Lynn Westmoreland

Mr. WESTMORELAND

Mr. WESTMORELAND. I think it is interesting, you mentioned the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and the letter that Speaker Pelosi wrote to the President. It is interesting that oil came down $4 a barrel. Now, if it will come down $4 a barrel on just a letter going to the President asking him to take the crude out of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, think of what it would do if we voted in this body to drill without even sticking a drill in the ground. These speculators would run for the hills. And so I think you make a great point. And trust me, if we didn't have the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, we would not be getting oil from our enemies because they would know that they had us down. Mr. Speaker, in closing, we have got just a few more minutes here, let me just say this. I think what you have heard tonight is that this is an all-of-the-above solution. It is all of the above. But a very important part of this is this country producing oil, to increase our oil production. Rahm Emanuel on TV said, yes, increasing oil production is part of the solution. The Speaker has acknowledged that increasing oil production or at least having more oil is part of the solution. But as my colleague from Texas said, we don't need to take that out of our savings account. We need to bring it out of our natural resources, out of the ground. Senator Schumer in the Senate about 3 weeks ago said that if we could just get Saudi Arabia to increase oil production 1 million barrels a day, it would drop the price of gas 50 cents a gallon. I don't know if that is true or not, but at least on the other side of this building some of the Democratic leadership understands that increasing oil production would bring down the price of gas. I don't know why it is so hard to get a bill like that to this floor. I think the reason is strictly politics. It is strictly the radical environmental groups that has a grip or their claws into this majority. And so I think what is happening is we are putting power above people, we are putting politics above process. Because as these gentlemen have talked tonight, with these ideas that they have shared they have not had one opportunity to offer one amendment on the energy bills because they have been brought either under suspension, under a closed rule, no committee hearings, no subcommittee hearings. The process has been broken. And so when the process is broken, the product is flawed. Let me just close with this: www.house.gov/westmoreland. Mr. Speaker, go there, see if your Member has signed this simple petition that says I will vote to increase U.S. oil production to lower the gas prices for Americans.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. If you would yield for just a minute.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. When these energy bills have come to the floor, have you been able to offer an amendment for some of your ideas that you have had here to present it to see if your constituency and your ideas could possibly be heard on this floor?

Mr. WESTMORELAND. So what I hear you saying is we need to take the politics out of this, and we need to put people in front of power, and we need to put process in front of politics and do something that will move this country toward energy independence, rather than just staying in the fetal position, so-to-speak, that we have been in, and being held hostage by radical environmentalists who the majority may feel is a big part of their base. I don't want to put words in your mouth.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. I want to thank my colleague from Georgia. That was a great test. I think anybody, anybody in the United States should be able to pass that test, Dr. Gingrey. I am glad you put it up, because that simplified it. This is something, this little simple petition, I will vote to increase U.S. oil production to lower gas prices for Americans; 435 lines. So far, we have 191 signatures. This is just telling the American people we are ready to do all of the above. If you want to find out if your Member has signed this simple petition, much like the petitions that many of these people have signed, Mr. Speaker, that are listening to us, have gone on the Internet and signed petitions saying, Hey, drill here, drill now, lower our prices, and bring the U.S. back to being dependent--back from being dependent on foreign oil, go to House.gov/westmoreland and you will find out if your Member has signed, refused to sign, or is in the category of not making a decision because, Mr. Speaker, I feel like the American people are going to have to make the majority party understand that they want some change. See, in April of 2006, then minority leader, now Speaker Pelosi made a statement that the Democrats had a plan. They had a commonsense solution to the skyrocketing price of gas. Of course, gas was about $2.05 then. So we are still waiting on that solution. We are still waiting on that commonsense plan. It hasn't been unveiled yet. Although, in January of 2007, H.R. 6, the Energy Independence and Security Act, Dr. Gingrey, was passed in this House. The Republicans called it the ``no energy'' policy. I will read you some of the key words. This was a 300-something page bill. Crude oil was mentioned five times in that bill. Mr. Speaker, gasoline was mentioned 12 times. Exploratory drilling was mentioned twice in a 316-page bill about energy independence. Offshore drilling was mentioned zero; domestic drilling, zero; domestic oil, zero; domestic gas, zero; domestic fuel, zero; domestic petroleum, zero. Gas price or gas prices, zero. Common sense, zero. Now what was mentioned was greenhouse, 103 times. Green building was mentioned 101 times; ecosystem, 24 times; climate change, 18 times; regulation, 98 times; environmental, 160 times; geothermal, 94 times; renewable, 333 times; swimming pool, 47 times, because there was a swimming pool safety bill in the Energy Independence and Security Act. Lamp, CFL, the new fluorescent lamps, 350 times. Three-hundred fifty times. Contains mercury. Only produced in China. We can't even dispose of it. If you drop one, you need to put on a mask, evacuate the house, let it air out until you can clean up a broken light bulb. This was the commonsense plan, I hope not, that then Speaker Pelosi, then Minority Leader Pelosi was talking about bringing up, because gas has almost doubled, or more; maybe doubled when this commonsense plan came out. But I want to read you one thing before I yield to my friend from Illinois. This was a statement made on January 18, 2007, the day, Mr. Speaker, this bill was passed. It says, ``It is sad to see the Republicans come to this. Now, they laughably say that this will lead to higher prices.'' That was Mr. Peter DeFazio from Oregon on how the Democrat's 2007 energy bill would affect gas prices. ``It is sad to see the Republicans come to this. Now, they laughably say this will lead to higher prices.'' Well, Mr. Speaker, I'd hate to say this, and I hate to say this, but we were right. It has led to higher prices. It has led to oil going out the roof because now the speculators in this world know that we, as a country, are not going to become energy independent as long as the leadership continues the course that they are on right now. I'd like to yield to my friend from Illinois, a great leader in the energy battle and somebody that I think has made some real movement in the policy here, and that's Mr. Shimkus.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. Right now, one of the reasons we are not being held hostage by our enemies, the people that supply us with our oil, is because we have the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. If it was zero, trust me, we would have a bad time getting any oil.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. I thank you for your comments. And just a couple of points that you made about the amount of money that we give to some of the people who are not friendly to us, even in our own hemisphere, we give Hugo Chavez $170 million a day. I hear the other side complain about what Big Oil makes, and I don't know. Big Oil, according to the records and stuff I read, make about a 10 percent profit, and I am not saying if that's good or bad for their business. But what do they think Mr. Chavez is making off of $170 million of U.S. dollars every day? And, listen, he is not our friend. And the other thing that the gentleman has brought up is a great point, and we heard it today and I heard it on the floor earlier today that we need to all work together. Well, I agree we do need to all work together. But when the majority party brings the energy bills to the floor, some under suspension, when there's only 20 percent of debate on each side, no amendments, no committee hearings, no subcommittee hearing, no regular process, how are we all working together, Mr. Speaker? Mr. Speaker, you know if we are going to all work together, if we're going to all be part of the process, if all the people in this country--this is a republic. It is a representative form of government. And if I don't have an opportunity to amend or give input into the process, my people are shut out of the process. If there are no amendments, nobody on this side of the aisle and many people on this side of the aisle, the people they represent are shut out of the process. So let's do all come together. Let's have an energy bill on the floor that can work, this open rule. We can have 435 plus the 7 delegates offer changes, offer solutions, as Mr. Roskam just did, about the people that have come up with solutions in his district; as Mr. Scott did previously about the biofuel in his district. We all have good ideas, but when we are shut out of the system, you can't work together. And I don't know what part of that the majority doesn't understand. I would like to now yield to my colleague from Georgia, Dr. Gingrey.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. With a sail on the top of it.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. I am going to yield now to my classmate that we came in together, my colleague from Texas, where there are thousands of jobs every day where people go to work working in oil fields, and that is my friend Mike Conaway from the great State of Texas.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. If you will yield for just a second, every bill that has been passed through here has had Davis-Bacon, which is the union pay scale, attached to everything we have passed through here. So I am sure if they pass something, if they ever did about building a refinery, I am sure Davis-Bacon would be added to it.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. I understand, but I am sure it would be part of what they do.

Mr. WESTMORELAND

Mr. WESTMORELAND. I want to thank my colleague for yielding to me. Just to my good friend from Guam, I don't have a problem with what you said because it sounds like we have had a bite of the apple, the new majority has had a bite of the apple. People have seen their gas prices continue to go up. So why not come up with a bill that we could put on the floor, to have an open rule, because there is nothing more important in this country right now, not just because the price of gasoline is $4.11 a gallon. This is a national security issue. We are writing Hugo Chavez a check to the Venezuelans for $170 million a day. This is a national security issue. This is an economic issue that we are talking about. This is affecting our stock market. This is affecting our gross national product. This is affecting a loaf of bread. This is affecting a gallon of milk. This is something we need to be talking about. So I'm glad to hear that you've taken notice that our plan of 2005 has not been totally successful because it has not been totally implemented yet. But I am more than willing to have a discussion on this floor, open rule, energy package. Let's write one. Let's let it go through regular order. Let's let it have amendments. Let's let it have discussion. And I think if we could do that, then we maybe could come up with something that could succeed.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. I thank my friend for yielding again. Mr. Speaker, I got the whip report today and was looking over some of the bills that we're going to be going over today and this week. And I felt like, Mr. Speaker, it might be good just to remind our colleagues maybe of what all we're going to be doing this week so they can get their staffs down and start looking at this real hard. I was hoping that we might be talking about some ways to improve our energy management because what has happened so far on this House floor by the majority has simply not worked. We voted, I guess, almost 6 weeks ago now, to stop sending oil into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and so thus far I believe, today is July 8; so at 70,000 barrels of oil a day, that's over half a million barrels of oil that we have kept from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and yet gas is at a new record of $4.11 a gallon. So that's not working. The energy bill that the majority passed in January of 2007, which we called the ``No Energy Policy,'' has actually turned out to be a no energy policy because gas has gone from $2.35 a gallon to $4.11 a gallon. And light bulbs, or the CFLs, was mentioned over 350 times in that bill, and we have now learned that you can't dispose of those things because of the mercury in them, and they are only produced in China. So we have got a long way to go on correcting our energy situation in this Congress, and for some reason the majority just keeps turning its head. But I just felt like for some of our colleagues that are listening today they might know that we have already heard today that we amended High Seas Driftnet Fishing Moratorium Protection Act. We're going to get a chance to vote today to authorize the Preserve America Program and Save America's Treasures. We are now authorizing the Secretary of Interior to lease a portion of the visitor center to be constructed outside the boundary of the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore in Porter County, Indiana. I know that's a big one. You all need to be looking at that, Mr. Speaker. Number four, to amend the Dayton Aviation Heritage Preservation Act of 1992 to add sites to the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Park, and I know that's an important piece of legislation. We're also going to do the Maritime Pollution Prevention Act. And we're going to name three post offices today. Now, tomorrow we are going to get into the real meat of some of this stuff. We've got 12 more suspensions, which are bills that really just come to the floor with about 20 minutes of debate, I believe, on either side, no amendments, not structured to any rule. We are going to look at the Pension Protection Technical Corrections Act, and I know, Mr. Speaker, these people at home will be glad to know that we're doing that. And then we have got to honor the goal of the International Year of Astronomy; celebrating the 25th anniversary of the first American woman in space, Dr. Sally Ride; the Federal Ocean Acidification Research and Monitoring Act; commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Space Foundation; commemorating the 50th anniversary of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; Homes For Heroes Act; America's Beautiful National Parks Quarter Dollar Coin Act; Community Building Code Amendment Grant Act; Lead-Safe Housing for Kids; and Money Services Business Act. And then we have got one real bill that's going to be subject to a rule, Mr. Speaker: the Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route National Historic Trail Designation Act. So any Members listening to this might want to get their amendments ready for that, and I don't know if we can amend that to talk about energy. But, Mr. Speaker, I just thought it was important that we discuss here among ourselves what we are doing in this Congress this week. People are paying $4.11 a gallon for gas at the pump. People are having to make decisions about whether they can go to work or go visit a loved one in a hospital. We need to be discussing our energy crisis because this is not something that just happened. And, look, we are not innocent in this. We had 12 years. We could have led the charge. But I remember back in April of 2006, then minority leader, now Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said, ``Elect us. The Democrats have a commonsense plan for lowering the skyrocketing price of gasoline.'' Please bring out that plan, Mr. Speaker. Bring out that commonsense plan so that we can see what can lower the skyrocketing prices because since that plan has not been revealed, gas has gone from $2.35 to $4.11. So while we are talking about all these important things today, and I know the American people are sitting on the edge of their seat to see if these things pass or not because of the effect it's going to have on their lives, I think if they could honestly have a good, bipartisan debate with an open rule, a good energy bill that all the people could come that represent the people all over this country to come in and discuss what we can do to give them relief at the pump.

Mr. WESTMORELAND

Mr. WESTMORELAND. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my friend from Guam and her comments about bipartisan and working together and coming up with a common solution. Mr. Speaker, I am all for that, but what we've come up with in the past is very limited debate. We've had bills come to the floor with no amendments. We've had bills come to this floor that had no committee hearings. Now, that, to me, is not working together or with bipartisan support. So, if we want to have this bipartisan discussion, let's have it on the floor. Let's have an open rule on an energy bill, an open rule energy bill. What a great way to preserve what this body was meant to be, a place where representatives of the people came to debate and discuss and to talk about things that were affecting their constituents. But half the people in America who are represented by Republicans in this body have not had an opportunity to even offer an amendment to some of these energy bills. We've not even had an opportunity to come down and speak on this floor because of the limited debate. If we want to work out a solution, if we want to hear all the ideas from all 435 Members of this, so all the people in this country can have some input into this process, let's have an open energy bill that went through regular order and went through the subcommittee and the committee process, had a rule that was written where we could all have some input. I'm for that kind of bipartisan support, and I know you are too because you are a very sweet lady. Now, let me go on to say one thing: There was a poll that came out today I thought was very interesting. The percentage of voters who give Congress good or excellent ratings has fallen to single digits for the first time in Rasmussen reporting tracking history. This month, just 9 percent say Congress is doing a good or excellent job. Mr. Speaker, I think we need to form a committee to go find that 9 percent of the people to find out where they've been because we are not doing a good job, we are not doing an excellent job. We are doing a very poor job of addressing the needs of the American people and what's affecting their pocketbook and the ability for their family to survive today. We've got gasoline that is up $1.76 a gallon since the end of 2006. A loaf of bread is up 23 cents, or about 23 percent, than what it was at the end of 2006. A gallon of milk is up almost 30 percent, Mr. Speaker, since the new majority came in. The Dow Jones has lost about 20 percent. The stock market is down $53 billion in the wealth of the stock market. Real net worth is down $2.51 trillion. The real per capita gross domestic product is down. Inflation rate is up. Unemployment rate is up. The real average wage is down, Mr. Speaker. We are not doing a good job. Part of the reason that bread is high, that milk is high, that the stock market is going down, that inflation is up is because of the oil crisis that we're in right now because we are totally dependent on foreign oil. And I would like to close with this, as a quote from the Department of Minerals Management Service that's in the Interior Department. The director says, ``The agency estimates that offshore drilling could produce 1.8 billion barrels of oil and 76 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.'' And we're going to need that natural gas, Mr. Speaker, when these home heating oil and natural gas bills come due for people trying to stay warm this winter. The director would not say how much more oil and gas he thinks the lands could produce, but he said that experience has shown that once companies begin drilling on land, they often find more than expected. Mr. Speaker, we have about 2.5 billion acres of Federal land and offshore that we could be drilling on; 68 million of that has leases that oil companies have leased. And we certainly--and I say we, I'm talking about the minority--do not think that Big Oil does not play some part in this. But the reality of it is we cannot expect Big Oil to go out and drill on leased land that has no oil or no gas. You do not go grocery shopping at a hardware store. We need to open up this land that is available, that the Department of Interior, that the Minerals and Management Service says that there is gas and oil there. We need to open up this land to let people drill on, to let people get our natural resources out of the ground rather than us being dependent on going to foreign countries on bended knee with hat in hand asking them to sell us their natural resources when we refuse to use our own. So Mr. Speaker, I will close with this, that we do want to work. We want a bipartisan solution. Because we think the answer is all of the above, it's more conservation, it's more use of wind and solar, but it's also drilling. It's also using our own natural resources. It's using clean coal. It's using an environmentally sensitive way to get this natural resource out of the ground. And we welcome an open rule bill that comes to the floor that all 435 people and the seven delegates that represent people in our territories and our States in this great country that we live in, to come have an open, honest debate about what we can do to solve our energy policy, to come together, to work together. That's the kind of change that the American people want, not the radical kind of change that has been offered so far in this Congress.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. WESTMORELAND

Mr. WESTMORELAND. Mr. Speaker, I come to you today to help with some statistics that I thought you might be interested in. The fact is that we have a new majority. We have had a new majority now for about 18 months or so in this body. I wanted to give you some statistics about what has happened since the new majority has taken over. A gallon of gas has gone from $2.35 to $4.11, an increase of $1.76. A loaf of bread has gone from $1.14 to $1.37, a 23-cent increase. A gallon of milk has gone from $3 to $3.76 a gallon. Dow Jones has gone from 12,463 to 11,812, losing 651 points. Mr. Speaker, the American people I think were misled with the new majority. But I think business and Wall Street and the price to consumers is now telling the tale of exactly what high taxes and the threat of high taxes and the willingness to be energy dependent is costing the American people.

Mr. WESTMORELAND

Mr. WESTMORELAND. I yield.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. I want to thank my friend from Indiana. And I want to get 300 signatures because I would like for the American people to know that way more than just a simple majority is behind them for making sure that, not necessarily those of us that are our age, but our children and our grandchildren will not have to go through the things that we're going through today. Because in 1995, this Congress passed drilling in ANWR and President Clinton vetoed it. And by all estimates today, 13 years later, we would be getting one million barrels of oil a day. And as Senator Schumer said over in the Senate about 2 weeks ago, if we could get OPEC to increase oil production by one million barrels a day, it would lower the price of gas 50 cents a gallon just like that. We don't need to be sending our President over to foreign countries-- and especially those that are not that friendly to us--with hat in hand on bended knee asking them to use more of their natural resources to provide us with oil when we won't use our own natural resources. In talking about that, because this is the one thing that gets people fired up, Madam Speaker, and really gets those lines hot, that they want to find out if their Congressman has signed this very simple one sentence, is that it says, ``In a recent interview on al Jazeera, Chavez''--now this is Hugo Chavez from Venezuela--``Chavez called for developing nations to unite against U.S. political and economic policies. What can we do regarding the imperialist power of the United States? We have no choice but to unite,'' he said. ``Venezuela's energy alliances with nations such as Cuba, which receives cheap oil, are an example of how we use oil in our war against neoliberalism,'' he said. Then there was another date, on March 15, 2005, in the Washington Post, Mr. Chavez says, ``We have invaded the United States, but with our oil.'' Now, that would make your blood kind of boil, Madam Speaker, but this is what really gets people off is the fact that every day American families and businesses in this country write Hugo Chavez a check for $170 million. That $170 million could be going to our country. It could be going to provide energy independence. It could be going to provide jobs and build an industry, put into infrastructure; $170 million a day to Mr. Chavez. Now, what we've been doing this week with the Democratic majority-- and let me remind you, Madam Speaker, that it was back in April of 2006 that then Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi made a statement, and she said, ``Democrats have a commonsense plan to bring down the skyrocketing price of gas.'' And at the time it was about $2.06 a gallon. We are waiting on that commonsense plan to be unveiled. We're waiting on it. And we heard that there were going to be about four energy bills this week. And Madam Speaker, the energy bills that were brought out this week was kind of like putting lipstick on a pig. H.R. 6377, the speculation bill, this is what it says, ``to direct the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to utilize all its authority.'' In other words, we passed something that's already existing law. That's what we did, we passed something that was already existing law. I want to read to you what happened in some quotes from H.R. 6. H.R. 6, Madam Speaker, was a bill that the new majority passed in January--I believe it was January 18, 2007--shortly after taking over, after they had promised the American people that they were going to lower gas prices. And I do want to read this one quote before I start reading these others. This is from Paul Kanjorski, and this was about 2 weeks ago. It said, ``A man was trying to question Mr. Kanjorski about his remarks that Democrats had overpromised during the 2006 congressional elections by implying that they could end the war if they controlled Congress.'' ``Now, anybody who is a good student of government would know that that wasn't true,'' Mr. Kanjorski said at an Ashley town hall meeting in August, ``but you know the temptation to want to win Congress back. We sort of stretched the facts, and people ate it up.'' Yep, they ate it up. And right now they're paying a price for it. I want to read you some quotes. These are from January 18, 2007, when we were debating H.R. 6: Mr. Peter DeFazio: ``It is sad to see the Republicans come to this. Now they laughingly say that this will lead to higher gas prices.'' Well, gas was $2.23 a gallon on the day Mr. DeFazio made his statement. It's about $4.08 today. So we were probably right. This was no way to lower gas pries. The same day, January 18, 2007, Mr. Jim McGovern said: ``What we are doing today really is responding to the outcry of the American people who are outraged by the fact that in the midst of being gouged by Big Oil . . . '' Well, we have had seven investigations into price gouging, and it hasn't lowered the price of gas. In fact, it has gone up almost $2 a gallon since that statement was made. The same day, John Hall: ``Today we are going to take back the tax giveaways to Big Oil so we can give the American people a break at the pump.'' January 18, floor statement, Kathy Castor: ``Instead of giving away billions of dollars to big oil companies which made multimillion dollar profits last year, the new Congress intends to chart a course in a new direction by investing in alternatives for the American people. This will help America become energy independent and ultimately lower the utility costs for average Americans.'' I would like to tell the gentlewoman that the price of natural gas is twice what it was.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. Madam Speaker, I just wanted to start out by saying that I know that I can't talk directly to the American people, but I hope that if anyone is out there listening that they would listen to my comments that I make to you. Madam Speaker, I guess about 2 weeks ago probably I started getting some phone calls about different petitions on the Internet and other places about the prospects of America becoming more energy independent, that we would not be dependent on foreign oil sources, and that we would be able to use our own natural resources to meet our energy needs. And people began to ask if I had gone and signed them or had seen them. One was on americansolutions.com, which offered to increase domestic oil drilling. There was one about a gas holiday. There were several about developing alternative energy sources. But there were some interesting petitions against drilling by Democratic Senator Ms. Boxer, the Sierra Club and Greenpeace. As I walked into a service station in my district, there was a petition on the counter, Madam Speaker, that said: Sign here if you want to let your representatives know that you're for lowering gas prices. And I'm assuming that the proprietor of that station had it there to keep people from talking bad to him about the price that was on his pump. But what I decided after looking at all these different petitions is that I would come up with a petition so the American people could understand where their representative was at. We know where our constituents are. I think on the American Solutions petition they are at like 1.7 million people. So we can kind of understand where the American people are at. They want us to be independent. They want us to increase our U.S. oil production. So what I decided to do was come up with a petition, and what this petition says is: American energy solutions for lower gas prices. Bring onshore oil online; bring deepwater oil online; and bring new refineries on online. Realize, we have not built a refinery in this country since the late 1970s. And you may not realize this, because we're always talking about crude oil, but you might not realize that the United States imports 6.2 billion gallons of gas and 4.6 billion gallons of diesel every year. We import these from the United Kingdom, U.S. Virgin Islands, France, Canada, Netherlands, Norway--which, by the way, Norway is now the third largest exporter of crude oil, and back in 1965 they were energy dependent on foreign oil and they decided that they would open up to drilling in the North Sea. They are now the third largest exporter of crude oil. But we import refined gas from them--Germany, Russia, Italy, and of course the OPEC countries, which don't even really have that much refining capacity, Madam Speaker, but yet we buy refined gas from them. So I got a petition, I've had it over here on the wall, Madam Speaker, for probably about 2 weeks now. There are 435 spaces for the Members, and then there are seven spaces for the delegates from the U.S. territories. And I'm happy to say that we've had 191 signatures. Now, this may be too simple for some people because all it says is, ``I will vote to increase U.S. oil production to lower gas prices for Americans.'' And so we need your help, Madam Speaker. We need you to sign. I don't think you're on it, Madam Speaker. But we've got a Web site, and it's our Web site at house.gov/ westmoreland. And on there we have everybody that has signed, and we have everybody that we've talked to that said they would not sign. So we've got two columns, we've got a signers and a non-signers. And then also, just to let you know, we have notified every office here at least once, we will do it again next week. And some people said have, well, Congressman, they ask me how long have you been working on this? And I say, well, about almost 2 weeks. Well, how come you only have 191 signatures? Well, Madam Speaker, I'd ask people that ask me that question, Sunday, when they're at church, try to talk to 450 people on a Sunday, it's almost hard to do, especially when you get in different conversations with folks. So if you want to understand, house.gov/ westmoreland, Madam Speaker, that's where somebody would go if they wanted to see where their Congressman was at on this simple petition that basically just says, ``I will vote to increase U.S. oil production to lower gas prices for Americans.'' I would like to yield some time to my friend from Indiana.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. Mr. Burton will dialogue with you.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. Not only that, reclaiming my time for a minute, did not the Democrat majority in 1992 extend that lease period to 10 years? Was it prior not 5 years or 7 years what it was?

Mr. WESTMORELAND. I thank my friend. Now I have got to go catch a plane, but I hope that everybody will go to House.gov/westmoreland, Madam Speaker, to find out who is for drilling and who is for not just drilling, but like the gentleman from Texas said, for producing more of our natural resources to lower the price of gas. Now I want to yield to my good friend from Nebraska, from the heartland of this country, from one of the corn-producing States, another one of my classmates that came in, and that is Mr. Fortenberry.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. Thank you. January 18, and these are quotes from H.R. 6, which was their mantelpiece legislation. This was their commonsense plan, I guess, for bringing down the skyrocketing gas that at the time was $2.23 a gallon: Ms. Sheila Jackson-Lee said: ``The price per barrel of oil is $50 plus.'' Today I think it's about $140. She goes on to say: ``And so what is this Congress and this leadership doing? It is doing the right thing.'' January 18, floor statement by Steve Israel: ``This dependence on foreign oil, Mr. Speaker, is a glaring threat to our national security.'' I could not agree with you more. But we are more dependent today than we were when you made that statement. Mr. John Lewis, my colleague from Georgia: ``More than ever we need to get our priorities straight. We need to stop dancing while Rome burns and reverse the damage we have done to our environment. The American people need relief from energy costs.'' And I couldn't agree with you more, Mr. Lewis, but the problem is that gas has almost doubled since you made that statement. Rahm Emanuel: ``Mr. Speaker, let's review the score: ``Big Oil, one; taxpayers, zero. Now the score is tied, and we are just getting warmed up.'' Well, I hope you're about as warm as you're going to get, Mr. Emanuel, because I don't know if we can stand any more of this. January 18, 2007, floor statement from Allyson Schwartz: ``The United States imports 65 percent of the oil we consume. We spend $800 million every day on foreign oil-producing countries. This threatens our economic stability, our environmental security, and our national security, and today we say `enough.''' Well, I say ``enough'' too, but if we had said ``enough'' then and started producing our own oil and started using our own natural resources, maybe oil wouldn't have almost doubled since then. The chairman of the Democratic Congressional Committee, Mr. Chris Van Hollen, said this: ``This is the time to change direction, to set a new course on energy policy, to say to the country we're not just talking rhetoric, we mean what we say.'' Mr. John Yarmuth: ``Mr. Speaker, my constituent, like yours, paid over $3 a gallon for gas last year. Isn't that enough?'' Absolutely it's enough. But today we are paying over $4 a gallon, and the reason we are is because we refuse to use our own natural resources for the health of this country and, like so many of these other statements said, for the national security of this country. Stephanie Tubbs Jones: ``Critics of H.R. 6 argue this measure will place an undue burden on oil companies which will lead to higher gas prices.'' Okay. We must have been right because what happened was after H.R. 6, with gas being $2.23 a gallon, today it is $4.08. What we are trying to do, before I yield to some of my colleagues, we have that petition that my friend from Indiana and I have been talking about, and what it says is ``I will vote to increase oil production to lower the price of gas.'' And what that means is bringing onshore drilling online, offshore drilling online, deepwater oil online, and bring in more refineries online. If we bring onshore oil online, it will save anywhere from 70 cents to $1.60 a gallon. To bring deepwater oil online, the Outer Continental Shelf, 90 cents to $2.50 a gallon. To bring new refineries online, and not one has been built since 1976, would save anywhere from 15 to 45 cents. The gas tax holiday, 18 cents. To halt oil shipments to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a nickel. Now, I have got some more quotes on that, and, of course, this was passed in the House probably back in May. We stopped those shipments in July, and so we should find out if it's going to bring it down a nickel a gallon. But if you look at what the Democrat plan was, and this is that commonsense plan, I'm assuming, but ``sue OPEC,'' we have had a lot of success with that. ``Launch the seventh investigation to price gougers.'' ``Launch the fourth investigation to speculators.'' Now, we put that lipstick on that pig today with the speculation bill, that we just really passed something that's already on the books. ``Twenty billion dollars in new taxes on oil producers.'' I can hardly wait to see what that does to lower the price of gas. And we've seen that just not even putting the new taxes on them but just taking tax relief away from them has caused gas to almost double. And then of course they've got ``halt oil shipments,'' which is a nickel. You can see that if we put our policies in place that gas today would be somewhere around $2.10, and that's using very conservative savings over there. And you can see that if this works, and we don't even know that this is going to work, it would be about $4.03. So we hope that we will get 300 signatures on this petition to show the American people that we are not going to lie here in a fetal position or just keep doing repetitious things to make you think we are doing something. So if you could just go to the house.gov/westmoreland and look at it. We had 45,000 hits on it, Madam Speaker, last night. And we have had a couple of Members that have come to us and said, We have heard and we want to go from the ``would not sign'' to the ``sign.'' So we can't do it, Madam Speaker, if people aren't going to be involved with us because we don't have that much influence over the majority. I would like to yield to the gentlewoman from North Carolina, my classmate (Ms. Foxx).

Mr. WESTMORELAND. I thank you for saying that because that's exactly true, and the petition is actually so simple, one line: ``I will vote to increase U.S. oil production to lower the price for Americans.'' And you can go to house.gov/westmoreland and see if the Congressman is there. Madam Speaker, you would really have been intrigued at some of the things that I heard about why they couldn't sign it. But I want to continue on. These are quotes from the H.R. 6 debate, which was on January 18 of 2007, after the new majority, the Democrats, had overpromised the American people, as admitted, and now they were coming up with something that was satisfying that radical environmentalist base of theirs, whom they felt like they owed their victory to, at least in part. So they were going to take away the tax breaks and other things. I'm not a big fan of Big Oil. Don't get me wrong. But I had a high school economics teacher, and I didn't pay that much attention in school, but Colonel Wofford at Therrell High School there in Atlanta taught us that taxing manufacturers or producers does not lower the price to consumers. So for whatever that's worth, I will give that to the majority.

Mr. WESTMORELAND

Mr. WESTMORELAND. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.