vote for just a moment. I urge my colleagues to vote against the Daschle amendment, which was also modified by my friend and colleague, Senator Murkowski, because it mandates that we pick the southern route for a major gas pipeline to go through Alaska. That may be the best route. There are other possibilities, other alternatives. There is a northern route. It is several hundred miles shorter. It may be more economical. Most of the northern route goes through the Mackenzie River Delta which is on a pretty flat plain and would not require going through 900 miles of mountains. I do not know which one we should choose. I do not think that Congress should choose it. I do not think we should mandate it without more significant oversight and discussion. I would like to hear the experts. I would like to hear the environmentalists. I would like to have some input from a lot of people. And I would like to have an idea how much the alternatives would cost. I have heard that the pipeline route that Senator Daschle is trying to mandate, the southern route--going through Alaska, and then going through Canada--would cost about $20 billion. I do not know. I do know that in the underlying bill there is a $10 billion loan guarantee. We have never had a hearing on the loan guarantee. We have never had a hearing on how this is going to be financed, whether it needs governmental assistance or not. I think it is wrong for us to dictate we go this particular way and other options cannot be considered. I would like to think we believe in the free market system enough to where we would let the marketplace decide what is the best route, what is the most economical route, what is the route that will do the least environmental damage. Instead, we have people coming up and saying: Oh, wait a minute, I have talked to a couple politicians. We are going to mandate the southern route with very little discussion or debate. Let's let the marketplace decide. Let's get some input from a lot of people. I do not think we are doing that in this case. I do not think this is a good way to legislate. I do not think we know how much it will cost. I do not think we have an idea of the environmental impact. Instead, we are just going to have a 2- hour debate on the floor, and then we are going to say: Let's go make a decision on a $20 billion pipeline. Do we need a loan guarantee? Do we need Federal assistance? Do we need to have Federal financing for this project? I think we are moving pretty quickly here. I would hope we would be silent and assume we could go through the regulatory process. We have built hundreds of miles of pipeline through my State, and we have never had Federal legislation designating what you have to do, nor have we had State legislation designating what you have to do. I question the wisdom of us mandating one particular route at this particular time. So I urge my colleagues to vote no on the Daschle amendment.

Mr. NICKLES. Will the Senator yield for 1 minute?

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, thank you very much. I wish to make a few remarks regarding the energy bill. Let me first compliment my colleague and the former chairman of the committee, Senator Murkowski, for his leadership on this issue and for the statement he made both yesterday and today. Let me also express my very strong displeasure with the process that leads us here today. I am glad we are debating energy. I am glad we are going to have an energy bill that will be amended and discussed. But I am very upset about the procedure and how we arrived here today. I served 22 years on the Energy Committee. I worked with Democrats and Republicans to pass historic legislation, to deregulate the price of natural gas. I worked with Senator Bennett Johnson, Wendell Ford, Jim McClure, and other Senators. It was bipartisan, historic, important legislation. We passed other legislation. My point is, we passed historic, meaningful legislation in a bipartisan manner through committee markups, some of which, as in the case of natural gas deregulation, took years. We worked on it, we amended it, and brought a bill to the floor. We did not do that in this case. I cannot recall in my Senate career a legislative proposal this significant where it bypassed the committee. The committee proposal we have before the Senate had no Republican input. I have not had one chance to offer one amendment to this bill. I am offended by that. I am offended by the process. I am offended by the fact that people think we do not want markup in the committee because we cannot control the committee. Since when do we say, we will not have markups if we cannot win? That is exactly what happened. I have heard some say, that is not really what happened--we just rule 14 bills all the time. We do not, all the time, take significant legislative action and say we don't want the committee to mark it up; we do not want to have bipartisan input; we do not want to allow people to offer amendments; we do not want them to have an amendable vehicle. The fact is we did not have a legislative markup in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee for months. I am offended by that. Why am I serving in the Senate? Why did I select the Energy and Natural Resources Committee? Why am I one of the senior members on that committee and not even have a chance to offer an amendment to express some positive or negative points about some provisions that affect every single American? I did not even have a chance to offer an amendment. I did not even have a chance to say this is good or bad. Now we have to do it on the floor. There are a lot of items in this bill that a lot of people do not know about. I wonder if my colleagues are aware there is a $10 billion loan guarantee in this bill. Most people do not know that is included. We never had a hearing on it. We did not have a hearing on it in the House or in the Senate and it is in the bill. I understand they will change it. That is interesting. That has not been discussed. When Senator Murkowski was chairman of the committee, we had a lot of hearings dealing with the issue, and we were going to mark up the bill. We started marking up the bill last year but we stopped. Why did we stop? The Washington Post says in an October 11 headline, ``Daschle Stops Panel's Consideration of Energy Bill.'' Then it goes on to say: ``Majority leader, Tom Daschle, yesterday abruptly halted further committee consideration of major energy legislation after Democrats concluded there were probably enough votes on the panel to approve the Bush administration's plan for drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.'' In the Washington Times, the headline, ``Daschle Takes Control of the Energy Bill; Republicans decry bid to stall Alaskan drilling as `partisan' maneuver.'' Daschle yesterday took control of the energy bill in a move to strengthen his opposition to the administration's proposal to drill for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which President Bush says is critical to national security. In an unusual legislative action . . . It is more than ``unusual.'' I don't remember it happening. I have been here 22 years, and maybe others who have been here longer can say it has happened, but I can't remember a majority leader saying: Stop, don't work, don't mark up, I will come up with something on my own. That does not happen.

Mr. NICKLES. I am happy to yield.

Mr. NICKLES. Let me answer the Senator's question. I thank the Senator for the point. There is a difference between a budget resolution that is not even law--a budget resolution does not even go to the President for signature. Budget resolutions are entirely different matters. That is not the same. A budget resolution does not have the impact. A budget resolution authorizes committees to say: Here is how much you spend. But it is not a tax cut. You still have to pass a tax cut; you still have to pass the legislation. This is legislation. This is a bill that will become law. This is a bill that has the potential of increasing the cost of vehicles for everybody in America by $2,000 or $3,000. Are people aware of that? Do I recall a hearing on that provision, the so-called CAFE standards? No. Did the Commerce Committee have a hearing on it? Did the Commerce Committee have a markup on it? Did it pass by bipartisan majority out of the Commerce Committee? The answer is no. Where is the committee report? One of the reasons we have markups in committees is to have everybody on the committee who has expertise on the issue to have input, to support it or oppose it--to issue a committee report so we can find out what is in it, so you can read what is in it in English, not just the legislative language which is difficult to decipher. Our competent and capable staff prepare a committee report explaining in English, here is what this provision does, here is what this provision means. On most legislative issues I can remember we have had a committee report. There is no committee report because the committee did not report on this bill. This bill has enormous potential impact on American citizens, but no one knows what is in it. I didn't know what was in it and still don't, even today. I pride myself on doing a little homework on legislative issues. I kind of like to read bills. The bill introduced by Senator Daschle did not come through the committee. Maybe it is supported by Senator Bingaman, but it is not supported by this Senator. It was introduced February 15. It is 436 pages. I wanted to get the yeas and nays because I had an idea it might be changed. I was not successful and could not do that. But it was introduced and I thought at least I can now start reading it and do homework. The more I read, the less I liked. It is a pretty crummy energy bill, in my opinion. I started to say you couldn't do much worse, but maybe you could, surely you could. It is not much to my liking, but I had no input on this bill whatsoever. And I think I happen to be No. 3 in seniority in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee--No. 3 or 4. Then the bill was changed. That bill was introduced on February 15, and it was 436 pages. On February 26, the bill was introduced, just a week or so ago, and it was 539 pages. It grew by over 100 pages in a couple of weeks. I don't know what the differences are. I am trying to find out. I thought, now I have a printed copy. I had to ask consent to get this copy printed, so I did. So now it would not be just in loose- leaf form, and now we can get some work done. I can do my homework and take this home. I started reading it. I didn't like this one either. And I didn't have any impact on this. I didn't get to vote on one single page of this bill--not one. I am offended by that process. Then it was changed yesterday. We have version No. 3. This was dated March 5. It is 590 pages. That is only another 51 pages more than the bill that was on the floor a week or so ago. I have not analyzed that. I don't know what is in the 51 pages. I have not figured that out yet. But I do know I had no impact, no input, no amendment--nothing. We have a terrible process where the majority leader shuts down the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and says: We do not care if you have 20 members who have experience on these issues. We don't care if you have had a lot of hearings in the past on these issues--issues such as electricity, CAFE standards drilling in Alaska. We do not care if you have expertise because we do not want your input. The Democrats are going to put together a bill. We will decide what you will mark up. Sure, there is a reason. They said: If you want to change it, go change it. We will give you some amendments. And we will have amendments. Yes, we will just fix it. That is almost the size of the Bible, and unlike the Bible, it contains no good news. This is a problem. Now we have to fix it. We will fix it paragraph by paragraph. There are a lot of paragraphs in 590 pages. I keep reading things in here I don't like. What is my alternative? I didn't have a chance to offer an amendment. I do not like the loan guarantee. I don't like any loan guarantee. For the most part I opposed the steel loan guarantees. I lost on that one. Now there are loan guarantees for oil companies in here. I don't like loan guarantees for oil companies either. It is in here. Now I have to strike it, I have to replace it. I don't like the CAFE standards. Some people think: Let's just increase CAFE standards; we'll go from 27.5 to 35. Wait a minute, in this other version it was 36. But we are going to increase CAFE standards. Does that include SUVs and pickups? Do they have a different standard? Yes. How much will that cost? Some people say it costs a couple of thousand dollars a vehicle. It may cost a lot more. It may cost thousands of lives. Who had a hearing? Where is the committee report? Where is the scientific analysis? Where is the data we have from the Department of Transportation that this is a good change? It is not here. Where is the committee report, where you can study the pros and cons, the supporting opinions and dissenting opinions that we usually have in the back of the report? It is not here. I don't recall a committee report. We are going to consider legislation of monumental importance, probably the most important issue we will consider this year--maybe not. Maybe it is in the eyes of the beholder. Maybe some people think campaign reform is more important. I don't. This will impact every single American because energy security is national security. If you don't have energy security, you don't have national security. If you don't have energy security, you don't have economic security. We have seen that happen in the past. We have found ourselves, in the past, when we have not prepared properly, to have made serious mistakes, to have been really vulnerable to curtailments. We had a curtailment, I might remind my colleagues. In 1973 we had a curtailment. It was called the Arab oil embargo. Some of my colleagues might remember it. I remember it. I was in the private sector back in those days. There were lines; there were shortages; we had brownouts; we had schools that were closed; we had people lined up for blocks to buy gasoline. There was a real shortage. It was caused by an oil embargo because there was a real crisis in the Middle East. At that particular point in time, we had gross crude oil imports of 26.1 percent. Today we are over 60 percent. In 1979 we had another shortage. It was during the Iranian hostage situation. There was an embargo. At that time we were importing 44.5 percent. Today we are importing 60 percent. Today we have a real problem in the Middle East. It is flaring up every day in Israel. It could expand. I hope and pray it does not. But we are a lot more vulnerable today than we were back in 1973 and 1979. So now, finally, we have an administration that has put together a package after a lot of work, promoted that package, passed that package, by and large, in the House of Representatives. Did the Senate have a hearing on the House-passed package and use that as a markup vehicle? We do that a lot, but we didn't in this case. Did we hold the House-passed bill at the desk and use that as a markup vehicle? We do that a lot. No, we didn't do it in this case. We started with an entirely different bill, one that has never seen the light of day, one that has never gone through a legislative markup, one that has never had a Republican amendment considered. Basically, what you have is a couple of people who put this bill together, making a whole lot of special interest groups very happy in the process. There are lot of special interest groups that, because of this bill, are very happy. But it is a pathetic excuse for an energy bill, and it is a very poor excuse if we want to do something that will help solve some of our national energy problems. Even worse than that, it is a terrible legislative process. If we are going to tell two major committees--the Energy Committee for the energy components of this bill and the Commerce Committee for the CAFE standards--don't mark up, then you have just disenfranchised 47 Senators: We don't want your input; one or two people will decide what we are going to do, and if you don't like it, amend it; and, incidentally, if you try to amend, we are going to filibuster your amendments so now you have to have 60 votes to change this bill. What is the difference? If a committee markup was held you would have input from Democrats and Republicans. You would probably come a lot closer to having consensus, a bipartisan bill. You would have a committee report so people could understand it, they could read what it is, what people are trying to do, what they are doing in the legislative language. Then, if you disagreed with what the committee did, a group of 40 Senators--in this case, 20 from the Energy Committee and 20 from the Commerce Committee; maybe 42 or 43--you could offer amendments to try to change it. Instead, we are acting as if we have some type of totalitarian government or some type of kingdom over here that says: Committees don't operate. I'll decide what is in your bills. Maybe one or two people, maybe three--I don't know how many; a few people, not Republicans--put together the bill. It is 590 pages. Oh, we will amend but if you offer a couple of amendments, we are going to filibuster those amendments. You need 60 votes. Good luck. If you marked it up in the committee and put ANWR in the bill--which we would have--then somebody would have to strike it out of the bill. It is totally different. Then you are talking about a majority vote, you are not talking about 60 votes. There is a big difference. Or if somebody wants to set new CAFE standards, new CAFE standards that have bipartisan support that come out of the Commerce Committee, we didn't do that. It is a terrible legislative process. Shame on the Senate for this legislative process. Shame on the Senate. I have only been here 22 years, but we have not done this. It is not the same thing as the budget resolution. It is not the same thing as a sense-of-the-Senate resolution. This is very comprehensive, significant legislation. It is similar to legislation with which we wrestled in the last Congress dealing with the Patients' Bill of Rights. It is a tough bill. I was in charge of a lot of it. I disagreed with a lot of the ideas that were floating around. But we had a markup in the Labor Committee. We had a markup in the Labor Committee that lasted days. We had 30, 40 votes on amendments; more amendments, that many votes. The committee passed, with Senator Gregg's leadership, with Senator Collins' and others, a Patients' Bill of Rights. Senator Jeffords was on the committee at that time. They passed a pretty decent Patients' Bill of Rights, and we considered it on the floor and amended it on the floor, and we passed it. I didn't agree with everything that was in it, but I agreed with the final package. It was a decent package. It brought a lot of people together. Some people said it was not enough. But anyway, it went through the legislative process. It wasn't easy. We could have said: We are in the majority, the heck with the committee; we will come up with what we have deemed is the right package and run with it. I think that is a violation of Senate protocol, spirit--basically telling the minority they don't matter. It doesn't make any difference if there are 49 Members on the Republican side, you don't matter; you have no input. I just very strongly disagree with that. It means a lot to people who have not looked at this legislation. Usually a lot of Senators haven't looked at it but they rely on the committee, the authorizing committee, for their expertise and for their homework, and they can rely on them for their judgments. It is kind of hard for us, many of us on this side of the aisle, because we have not looked at this. I keep finding things in there at which I am kind of shocked: Where did this come from? Well, some lobbyist or somebody had some idea, so he stuck it in the bill. We have all kinds of mandates and subsidies and loan guarantees. Now there is an amendment that says that we, in our infinite wisdom, are going to choose which pipeline route to go for a natural gas pipeline in Alaska. The underlying bill says there is a $10 billion loan guarantee. I question that. But I also question why we are trying to choose which pipeline route should be involved in building the Alaska natural gas pipeline. Let me see. Let me count the number of days we have had hearings on this. This is about a $20 billion project--a pretty good size project, over which we should have held several hearings on at the least. Did they have a hearing in the House of Representatives? No. This language or similar language is in the House bill. I am not going to fault the House. I think they did a pretty good job. I question the wisdom of putting this in without hearings. Should we dictate which pipeline route? I hate to say this, but what about the marketplace deciding which route? Why don't we use the route that would be most economical? Why don't we use the route that makes most economic sense? Why don't we use the most feasible route? Is that language in here? No. The language that Senator Daschle is proposing now--in addition to the $10 billion loan guarantee that came from somewhere, just appeared in this bill--it says: Oh, we are going to take the southern route. The southern route--if you look at the chart; that is the one shown in orange--swings through Fairbanks and through Alaska. It is several hundred miles longer than the other route. The other route looks a lot cleaner, a lot shorter, a lot straighter, and it is also in plains, maybe marsh. It is parallel to the Mackenzie River. The other one goes through about 900 miles of mountains. I used to work for a pipeline company. I helped lay pipe in some of my private sector days. I know a little bit about it. I know it is expensive. Man, it is a lot more expensive to do it in the mountains than it is on the plains. There may be pluses and minuses on both. I do not know all the pluses and minuses. I know one thing: I probably do not know enough yet to say this is the right route or this other one is. I have not studied it enough. I don't recall a hearing. I have not met with all sides. I have met with a couple people. I have constituents who have an involvement. I have constituents who have some minerals or gas in the project, and they would like to get it to market. I would like to get it to market. It would be good for the economy to get it to market. But why are we going to mandate which way to go? Why are we going to mandate which way to go under Senator Daschle's amendment without even a hearing? Whose special interest group is this? I just question the wisdom of acting this way, of having this bill up in this manner. We have not had a hearing on this bill. No one knows what is in it except for a few people. And now here is an amendment that says: Oh, in our infinite wisdom, we are going to dictate you go this route. Let's go the longer route, the route that looks a lot more expensive because it is several hundred miles longer than the other route. We are going to dictate that? I don't think we should. Maybe I am in the minority on that. I want to defer to my friend from Alaska, Senator Murkowski. I have great respect for him. But I really question the wisdom of Congress trying to dictate this, and it just goes with the whole process of this bill. I am more offended by the process and the way this has come to the floor than anything procedurally in the Senate in my career, and certainly out of this committee. I have not been on other committees. Maybe other committees have tried a little end run like this in the past, but I can't remember. But I know they have not in the Energy Committee because I have been on the committee. I would have been very outspoken. If our side tried to do it, I would say: No, that is not right. We have to run it through committee. You have to have input from Democrats and Republicans. You may have party-line votes once or twice, but most of the time on the Energy Committee we didn't vote on party lines. We tried to vote for what was right and in the best interests of the country. This is 590 pages of all kinds of little subsidies for alternative fuels, mandates. Oh, we already have a big mandate for ethanol, about 53 cents a gallon for ethanol. Now we are going to mandate not only the subsidy, but we are going to mandate that they have to produce so many gallons; I think it is something like 5 billion gallons in another 10 years or something. Wow. How much are we going to do? Then on and on and on. The more I see--oh, we have subsidies for wind energy, you name it. There are all kinds of things that are in this bill, some of which are very questionable economically, some of which are going to greatly increase consumer prices. Then let me just touch on the other side of it, and that is the issue of CAFE. The Federal Government is going to mandate that we raise the fuel average economy standards from 27.5 miles per gallon to 35 miles per gallon, and do that over the next 13 years. In a previous bill it was over 11 years. Now that has been adjusted. My wife happens to drive a Pathfinder, an SUV. We should send out signals to SUV moms all across the country: Hey, the Senate Democrats, under this bill, are going to raise the price of your vehicle by at least a couple thousand, if not $3,000 or $4,000. Notice to soccer moms, notice to SUV vehicles: It is in here. It is going to increase the price of your vehicle. Maybe I should have an amendment that says Senate cars should meet these standards, because they do not. But we are going to make every soccer mom in America pay for this because it is in this bill. Oh, soccer moms: One of reasons you like these SUVs is that they are kind of big, kind of safe. My son has two kids, and he has one. He has the baby seats in it, and he likes it because it is safe. It is not going to be nearly as safe if this bill passes because this bill is going to mandate--well, the vehicle is going to have to have a much smaller engine, it is going to have to be a lot lighter, it is going to resemble something more like a Volkswagen than it is an SUV, and we are sorry about that. Will the fatalities go up if we pass this bill? The answer is yes, by the thousands. How many? What scientific studies do we have? We don't know. We have not had a hearing. We were not able to ask the safety experts. We were not able to ask the experts who build this: Can this be done? Can it be done safely? And how much will it cost? I would love to ask the automobile manufacturer: How much is this going to cost? Can we comply with these standards? How much more will SUVs cost in 8 years if they meet this standard? I will tell you, it is going to be in the thousands. We do not know because we have not had the hearing. We have not asked those questions. We have not gone the legislative route. There is no committee report. There was no homework done. This is put together and changed almost on a daily basis. It is a crummy way to legislate. And this first amendment is a crummy way to legislate, a very poor way. Shame on the Senate if, oh, we are just going to decide this is the way we are going to build this pipeline, we are going to dictate you have to take this route. That is not the way it should be done, not when you are talking about $20 billion, not when you are talking about Federal loan guarantees that should not be in the bill in the first place. Oh, now we are going to have loan guarantees and we are going to dictate which route to go. We never had a hearing. We do not know which way is the best as far as protecting the environment is concerned. We do not know which is best as far as the economy is concerned. One might cost twice as much. I would think to build a mile of pipeline through the mountains would probably be several times as expensive as building one on the plains. Yet we have an amendment offered by Senator Daschle, the first amendment up: Here is what we are going to do. Maybe there are political considerations behind his amendment. I don't know. But I am just astounded by this process. I am very disappointed in this process. This process should not be repeated. It should not be repeated by Democrats or Republicans. We have committees for a purpose. We have committees for a purpose: So we can have bipartisan input, so we can have the legislative process work, so we can have hearings on legislation so people can know what they are voting on, to where they can try to improve it, to where any member of the committee has an opportunity to read the bill and to amend it, to change it--win or lose, at least they have the opportunity to try. No one has had an opportunity to amend this bill--no one. A few people might have been able to get their special interest provisions in, thanks to the majority leader and to the chairman of the committee. But no one, no Member of the Senate, has offered an amendment to this bill because it has not had a markup. Right at about half the Senate has been disenfranchised because we did not have a markup on the CAFE standard and did not have a markup on the energy package. So now we are presented with an energy bill: Here it is. Go get it. Have at it. See if you can improve it. Oh, yes, if you have an amendment we don't like, get 60 votes. That is not the way the Senate is supposed to work. The Senate is a great institution. People are violating the thrust of the Senate. Totally ignoring the committee process should not be done lightly. So I am critical of it. I want my colleagues to know of the problem of how we are situated. So we have a bad bill. Some of us are going to try to make it better. It may take a while. We may have to ask a lot of stupid questions: What is this in here for? How much is it going to cost? I would like the proponents to know I am going to be asking those questions because I did not have a chance to ask them yet. I did not have that chance to ask them in committee, so I am going to ask them on the floor. So this markup may take a little while. This amendment may take a little while. I do not want to filibuster this amendment, but I want to know how much it is going to cost. I want to know why this route is preferred over the other route. I want to know why there is a $10 billion loan guarantee in the bill. Why? Who benefits from that? What is the purpose? Is that the best way to do it? Should it be done? Is it necessary for it to be done? Could we build the other route even without a loan guarantee? Without price supports? Is that possible? Does it need to be? Or does the marketplace dictate we have to go this way? Aren't those decent questions? Shouldn't those questions be asked? They have not been asked before. Yet we are getting ready to commit to a $20 billion project? This is a crummy way to legislate. The Senate leadership should know this is not the way to operate. We should not disenfranchise 40 some Senators from the committee process. I hope we won't do it in the future. I yield the floor.

Mr. NICKLES. I thank my friend and colleague, Senator Murkowski. I understand his situation. We are dealing with $20 billion projects, $10 billion worth of loan guarantees, and we haven't had nearly the number of hearings necessary to consider proponents of both sides and environmentalists. In addition, we should have people who are going to be granting permits, and so on, to give us some input and some estimates on how much it will cost and what the time delays would be, and so on. I haven't seen that being done. The chairman of the Energy Committee is not here, but I want to have this hearing--and I may not get this hearing before this bill is taken care of, but I want to have a hearing on this before we get a conference report. So he is not here, but I will insist on it. We are not going to have a conference report until we get to have some hearings. I think if we get to the conference, I might have something to do with what is going to be in the conference report. To have this kind of issue and ask Senators to vote on it when we haven't properly reviewed its substance in committee, that is a real procedural mistake. We need to have more significant input from many more experts before making these decisions. I think it is a mistake for us to dictate which pipeline we should be building, without more information. With that comment, I yield the floor and thank my colleague from Nevada.

Mr. NICKLES. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. NICKLES. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. NICKLES. I think there are factual inaccuracies here.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, the Senator mentioned that we had hearings. Can he give me the dates? Have we had a hearing on the two alternatives for pipelines for Alaska?

Mr. NICKLES. I am surprised. I don't recall that. I don't recall considering the two alternatives. I asked staff did we have a hearing and they said no. I asked if there was a House hearing; they said no. On something this controversial, I am just not so sure we did. Maybe my memory is short, but for a $20 billion project, I kind of think I would know about it. Maybe that is not the case. Maybe I am wrong, but I doubt that hearing was set up in a way that said let's consider these two alternatives. I will do a little more homework to find out what happened on October 2. I want to find out if we were in session. This doesn't ring a bell. The Senator said the Republicans brought up Patients' Bill of Rights under this procedure. That is wrong. We had a committee markup on Patients' Bill of Rights. It was marked up, amended, voted on. It was tough, difficult, and it was a very challenging thing, but we marked up the Patients' Bill of Rights. We passed it in committee and on the floor. The Senator mentioned a budget resolution. That is not a law; that is a guideline for the Congress. Maybe my colleague is right. Maybe we should not have done that. But, at least in my 22 years in the Senate, we have never had substantive, major, significant legislation out of the Energy Committee where we had a day or two of markup and the majority leader said ``no more'' and we have no more input or consideration of amendments. That has not been done, I am absolutely certain, in my 22 years in the Senate.

Mr. NICKLES. I may well stand corrected, and October 2 is pretty close to September 11. Maybe I missed it. My guess is that hearing did not consider the two alternatives. It may have been promoting one alternative. It may have been promoting the alternative that the Governor wanted, but other people--I don't know. I happen to think there is a lot of interest in two alternatives, and I do not know which is right. I will readily admit that I do not have the answer to which is the best, which is the most economical, which is feasible. My colleague from Alaska was saying we may have to go offshore and build that pipeline; it is a challenge. I do not know that we have to go offshore. These are things that need to be discussed and need to be explored. We did not do that. My point is, though, we began markup on this bill and that markup was stopped. Again, I will go back to my little 22 years; I cannot remember a substantive legislative item, certainly in the Energy Committee, where we started a markup and then were stopped and were told: No more committee markup; i.e., we do not want input from other people; we are just going to come up with a bill on the floor. That has not been done, and the process is terrible. I am going to maintain my criticism of it. I look at the 590 pages, and it has grown 100 pages--actually it has grown 154 pages in the last 3 weeks--and I do not know what is in it because we did not have it in committee. There is no committee report. I am fumbling around here. I do not see a committee report. There is no minority report. That is very unusual for something that is going to increase people's bills, that is going to increase the cost of electricity. We ought to know something about it. It is not out there. I stand corrected. I always want to be factual. I may have strong passions, but I want to be factual. If we had the hearing and I said we did not, I stand corrected, and I thank my colleague.

Mr. NICKLES. Will the Senator yield for a question? Since there was a hearing and my able staff pointed out that, yes, there was a hearing, it happened to be on October 2, did that hearing involve the necessity of loan guarantees? Where did the $10 billion loan guarantee come from? This is a surprise and, to my knowledge, was not considered.

Mr. NICKLES. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, before my friend from Nevada leaves, let me clarify a couple things. One, he referred once or twice to the Patients' Bill of Rights. We had a markup on the Patients' Bill of Rights. I am absolutely positive of that. No matter how poor my memory is, I know there was a markup on it.