Jeff Sessions

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. That keeps the money at home, hiring American workers who pay taxes to the United States of America.

Mr. SESSIONS. It is very troubling to me. I say to the Senator, I know you also are knowledgeable--I do not know if you have a minute; I think you mentioned it in your remarks. But you have pointed out, as I understand it, in the West, in the shale oil areas of the West, we can actually produce shale oil for far less than $120 a barrel; is that correct?

Mr. SESSIONS. I could not agree more, I say to Senator Domenici.

Mr. SESSIONS. It has increased six times in price since you first began to discuss it.

Mr. SESSIONS. That is six times as expensive.

Mr. SESSIONS. Yes.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I see Senator Thune, who wanted to have 4 minutes to file an amendment. I ask unanimous consent that he be recognized when I finish my remarks.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I so much appreciate the remarks of Senator Domenici. He has given his career in the Senate to dealing with energy issues. There is no one here who is more deeply steeped in those issues and the history of how we got here and how we could be in better shape today than Senator Domenici. We don't want to be in a blame game. We don't want to be saying, ``I told you so.'' In fact, I will admit that I have made decisions, when the price of a barrel of oil was $30 and $40. It is different when it is now $120, as the Senator from New Mexico pointed out. We are facing a crisis, and we need to do some things. We don't need to do a piece of legislation that is pending on this floor, that came out of the EPW Committee, that not only won't help us deal with our crisis in energy but will actually surge the cost of energy, which is the only big piece of legislation I know relevant to the question that is now pending, other than legislation Senator Domenici offered. Gas today is over $3.60 a gallon. That is well over what it was 2 years ago. People are spending $60 to fill up with a tank of gas. The average family who has two cars is spending no doubt $50 to $100 more a month for the same amount of gasoline they were purchasing the previous few years. It is an enormous cost to that family. It is an impediment to economic vitality. It is a very significant, if not the most significant, factor in the economic slowdown we are dealing with. Electricity also will be going up. One expert has said that we could basically be seeing a $100-a-month increase in the average family's electricity bill. If we pass this cap-and-trade bill, it will be a lot more than that. Diesel priced fuel is up--too high, in my view. I can't understand why it is consistently 60 cents more per gallon than regular gasoline. An airline official told me not long ago that jet fuel is double. So we have a problem. We really do. I know everybody has goals and visions about how we can solve this problem. Senator Domenici and I share a deep belief that nuclear power can be a primary source in the years to come to deal with this crisis. In fact, he has written a book about it. We have advocated this for some time. I think that reality is beginning to dawn more clearly on us today. But it is going to be maybe 7, 8, 10 years to get a new nuclear plant up and running. But we can generate large numbers of them if we follow smart procedures and have that come on line. But the point I think we are trying to make is: That is 10 years down the road. It may take 10 years to do ANWR. We can bring on coal-to-liquid technology. That can happen, but it takes some time. But we need to get started. We are so hopeful we can do more with conservation. I supported the bill last year to raise our fuel standards, CAFE standards, automobile mileage standards up to 37, 35 miles per gallon, the entire fleet, including trucks. That is going to be difficult to achieve, but it will conserve a tremendous amount of fuel and be good for us. But that is not going to solve our problem either. So what must we do? I think we must have a long-term policy. I believe that policy should focus on investing in the ideas and concepts that have potential to be breakthrough technologies to confront this problem. There are a number of them out there. Hydrogen. President Bush pushed hydrogen for our automobiles, but from what I can understand, that is coming along slower than we would like. There are a number of very difficult technical problems with hydrogen. It takes some time. We would love to see the hybrid automobiles be able to be converted to plug-in hybrid automobiles, and progress is being made in that regard that is pretty exciting. We may be getting closer there than we think. That would convert from liquid fuel that runs our automobiles to electricity. We can utilize electricity generated in nuclear plants that emits no CO2, no pollution into the atmosphere, and do that at night when they are not fully engaged and be able to drive, for most people, all they need to drive that day on a battery charge at night, utilizing no fuel in their automobile. What a great thing that would be. We also have, as Senator Domenici has pointed out, though, great reserves of oil and gas and energy in our country. The sad fact is, we are not going to be able to get away from fossil fuels in the next few decades. We are just not going to be able to get away from that. People seem to have no problem that we buy it from foreign countries, some of which are not friendly to us. We can just buy from them. But if you talk about producing that oil and gas here in the United States, in our country, they get, for some reason, to objecting. We have seen it time and time again. I was so pleased that last year, under Senator Domenici's leadership--the year before last, I guess--we passed legislation to open 8.5 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico. But we left closed to drilling huge areas in the Gulf of Mexico, some of which have tremendous reserves of oil and gas. We have opened none off the Pacific coast, where there are huge resources, and none off the Atlantic coast. We have shown in the Gulf of Mexico that even with this powerful hurricane, these billion-dollar rigs can sustain the storm and not provide economic destruction or damage to the gulf. We can do that around the world. So the question is, Are we going to take that step? This legislation helps us go in that direction. We have seen and shown you can convert coal. We have huge reserves of coal-to-liquid that can burn in our automobiles. That is technology which is ready to go today basically. We just need to prove it out in a large commercial area, and the Government should help establish that technology. But the point I would like to make is that would produce huge amounts of energy we can utilize in our vehicles and keep the money at home. So there are many other things we can do and are doing. I believe the concerns over ethanol raising food prices are exaggerated. Even President Bush, who has been somewhat skeptical of this--his own administration said they thought about 2 percent to 3 percent of the price of food was as a result of ethanol being produced from corn and soybeans for biodiesel. It is not the main factor in the rise of farm prices. But it certainly helped us not to have to import lots and lots of foreign oil into the United States. I will recall for my colleagues that according to the Congressional Research Service, this year we will import into America $400 billion- plus worth of oil. Probably, the next year from this day--the next 12 months--it would be over $500 billion worth of oil. This is the greatest wealth transfer in the history of the world. It is money we have, as American citizens, that is ending up in the pockets of countries--small countries, some of them, building more skyscrapers than they have apartment complexes--unbelievable displays of wealth. We can do better about that. We need to produce more energy here at home, energy that we have. If we do so, we can reduce our dependence on foreign oil. And if we can reduce that amount through conservation, through local American production, the result could be that we could knock down the high demand that is out there, and we might even see the price of oil drop more than people think. Historically, it has been boom and bust in the oil industry. Some say we will not have a bust again because of the world demand, and they may be right. But I think there are some realistic possibilities we can. So there are biofuels and solar and wind and biomass and new batteries. All of this is good, and I would support research and development on them. But I do not believe we ought to press down on the brow of the American working man some theoretical beliefs about clean energy that will not work or are exceedingly expensive and create only a burden on working families in America. We have to be careful about that. So I am excited about the proposal that has been put forth. I believe we have great potential to produce more American oil and gas off our Continental Shelf. I have seen it right off from the coast where I live in Alabama. I have seen that production come in for decades now. We know ANWR has great potential. It could reduce our imports by as much as 10 percent if it is brought on line. We know coal-to-liquid can be done today for far less than the world price of oil. We know oil can be produced from these huge oil shale deposits in the West for less than the world price of oil today. We know nuclear power has the potential to help us transform our vehicular traffic from fossil fuels to electricity. But we have to get busy doing it. We have not built a nuclear plant in 30 years. Since I have been in the Senate, for 12 years I have talked about nuclear power, how critical it is to our future. We have done nothing really to make that happen--until Senator Domenici, 2 years ago, as chairman of the Energy Committee, finally pushed through some legislation that took us from having zero applications for nuclear plants to over 30 today. I think we have the potential to see a renewal of nuclear power. The British just announced they are going to build five new nuclear plants. France has 80 percent of their power or more from nuclear power. Japan does. We also need to figure out how to deal with the question of recycling, which is not at all impossible to do. The British, the French, the Japanese, the Russians recycle. We want to work on legislation to create recycling of nuclear waste. That will both help us create more fuel and reduce the danger of the waste that is left. These are things we can do. But it is time to get busy and do it, not have a policy of creating a massive bureaucracy, some cap-in-trade bureaucracy that has not worked in Europe. It just has not worked. A massive tax increase is what it amounts to in sheep's clothing. So, Mr. President, I thank the Chair.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I know it was less, but I do not know.

Mr. SESSIONS. Nineteen.

Mr. SESSIONS. Under current technology. I assume it will get better in the years to come, but even right now with the technology we have?

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I thank Senator Murkowski for her comments and agree with them very strongly. This is not a matter that she just raised. Her distinguished father, who chaired the Senate Energy Committee, was a champion of ANWR production when he was in the Senate. When I came here almost 12 years ago, I believed that was the right thing then. I understood then that it did have the capability of maintaining wealth in our country and helping to ease the surging price of oil and gas. I believe, as history has proven, she is correct. That is the way it is. We steadfastly--vote after vote after vote, for the last 12 years I have been in the Senate and before that--tried to produce the tremendous reserves of oil and gas that are contained in a small part of ANWR. We have been blocked. It is odd that those who blocked it, and seem unphased by the fact that we are importing huge amounts of oil and gas from nations around the world that are often hostile to us, such as out of that great lake in Venezuela. Nobody is worrying about the environment in Venezuela--it is all right to bring it from Venezuela or other places but not from the United States. After many years since I have been in the Senate, we finally were able to open up more lands in the Gulf of Mexico, where huge reserves exist. It is not an academic matter only. We are talking about gasoline that has risen to the price of $3.61 a gallon as of this morning. One year ago, it was $2.84 a gallon; and 2 years ago, it was $2.74 a gallon. As a result, the American family, with two cars, is paying about $75 a month more for the same amount of gasoline they were buying previously. This impacts our economy adversely. It is a transfer of wealth. T. Boone Pickens--himself an oil producer and one of America's most successful entrepreneurs--recently talked about the fact we are buying over 60 percent of our oil from foreign countries at the cost, he estimates, of $600 billion a year. We are sending $600 billion a year to foreign countries to import the oil we utilize. T. Boone Pickens referred to that, in an American Spectator article recently, as: the greatest wealth transfer in the history of the world. Do we have the ability to do something about it? Are we just totally hopeless? Do we have an ability to do something about that? Absolutely, we can do some things. I supported ethanol, although we clearly are pushing the limits on that. But if we could do more cellulosic ethanol, we could do better. I supported the increase in the gas mileage, which we did pass, which will have a significant reduction in our demands. But as the population of our country is growing, even if we reduce our own individual use, we are going to have high demand in our country for years to come. It is a question of: Where are we going to get it? I support hybrid automobiles. I support diesel automobiles. In fact, diesel is as clean or cleaner, in terms of CO2, and gets 30 percent better gas mileage than gasoline automobiles. Europeans utilize diesel automobiles. Fifty percent of their cars are now diesel. They actually get the same gas mileage and emit the same or less CO2 than hybrids. Did you know that? So somehow we have fiddled around here and ended up not promoting diesel in an effective way and have seen the price of diesel fuel, which should be cheaper, be 60 cents more per gallon at the pump. I would like to know more about why that is happening. I think it has to be a combination of things, but I think Congress needs to look into that. I hope, in the Energy Committee, we will have some hearings on that particular question. But let me talk about some of the reserves we have in our country. In 2005, this Congress directed the Department of the Interior to study our reserves on the Outer Continental Shelf. I am from Alabama. We are a gulf coast area. They found that 8.5 billion barrels of oil are currently known to exist off the Nation's shores. In addition, the study estimated that approximately 86 billion barrels of oil also exist in those areas that have not been charted yet. The U.S. Geological Survey and private industry also estimate that approximately 25 billion barrels of oil exist onshore in the lower 48 States and in Alaska. This amounts to approximately 119 billion barrels of oil available to the United States in our country or off our shores alone, for which we do not have to pay any foreign nation. Any production we get, as Senator Murkowski of Alaska stated, can create profits that come to the United States and not to foreign countries, and we can use it to accelerate nuclear power, plug in hybrids, ethanol, cellulosic ethanol, wind and solar, and those other kinds of energy forms. But apparently we have those who just steadfastly block this and prefer to send our money to Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Now, there are some additional sources of oil in our country of immense proportions, and at these world prices, it has proven to be already economically feasible to develop them. One is oil shale. The Congressional Research Service, our own independent research service, estimates this country's oil shale reserve to be equivalent to approximately 1.8 trillion barrels of oil, or 1,800 billion barrels of oil in oil shale. The largest oil producer in the world, Saudi Arabia, is estimated to have only 267 billion barrels. We are talking about 1.8 trillion in the United States, and it can be produced for less than $100 a barrel--some say $60 a barrel--and the people who produce it would be Americans paid salaries by the American Government, who would pay taxes to the U.S. Treasury, keeping our wealth at home and not transferring $600 billion to a foreign country. In 2005, Congress recognized the potential--I want my colleagues to understand this--we recognized the potential of oil shale in the Energy Policy Act we passed, which was a good bill. It made a number of good steps forward. We identified it as strategically important and called for its further development. Yet the new Congress, under the new leadership, has acted to block the development of this abundant resource despite the record price of oil. They undermined the 2005 Energy Policy Act. In the recently passed Energy Independence and Security Act, the majority inserted language into the bill prohibiting any Federal agency from contracting to procure any alternative or synthetic fuel that produces greater life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions than those produced from the ground, those produced from Saudi Arabia. This language prohibits the Federal Government from contracting to produce oil shale. They knew exactly what they were doing, and that was exactly the purpose of that language. It really should be repealed. It is misguided. It is wrong. The Energy Act of 2005 directed the Bureau of Land Management to lease Federal lands for oil shale research and development projects. Yet the Congress, in this same bill, acted to block the development of this provision. So we passed it in 2005, and they came along and blocked it. Language was inserted, actually, this time in the Consolidated Appropriations Act--that is, the Omnibus appropriations bill at the end of last session--that prohibited funds from being used to implement the leasing program which Congress directed BLM to implement in 2005. It should be repealed. That is not the right thing for us to do. So there is much more we can say. We need technology. We need advancement in our ability to conserve energy, and at the same time, while we are making that progress, we do not need to be devastating our economy by transferring $600 billion a year to foreign countries when we can produce so much more here at home. I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I thank the Chair and Senator Klobuchar for her comments. These things just take time. I fully understand that. I would share with her a question as to why we would continue to pour large amounts of petroleum into our Reserve when we are clearly at high, even peak prices that seems to me not a good idea. It would help relieve some pressure on price and on supply if we were to suspend that. I also share her concern that on the world market, we are not in a free marketplace. Those experts who said they thought the price ought to be $50, $55 a barrel, I don't know what the prices ought to be, but I know OPEC meets and decides what the production level will be. As a prosecutor myself, that is a cartel. That is price fixing, as I understand it. Somehow, we need to make it a part of our sustained national policy to stand up to this. In one sense, what OPEC does when they drive up the price by limiting production, what they are doing is taxing the United States of America. They just decide how much they are going to tax us for the oil we use. One expert has said that the cost of producing a barrel of oil in those fabulous oil sands in Saudi Arabia is less than $10 a barrel. So we see what the profit margin is when it hits $120 a barrel on the world market. Many factors are in it. I know the decline in the dollar and other factors are involved. But I just want to say that I do think we are moving into a new era of government-controlled oil more than we ever have. Most people think oil companies control it. But recent studies show about 85 percent of oil is owned by nation states. For example, Mexico owns all of its oil and will not allow private industry to participate in its extraction. Because the Government is inefficient and unproductive, their production has fallen, whereas Mexico has huge reserves. Venezuela's production has fallen. Aramco, the Saudi Arabian company, owns theirs, and their production has fallen. As a result, we continue to see shortages on the world market, driving prices up, allowing certain people who are clever and smart and who have invested wisely or aggressively to make billions of dollars. We have a serious energy problem in the United States. The high costs are impacting the lives of American citizens and farmers and others. There was an article in a local paper--I believe the Mobile Press Register--that I saw today where an individual who has a shrimp boat parked his boat at the dock and said: If the price of shrimp doesn't go up or the price of fuel drop, I cannot make a profit. There is no way I can go out and do this. He docked his boat. There was a similar article in the Florence Times talking about farmers and the increasing cost farmers see from the fuel they use. Increased demand from India, Southeast Asia, South America, with decreased production around the globe, has created the opportunity for prices and profits to grow for certain people who are wisely positioned. During my last trip to Alabama for a week, I had townhall meetings and visited with people throughout the State. Energy prices were the No. 1 thing people talked to me about. It is having a real impact on their family budget. The price of regular unleaded gasoline climbed to $3.50 a gallon. A year ago, it was $2.84, and 2 years ago, it was $2.74. That is a 28-percent increase in 2 years. This helps explain the economic doldrums and slowdown we are in. The typical American family with two cars is paying about $750 to $1,000 more per year for the same amount of fuel they were buying the previous year. That represents $70, $80 a month of disposable income that previously they could use for other things for their family. It is now going to buy the same amount of fuel they were using the year before or 2 years before. This represents a huge economic hit to the American family. There is another adverse, serious problem for America as a nation: More than 60 percent of the fuel we utilize in our vehicles comes from places such as Saudi Arabia and Venezuela and Russia and Mexico, some of which countries are not friendly to us. That represents a $400 billion transfer of wealth on an annual basis from this country. Businessman T. Boone Pickens, in a recent interview in the American Spectator, referred to this as ``the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of mankind.'' That is a pretty smart guy. He is an oil man himself. He said we have to do something about this. It is not something we can just ignore. Of course, there is no silver bullet to solving the problems, but there are some basic principles we should respect. We must increase supplies in our own country, increase production in our country, which we certainly can do and which I regret to say we have attempted in this Senate and in the House more than once, to be blocked by various groups that seem to complain about high energy prices but don't want to do anything to allow us to produce more in the United States. We must conserve more energy. I supported the increased gas mileage standards which represent a substantial improvement. Maybe we can even do more. We certainly must try to use more biofuels, if we can, although under current technologies, we are reaching the limits. But I think other technology will help us in the future to expand the amount of biofuels we can use. We must use the fuel we have more efficiently. The Government does have a responsibility to ensure that we have fairness in the world marketplace and in the American marketplace and to make sure these cartels openly fixing the price of oil do not succeed. As I will discuss in a minute, I think we should take a serious look at establishing a policy with regard to diesel fuel. I will mention that in a moment. I know the problem for gasoline is hitting American families directly. But at this moment, I would like to share some specific thoughts about diesel fuel and those high costs. Recent spikes in diesel fuel prices don't get a lot of attention in the media, but it has a huge impact on consumers and businessmen and truckers and shrimpers and farmers. Today, I had the pleasure to meet with six independent truckers who are here in Washington to bring attention to the skyrocketing cost of diesel fuel. They had press conferences, and they talked to a number of people. I invited a group to come to my office. Over-the-road trucks, 18-wheelers, heavy equipment, and agricultural trucks almost exclusively use diesel fuel. This month, diesel fuel prices climbed to $4.14 a gallon. Two years ago, it was $2.72. That is a 52-percent increase in diesel fuel, substantially greater than the increase in gasoline. That is putting a huge stress on trucking companies--independent truckers, particularly--small businesses, and farming and fishing operations. Among automobiles and pickup trucks, 98 percent of the people drive vehicles that use unleaded gas. So you might say: I am not a trucker or a farmer. Those prices don't really affect me. But that is just not so, really. There are two ways the market for diesel fuel affects the average person's pocketbook. When diesel prices go up, the cost of transporting goods, consumer products, and food goes up. That increase is passed to consumers. Secondly, we have an opportunity, through improved diesel technology, of making diesel engines cleaner and more efficient than ever before. Mercedes, for example, Daimler-Chrysler, is offering consumers a range of vehicles with its blue tech diesel engine that is built in my home State. So we should spend a few minutes looking at our policies and how they affect diesel prices. I hope the Energy Committee, of which I am a member, will have some hearings on this issue. It would be worth our having some time set aside exclusively to this problem. Nearly all trucks and delivery vehicles utilize diesel fuel. The price of diesel fuel affects our country in so many ways. Trucking currently uses 75 percent of the total diesel fuel used in the United States. Only 3.5 percent of the automobiles in America use diesel. But in Europe, approximately 50 percent of the automobiles are diesel. And in the United States, one action we took that may have had some impact on not using so much diesel fuel but had a good impact, perhaps, for the environment was to demand very clean, low-sulfur diesel fuel. Our diesel fuel is lower sulfur than the Europeans, and that is because of environmental reasons. But did you know this? Diesel automobiles run approximately 30 percent farther on diesel fuel than similar gasoline-powered automobiles. Diesel engines get 30 percent better mileage than gasoline engines. Diesel-powered automobiles also get more miles per gallon even than hybrid automobiles, or about the same. Some insist it is better, but they are pretty much equal. In addition to being fuel efficient, diesel-powered automobiles emit fewer CO2 emissions than similar hybrid and gasoline engines. A lot of people don't know that. Of course, that is why 50 percent of the automobiles in Europe, which has analyzed this more carefully than we, it appears, are now diesel. The European Union has emphasized diesel engines because it takes 30 percent less fuel to run a diesel engine. The average price of diesel fuel used in motor vehicles has historically been lower than the price of regular gasoline. According to the Department of Energy, the average price of diesel has been higher than gasoline since 2004--as a matter of fact, substantially higher. So for some reason, even though diesel fuel traditionally has been less expensive and requires less refining effort than gasoline, it has been averaging 64 cents a gallon more than gasoline. Now, like I said, I believe in a free market. I am loathe for the Government to intervene. But let me ask this question: Why is that? Why? Why would a product that should be cheaper be consistently, since 2004, more expensive than the other product? I, frankly, do not know. But it does appear our country has made a determination to shift to a gasoline economy and a hybrid economy. I think it is fabulous we are utilizing large numbers now of hybrid vehicles--large numbers. We certainly have enough on the roads today to be able to find out how well they work, to make their capabilities more sophisticated, to improve their lifespan, to improve their efficiency, to work out the bugs. A lot of people are finding that the savings in gas alone will help pay for the somewhat more expensive hybrid engine. So I am not against the hybrid engine, and I am delighted we are leading the world in the effort to utilize hybrid engines. What I am asking is, how have we gotten ourselves in a situation in which the less expensive diesel fuel, that gets 30 percent better gas mileage, is not readily available and is costing 64 cents more a gallon? Something is awry as far as I can see. I say, let's get busy. Let's do something about it. Let's stand up to OPEC. Let's use every political influence and pressure we have to encourage them to increase productivity to reduce these shortages. Let's stop, at least temporarily, depositing to the petroleum reserve. Let's expand biofuels, and particularly biodiesel, which is a fabulous fuel that, unlike ethanol, is just as productive as diesel fuel and actually is even cleaner than diesel fuel. We need to figure out how to get more production domestically from our own reserves. I will not go into the arguments we have had about ANWR, all the oil shale in the West, and offshore drilling. We simply have not done enough of it, and we still have large reserves available to us in this country. So when those reserves are produced, that wealth does not go to foreign nations but is kept within the United States, creating jobs in our country. So we need more production, and we need to look at this question of refineries. I do not know what the problem is, but we need to ask some questions. I have already asked the Congressional Research Service and the Department of Energy some questions. But I intend to look at this more as to why we do not have sufficient diesel fuel being produced in the country and we continue to have shortages of it. So that is what I think we need to do. I am not unaware and I understand completely that the surging cost of energy impacts working Americans directly. It hits their pocketbook. Those are the people who have the least disposable income, and it is like a hidden tax. Yes, oil is more valuable today than it was. Mr. T. Boone Pickens, in his article, said he thought we were at a peak oil situation in the world while demands are going up worldwide. I do not know that we are yet at a total peak. I doubt we are, frankly. But we are getting close to that. So the oil is just a more valuable product. I understand that. But we need to execute the policies we know will work to help contain the price increases that are hurting Americans. I will add this one thought: We need to be careful about cap and trade and other pieces of legislation that focus solely on CO2 emissions because we know those actions and those pieces of legislation will only drive the cost of fuel higher. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, which has just completed a study of the cap and trade bill that the Environment and Public Works Committee just reported to the floor a month or two ago, that bill would raise the price of gasoline 50 cents a gallon. It could raise the price of electricity maybe as much as $100 a month for a family. Who is going to pay that? So we have to be very careful when we pass cap-and-trade, global- warming-type legislation, that when we do, we do not dump huge costs on working Americans, on low-income Americans which they do not deserve and they are not justified. So I think that is a matter we will need to consider in the weeks to come. I thank the Chair. I appreciate the opportunity to share these remarks. I appreciate very much the truckers who were in my office today. I enjoyed talking with them. They told me stories of people who are having to park their trucks and not being able to continue to work. They told me stories of people who were going to go into bankruptcy; they could not continue to make their payments. So it is not an academic matter. It is a very real thing. We need to take action consistent with our great heritage of freedom in our country to see what we can do to confront this rising cost of energy. I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I thank Senator Klobuchar for her comments. I agree with so much of what she had to say. When you go out and talk to real people and see the impact on their lives of these huge prices, you begin to analyze where we are.

Mr. SESSIONS. That sounds fine to me. I did not hear that. I yield the floor, before I complete bragging on the Senator's comments.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I thank my colleague, Senator Menendez, for his courtesy. I will adhere to that timeframe. I ask to be notified in 4 minutes. I would express my appreciation to Senator Stevens for his service to his country during World War II, and Senator Inouye, our decorated World War II veteran himself. Both served in harm's way for their country. We do value their opinions on so many important issues. John Little, a native of my hometown of Mobile, AL, a product of UMS High School, a good high school in Mobile, graduated from Southern Methodist University with a BA in history, got his juris doctorate from Cumberland School of Law in Birmingham, AL, a fine law school. He interviewed and then joined my staff 9 months into my term, just as I had come to Washington. We hired John, and we told him he would have to start at the bottom. And he did. He handled judiciary issues and correspondence with constituents back home. But within a year, using his excellent writing and research, it was obvious he was destined to take on more responsibility. John had great talent, and we made him our legislative counsel and gave him the responsibility of several issues, including education, labor, drug caucus work, welfare, and campaign finance reform. In 2000, John was promoted to legislative assistant and counsel and he dove right into the largest issues of our time, at that point the Elementary and Secondary Education Act debate. We were dealing with a very important issue in education, in particular, the special ed or IDEA reform, the need to create a thoughtful, disciplined standard and reform for students and teachers in the classroom. It was a big problem. We were hearing a lot about it. John spent countless hours of work on this project as my legislative assistant and helped foster the strong reform that eventually would be accepted in the IDEA reform bill which was signed into law that is affecting positively every school in America today. After 2 years spent on education, labor, and welfare and judiciary issues, I promoted him to my deputy legislative director and counsel. His portfolio grew on a whole host of issues. He also became a key point man in my office on nominations issues. So after the departure in 2003 of my legislative director, John was the obvious choice to take over and manage the day-to-day legislative operations of my office. He and I spent countless hours together working on IDEA reform and other issues that were so important. He spearheaded my efforts to promote our plans for a strong national defense, lower taxes, less regulation, and the thoughtful application of commonsense conservative values to promote and pass good public policy. After the elections of 2004, a new Senator, my good friend and colleague from Florida, Mr. Mel Martinez, heard of the outstanding work of my young legislative director and counsel. I suppose he heard about that because he called me to ask if he could interview him. And I certainly agreed to that. I think he sought out John's leadership, know-how, interpersonal skills, and a command of the inner workings of the Senate, and he eventually asked if he could bring John on as his chief of staff. Although I would lose a strong counselor and a legislative leader and friend, my loss was indeed Senator Martinez's gain. So it has been for the past 3 years that John has been at the helm with Senator Martinez as his chief of staff. He will leave the Senate family now but will be taking on another important challenge in the corporate world. I know John Little well and the values and high ideals he holds dear. He truly loves the Senate and respects her traditions. He loves America. The Senate was a better place with him here. Thank you, John, for your friendship, your strong personal support, and your service to the Senate and our great country. It has been a pleasure and an honor to work with you. We wish you every success in your chosen endeavors. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I think the Senate is clearly in a slowdown. It is not fulfilling its responsibility to evaluate and vote on Presidential nominees for our courts in America. We are now into the fourth month of 2008 and only one circuit judge, Judge Haynes, who received an ABA rating of unanimously well qualified--the highest rating by the bar--has been confirmed, and that confirmation only happened last week, April 10. So we have gone quite a long time here. We still have 10 pending nominations to the appeals courts that need hearings, need votes out of the Judiciary Committee, and need up-or-down votes on the Senate Floor. Why is this a problem? I will tell you. Because President Bush campaigned on, and effectively, I believe, won the day on the argument that judges should be, as now Chief Justice John Roberts said at his confirmation hearing, neutral umpires. They are supposed to call the balls and strikes. They are not supposed to be on one side or the other. They are not supposed to be setting forth their personal political agendas in the guise of ruling on disputes of law in a courtroom. That is an abuse of the power of the judiciary. Members of the Judiciary are given lifetime appointments. They cannot be removed except through impeachment or death, and their salaries can not be reduced. It is critical that those judges show restraint and remember their proper role in our three branch system. Now, the truth is that for many years my liberal activist colleagues have delighted in having Federal judges, and sometimes State judges, promote and affect a political agenda they could not win at the ballot box. That is what it is all about. But we need judges who respect the rule of law and who understand they are not policymakers. If they want to set policy, let them run for Governor, let them run for President or the Senate. So President Bush has consistently submitted nominees with high ratings, even from the American Bar Association, which frequently, I submit, is more activist than I would favor. Indeed, they meet and have all these resolutions and pass these resolutions on issues with which I do not agree. I am a member of the ABA, but I don't agree with some of the positions they take in these resolutions. They meet in some big conference, unrepresented by the members of the bar, and they do these things. I mention all that to say they have been rating these present nominees very well. They have been giving them high ratings because they are men and women of good legal ability, sound judgment, and President Bush would not nominate them if they were not committed to the proper role of a judge, in my view. Circuit court vacancies--these are the 11 circuits we have. The circuit courts are the first level of appellate courts above the Federal district court, the trial courts. When you appeal a criminal conviction or a civil judgment in America, you appeal first from the district court to the circuit court. That is one step below the Supreme Court. Then you can appeal from there to the U.S. Supreme Court, Chief Justice Roberts and his team, right across the street. That is the way the system works. These appellate courts are important because the Supreme Court only takes 100 or so cases a year, and many of the rulings of the circuit courts have become final. That is one reason people consider them to be important. Ultimately, the Supreme Court will rule. Despite the fact that there are 10 nominees for the 13 vacancies in the circuit courts, the Judiciary Committee, our committee, of which I have been a member now for almost 12 years, has only given a hearing to 1, and that was over a year and a half ago when Senator Specter was chairman, the Republican chairman. Peter Keisler, the circuit nominee for the D.C. Circuit here in Washington, was given a hearing in August 2006, but he has still not been voted on, called up for a vote in the Judiciary Committee. He is a fabulous nominee. One of the reasons he is being objected to is the same reason they objected to Miguel Estrada, the same reason they objected to a lot of other nominees--he is so capable, he would be on the short list for the Supreme Court of the United States. If they can kill them off at this level, they will not be considered sometime in the future. That is just a fact. I have been here. I know how this works. There is no reason Peter Keisler ought not to be confirmed. He had a hearing in August 2006, and he still has not been brought up for a vote in the committee. Catharina Haynes was highly rated too. She was confirmed last week after we began to complain about this. That was the first circuit court nomination hearing since September of last year. The Fourth Circuit is in a crisis. The vacancy rate is alarming. One- third of the seats are vacant. Four nominees are pending for those vacancies, but none has even been given a hearing. Robert Conrad, former Federal prosecutor, has been waiting for a hearing for 265 days. He is also, at this point, a Federal district judge, a Federal district judge for the Western District of North Carolina. He was nominated for a judicial emergency. He has the support of both his home Senators, received a unanimous ABA rating of ``well qualified,'' the highest rating you can get. He is a consensus nominee. The Senate unanimously confirmed him for his current district judge seat, and the ABA, then, ranked him unanimously ``well qualified.'' The whole ABA 15-member committee voted him the highest rating, unanimously. So why hasn't he been given a hearing? Steve Matthews has been waiting over 205 days. We have others out there who I think are being slowed down. Mr. Conrad is an excellent nominee, in my opinion. He has a number of qualifications. I remember he was given the duty to conduct one of the investigations that occurred in the Department of Justice. He testified. I remember him testifying because I liked the honesty and directness in his testimony. He chose not to prosecute anybody for those offenses, but by all accounts he examined it carefully and fairly. Among other qualifications he had, he played point guard on the Clemson University basketball team in the ACC where he was an academic All-American basketball player, among the other things he did, which has always impressed me. I would say there has been talk about invoking the so-called Thurmond Rule. The Thurmond Rule could sort of be, if you want it to be, an excuse for slow-walking nominees and not approving the nominees who ought to be approved just because there is a Presidential election on the horizon. Majority Leader Harry Reid mentioned last night that the so-called rule would be invoked in June. Senator Leahy has mentioned before that he would invoke it in the second half of this year. Let me say this about the Thurmond Rule. It is a myth. It does not exist. There is no reason for stopping the confirmation of judicial nominees in the second half of a year in which there is a Presidential election. I remind my colleagues that our now chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Chairman Leahy, when he assumed control over the committee, stated he would institute the Thurmond Rule starting the spring of this year. He said: The Thurmond rule, in memory of Senator Strom Thurmond--he put this in when the Republicans were in the minority--which said in a Presidential election year, after spring, no judges would go through except by the consent of both Republican and Democratic leaders. I want to be bipartisan. We will institute the Thurmond rule. Those were his remarks at Georgetown University Law School in December 2006. In May 2007, he reiterated that the Thurmond Rule would kick in next April. Senator Leahy said: Obviously the Thurmond rule kicks in. But let's be very clear about it. The Thurmond Rule as interpreted is a false myth. Senator Leahy, before the statements he made in 2006 and 2007 during the Bush Presidency, has admitted as much. In fact, as Senator Leahy said in 2000, when the situation was somewhat different-- during President Clinton's final year in office, like this is President Bush's last year: There is a myth that judges are not traditionally confirmed in Presidential election years. That is not true. Recall that 64 judges were confirmed in 1980; 44 in 1984; 42 in 1988, when a Democratic majority in the Senate confirmed the Reagan nominees and, as I have noted, 66 in 1992, when a Democratic majority in the Senate confirmed 66 Bush nominees. Those are not my words. Those are Senator Leahy's words. I see the distinguished ranking member of the Judiciary Committee is here. It is time for him to speak. I will just say that we, as Members of this Senate, have a Constitutional responsibility to move judicial nominees. We should not be playing games. Good nominees with strong support ought to be moved forward. A lot of these nominees have not been treated fairly. It is time to move them forward. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for up to 10 minutes.

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

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, we had a hearing yesterday in the Armed Services Committee, of which I am a member, in which General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker made their reports back to the Congress, as they promised. They also testified yesterday afternoon before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and today they are before the House committee. I think they had about a 30-minute break or less between the testimony here and their testimony in the Foreign Relations Committee. I thought General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker did a marvelous job and were asked a lot of tough questions, which is the Congress's responsibility, I don't dispute. What I wish to share with my colleagues today relates to the testimony of General Jack Keane, who testified this morning before the Armed Services Committee. General Keane was former Vice Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army. He is a paratrooper, a combat veteran, a student of the military for 37 years, a four star general who has made four trips to Iraq in the last year, and he has made a number of suggestions and continues to be, in my opinion, one of the most respected observers of the Iraqi military situation we have in our country today. In fact, I happened to be on ``The Charlie Rose Show'' with him and Senator Jack Reed last night. Reference was made that he was an adviser to Presidential candidate and Senate Member Hillary Clinton. He said that, in fact, he had provided advice to her, but he had provided advice to all three of the leading candidates still in the race and three of those who dropped out. His advice is widely sought. His criticism was real over a year ago when he felt the policies we were executing in Iraq were not good policies and not effective. He believed a change in policy was called for. To a significant degree, the surge, and even more importantly, the tactical changes that took place with the surge were suggestions that he had made. Of course, General Petraeus also executed them, and it represented General Petraeus's view, but General Keane did make a valuable contribution in the new policy we have undertaken. Now, the American people are concerned about Iraq. They are rightly worried that we have a long-term commitment, and they wonder whether there is a good and decent government at the end of that commitment, whether it will be worth the effort we are putting forth, and whether we have a realistic chance of success in Iraq. I have asked General Petraeus each and every time he has testified before me: Do you believe we have a realistic chance of success? He said that when he first went over there, when things were going badly and he knew he had to make some changes, he said: Yes, Senator. If I didn't believe I could be successful, I wouldn't go, I wouldn't take the job. Since then, he has twice reported based on his time there that he thinks we have a realistic chance of success. What did General Keane say to us today? This very fine, highly respected professional military officer said this: The character of my visits to Iraq is to spend considerable time with the Iraqi people, their Sheik and Tribal leaders, as well as time with our U.S. military, Iraqi military, and civilian leaders, and our troops. That is a direct quote. I will continue to quote General Keane: First and foremost, we have the most talented and capable leadership team in Iraq represented by General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker. Nothing in my 40 plus years in national security compares to this extraordinary team who provide the very best of leadership to their marvelous teammates and troops. He talks about the dramatic turnaround: The security turnaround in Iraq from the hell of 2006 and 3 years of failed strategy is one of the most stunning achievements in the annals of counterinsurgency practice. It was achieved in a matter of months versus the years it normally takes to turn around one of the most formidable insurgencies the West has ever faced. Fundamental to that success was the use of proven counterinsurgency practice to protect the people with sufficient amounts of Iraq and U.S. troops. This was a catalyst-- He says-- for the widespread Sunni awakening movement, which is truly underappreciated here in the U.S. What really happened is the Sheiks and Tribal leaders decided they could not achieve their political objectives with al-Qaida Iraq in fighting the United States and the government of Iraq. As such, the overwhelming majority of Sunni leaders made four strategic decisions to (1) stop the violence; (2) leverage the United States leaders to influence the government of Iraq; (3) reconcile with the government of Iraq; and (4) provide their ``sons'' to work with us and the Iraqis to help defeat the

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, the amendment offered by my colleague is an amendment that does not effectively replace the amendment I have offered. My amendment that will be coming up next is a broad amendment. But this amendment contains immigration reform language that suggests once again that enforcement cannot be effectively done without a comprehensive amnesty approach. It fails to include any provision for State and local law enforcement, fails to include any provision for border fencing, fails to include any provision to advance specifically the effective operations streamline policy that is being done now in four border areas, that needs to be done in 20, and that has resulted in a 60-percent reduction in illegal entry in those four areas. The Menendez amendment does not particularly cover that area. I would ask that it not be passed and that my amendment coming up next would be the one more appropriately effective to carry out the will of this Congress.

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, this Senate has repeatedly voted on issue after issue after issue that would move us toward a lawful system of immigration. But for one reason or the other, those votes have not been translated into action or funding. As a result, we have not made the progress we should have made. We have created a lack of confidence in the American people who are cynical about what we do. My amendment is broad. It would allow a budget-neutral reserve fund for any immigration factor, but it specifically mentions six. It does not in any way suggest these enforcement measures should be delayed until some amnesty proposal or comprehensive reform is passed. The programs include Operation Streamline. Four of twenty southern border sectors now are prosecuting illegal entries, and they have seen a 60-percent reduction in illegality. We would like to see that in all 20, of course. It would commit us to construction of the fence and four other areas. I urge support for this amendment, which would clearly move us in the direction we have been voting in the past.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I send an amendment to the desk.

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I thank the chairman. Senator Gregg and he have alternated chairmanships of the Budget Committee. It is a contentious committee, there is just no doubt about it, because we have things about which we disagree that are important to our members and our constituents. But I think both of them have done a really good job of conducting the committee with grace, gentility and courtesy, so it was not at all unusual that I would agree with that request, and I thank the Chair.