John Peterson

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Madam Speaker, pursuant to the Republican Leadership standards on earmarks, I am submitting the following information regarding earmarks I requested and were included in H. Res. 1488, Providing for consideration of the Senate amendment to the bill (H.R. 2638) making appropriations for the Department of Homeland Security for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2008, and for other purposes. Consistent with the Republican Leadership's policy on earmarks, I hereby certify that to the best of my knowledge this earmark: (1) is not directed to an entity or program that will be named after a sitting Member of Congress; (2) is not intended to be used by an entity to secure funds for other entities unless the use of funding is consistent with the specified purpose of the earmark; and (3) meets or exceeds all statutory requirements for matching funds where applicable. Member: Congressman John E. Peterson. Bill Number: H. Res. 1488 (H.R. 2638). Provision: RDTE, N, Line# 183, PE# 0205633N. Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Impact Technologies. Address of Requesting Entity: 2571 Park Center Blvd., State College, PA 16801. Description of Project: This project provides $2.4 million for FY09 in the DoD RDTE account for F/A-18 Avionics. The entity to receive funding for this project is Impact Technologies, 2571 Park Center Blvd., State College, PA 16801. It is my understanding that the funding will be used for a ground support system for the F/A-18 Avionics. The system would be developed to enable cost effective avionics and flight control fault isolation, repair, and management at different support levels. Member: Congressman John E. Peterson. Bill Number: H. Res. 1488 (H.R. 2638). Provision: RDTE, Z, Line# 139, PE# 0605790D8Z. Legal Name of Requesting Entity: TRS Technologies, Inc. Address of Requesting Entity: 2820 East College Ave., State College, PA 16801. Description of Project: This project provides $1.2 million for FY09 in the DoD RDTE account for Ferroelectric Component Technologies. The entity to receive funding for this project is TRS Technologies Inc., 2820 East College Ave, State College, PA 16801. It is my understanding that the funding will be new ferroelectric components. These components are used as power sources for electromagnetic munitions designed to remotely and non-lethally disrupt electronics in targeted threats and IEDs.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. I have mixed emotions today. It may be the last chance I have to address this body. In 1 minute, I can't say much. I want to tell how much I've appreciated both sides of the aisle, my friendships.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to thank the leadership on both sides. I want to thank all of the Members for the opportunity tonight to offer America the first bipartisan energy bill that may have been offered in this century written by Republicans and Democrats in a room with just cold sandwiches night after night, working with no lobbyists, no power brokers, trying to come together like the American people want us to. They want affordable, available energy as soon as we can get it, and they want it ongoingly, and they deserve it. We're the most powerful Nation in the world, and it's unfair to the American public that their future depends on weather in the gulf, that their future depends on unstable countries that provide us half of our imported oil. We get half of the 70 percent we import from friends and half of it from unstable nations. The American people are not comfortable with that. They want better. And the American people know that our energy system could be sabotaged each and every day by the terrorists because there is no slop in the system, there's no surplus, there's no extra. There's just enough oil to meet the oil demand each day, and whenever anything goes wrong, the prices skyrocket. Folks, we have the chance here to reevaluate our policies. I understand many years ago when we set it aside, it was cheap: $2 gas, $10 oil, use theirs, save ours. Folks, that day is gone. We need to now reassess where we're at. We need to be energy independent in this country, and we need to start down that long road. It won't be easy, and it needs to be a broad-based plan. Our bill opens up the Outer Continental Shelf. It takes away all the prohibitions that have been put upon the Department of the Interior for leasing land. It repeals the prohibition of preventing Federal agencies from entering into contracts for procurement of alternative and synthetic fuels. It repeals limitation on the number of new qualified hybrid and advanced clean-burn technology vehicles eligible for the alternative vehicle tax benefits. That's electric and gas cars. It allows the use of woody biomass, the fastest growing renewable we have that's fueling pellet stoves and factories with wood waste and will be part of cellulosic ethanol as we move from corn to cellulose, prohibited today by law from using off of Federal land, wood waste. Removes that. Folks, it removes the prohibition on shale oil, the biggest oil opportunity this country has ever had. And folks, it takes the revenues and funds the renewables better than they've ever been funded. It funds conservation better than it's ever been funded. It funds clean-up efforts, environmental clean-up efforts. It funds carbon sequestration with large amounts of money. And let me read you that paragraph which I think is vital: ``The Carbon Capture and Sequestration Reserve offsets the cost of legislation enacted after the date of the enactment of the National Conservation, Environment and Energy Independence Act to promote research and development projects associated with carbon capture and storage in the production of liquid transportation fuels, electricity, synthetic natural gas, chemical feedstock and for the disposition and recycling/reprocessing of nuclear waste from nuclear power plants.'' It will fund LIHEAP for those who are not going to be able to afford their heating this winter. Folks, this is not a perfect bill, but it's a damn good start, and it was put together by no interest groups, no corporations got involved, no environmental radical groups. None of them were at the table. It was just Members of Congress who felt the needs of their districts and realized the plea of the people to give us available, affordable energy. We're the most powerful Nation. Why are we not doing that? Just recently, Russia bought a coal plant in Pennsylvania. You're going to find China buying energy plants in this country. They're building plants everywhere. They're preparing for their future while we've been sitting on our hands, bickering and bipartisanly fighting with each other. I ask the Members of both conferences to support this act that will give America energy in the future that's affordable.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. I want to thank the gentleman for yielding, and I want to thank all the Members of this body for participating. Those of you that have been down here for hours, I want to thank you. I want to thank my friend Mr. Abercrombie from Hawaii, who has worked at my side for half a decade, bipartisanly, to try to figure out how we can make America energy independent and open up the resources that we have. How can the most powerful country in the world allow itself to be in a position where its energy prices depend on three things that they have no control over? We just faced one, and we dodged a bullet again from major damage; storms in the gulf. They happen most years. It will depend on that whether we have available affordable energy. The stability of the 13 largest oil companies in the world, all bigger than Exxon, unstable countries, non-democracies who have governments that tip over often. And if any one of them tips and produces two or three million barrels less oil, there is a shortage of oil in the world. And then we have been lucky that terrorists have not yet attacked our energy system. It is so vulnerable. How did we let ourselves get there? Well, most of our lifetime, in fairness to the former Congresses, energy was cheap, $2 gas and $10 oil. A spike in the seventies, a spike in the eighties, a spike in the nineties. We tried alternatives, but they didn't work, because cheap oil ran them out of the market. Folks, cheap oil is gone. Cheap natural gas is over. We are in a new era. We are sharing energy now with a whole part of the world that didn't use it before. We will soon not be the biggest user of energy. Twenty-eight years ago, we decided it was better to use theirs, not ours. We started locking up our Outer Continental Shelf. A few years later we tried to open ANWR when it was starting to get a little tighter, and a President vetoed it. About the same time, they set one of the largest coal reserves in America, I believe it was in the State of Utah, aside, as if it wasn't important, millions of acres. More recently, in legislation that slipped through and got signed, unfortunately, we locked up shale oil, the big new field that has awesome potential. And the one that stuns me, the fastest growing renewable, and I haven't heard anybody mention it here, woody biomass, 3.6 percent now. Woody biomass. Pellet stoves, wood waste for boilers, and we are hoping to do cellulosic ethanol from it. We have legislation that says wood waste from our Federal lands can't be used. Tar sand oil, the new oil from Canada that we have built our refineries to use, we have legislation that is going to made it difficult to get that. Every year since I have been here we have become 2 percent more dependent on foreign oil, and we will again next year. Unfortunately, this legislation locks up 97 percent of the west coast energy availability. It removes the part of the eastern gulf that is the most easy to obtain, close to where we are producing today, where the infrastructure is there and we can do it quickly. On the east coast, most of the energy is between 25 and 50 miles out, and it is locked up. Then I guess the part that bothers me, I was a State legislator before I came here, we are kicking the ball to the State legislatures. It is Congress' role to provide energy for America. We are saying to State legislators, vote to open up. We are not going to give you royalties. There is no win in it for you, but you be statesmen. You take on that environmental lobby and you open that land up, because we won't. Yes, prior to this bill, the ANWR Interior bill was available, and for the last number of years I forced many of you, and some of you groaned, to vote on whether we continued the moratorium. Fourteen Congresses and three Presidents have not adequately valued energy availability for America. There is lots of blame to go around. Let's stop blaming each other here. Who are the losers? The working people of America, Mary and Joe, retired seniors, living in a family homestead, struggling to have money for their automobile fuel and going to try to heat that big old home this year. Last year they kept it at 58. They don't know what they are going to do this year. Jim and Nicole with three children. They have an eight-year-old vehicle and a modest older home. They kept their home at 60 raising kids, and they don't know how they are going to do it, because their bills are going to be much higher this year. Then Margie, a single mom with a teenage daughter and a teenage son. She drives 40 miles to work one way, that is 400 miles a week. That is really stretching her budget with these gas prices. Her gas bill has gone from $175 to $220 to $230. She has no idea how she is going to pay it. The small businesses that employ the bulk of our friends and neighbors are struggling to pay their energy bill. Folks, we need to deal with this energy issue, and we need to deal with it bipartisanly and get cost-effective energy for this country.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Yes, in its current form.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I have a motion to recommit at the desk.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I rise today with a heavy heart. America is in a crisis for affordable, available energy. Our folks back home want us to sit down and figure out how to have available, affordable energy. Four hundred Members of Congress, including me, who have been involved in this debate for years, this morning found out there is a 290-page bill that we are going to vote on today with no amendments. That's not the process of how to get to a solution. That's the political process. This is a political process, not a process about solving America's energy crisis. Mr. Markey's just sharing with us that we are holding back wind and solar and geothermal. That's not true. There is no Member of Congress that I know of that won't fund all of those. The Peterson-Abercrombie bill funds every renewable that's on the books for 5 years. It funds all the conservation programs that both parties have thought of, and it funds environmental cleanups. It incentivizes all the forms of energy that will help us get to where we need to be. The Pelosi bill, unfortunately, talks with one hand of opening up drilling. On the other hand, it locks it back up because of a 50-mile setback, and then States are supposed to open it up when Members of Congress don't have the courage to, with no reward of a royalty. No State legislature is going to open up the second 50 miles and get no royalties. America doesn't want this political rhetoric. America wants us to sit down as Republicans and Democrats. They don't want a Republican bill or a Democrat bill. They want us to sit down and discuss energy into the night, day after day, until we get it right, and we fix and provide America available, affordable energy. Folks, we can do that. We have lots of reserves. Twenty-eight years ago we started locking up our reserves and decided not to produce energy. We caused the shortage. We caused the high prices. We are the reason the oil companies have made huge profits. When you lock up supply, the price triples. Whoever owns it gets rich. That's how it works, folks. We need to open up supply, bring prices down and give America energy to heat their homes and drive their cars so that they can afford to pay for them.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I rise with disappointment today. People in my district and the working people of this country are begging us to resolve this energy issue. They're struggling to drive their cars, and they don't have any idea how they're going to heat their homes and run their businesses with today's energy prices. They expect us to do something. Speaker Pelosi's been telling the country that drilling's not the answer; it would take 10 years. Well, the Pelosi team drafted a bill. It will take 10 years, maybe 15, maybe 20, folks. This bill will not produce energy. It locks up 97 percent of the west coast forever. It locks up the most productive part of the gulf that we can produce quickly forever. Folks, we need a bipartisan bill. Twenty-three Republicans and Democrats sat down and drafted a bill, 11 Democrats and 12 Republicans. We drafted the Peterson-Abercrombie bill that opens up all kinds of energy for America, funds all the renewables, and gives hope to the American people. That's the kind of bill they don't want. They don't want a Republican bill. They don't want a Democrat bill. They want a bill that Members of this Congress sat down with no oil companies, no lobbyists. We sat down and drafted a simple bill--not 290 pages--one we could understand. We need to vote on a bipartisan energy bill that will give hope to the Americans that there is an economic future.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I appeal the ruling of the Chair.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. We heat 63 million homes, we heat five million small businesses, and a quarter of a million industrial companies use natural gas in great numbers, and they're all going to get hammered this year. Our hospitals and our schools are going to pay twice as much as last year.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Oh, absolutely.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. I would have to think, if I was a citizen back home knowing just a fraction of what I know now, I would be one angry citizen. Because this Congress, like the 14 Congresses in succession, have done little to formulate an energy policy for America and produce available, affordable energy. And it's doable, it's something we can do.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Do you know of any energy bills scheduled for next week and the week after, before we go on the August recess?

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. To the gentleman from Iowa, do you know of any energy bills scheduled for this week?

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Could I ask you a question?

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. That's one of the things I didn't mention is I think nitrogen fertilizer is 70 percent natural gas. Petrochemical, 55 percent natural gas, as an ingredient. Polymers and plastics, 45 to 50 percent natural gas. We have steel. We all know the manufacturing of steel and aluminum use huge amounts of natural gas. My prediction is if we don't open up natural gas and get the price down, we'll make our bricks--bulk commodities like bricks that are easily made in our own neighborhoods from clay somewhere in a mountain nearby, those will be made in Trinidad, where gas is $1.60. Glass for our home windows will be made in Trinidad. In fact, car windows are coming in from overseas right now because of natural gas prices. Natural gas is the mother's milk of the manufacturing process in this country. And if we don't fix the natural gas problem, we're not going to have a manufacturing base of anything. We will import everything that's manufactured. And at the same time, Americans, this winter and the winters ahead, are just plain going to struggle to drive their cars and heat their homes.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. I thank the gentleman from Iowa and for the opportunity to share time with him. I don't know about you, Mr. Speaker. After the 4th of July recess where we had $4 gasoline, $5 diesel, almost $4 heating oil, and Americans are shuddering because what they don't know, and they will be even more concerned, is that in a few months, they will be getting 50- to 60-percent increases in home heating costs with natural gas. Those passed-through costs will be approved by our State PUCs. My home company in western Pennsylvania raised the rates at 6 percent in May and are going to be raising it 50 percent August 1, and they have another opportunity to raise it again in November. And they're just passing through the costs of gas. Just like New England just had a 42 percent increase in electric costs because of the percentage of their electricity that is now made with natural gas. So as natural gas prices escalate, theirs escalate. When we have these prices, I have neighbors who don't know how they're going to heat their home this year. I have churches in my district who probably won't use their sanctuaries, seniors who are living on limited budgets. I know a gentleman, a neighbor, this week-- he's 75 years old. Four years ago, he sold his pellet stove because he was 71 and decided he was getting too old to carry 40-pound pellet bags into the basement. He had it in his basement and ran heat up through his registers. And he took it out. And with the current energy prices, he bought another pellet stove. He has to cut another hole through the cement wall that he had cemented and put another pellet stove in because he can't afford fuel. I have neighbors and friends who kept their house at 55 last year. And this year energy prices are double if they're heating with home heating oil. They're about 75 percent higher with propane, and they're going to be somewhere between 50 and 75 to 100 percent higher in natural gas when those prices hit the market. I know Americans who are driving 30 and 40 and 50 miles to work. I have a neighbor lady who makes $11 an hour. She has two children. She travels 36 miles to work. Her balanced billing bill is $175 a month, and she has no money in her budget for a 60 percent increase in natural gas prices that are going to hit her for this winter. People all over America are scared. Should we open the reserve? Well, I guess if we do, we sort of say we didn't need a reserve because the reserve is only several months' supply in case there's a tragedy in the world market, there is a major problem in one of the big sending countries. Let's just say, God forbid, that terrorists would blow up the sending platforms where we load our tankers in Saudi Arabia, we would have $250 oil quickly. The petroleum reserve is in case of war, is in case of tragedy somewhere in the country, some tragic incident that cuts off our supply. Because today, we get one-third of our oil from home, we buy one-third of it from our friends like Canada and Mexico and other friendly countries, and we buy one-third of it from the Middle East. The one-third in the Middle East, as we've heard earlier, is fragile. We don't know that will always be available. Should we use the reserve? I don't personally think we should. I think we should have kept filling it because 70,000 barrels a day is a drop in a bucket. It did nothing for prices, will do nothing for prices. So use the reserve and say July, August, and September it will be all gone. And what do we do in October, November, December if we have tragedy or what are we going to do then? That's not a solution. It amazes me, because I'm not giving high grades on energy to many people around here. It's my view that 3 Presidents and 14 Congresses in succession have not gotten good marks on energy, have not had a bona fide energy plan. And you say, Why is it? Well, it's kind of understandable. Up until 7 or 8 years ago, except for a spike in the 1970s and 1980s and 1990s for a year or two at a time, we had $2 gas and $10 oil. And the argument was--and I remember debating it at the State--should we use theirs or should we use ours. I always thought we should produce ours. It creates jobs here. It's part of our economy. There's no better jobs than oil- patch jobs and all the related jobs, the refineries and the pipelines and all of that whole system. You can go down in downtown Washington and buy gasoline made in Russia, and the only person making money off of it is the guy selling it. It was refined in Russia. We can buy that in Washington, D.C. They only chain the stations here in the east coast. So I just find it, I guess, unconceivable that we don't--we can't figure this thing out that when we're one-third dependent--we're two- thirds dependent--but one-third dependent on enemies or people who aren't our friends, and people who--or they're not stable governments. And when they say not to drill here, every day we don't drill here we become more dependent. Since I've been in Congress, we've averaged 2 percent a year. This year we will increase another 2 percent. We're at two-thirds now dependent on foreign countries. And what happened was--I don't give the Bush administration high marks. In fact, looking at, you know, they actually get higher marks than many. They had the hydrogen car initiative 2 or 3 years ago. They pumped a lot of money into hydrogen cars. But do we have a hydrogen car? No. Do we hope to some day? Yes. But that's futuristic. That's a good thing. Last year they had the mandate, they urged us to increase the mandate on biofuels to 36.5 billion by 2030, switching from corn after 15 billion gallons to cellulosic ethanol. Now, I get a little nervous when you mandate cellulosic ethanol when we still don't have the design of a plant to make it. Now, we're hoping and praying, and the thought is making it out of wood waste and making it out of garbage and out of sweet grasses like switchgrass. That looks hopeful as a better way to make ethanol. Because we do know that corn prices have edged up a little from $2 a bushel to I think it hit a high of $7.70 last week. It's down to maybe $7.40 this week. But the first Bush administration locked up the Outer Continental Shelf. We're the only country in the world to do that. Canada drills right up here. And they drill right up here within sight of our coastline. Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, every country, all of South America, everybody produces offshore. In fact, Brazil, the country everybody gives high marks for, and they gave the credit for ethanol. Ethanol is 15 percent of it. But they went out and opened up their continental shelf and just recently in deep water found a huge reserve of oil, and now we're going to be an exporter of oil. Now, what we don't know about America is when we did seismographic on our shores 30-some years ago, since then for the last 28 years law has prohibited us from even measuring out there to see what's out there. That's how stupid I say we are. We don't even want to go out and look. We could have somewhere out here, or somewhere out here, the largest oil and gas reserve because all over the world, offshore is tremendous energy production. In fact, everybody tells me, everybody that knows the business and who have regulated the business, not necessarily producers, that it is the least environmental hazard. When you're out in the ocean and you drill a hole in the ground, I mean, one little storm stirs up more than a drilling bit going down into the ocean floor. And we've not had a major spill since Santa Barbara in 1969. We have the technology today. And the cost offshore is big. But here offshore when we did the seismic measurements 30-some years ago. We only did it in water less than 4,000 feet. Now, today we can drill in 2-mile deep water so we've never even used--and the seismic of today would be like comparing an old seismic 30 years ago. It would be like a black and white TV to the current thin-screen TVs like we have today. That would be the difference. I mean, the new seismic tells you what's there. Tells you a lot. But we're not there. We just drill in a small part of the gulf. That's the other thing. And it amazes me when we listen to these talks about we got 64 or 84 million acres. Until they drill that we're not going to let them. Well, you know, four out of five deep water wells are dry. It costs $900 million. I'm going to say that again: $900 million to build a deep water platform. It costs $1 million a day to operate it, and it's four out of five wells you will drill. Now, I'm not able to personally assess. I'm meeting with some people tomorrow in two different groups to learn more about the potential of those 64 or 84--I keep hearing different figures--million acres that they're talking about. But I do know that these are great and the rest of the gulf here are great areas, and we are saying can't drill there. Now, it seems to me drilling for oil's not a sure thing. Four out of five deep? No. You don't get anything. Three out of four shallow? No. You don't get anything. So you explore, and when you find three or four good wells, now you know you've hit a pool and you will go in and try to figure where it's at and maximize it. We know in much of the gulf we've been drilling for so long that the gulf is actually depleting. Although we're drilling twice as many wells there as we used to, we're getting less energy because we're in old, tired fields. We're drilling between wells. We're drilling deeper where it's more costly, and it's still exploring, trying to find more gas and oil. Now, I guess the part that really confounds me is the hope we have for renewables. And you know, I hope for the day in my lifetime that we can run our country on renewables. But here is the chart. From the middle of this chart towards me is history. This is the Energy Department's figures. From the middle of my chart to my left is their projection of the future. Of course, oil's the Big Kahuna. Natural gas and coal are the other big ones. Now, they show coal increasing. I disagree with that because of the carbon issue and because 70 coal plants in the last 8 or 9 months have been turned down by State agencies, and they will all become gas plants. And the reason we have such high gas prices in our country today is that 12 years ago we took away the moratorium for using natural gas to make electricity. Historically, Mr. Speaker, we only made electricity out of natural gas in a peak power plant that ran in the morning and the evening when we consumed huge amounts of electricity when we're heating water at home and cooking and doing the washing and so forth in the morning and evening, and all of the plants that were running to. So that was a maximum load of electricity. So 12 years ago we took that moratorium off, and now 24 percent of our electricity is made with natural gas. From 7. That's a huge increase, and we didn't open up supply. Now, just several years ago natural gas was $2 a thousand. The last few months it's been running at $1,300 to $1,350 a thousand. Those are figures that will drive most industries left out of this country because natural gas is not a world price. It's a country-by-country price. When we pay $130, $140, or $150 for oil, it's very painful; but it's painful for our competitors. It's painful to our neighbors. But on natural gas, we've been paying the highest prices in the world, and we have competing countries who are right in South America. Trinidad has $1.60 gas. Now, if you're going to make glass or you're going to make bricks, you're going to make petrochemicals, you're going to make fertilizers which consume enormous amounts of gas. Just to show you. Dow Chemical in 2002 paid $8 billion a year for natural gas. Today, Dow Chemical pays $8 billion a quarter for natural gas. And to show you the migration of jobs out of this country, Dow Chemical in the year 2000 had 64 percent of their production on shore in America. Today they have 34 percent. Why? They can't afford to be here. Just like my neighbors can't afford to heat their homes and drive their cars in rural areas. Companies and small businesses who heat treat things who bend metal and twist metal and have to heat it with natural gas, they can't afford to function competitively in this country if they're competing with products made in another country that can buy gas for a fraction of the cost. Now, let's look at where we're putting all our faith. I want wind and solar to be huge but it's not. Nuclear, we did in the 2005 Act streamline the nuclear process. We have thirty-some permits applied for. I think we have 33 about ready to be given. We need 35 to 40 new plants built for nuclear to keep nuclear at 20 percent of the grid, just maintain, 20 percent, not gain. Hydro continues to lose ground--that's the brown line here--because we're not building dams. We aren't allowed to build dams. That's the cleanest energy we could have. The top line is the renewables. Now, over on my left, I'm going to have a big chart tomorrow, but the red is biomass, woody biomass. Now, woody biomass has grown almost a percent in the last 4 years. That's pellet stoves. Over 1 million Americans this year will heat their home with a pellet stove. That's wood waste factories burning boilers with wood waste, heating their factories with wood waste. And it's power plants topping their coal loads with some wood waste to meet air standards there near the edge. So woody biomass, and I don't think there's been any initiatives, any tax credits. That's just happened. Then we have hydro, and it's not gone. It's going to stay there. The yellow line is geothermal, and there's all kind of incentives. They get the tax credits, but as we grow our economy, it just remains a small portion. Then we have the blue line, which is wind, which has bubbled somewhat. But if we double wind and solar in the next 5 years we will be less than 1 percent of our energy portfolio. Now, I hope we can, and I hope we can double it again the next 5 years, but we'd still be less than 2 percent of our energy portfolio, maybe even less than that because our energy needs will grow. Now, the problem that's changed in the world, and a lot of people don't realize it, is the growth of use of energy in the world. It's not us. We're flat on energy use. In fact, we're decreasing because of price. China is increasing 15 to 20 percent a year. India's increasing at a huge rate. You have South America developing. You have Malaysia developing. You have millions and millions of people in this world who are buying their first car and owning their first home, and when they buy their first car and own their first home, they're in the energy use business. So, no matter what we do, we can't control prices by conserving. I'm for conservation. In fact, we need to figure out how to help Americans to use energy more wisely and let them write it off on their income taxes in a 3- or 4-year period. We need to do that, whether it's more efficient heating, whether it's better windows, better doors, whether it's more efficient appliances, yes, we need to help them out, because, really, I hate to say it, but the only thing Americans have today that they can do is use less energy. There is nothing now because we are not going to drill. We're not going to drill. I have a bill to open up the Outer Continental Shelf. I had it poised. I offered it in the committee, in Interior, in the subcommittee, and it's the first time that it's been treated partisanly. We had six Republican votes were ``yes'' and nine Democrats votes ``no.'' Now, I'm not going to blame those Members. They had tremendous Speaker power applied to them. There were Members who voted against energy who have never voted against energy in this Congress in that sitting. A week or two later, we were going to offer our amendment again in the full committee, where you have about 75 or 80 Members. And I think somebody in the Speaker's office took a count, and when they didn't have the votes to beat my amendment, we didn't do the Interior bill. And here we are today, weeks later, we are still not doing the Interior bill. Why? Because Congressman Peterson has an amendment that would open up the Outer Continental Shelf that would open up drilling 50 miles out, from 50 to 200. Like I say, I don't pass out any gold awards around this place in the last three decades on energy leadership, and I mean that sincerely. We haven't had a President. President Clinton didn't lead on energy. He vetoed the ANWR bill. And I personally think President Bush tried hard to do ANWR. I voted for ANWR, but if he would have put the same effort on offshore, we would have probably accomplished it, but he didn't. In fact, he has never supported offshore until a news conference two weeks ago. But he also--and I'm going to say this critically--there's a Presidential moratoria and there's a legislative moratoria, and he said, if Congress will lift their moratorium, I will lift mine. Mr. President, I was disappointed that you didn't lead. I was disappointed that you didn't lift your moratorium. Now, your father put it on. It was not supposed to be long-term. It was supposed to be 5 years until they could assess what parts of our coastline might need to be protected. President Clinton came in, had no energy initiative. He extended it to 2002, and then come Bush II, and because he had a brother in Florida and offshore drilling was an issue, he didn't touch it. In fact, last year we passed a major bill here in the House to open up offshore. The Senate wouldn't deal with it. They passed a small bill down here in the gulf that was tracked 181 that had been on the 5-year plan in the Clinton administration that had not been leased, was taken out of the 5-year plan because of its proximity to Florida by the Bush administration, and was legislated back into the 5-year plan by the Senate, and I had to lead the fight here to get that accomplished in the House. They wouldn't conference with us on our bill so we could merge the two bills, but I led the fight here to make sure that we got that passed. That lease sold for I think $3.6 billion and is on its way, and it was done rather quickly. Now, there are those who say we can't do anything in 10 to 20 years just don't know what they're talking about. If we work close to the areas in the gulf first--and we will--that have been leased, there's infrastructure. And if we would expedite the permit process legislatively like we did with track 21, and force the hand of the bureaucracy not to sit on this and to get it done, we could have oil and gas production in several years. We still have 27 platforms active in the western coast that were exempted by the moratorium. They're still functioning. In fact, the governor of California uses some of them to drill in his 3-mile zone, when he's telling us not to drill nationally. Yes, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor of California, issues permits, and California approves them or his administration does, to drill off the shore of California every year, drilling in the 3-mile zone. Now, they drill part of them from onshore with a slant drill. They go on our Federal platforms in Federal Waters and slant drill into the 3-mile area to produce oil. I'm sorry, but California and Florida are huge users of energy and both of them have thwarted us. I've got to give credit to the Florida delegation. They have come around. Many of the Florida delegation realize--and the Florida citizens picked it up first--they're now supporting offshore production of energy. Offshore production of energy is not a threat to our coastlines. It's the best reserves we have. It's close to where the people are. We have pipelines and refineries there. It's what really works. When you produce oil in some parts of the Midwest it's hard to get it to market. I'm not saying we shouldn't produce it, but when you produce it on your shorelines where your population centers are, it's the best place. I find this Congress almost unbelievable that we use excuses like there's 68 million acres that are leased and are not producing. Well, if you punch 10 holes in the ground and they're all dry holes, you stop spending your money. I know also there's probably hundreds of cases in the gulf where there's lawsuits preventing them from drilling a hole in the ground. Citizen lawsuits, the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, all these organizations continually sue to stop the production of energy. Yes, the problem we've had, we've had three Presidents in a row and 14 Congresses in a row, and all these 10, 11 environmental groups that said we must stop using fossil fuels. We must stop using these, and we're going to replace them with these. They're going to replace these with this. I wish we could, but until we can, we better produce and we need to be doing coal-to-liquids and coal-to-gas. We need to be continuing to push hydrogen. We need to do all of the above. And I want to tell you something, it's my opinion, my humble opinion, that if we drill offshore and we drill more in the Midwest and we do coal-to-liquids and coal-to-gas--they all take time--this country is going to be in an energy crunch for a number of years, and there's going to be pain felt in this country. We're going to lose middle-class jobs. We're going to lose industries out of this country because they can't afford to be here, no matter what we do, because we've waited too long.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Would the gentleman yield?

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I've been listening to the discussion and the debate here. Having served in local government and State government and here in Washington, I find it unbelievable that we're talking about an issue that came from an energy discussion of the beginning of the Bush administration's e-mail records. Back home people are struggling--and I live in a big rural area--to drive their cars. They're soon going to find out that natural gas prices are probably going to double by fall and the costs to heat their homes are going to double. My schools are going to pay twice as much to transport their children. They're going to pay twice as much to heat those schools. My hospitals are going to pay twice as much to heat those facilities and to transport patients. I'm losing the air service at my rural airports because you can't fly small planes with these fuel prices. This country's economic base is crumbling as we talk here today because of exploding energy costs. We are not going to live in the country we were born in. Opportunity is not going to abound. Americans are frightened and concerned, and we're worried about e-mail records of a meeting 8 years ago. I think our priorities are backwards. We passed an energy bill in `05 that was timid. I think this administration has been timid. We've had three administrations in a row that locked up our Outer Continental Shelf, the only modern country in the world to do that. We've had 14 Congresses in a row that have locked up the Outer Continental Shelf where there's huge resources. I'm for all the wind we can produce. I'm for all the solar we can absorb. But if we double them both in the next 5 years, we're less than 1 percent of our energy need, and our energy need is growing more than 1 percent a year, so it can't even fill that gap. Whether we like it or not, we need fossil fuels. We need coal, we need oil, we need gas--clean, green natural gas. I can't believe that people are afraid of drilling a gas well. Natural gas is driving the blue collar jobs out of this country as we speak. Dow Chemical used to do 64 percent of its business in this country in 2000; they're now at 34 percent of their business in this country. They paid $8 billion for gas in `02; they now pay $8 billion in natural gas quarterly. They can't afford to be here, folks. Americans can't afford to heat their older homes. They can't afford to drive their older cars. One hundred small trucking companies are going out of business every week because they can't afford fuel oil prices. The working poor of this country are being destroyed economically. The middle class are going to become poor. Most people in this Congress won't feel much pain. They can afford to pay these prices. But I want to tell you, my neighbors can't. A young lady that lives besides me drives 36 miles to work. She makes $11 an hour.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. She pays $200 a month to heat her home, and she can't afford a doubling of those prices and she can't afford to drive to work. I can tell you story after story after story.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. If the Democrats win this debate and we don't produce energy--if we use these old statements of 68 million acres and 80 something percent is leased, that is not factual; 2.5 percent of the Outer Continental Shelf is leased, the good spots are not leased--then we are giving the future of this country away.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. That's right. We need to get out into the fertile fields where we'll drill less holes in the ground, but we'll get massive prime production where you get into a fertile field that's got great gas pressure and great oil pressure and we'll get huge volumes. We've been deprived. In fact, on the Outer Continental Shelf, we're showing here, we've not even allowed seismographic in the last 35 years. We don't even have a modern measurement out there. We had old seismographic, what we're measured by; but new seismographic is like taking a black and white TV with a new modern flat screen TV. There's not much comparison, is there? No. Well, we've prevented that. I mean, I guess what's scary is that while we're talking about this issue, you know what's going on in the Senate? They're talking about climate change. They just voted down, thank God. And Mr. Markey's committee here has a new climate change bill. If we go down the carbon tax road, we're going to add another 20 or 30 percent to energy prices. Nobody disputes that. That's insanity. I mean, available affordable energy for America is the number one issue facing this country, and anybody who isn't for that doesn't get with the American people. They understand this. Let me say this: If we don't deal with this issue in this Congress, the middle class in America will be destroyed. We don't have more years, we're years behind. The middle class in America will disappear because by the time they heat their homes and fuel their vehicles, they're not going to have money. I have a neighbor lady who makes $300 and something a week. She pays $175 a month annual gas bill to heat her home. She has two kids, $100 a month to buy groceries. She said, if my gas bill doubles, I don't have any food money. She's going to have to get a second job and still try to raise two teen-age kids with a second job to pay. Folks, that's not what America is about. Last year, we had seniors in my district keep their houses at 58 degrees because they couldn't afford to keep them warm. That's not the America we should be providing. If we don't deal with energy prices, the middle-class, blue-collar jobs are all going to disappear. The middle class is going to disappear. And we're going to have a country like so many other parts of the world where we have the rich and the poor. And the government is going to have to subsidize the poor because they can't afford energy. It's a crisis in America. In fact, I think we're 4 or 5 years beyond when we should have started. I don't quite know how we catch up. Every day we delay, every month we delay, the American people are going to pay a bigger price. This is not the America my father gave me in my inheritance. I want to return our young people with hope, with affordable energy. Eight years ago energy was cheap; it's never going to be cheap again. It's up to this Congress to do what's necessary and provide energy for America. And all those talking points that the Sierra Club have given the Democrats don't cut it.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. They're drilling platforms, and it takes years to get there. So some of these are in process. A lot of them are old, tired leases where we're now drilling between wells. And the return, we're drilling three times as many wells as we used to and we're getting much less oil and gas because we're in old, tired fields.