Steve Pearce

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. It is. And people a lot of times unfamiliar with it will say, well, does that not contaminate the water? Well, in southeast New Mexico, where I live, we get our water from the Ogallala aquifer that lies underneath five different States. The process has a way of running pipe through those zones with water so that we never do get drilling fluids out into the water. We do not get the fresh water back into the well. We usually have three concentric series of pipes at the surface down to about 800 feet. We have very large, sometimes 13\1/2\ or 13\1/8\, that size of casing, that will go down to about 800 feet, then another string maybe down to 1,500 or 2,000 feet. And, finally, we have the 6- inch string the gentleman is talking about that runs on to the total depth of the well. We then go in and put cement outside of that pipe. The particular company that I owned really was charged with going in and repairing those strings of pipe as holes got in them or as problems came along. The science in the industry has come a long ways in the many years since my father was in the business, and I can remember growing up when there were environmental problems. But I will tell you, most of the young people working in those companies now are as environmentally sensitive as anyone you know. They take care because none of us want to contaminate the water for our children, and we do not want to contaminate the surface of the soil for our children. So they have used the large companies' budgets to do research and development, provide new technologies, new abilities, new safety processes. Those things should be considered when we are dealing with the ability of our people to make payments for their energy even in today's market. I just hope that the Nation is listening as you present your comments. I know you have been tireless in supporting these causes. I would like to mention that your amendment that you presented during the energy bill hearing had five or six very common-sense modifications to the Endangered Species Act. It is not going to hurt the recovery of any single species; but what it did, it untied the bureaucracy, untied the hands of the bureaucracy to where we can get just a little bit of common-sense adjustments for some of the approval processes for drilling. In my visits back to the State since then, people are extremely complimentary about the amendment you got added into the bill. It is time to take another step. Let us look at the factors, let us look at those policy decisions for the last 30 years that have caused these situations to exist. I will tell you that we cannot cure the problem before this winter. For those people who are saying we are going to do something before the wintertime, it is not possible. We have dismantled the drilling industry to the point that back in the 1970s and 1980s, we had over 4,000 rigs running. Today we have 1,200 and they are all working, but we cannot give up three-quarters of our industry's capacity and respond the way we should be responding. But if we will take corrective steps and make common-sense judgments that the gentleman is presenting, I know by next year we can begin to moderate this price that has been created by our own decisions, the decisions of the government to not pursue those current supplies of energy that could help modify the prices. The energy bill we passed this summer has good long-term incentives for renewables. There are six or seven kinds of renewables in that bill. There is biomass, nuclear, geothermal, there is solar, there is wind, there is hydrogen. All of those have great stimulations, but they are not market oriented right now. You cannot go out and fill your car. And if you had a hydrogen fuel cell car, you cannot get it serviced. If you had solar power in your home, there is no one to work on it. My brother has been in the solar industry in Denver for over 20 years. He still teaches school and does a solar business together because he cannot make a living just on the solar business alone. We must recognize that if we are to modify and moderate the cost to our consumers, we have to have a long-term strategy of conversion to different supply sources, but in the meantime we must be doing something to lower the price of gasoline at the pump and lower the price of natural gas into our homes. The gentleman is exactly correct in what he is proposing. I would encourage us as a body to really move forward on the suggestions that I know he has presented. A bipartisan group, Members from both sides of the aisle, recently introduced that bill that would allow us to begin to expand our drilling into the areas with the greatest promise. I think that is extremely important for us to step up to the plate, take responsibility for our past, and take control of our future.

Mr. PEARCE

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

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to address the body. We are at a time right now where literally the stakes of America lie in the balance. Our future is going to be determined by our actions today. Many people often ask me exactly what is the difference between the two approaches, and I will tell you that there are significant differences between the Republican and Democrat approach in Congress. Dennis Prager, a talk show host and author from California, has really summarized those very well; and I will quote from him, but these words express the beliefs of many. The differences between this side of the aisle and that side of the aisle are important and substantial. One party believes in American exceptionalism on a national stage, that the United States has better values than any other country. The other believes in the United Nations, the acceptance of all countries' values. One party believes in universal morality, that is the ultimate good and evil that exists in society and the necessity to choose between them, and that that decision between good and evil should determine the international authority. The other believes the UN-iversal law; that whatever the U.N. decides should be determining our international law. I will tell you, Mr. Speaker, that that is playing out right now in the United Nations, as we see the head of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, mired in corruption with his own son and with close allies of his in the bureaucracy indicted and involved, and yet we are not hearing one word about that corruption and that involvement from any of our friends on the other side of the aisle in this body. One party believes that race is irrelevant. One party believes that race is the defining of the human being. I will tell you that race has no characteristic. Character has characteristics. And when we begin to understand that we judge people by their character and not by their race, we are going to be a better country for that. One party believes in powerful government. One party believes in individual liberty. One party believes in individual responsibility. One believes society is responsible for individual actions. We often hear the words that poverty causes crime. If poverty causes crime, then affluence causes kindness. If you want to see that in play, you would look at the most heinous of the drug lords in central and South America, people who are rolling in billions of dollars and yet have an evil intent toward everyone around them and toward everyone in society. I will tell you that poverty does not cause crime; character causes crime. If you do not have a certain level of income, you are determined to be morally retarded by our friends on the other side of the aisle. And I will tell you that that is one of the biggest insults we can give to people of low income. One party believes that while compassion is important, standards are more important. One believes compassion is more important than standards. The only people held morally responsible today are white Christian males. In macro-life, society, standards must be more important than compassion. In your personal life, we allow compassion to rule. But when we begin to deal with compassion from the government, someone is always disadvantaged. One party believes the Boy Scouts are the greatest blessing in America. One believes they are a curse and working daily to undermine the capability of the Boy Scouts to deliver their message and their program. One party standard bearer believes that the greatest threat to humanity is environmental degradation. One believes that the greatest threat is human evil. One party believes in secular government. One party believe in secular society. There is a huge difference between a secular government and a secular society. Government without religion or society without religion, if we are without religion as a society, where do we get the moral values that will compel us to follow laws and to act within the bounds of human behavior? One party believes that Judeo-Christian values and God are what makes society tick. One believes that all values in society are equal, and that is played out in the moral relativism that we see declaring that even in the United Nations we cannot get a definition of what a terrorist state is because all societies are deemed to be equal. They will not condemn any other society in the U.N., and I will tell the Members that that value plays out inside this country, also. One party believes in the value of Europe. One party believes in the values of Texas. One party regards the Lone Ranger as a moral model. One regards the Lone Ranger as an arrogant unilateralist. Mr. Speaker, we are faced in these times with extraordinary difficulties. I would remind this body that just as late as 1999 we began to experience tremendous economic difficulties in this country. They were brought on by the collapse of the dot com industry. That was an industry that had built up the prices of its stock so that stocks that had no product, they had no sales, they had no net income, those prices had escalated from zero and $1 all the way to $200 and $300 per share. That was a fictional amount, but our economy experienced a surge in the late 1990s. Then in 1999 and 2000, while President Clinton was still in office, we had the dot burst of the dot com bubble. That created a recession inside our economy that began to persist. We were just about to work our way out from underneath that economic burden when 9/11 came along. That shocked us again into deep recession. Once again, the Bush administration, having inherited the dot com collapse, which collapsed before they came to office, and then faced with the economic pressures of the 9/11 catastrophe, fought its way back. And still we were about to come out from underneath those two deep shocks to our economy when we had companies like Global Crossing, which defrauded the Nation out of millions and the chairman of the Democratic Party, on a small investment, made $18 million. That corporate culture of misleading and pulling money out of stocks and giving it to individuals, that Enron-Global-Crossing-WorldCom then created an even deeper shock into the economy because people began to pull their money out of the stock market and began to put their money into very safe investments but pulling it away from companies where they could grow and expand. So those three deep shocks were facing this administration almost from the day that they took office, and still we did things as Republicans which caused the economy to turn around. We passed the individual tax cuts. The Governor of New Mexico, a widely respected Hispanic Democrat Governor of New Mexico, stated most clearly when he was lobbying for tax cuts inside the State, he said, and his words are very true, that tax cuts create jobs. Now that is the question as we go in toward the end of this year, whether or not we are going to let ourselves understand the economic principles and try to achieve growth to where our kids continue to have jobs to go to or if we are going to listen to the other side and say that these tax cuts are just tax cuts for the wealthy. That is the discussion going on now. Do we want a vibrant, growing economy, or do we want to listen to our friends over here harangue about policies of which they appear to not have much understanding of? Who is going to win this economic struggle for the future of the country? That is the question that is involved right now. I will tell the Members that if we are not dedicated to the principle of building this economic strength back into the economy, we are going to find after January 1, all the tax cuts were temporarily extending until January 1, and they roll out and become noneffective on January 1. If we do not do something about that, I will tell the Members that we are going to find the deep shocks into our economy that are going to penalize all of us. We are finding, also, that the policies of our friends from decades of obstructing industries in this country that we are harvesting the benefits of those policies of obstructing. For instance, drilling. Are have constantly hearing from our friends that you will not drill here, you will not drill there, you will not drill anywhere. So today we have $70 and we have got $14 gas. Now what does that mean? The $14 gas is compared with normally $2. One does not have to really understand gas much. Just think about the relationship between 2 and 14, and one will begin to understand the economics that face us. This winter, because of past policies, we are going to reap the benefits of those obstructions to drilling that our friends on the other side of the aisle have thrown up. We have made decisions not to drill in ANWR, we have made decisions not to drill on the Outer Continental Shelf, and we have made decisions to not drill in the Rocky Mountain regions of the country where tremendous trillions of cubic feet of gas are available. And the losers are going to be the American public and the consumer. But, long term, we are going to continue losing because our jobs are moving overseas. When we are paying $14 for natural gas in this country and because gas is not easily transported, the pricing tends to be national in scale rather than international. We are paying $14 in this country, and yet many of our friends around the world are paying under $4. Some places pay as little as $1. One can imagine that if one is a plastics manufacturer here in this country or a chemical manufacturer or a fertilizer manufacturer that they are paying $14 and they could locate a plant where they are paying $1. Common sense and business sense will tell us that there is great incentive for people to go where the $1 gas is, but, when they do that, they are going to take the jobs and the manufacturing facilities and they will never come back to this country because we will never be able to get our price down to where the foreign nations have it. They have such a low relative wage that we are never going to compete dollar for dollar. So once we allow those plants to move overseas, then we will have lost that segment of our economy. I will tell the Members that that is where the real threat for America lies, in the loss of that economic structure, that economic base for this country. The future of our children is at stake. Those of us who are baby boomers like myself, I think during the next 10 years we can see that slow deterioration of our economic base. But it is when it is dissipated that our children and grandchildren are going to reap the very sad rewards of policies that our friends on the other side of the aisle, with good intentions and good hearts, have foisted on the American public. Today, the debate in this country is about the future of this country. President Bush and his administration have steadfastly moved us into pro-competitive, pro-business environments, and our friends here in Congress have constantly criticized that, have constantly thrown up roadblocks to that and have constantly had no suggestions of their own. Mr. Speaker, I would like to just close today by saying that this is a very important time in our Nation's history. We are fighting basically three deep struggles right now. We are fighting an economic struggle that is worldwide. The worldwide economy has taken traction. Jobs can be here or jobs can be in other countries with equal facility. Investment capital can move up and move to wherever those capitals would want to go. There are absolutely no restrictions. The Internet makes it possible to move one's money literally overnight. So we have an economic struggle where we are competing with low-price, high- quality competition in our labor market. So the economic challenge is one, but we are also facing a challenge of military circumstances. The war on terror is absolute. It will be fought. It is just a question of whether it will be fought in this country or in the homeland of the terrorists. For myself, I always vote to take the battle to the terrorists there. We did not invite 9/11 into this country. It came without provocation and with no warning. We are either going to continue seeing that escalation of terrorist attacks inside this country or we are going to find that we will encounter the terrorists and defeat them on their own ground. And I will tell the Members that as long as people are willing to cut off the heads of individuals who are private, nonmilitary citizens, without provocation, that there is no negotiating with that kind of a person. It is a fight to the death, and the more terrorists that we kill and capture and put into prison, the more safe that our streets will be for the kids who are walking on the streets just intending to go to school on certain days. So we have got the economic struggle going on. We have then the war on terror. But we also have a tremendous social struggle going on where we are trying to determine the values of this country. Again, my introduction differentiated between the two parties and the approaches to the values. I am not saying that everyone in America agrees with our friends on the other side of the aisle, even if they are in the Democrat Party, but I will say that the leadership here in this Nation is willing to talk fiction and talk nonanswers and throw obstructions into the way of good, hard-nosed policies which guarantee our future, and for that they will be eternally accountable. They talk about corruption, and yet they fail to mention that the only person in prison today is actually one of their members who came in in my class last year. Only one person. And yet they are sending phone messages and they are sending radio commercials, bank phone calls into many Republican districts saying you should give back that money. Theirs is the side with answers to give, and yet I never hear those questions about their own people. Their agenda is a political one. It is designed to gain back political power at the expense of the Nation. It is a day that they should not be proud of.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chairman, the Endangered Species Act is broken and needs to be fixed. Those are not my words, those are the words of a city counselor from Santa Barbara, California. In a hearing we had on endangered species last year, she described California as being the greenest State, Santa Barbara as being the greenest of the cities in California, and she as being the greenest of the green. She said that the Endangered Species Act is blocking people from making additions onto their homes, it is keeping the beach closed, it is stopping development in their town, and they are tired of it. They either want it eliminated or fixed. Elimination of the Act is too extreme. The gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo), our chairman, has taken a very good stance in reforming it. In New Mexico, we have the silvery minnow. In order to keep the flow in the Rio Grand River at the level that the biologists said we had to have, we had to release storage of water that had been building up for 50 years in four different reservoirs. And storage for water like that in New Mexico is not easy to get. When we empty those, we cannot maintain the flow. So one of the most important provisions in this bill is that sound science must be used for any decision. We also are affecting the outcome for our private property owners, and so I thank the gentleman for his hard work on this and I support the bill.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Madam Speaker, I rise today to urge strong support for House Concurrent Resolution 242 and join with the other members of New Mexico's congressional delegation to celebrate the presentation of the Po'Pay statue for placement in the National Statuary Hall here in the United States Capitol. My colleagues have mentioned most of the specifics already, but the event is particularly an honor for the State of New Mexico as the Po'Pay statue is the 100th and last presented to the hall, completing the Capitol's collection which began in 1864. The statue also completes the Capitol's collection in another way. As the gentleman from New Mexico mentioned, Mr. Fragua is the only American Indian sculptor who will be represented among the 100 statues here in Statuary Hall. It is fitting that the last vacancy memorializing America's heroes be filled by a statue that represents not only New Mexico's rich and unique multicultural heritage, but America's great multicultural composition of many languages, customs, and traditions. In facing the monumental task of creating Po'Pay out of a 7.5-ton block of pink Tennessee marble, sculptor Cliff Fragua began with no physical references of his subject. There was no drawing, no description of Po'Pay's features, only a rich oral history manifesting a humble man who, caring deeply about the survival of his culture, became a hero for defending his way of life. Madam Speaker, what a superb way to complete America's storybook of characters. America has no one face, no one color, no one feature from which to reference its likeness, only a humble determination for freedom and liberty that unites us all.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, we have seen unprecedented suffering in this Nation in the last weeks. No one in this country has been able to comprehend the size and scope of the destruction. To put it into perspective, one of my colleagues pointed out that the size of the area affected is the size of Wyoming. Another pointed out that the size of the area affected was equal to the nation of Great Britain. So as we talk about our failures and our successes, I think it is important that we really discuss Katrina in an overall view. I know that from my perspective there are going to be three major challenges. We have to deal with the human suffering that is felt by every one of the families who have lost loved ones but also by those people who are displaced. So the human suffering in terms of jobs lost and regaining jobs of any sort, regaining an income in order to pay for current expenses, some way to access the safety nets that this Nation is providing, that is one challenge of the problem. The second challenge is rebuilding the entire gulf coast region, and that is going to be a long and arduous task and one that is going to require the dedication and commitment of the entire Nation. But the third thing that I think we must be aware of as leaders and as the House of Representatives is the effect on our economy. So tonight I am joined by the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Davis). We would like to discuss the effects of Katrina that we see and the things that we think the Nation should be aware of as we move into the days ahead. I would like to discuss some of the responses that we have seen and some that we have not seen. But at this point, I yield to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Davis) to talk about his perceptions of the disaster and the destruction that we have seen.

Mr. PEARCE. The thing that we do not often think about that drives this price higher is the fact that the emerging nations, China and India and the other emerging nations, are demanding tremendous high quantities of fossil fuels because that is the fuel of emerging economies. It is the fuel of our economy. So worldwide, the demand for oil and gas is spiraling up, and yet we have limited supplies. Now, we as a Nation have made decisions that limit, first of all, the supplies of gasoline because we have not permitted new refineries in the past 30 years. It has been almost 30 years since we have built a new refinery. And only this year, earlier this year, did we even permit a new refinery, and it has not yet been built. So one of things that is escalating the price of gasoline is that we have reached our capacity in refining. Not only is the price of crude oil going up, it has gone from $25, 3 or 4 years ago now, to $67, so that you can see the dominant cost of a price of gasoline coming from crude oil about 55 percent, we would expect that that would drive the price of gasoline higher. But then we have arbitrarily as a Nation chosen to limit our productive capacities because of the unnecessarily complex regulatory procedures that affect the permitting of new refineries. Now, those are choices that we have made, and we are at the absolute capacity of our Nation to produce gasoline so that, for the first time in our Nation's history, we began to get gasoline in through imports, and that is not a good sign for the future of our economy because our economy, again, is built on affordable energy. We, now, then, again with Katrina coming in to the Gulf Coast region, we have lost somewhere between 5 and 20 percent of our refining capacity. That is going to then drive down the supply of gasoline available at the pump which is going to drive this price up. Now, the effect on our offshore platforms will not be such a large effect. This Nation uses approximately 21 million barrels a day. The Gulf Coast region produces about 1.5 million barrels of crude oil a day, and so you can see that less than 5 percent of our productive capacity comes from this region. So even though we suffered some damage as a percent of our overall supply of crude oil, it is not going to be that large of an effect. Again, the largest effect coming from the restrictions to our refining capacity that we are going to find. Now, as a side note, we as a Nation have chosen to limit the amount of crude oil that we produce so that we import more crude oil today than ever before in our Nation's history. We import about 13 million barrels a day, most of it coming from the Middle East, from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and those nations. We also get oil from Mexico. We also get oil from Venezuela. Now, another factor that is going to very much affect the price of gasoline that we pay at the pump will be that Venezuela is currently talking to the nation of China, and China is trying to talk them into a 100-year contract with all of the production from Venezuela going to China for the next 100 years. Now, we as a Nation get 15 percent of our imported oil from Venezuela. So you can imagine that, if that contract goes through with China, taking away the production that we currently get from Venezuela, sending it to China, that we are going to see possibly a 10 or 15 percent jump in prices. Now, we have made choices to limit the amount of drilling that we do in this Nation so that we will be more immune to price manipulation from overseas from those countries that would import or export into us, and some of those choices are, for instance, in ANWR. Back in 1995, this Congress, both House and Senate, voted to drill in ANWR. That is an oil preserve, a wildlife preserve in Alaska. And there was a piece set aside strictly to do this drilling which has been stalled out by extremists. And so we as a Congress, both House and Senate, passed a bill which would allow drilling in ANWR, and President Clinton then vetoed that. If we had passed that bill and had it signed at that point, we would be experiencing about a million and a half barrels a day of production which would come down to this area. Now, again, that is about the amount that we have gone in the past, and when we would get price spikes, we would go to the Saudi Arabians and ask them if they would increase production by a million and a half barrels a day to help us lower the price of gasoline at the pump and keep our economy on sound footing. But we instead did not pass that bill that would allow the drilling in ANWR, and we as a Nation now are facing these $3.04 averages. That is an average price. Actually, some places are paying a much higher price, but we are experiencing these prices of gasoline because of past decisions that we have made to limit drilling. This is ourselves. We as a Nation are limiting our drilling, but we also have limited our refining capacity. Now, the energy bill that we passed recently, people would ask exactly what effect is that going to have on the price of gasoline at the pump. I would tell you that mostly what we did are things that would, long term, begin to limit our need for mostly natural gas. Natural gas is used to produce electricity, and we had great stimulation in the bill which would affect nuclear. We have also had great stimulation for many other renewables, both solar, wind, bio-mass and other forms of renewables energy. But those are long term. The only thing that really would affect the price of gasoline today is to increase the amount of crude oil production; that is drilling for more wells or to increase our refining capacity. Either one of those could have an effect on the price of gasoline today. But again, we, as a Nation, politically have decided in the past not to do that. And those are questions that we need to be asking ourselves right now. How high is the price of gasoline going to go before we think that we as a Nation should permit more refineries to be built? I think that we have passed that point. Now, my office, I am going to introduce in the coming week, we are proposing legislation that would in response to Katrina take the Federal excise tax off of gasoline. Currently, again, referring back to our chart, the price of gasoline is about $3.04; 55 cents of that $3.04 is made up of taxes. About 18.4 cents is a Federal tax. And our suggestion is that we as a Nation consider limiting that tax for a period of 6 months, so that the price of gasoline would fall immediately by 18.4 cents. And so you can see that we would be back under $2 a gallon for gasoline. But that is merely a short-term solution. In the long term, if we want to affect the price of gasoline, we must increase refining capacity or we must increase drilling. In the past, we have implemented different methods of or different measures which would restrict our capabilities or voluntarily restrict our use, but what we found is, as we got more mileage in cars, then people simply drove more because they are going to spend a certain amount of their budget for mobility. That is the way we as Americans are. Now we can agree or disagree with it, but we found that those measures that were designed solely to increase the mileage of our cars in the past actually did not lower the demands for gasoline, but simply we drove more miles demanding more gasoline. Now, one of the effects that I would like to visit about briefly before we finish is this trucking. Now, in my chart here, again we have got drilling, pipelines, refining, trucking to our local community and then the service station. But if we think of trucking in addition to not only trucking the gasoline from the refinery to a service station, then putting it in tanks at the service station, if we think about the trucking of all the goods and services along the highways; when you are driving along and you see the motorcades of hundreds of thousands of 18 wheelers moving along, those are taking goods that have been produced across this Nation and delivering them to the points of use or marketing and that those truckers are experiencing extremely high cost increases because they demand a lot of energy. They demand a lot of diesel, and the price of diesel is extraordinarily high right now. So we have tremendous downward pressure on our economy. It is one of the reasons that we are suggesting that the Federal taxes could be deleted for a period of 6 months to give us a chance to evaluate just what the effect of this storm Katrina is going to be, but in addition, it allows us to begin to have this debate on how complex do we have to make it for ourselves to build new refineries. I think we know the elements of refining that would create difficulties in our environment. No one is going to watch as our environment is spoiled, but right now, we are limiting ourselves arbitrarily, even though we know the safety standards that we need to implement. I, for one, feel like we can do both. We can have safety and create new refineries at the same point. Likewise, we have limited drilling for the same purpose. I think that we can drill in an environmentally safe manner, and we are going to either have to do that or watch as the price of our energy increases. Katrina has simply accentuated the pressures that already existed inside our economy, and it is time for us, as a Nation, to look at the effects of our decisions in the past. I would like to conclude my statements this evening by saying that, again, our hearts and our prayers go out to the people who have been suffering tremendously from this storm. We have seen the hearts of the Nation open up and accept these people who have been dislocated and have been taken in all across the Nation, into homes and into churches and into the Astrodome in Texas. I think that speaks so well of the compassion of this Nation and of our willingness to give of ourselves at a point where someone else is suffering. I think that in the days ahead we are going to see this Nation pool its resources, to pool its ingenuity together. We are going to see people really begin to buckle down to approach the problems that we, as a Nation, are facing right now, and in a unified fashion, I think that we will see New Orleans cleaned up. I think that we will see a rebuilding effort across the entire Gulf Coast region. I think that we will see those economies come back into those States and communities that have been devastated by these current situations. Again, we, as a Nation, owe it to ourselves to understand the full ramifications of what we face, and we owe it to ourselves to reinvest in those areas that have been so prolific and are so important to this Nation's economy. New Orleans not only has the refining capacity, they not only have the offshore platforms through Louisiana, offshore from Mississippi and Texas, but they process many, many of our grain crops on the way outbound as we export them. Many of the imports coming in come through New Orleans. It is an extremely vital and important part of this Nation, and I join with the rest of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle saying that we feel like that the days ahead will see the most magnificent responses to some of the most deeply felt problems this Nation has ever seen, from either a natural or unnatural disaster. Mr. Speaker, I thank the Chair for allowing me to address the situations that have occurred in the Gulf Coast.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Kentucky for his comments and for his heartfelt expressions of what this Nation is about. I wanted to discuss briefly the fact that there is great concern about the responses of our Nation, and we were treated tonight to an unprecedented, unprecedented in my tenure here in this Congress, 3 hours from administrative Cabinet-level Secretaries being here to address this House of Representatives and answer questions and be accountable. The information shared was extremely timely and was poignant. I would point out that one of the most impressive things to me was the responses of our military, and again, as we talk about the numbers of military, keep in mind that they may sound like a lot, but spread over 90,000 square miles, spread over the entire region of Great Britain, then we begin to understand just the proportions of responses that were actually required. Before the hurricane ever struck, a state of emergency was declared by the President. So we had a couple of days of lead time before Katrina actually begins to hit and move. This is a time line from August 26, 27, 28 and on, so we have Katrina hitting Florida about this point. We have already at that point activated troops in both Louisiana, listed in blue, and then Mississippi, listed in green. So we have activated troops prior to the hurricane actually moving into the Gulf. As it moved closer and closer into New Orleans and actually strikes New Orleans at this point, we can see that the troop level is now at 5,000, most of those troops in Mississippi; about half in Mississippi and about 40 percent in Louisiana. Then, the next day, we have an increase then to almost 8,000. Within 24 hours, now we are up to 10,000 troops, and we can see that the increase of troops has gone to where we have now 60,000 troops mobilized and on scene in this 90,000-square- mile region. Tomorrow, there will be an additional 10,000 troops. We will have at that point about 70,000 uniform personnel. About 43,000 of those are National Guard members, and about 17,000 of the ones on duty today are active duty military. But we also have to understand that the Coast Guard was able to be activated, and the Coast Guard rescued more people, about three times more people in this 1-week period than they normally rescue in about a 1-year period. About 60 percent of the helicopters available to the Coast Guard were actually activated and being used. And one of the problems that we faced is that communications throughout the region were just almost nonexistent; and especially as you went deeper into the highly populated area of New Orleans, the flood waters obliterated most of the communications systems. The wireless communications were not available. Cell phone communications were not available. The regular telephone communications were not available. So even if we had people there and on-site, they could not necessarily be directed right to the points where the problems were. But the responses that many are finding inadequate, and we have to admit as a Nation, the President, I think, said it best, that he appreciated the strength of responses, but they did not result in the kind of results we would have wanted to have. But once we get past that, we must evaluate what we should do in the future, not just try to point fingers in the current circumstance. I would point out that there is still much work to be done. So as we in this city begin to concentrate on recriminations and asking for resignations, what we are actually doing is distracting from those people who are actually on-site and trying to go through their jobs. There will be plenty of time to give consideration to the problems and the flaws that we did face. But at the current point I think that our administration is focused correctly on what we should be doing currently to ease the suffering of those people who have been displaced, to regain the control of the city's infrastructure, to re- establish the infrastructure in the city and in the rural areas that surround New Orleans, but also dealing with the misery of lost lives. The one thing that I think is extremely important for us to address with respect to New Orleans is the economic impact that we are going to face just from the loss of refining capacity. I have had good questions that are raised by constituents and friends of mine about why the price of gasoline would be jumping as it relates to this emergency, and so I would like to go through just a brief discussion about the components of production and the price of gasoline. We, first of all, need to be aware that gasoline is the end product, that we actually get it as a refined product of crude oil. To get crude oil, the first thing that we must do is to drill wells. And so, as I just put up here the basic sequence of getting refined gasoline, the first thing that we have to do as a Nation is drill oil wells or gas wells. And be aware when we are talking gas we are talking natural gas, not gasoline. But we drill. And when we drill successfully, we have oil that then must go through pipelines, and so we have got a transportation question here. Once the pipelines conduct the oil, usually it is carried to refineries, and so we have got the refinery then accepts the oil, and from the refinery then we get to usually a series of products. But the ones that most of us would be familiar with would be that we get either gasoline, which we get at the pump, or we get diesel which, again, many of our trucks going across the highways would use. Finally, then jobbers, these are independent, usually, operators who would go to the refinery and pick up gasoline in 10 or 12,000 lots and deliver it to service stations. So we then have the trucking from the refinery and finally to the service station. Now, that entire process is very complex. Just the drilling of the oil well might take 30 to 50 days, even for shallow oil wells. For the deep ones like you see offshore from New Orleans, we are talking billions of dollars and years to literally put these facilities into place. But then the conducting of the oil through the pipelines. Again, we put it in the refinery. It is at that point we begin to extract the oil or the gasoline or the diesel from the basic crude oil that comes from the oil well, and then the trucking to local service stations; and at that point, then you, as consumers, would drive up to the service station and access the fuel. And what we see over here as a price, generally, the average price across the country has dropped a couple of cents in the last couple of days. But basically right now the retail price average for the Nation is about $3.04. If we consider the source of that $3.04, where does that number come from, we have got a couple of charts that are extremely instructive. And the first one would show that when we have $3.04 of gasoline at the pump, that a $1.70 of that is created from the cost of crude oil itself. Refining creates $0.79 of the $3.04, and then the taxes that we add on top of that are the equivalent of $0.55. Now, you can see that the cost of crude oil is the dominant component. About 55 percent of the price that you pay at the pump is going to come from the price of oil. So as we talk about the price of oil nationwide, it is in the high $60 range, and then has recently peaked up almost into the 70 or maybe into the $70 range, and then has decreased back down. And you would ask what effect is Katrina going to have on the price of gasoline at the pump, and why would it have the effect. The chart that I have got here shows the track of Katrina coming in. It came across Florida, swung down into the gulf. Actually as it cleared through Florida, it decreased to about a Category 1 storm, and the speculation was early that it would simply bring rain across the southern gulf coast. But what it actually did was circulate out south into the gulf, pick up energy from the systems that were already in the gulf, and then it swung back toward the gulf coast here. And what is depicted right here in the dark zones are the oil platforms off the coast of southern U.S. there and the Gulf of Mexico. Also, we have got refineries that are listed here. So two things happened that are going to affect the price of gasoline as far as this storm is concerned. One is we lost some production from these platforms off in the Gulf of Mexico. But then secondly, we lost almost all of the refining capacity here in this region around Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana. Now, that represents about 25 percent of our Nation's refining capacity. We heard testimony tonight from the Secretary of Energy that much of that refining capacity is shut down simply temporarily. We have got about four of the 13 refineries that are going to suffer long-term damage, and it is still unknown. But let us say that we lose about 20 percent of our refining capacity. Then we can see that what we are doing is we are going to limit the amount of gasoline that is produced, and it is going to drive the price higher. We have got several things that are driving the price of gasoline higher right now worldwide. One of the factors that we tend not to think of, we understand as a Nation we have increased population and we have increased the amount of driving, and so we know that we, as a Nation, are demanding more petroleum products, more gasoline. Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 422, I move that the House do now adjourn in memory of the late Hon. William H. Rehnquist, Chief Justice of the United States.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 2362) to reauthorize and amend the National Geologic Mapping Act of 1992, as amended.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 2362, the bill under consideration.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in support of H.R. 2362, a bill to reauthorize and amend the National Geologic Mapping Act of 1992, introduced by the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Gibbons) and the gentlewoman from Wyoming (Mrs. Cubin). Geologic maps are important in identifying the Nation's water, energy, and mineral resources. Knowing where our resources are located is important in developing a sound national energy and minerals program that will allow us to become more energy independent, providing for a stronger, more secure economy and homeland. I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this important legislation that gets real results by producing new geologic maps on an annual basis. I urge adoption of the bill. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Gibbons). (Mr. GIBBONS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I have no additional requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 1428, the bill under consideration.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 1428) to authorize appropriations for the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, and for other purposes, as amended.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to support H.R. 1428 introduced by the gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo), the distinguished chairman of the House Resources Committee, which extends the existing authorization levels for the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. Since its creation in 1984, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation has funded more than 6,420 conservation projects. These efforts have been coordinated with more than 1,800 different conservation organizations. The fundamental goal of these projects has been to increase resources for fish and wildlife conservation, develop innovative conservation solutions, respect private property rights, and sustain healthy ecosystems. Unlike most conservation groups, this organization requires its grantees to sign an agreement stipulating that no Federal funds will be used for lobbying or litigation purposes. Instead of simply talking about conserving critical habitat, the foundation has accomplished that effort by taking their limited Federal dollars, and, through its challenge grant approach, generating over $900 million in private matching funds. This is a remarkable achievement. H.R. 1428 is a simple, noncontroversial and bipartisan bill. I urge an aye vote. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 38.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, H.R. 38, as introduced by the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Baird), would designate 20 miles of the Upper White Salmon River as a component of the Wild and Scenic Rivers system. This legislation would designate four different segments of the Upper White Salmon River and Cascade Creek, totaling 20 miles, as ``wild and scenic.'' The segments are limited to Federal land, located in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, and include 6.7 miles in the Mt. Adams Wilderness. This designation is supported by the local community as well as the Forest Service. I urge support for this important measure. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I would recognize the staff of both the majority and minority and also congratulate the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Baird) on not only his performance in submitting this bill but his stellar performance in the congressional baseball game last Thursday night. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 1512) to direct the Secretary of the Interior to conduct a special resources study regarding the suitability and feasibility of designating certain historic buildings and areas in Taunton, Massachusetts, as a unit of the National Park System, and for other purposes, as amended.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, H.R. 1512, introduced by the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank), would direct the Secretary of the Interior to conduct a special resources study regarding the suitability and feasibility of designating certain historic buildings and areas of the City of Taunton, Massachusetts, as a unit of the National Park System. It was in the City of Taunton where the Sons of Liberty first raised the Liberty and Union Flag in 1774, an event that helped to spark the American Revolution. I urge the adoption of the bill. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the staff, both majority and minority; and I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank) for submitting this valuable legislation. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I also thank the staffs from both majority and minority to get this bill through. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 1084) to authorize the establishment at Antietam National Battlefield of a memorial to the officers and enlisted men of the Fifth, Sixth, and Ninth New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry Regiments and the First New Hampshire Light Artillery Battery who fought in the Battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862, and for other purposes, as amended.