Ron Wyden

Mr. WYDEN

Mr. WYDEN. I am only stating this reservation to be able to propound a parliamentary inquiry of the Chair. If the unanimous consent request is propounded exactly as the distinguished Senator from Washington has so stated, would it be possible for the Senator from Colorado to offer his amendment and then the Senate would automatically return to consideration of my amendment?

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the distinguished chairman of the committee, Senator Cochran, be allowed to respond to my request, and that after he has completed his response I reclaim my time.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I am willing to yield so that the chairman of the committee can respond to my question.

Mr. WYDEN. Reserving the right to object, and it is not my desire to object, I think the point has been made. This is a sad day for the taxpayers of this country. When folks pull in to the gas station tonight and in the days ahead and they pay these record prices and they see these record profits, I hope they may have heard a little bit of the discussion here today, that while they are getting clobbered at the pump, the taxpayers are spending needlessly billions and billions of dollars, billions of dollars that are being wasted, not by my determination but by independent auditors. I wish that today we could have done right by all those middle-class folks and our citizens who pull up to the gas station. This is the big one, folks, in terms of energy subsidies. This is the one with the most money. This is the one there is no logical case for when oil is $70 a barrel. I am going to be back making this fight again and again, if the people of Oregon are willing. Madam President, in deference to my colleagues who have been extraordinarily patient in the course of the day, while I do not withdraw my amendment, I yield the floor.

Mr. WYDEN. I am happy to yield.

Mr. WYDEN. I appreciate the Senator's question, particularly in deference to colleagues on both sides of the aisle and all the help the distinguished leader has given me throughout. I would say that I would stay here all night. I would stay here until they literally had to take me off the floor because I couldn't stay here any longer to save taxpayers billions and billions of dollars on what amounts to the biggest giveaway to the oil industry. This is the one which really counts. Various other programs are a small fraction of the cost of it. I would stay here for as long as it took, if I thought the other side was willing at any point in any kind of fashion to allow an up-or-down vote on whether we are going to be on the side of the taxpayers or whether we are going to continue to side with the oil companies and protect a program which all the independent auditors say is a great waste of money. But what we have seen over the course of the last 5\1/2\ hours is that the Senate is not going to be able on this issue to operate the way it customarily does, where you have amendments debated and discussed and then they are clustered for a vote. As summed up by the distinguished Senator from New Mexico, they think something like this, once again, doesn't cost anything, when everybody who has looked at it independently says it is a huge drain of taxpayer money. I want to protect the middle-class folks and the folks who are hurting, whose taxpayer money flows in to Government and then flows out for this program at a time when the President of the United States has said the subsidy is not needed. I would stay here all through the night if I thought the opponents were ever going to allow a vote. It is clear they are not. We are going to come back to fight this another day, just as in the conference agreement, where those special interests sweetened the pot.

Mr. WYDEN. Reserving the right to object----

Mr. WYDEN. I am happy to yield for a question.

Mr. WYDEN. Reclaiming my time, so the Senate is clear, I have absolutely no intention of withdrawing my amendment. But it is evident, as a result of the discussion between Senator Reid and Senator Cochran, that there is no inclination or willingness on the part of some in the Senate for us to do what we customarily do, which is to take up these amendments, Senators talk about them, and after a number of them are talked about, we cluster the votes, we inform Senators of both political parties, and the Senate is held accountable. I see the distinguished Senator from Virginia here, Mr. Warner, who, again, has seen many more instances of the Senate trying to work its will than I. But I would only say, in the time I have been here, virtually every week the Senate does what I have been seeking, which is that Senators discuss their amendments, they are then clustered, and at some point the Senate has a vote. I have made it clear I am not interested in being first in line. I am not interested or committed to being part of even the first cluster of votes. That is not asking for special treatment. That is asking that the Senate do what it has done again and again and again. It is the custom of the Senate but apparently will not be the practice that is followed with respect to this sweetheart deal that wastes billions of taxpayer dollars at a crucial time in our country's history.

Mr. WYDEN. Thank you, Madam President. I am very interested in getting on with this. I do want to show deference to my good friend, the chair of the full committee, Senator Domenici. So what I would like to do next, before we try to finally work this out, is to, again, consistent with the unanimous consent agreement--if the chair of our full Energy Committee, on which I am proud to serve, would like to be recognized for a question, I would be happy to do that.

Mr. WYDEN. Reserving the right to object.

Mr. WYDEN. I certainly want to do that as part of our consent agreement. I think we are winding down to a close. The Senator from New Mexico is no longer standing, but if he desires to ask a question, I want to give him the opportunity to do it. Does the Senator from Colorado seek to ask a question?

Mr. WYDEN. The distinguished Senator from Colorado has not actually propounded a unanimous consent request, but it is very much my interest in accommodating the Senator from Colorado. I think, frankly, colleagues, to repeat, for those who are just coming in, after the discussion between Senator Reid and the Senator from Mississippi and the objection that was made by the distinguished chairman of the committee, it is evident that it will not be allowed that there be an up-or-down vote on the granddaddy of all of the subsidy programs for the oil industry. This is the big one. This is the one that counts. And the Senate will not, as a result of the discussion between the Senator from Nevada and the Senator from Mississippi, be allowing a vote on it. I believe that is a bad deal. It is a bad deal for taxpayers. It is a bad deal for our country. I do not believe that is the way the Senate ought to be doing business. But that is the judgment of the Senate. I respect the judgment of the Senate. And let us now----

Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, reserving the right to object, I do not want to give up the floor quite yet. I think the distinguished Senator from Colorado, through the Chair, has to ask me the question.

Mr. WYDEN. I thank my colleague from Illinois. That is essentially my desire. What we have seen, particularly in the discussion between the distinguished Democratic leader and the chairman of the committee, is it is the intent of those who oppose this amendment that they will not allow a vote. Not now, not at any point. That is what we have learned as a result of the discussion between the distinguished Senator from Nevada and the distinguished chairman of the committee, for whom I have a great deal of respect but simply disagree with on this point. We have heard people say, I am asking for special treatment, that I want to go first. That is not the case. I respect the rights of all Senators. I offered the last amendment before the Senate adjourned last night which made my amendment pending this morning. I have asked a variety of times now to work something out with Senator Salazar and the chairman of the committee, the chairman from Mississippi, and that is not possible, so the distinguished Senator from Nevada, Senator Reid, called the question. He basically asked, are we ever going to get a chance to vote. It is clear we will not. That is very unfortunate. In a few minutes--my friend from Colorado has been here and has been so patient--I will probably take one last crack at seeing if we can protect taxpayers' interests and see if we can work something out to do what the Senate normally does, which is to cluster these amendments. If that is not the case, I could talk until I fell over, frankly, but it is clear the folks who are opposed to this do not want to vote in any way, shape, or form. They are saying at a time of record profits, at a time of record prices, we ought to keep ladling out this money. As the Senator from Illinois said, this is on the people's land. We are talking about oil companies extracting oil not from land they own but from land that belongs to the people of this country. So a judgment was made in the 1990s, give energy development a break from the price of oil, when the price of oil is low, when production is down. It made sense then. It boosted production in those critical times. However, it certainly does not make sense to argue for a program when the price of oil is over $70 a barrel and you compare that to what we saw when this program originated; the price of oil was $16 a barrel, a fraction of what people are paying, and production was also down at that time. This comes down to a question of choices. Whose side are you on? Are you on the side of the taxpayer in an instance where the General Accounting Office has documented what a rip-off this program has become or are you on the side of a handful of special interests that have figured out a way to hotwire this special program that gives them such great advantages? I wish the case were, as the distinguished chairman of the committee, Senator Domenici, has indicated, the problems were with the Clinton administration and then the next administration cleaned them up, but as I read into the record, the problem got worse. It got worse twice. First, as a result of the actions by the Secretary of the Interior; second, as a result of what was done in the energy conference agreement. By the way, some of what we heard in the energy conference agreement was just preposterous, not from the Senator from New Mexico, but some in the energy conference agreement said: Oh, this oil royalty program has no cost. It doesn't cost anything at all. Now, I do not know how in the world you argue that when the General Accounting Office and others have talked about billions and billions of taxpayer dollars flooding out the door. But I think it shows to what extraordinary lengths some will go to protect this program, which is such an inefficient use of taxpayer dollars. My goodness, there are a lot of ways you could use $20 billion to $60 billion. How do you explain you are trying to pay for an emergency spending bill when the Government does not have the money to cover the emergency spending and yet you are still shoveling out billions and billions of taxpayer dollars, at a time when the President of the United States, to his credit, has said we do not need these incentives when the price of oil is over $50 a barrel? So this has been, for this Member of the Senate, a very unique experience. I wish we could get a vote on this amendment. I think this does a disservice to the taxpayers of this country. I wish to mention what it means in terms of the globe. I, like all Senators, see the men and women who honor us every single day by wearing the uniform for our country. They put themselves in harm's way. They risk their physical health, their mental health, their well-being, and put their families at risk because they honor us every day by wearing the uniform of the United States. It seems to me the people who wear that uniform and are fighting today on our behalf in Iraq deserve an energy policy that is going to make it less likely their kids and their grandkids are going to be off in the Middle East another time in the next few years in a war with implications for oil. To do that, to make our country's energy secure, we have to stop programs that rip off the taxpayers like this Royalty Relief Program. Now that I see Senator Domenici here, I say to the chairman, I have tried to indicate in the course of the day that, frankly, one of the best things we have been talking about over the last few years comes from a Senator from your side of the aisle, Mr. Thomas. Senator Thomas makes the important point that we are probably losing something like a third of all the oil from existing wells, and we don't have incentives to go and do that drilling from existing wells. I have been supporting Senator Thomas because I think it is good for production, and I think it is good for the environment, especially right now, because what we have learned in terms of environmental protection is that you can get more out of existing wells, capturing the gases, what is called sequestration, in order to protect the environment. So I want it understood by colleagues: One, I want to work in a bipartisan way; two, I think that arguably what Senator Thomas has talked about is one of the best new ideas to get a fresh energy policy that is red, white, and blue. But I do not see how you are going to get incentives for the kind of constructive thing Senator Thomas has been talking about if you are shoveling money out the door for wasteful programs like royalty relief. So I see the Senator from New Mexico is on his feet. I say to the chairman, the distinguished Senator from Colorado had asked I recognize him first. But let us structure this so the Senator from Colorado can ask his question, and then we will structure this so we can hear from the chairman of the committee. The Senator from Colorado.

Mr. WYDEN. That is exactly what I have been seeking since last night when I called the distinguished chairman of the committee, and what I indicated, contrary to what has been said in the Senate, I am not seeking any special treatment. I have not been seeking to be put first in the line. What I have been seeking is what I have seen virtually every week since I have been in the Senate. The distinguished Senator from Illinois is an expert in the rules, and it is my understanding that what we customarily do, we debate a variety of amendments, then we cluster them into a group, five, six, eight--sometimes the number will vary--and at some point the Senate goes on a vote. I offered to the chairman of the committee to be put in the second or third cluster. I don't have to go first if colleagues feel strongly about this, but at some point it seems to me we ought to say the Senate is accountable, at a time with record profits and record prices, for a program that is the biggest of them all. That is the Royalty Relief Program. I am happy to yield further.

Mr. WYDEN. I am happy to yield. I thank the distinguished Senator from Nevada for coming to the floor earlier and trying to get the opportunity for a vote on my amendment.

Mr. WYDEN. The Senator asks a very good question. This is the granddaddy, this is the biggest subsidy the Government gives--to the oil sector. The General Accounting Office, which did a review of this, indicates that a minimal projection is $20 billion for the cost of the program. If the litigation is successful, it is up to $80 billion. What we have is, at a time when middle-class folks, the people who are living paycheck to paycheck and being squeezed as hard as they are, at a time when our Government ought to be looking at trying to give them a break, give them a bit of help, what we are seeing is the middle-class folks have their tax dollars flow into the Federal Government and go out in terms of royalty relief at a time when the price of oil is vastly above the amount the President has indicated. It is for that reason I felt so strongly about this. I also point out this is a program that grew under Secretary Norton. After the initial mistakes with the previous administration, it was added to by the energy conference legislation between the House and the Senate which sweetened the sweetheart deal even more. I am saying this is enough. We do not need record royalty payments on top of record profits and on top of record prices. I have said I will draw the line. I have not done anything like what I have done today in the Senate since I have been here. I have had the pleasure of serving with the distinguished Senator from Illinois for a long time, going back to the days when I had a full head of hair and rugged good looks. I have never done anything like this. I regret this tremendously. But we have to protect the taxpayers of this country. I am happy to yield if the Senator from Illinois has anything further.

Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, I would like to respond briefly to the Senator from New Mexico, who I thought was going to ask a question. I see he is leaving the floor, but I would first say that if the distinguished Senator from New Mexico thinks what I am proposing is meaningless, I can't figure out why so many people have spent so much time and so much effort trying to avoid a vote on it. I don't get that. If this is so meaningless and so useless, it would seem to me we could have disposed of it about 10:15 in the morning. It is clear that the reason there has been all this opposition to the amendment is because it really does address a key kind of question, and that is saving taxpayers money. If it were meaningless, we could have gone to a vote hours and hours ago. The people who have pushed the hardest for this program have always tried to do it in the shadows. This program was expanded after midnight in the energy conference committee. The distinguished Senator from New Mexico has left the floor, which is unfortunate because I would like to engage him in a dialog. All that I have sought, as demonstrated through Senator Reid, is an opportunity to vote on this issue. To once again deal with the key point the Senator from New Mexico has made, nothing in this amendment says the threshold couldn't be lower for dispensing this money. It simply says we should set an upper level that reflects what the President of the United States has said. If this amendment is as meaningless as the distinguished Senator from New Mexico has said, let's go to a vote. Let's vote on it and save taxpayers money. The General Accounting Office says this program is going to cost a minimum of $20 billion. If the litigation is successful, it will be $80 billion. While I have great respect for the Senator from New Mexico, his argument that all of this never costs or saves anything is what we have been hearing for years. We were told in the energy conference agreement between the House and the Senate that this program costs taxpayers nothing. Backers of this program in the debate between the House and the Senate said with a straight face that royalty relief costs taxpayers nothing. Now we have heard an argument that an effort to rein in the cost of this program is meaningless as well. I guess because, once again, we are hearing that none of this costs money. It doesn't save any money. I guess this program just happens by osmosis. That is not what the General Accounting Office says. If the litigation involving this Royalty Relief Program is successful and taxpayers are out $80 billion, the people of this country are going to remember this day. They are going to say that the Senate had a chance on a bipartisan basis to do something sensible, and that is to reconfigure this program to ensure that there is royalty relief when it is needed. The legislation says the President can run the Royalty Relief Program if there is any evidence that it would disrupt supply. The amendment says that if the price goes down, of course, the original rationale for this program, royalty relief could be paid. This amendment puts in place the kinds of safeguards we need for a changing environment in the energy field. What it doesn't do is continue to write blank checks to a handful of special interests who even the author of the program has now described as getting something and being part of a program that was different than what he intended. This is not somebody who is hostile to the program; this is somebody who wrote the law and said this is not what was intended.

Mr. WYDEN. I think the Senator has said it very well. In a climate such as this, when prices are high, they get to privatize their gains and socialize their losses. This makes no sense at all. This is a program designed for a period when production was down and the price of oil was very low. What I have tried to do--because I have spent a lot of hours sitting next to the distinguished chairman of our committee, the Energy Committee, who points out, and correctly so, that energy is a volatile part of our economy--I made an exception so that if the President of the United States says there is going to be a supply disruption or the price of oil falls back down again, bingo, we are back to looking at royalty relief. The Senator from Illinois puts it very well. To drive home the point, I say to the Senate, particularly the Senator from Illinois who did great work on the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, we could have taken care of the needs of the Low- Income Home Energy Assistance Program plus have money left over for deficit reduction if we were to stop this wasteful expenditure of taxpayer funds.

Mr. WYDEN. I thank the Senator from Illinois for his question. We tried to get into this something like 5 hours ago. It is very helpful to have the Senator from Illinois asking exactly the question he has asked. The way this program works is that the oil companies are supposed to pay royalties to the Federal Government when they extract oil from Federal lands. In order to stimulate production when the price of oil was cheap, the Federal Government reduced the amount of royalty payments the companies had to make. It is my view and the view of all of the independent experts, including our former colleague in the House, Congressman Pombo, who chairs the Committee on Resources, it is the view of all of these experts across the political spectrum that with the price of oil soaring to over $70 a barrel, the discounted royalty payments amount to a needless subsidy of billions and billions of dollars. The General Accounting Office has estimated that at a minimum it would be $20 billion. There are projections because there is litigation underway. For some oil companies, even this is not enough, so they keep litigating and trying to get more and more and more. There are estimates that if the litigation is successful, the Government would pay $80 billion just in royalty relief. And that $80 billion would pay a significant fraction of the entire cost of this emergency spending bill.

Mr. WYDEN. I am happy to yield.

Mr. WYDEN. There we have it, folks. In essentially the late 1990s-- 1998-1999--as the distinguished chairman of the committee has pointed out, the Clinton administration dropped the ball. No question about it. It was costly to taxpayers. But I have just read a recitation of how the Secretary of the Interior compounded the problem and how on her watch the sweetener got even sweeter. The price of oil was still shooting up. The price of oil had doubled over the last few years, and she just kept ladling out the sugar. It just kept coming. Then, on top of it, we had the energy conference agreement between the House and the Senate. So on top of the problem that we see stemming from the last administration and then Secretary Norton sweetening the pot even more, we then had in the energy conference agreement additions to the royalty program, additions at a time when clearly they were not in the public interest. I think we are close to being able to move ahead in the Senate. I want to have some discussion with the floor manager, the distinguished Senator from Washington. But what we have seen in the last few minutes as a result of the unanimous consent request propounded by the Senator from Nevada is that this Senate will not be allowed to vote at any time on the granddaddy of all of the subsidies. We have tried to work out arrangements to have a vote that would be fair to both sides. I have propounded a variety of requests through the Chair in an effort to do it. But somehow for some reason continuing this outrageous use of taxpayer money seems to be the big priority around here. I am staggered. I can't understand. I cannot understand why the Senate would say at a time of record profits, at a time of record prices, it would want to continue to dispense record royalty relief. The President of the United States said, to his credit, that we don't need all of these incentives when the price of oil is over $50 a barrel. This program started when the price of oil was $16 a barrel. As the distinguished Senator from New Mexico has indicated, the last administration muffed it when the price of oil was $34 a barrel. But Secretary Norton has made it worse. The energy conference agreement adds more sugar on top of it. I wish to see the Senate step in and protect the public. I see my good friend from Illinois.

Mr. WYDEN. Five hours.

Ron Wyden

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