Lynn Westmoreland

Mr. WESTMORELAND

Mr. WESTMORELAND. Mr. Speaker, I want to take just a moment, before I start with any of my energy remarks, to welcome President Chen, Joy and Sean Chen here with General Protecht that is opening up a business in my district in Barnesville, Georgia. It's great to have them visiting Washington, D.C. What I really want to talk to the people about today, Mr. Speaker, is the fact that it is time that the American people understand where Congress is on providing them with our own resources to bring about lower gas prices and lower energy prices. I have had several constituents and people e-mailing me and calling me, asking me about a number of petitions that were on the Web or that were in service stations or in Wal-Marts or in Home Depots, and they were wanting to know how I felt about drilling onshore, about drilling in deep water and about bringing more refineries on line. So, as I looked at some of these petitions--and some of them I saw-- one was on American solutions, and there were others, but the one on American solutions had about 600,000 signatories. Six hundred thousand Americans had taken the time to go to that Web site to sign the petition that said, ``Drill now. Drill here. Less price.'' Less gasoline price. So I thought, you know, that's interesting because we know how these constituents feel, but do our constituents really know, Mr. Speaker, how Members of Congress feel? Because we do things up here to keep the American people from knowing exactly what we do think because we make these issues as to so many different subject matters that we can find excuses to vote for or against most any proposal that is brought to this floor. So what I want to do is simplify it, simplify it for the American people--for our constituents--and, Mr. Speaker, for the Members of Congress. So I came up with a petition for this House of Representatives, and the petition is simple. The petition says: ``American energy solutions for lower gas prices. Bring onshore oil on line. Bring deep water oil on line, and bring new refineries on line.'' I've got a petition here. Don't worry. This is one board. We've got five boards. We've got every district, all 435 Members who can vote in this House. We've got a petition, and it says, ``I will vote to increase U.S. oil production to lower gas prices for Americans.'' How simple is that? That's pretty simple. So what we've done is we've got this. Congressman Price and myself didn't bring it out until, really, after everybody had kind of gone home up here last Thursday, and we've already gotten 20 signatories. I've got two pens that I'm going to attach to these petitions. Mr. Speaker, I'm going to put them over here by the back door here on the minority side, and I'm going to invite every Member of Congress who believes that they would vote to reduce these prices to come by and sign them. Just to give the American people, Mr. Speaker, a way to look at this, we are going to post, and are going to try to post in as real a time as we can, on different Web pages who has signed it. So, if you want to know who has signed so far, you can go to House.gov/Westmoreland, and you can also go to GOP.gov/energy. Now, these are two Web sites that are going to have posted by the end of the day who all has signed. If you, Mr. Speaker, or if anybody out there might want to know if your Congressman has signed, then you can go to that Web site. We have had all different types of arguments in this House about energy, and the Democrats had an energy bill that they proposed and actually passed that President Bush signed into law in December of 2007. The Democratic majority passed this as one of their big issues in January of 2007.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. With that, I'll leave it up to Mr. Price, but for every Member in this House, the pens are here; the petition is here. Let the American people know how you feel.

Mr. WESTMORELAND

Mr. WESTMORELAND. Okay. Well, all right. But further parliamentary inquiry. If there's four of us in here, and one stands up, is that, in the Chair's opinion, enough to call for a vote?

Mr. WESTMORELAND

Mr. WESTMORELAND. I thank my friend for yielding. I found some of the facts today pretty interesting about this monkey bill, this monkey business, Mr. Speaker. I've only been in Congress 4 years, I was in the State legislature 12 years, and I've never had a call about a monkey bite or monkey bites being rampant in my district. I'm sure that it's important. As my friend from Utah stated, don't be real alarmed that your Congress has brought this front and center, the first bill on the floor today in the House of Representatives. You can take comfort, because only one in 38 million, that's your chances of getting bit by a monkey today. Now your chances are pretty good if you are driving a gasoline- powered car, when you pull into the service station, you are going to pay about $4.08 for gas. Now that's for sure. We need to be concentrating on that pain that you're feeling, not the pain of a monkey bite, but the pain at the gas pump that you're feeling. And, you know, we're going to spend, as my friend from Utah said, a half million dollars per monkey bite in this country. Those are expensive monkey bites. Not only are they rare, and that may be the reason they're so expensive is they are so rare; but we could be spending that money towards drilling, towards exploring our own natural resources. That's the reason I came up with a petition. I heard about all of these petitions on the Internet about where American citizens could go and sign a petition to let Congress know how they felt about high energy prices. And I thought, you know, why don't you come up with a petition that the Members of Congress can sign to let the people of America know how their Representative feels about the commonsense issue of providing our own resources. So we came up with the American Energy Solutions for Lower Gas Prices, bring onshore oil online, bring deep water oil online, and bring new refineries online. And just to make it special, I made every Member of Congress a separate line on the petition. And what the petition says is: I will vote to increase U.S. oil production to lower gas prices for Americans. And there are two pens on it. So I am going to invite everyone to sign it. Mr. Speaker, today when we vote on the monkey bite bill, there will probably be a little over 400 Members, probably around 410 or 412, that will vote on the monkey bite, and I would hope that we would have that many signatures on this petition. There are 435 slots over here for people who have the ability and under the Constitution to vote on this floor, have an opportunity to sign that petition to let their constituents know that they are for commonsense energy practices. You know, the keyword today, Mr. Speaker, in all of the campaigns you hear about is change. I think Americans do want change. I think our voters do want change. I don't know if it is the radical, rock-your- world, turn-everything-upside-down change that some of the candidates are talking about, but I think it is this kind of change, I think it is a change for honesty. I think the American people want to know where their Member or their elected official stands on the issues. And we make them so complicated that every Member of this body can go home and give a good reason why they voted for or against something. This simplifies it so the American people can see the honesty in their Member that says yes, I will vote to increase U.S. oil production to lower gas prices for Americans. That's simple. The other thing they want is common sense. They want common sense. Common sense, Mr. Speaker, is to use our own natural resources rather than going into other countries in the world hat in hand begging for their natural resources. That's not common sense. It is not common sense to be in this body passing a law today about monkey bites when you have a 1 in 38 million chance of getting bit. Or that it is going to cost a half a million dollars per bite, that's not the kind of common sense, that's not the kind of change that American people are looking at. What they're looking at is the commonsense change of us getting out of fetal position in this body, Mr. Speaker, and doing something to lower the price, to lower the pain for them at the gas pump, not reduce the pain from monkey bites.

Mr. WESTMORELAND

Mr. WESTMORELAND. The slant drilling.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. These are top exporters of gasoline into the United States in millions of barrels. Now these are exporters to us in gas, not crude oil, in gas. United Kingdom, 147 million barrels a year. That's about a billion gallons; the U.S. Virgin Islands import 990 millions of gasoline to us; France, 470 million gallons; Canada, 445 million gallons; the Netherlands, 441 million gallons; Norway, 353 million gallons. And let me say this, 20 years ago, Norway--it may have been a little bit longer ago than that--Norway was kind of dependent on foreign oil. And Norway, they're basically a tourist, fishing, snow skiing country. They are now the second largest exporter of crude oil in the world because they said we're going to drill and use our own natural resources. Germany. We import 250 million gallons of gas every year from Germany; 310 from Russia; 410 million from Italy, and 231 million gallons of gasoline we import from OPEC countries.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. And we can get out of the fetal position and start some action. And that's what we need to be doing. And you brought up a great point. Cooking oil, the fat, the grease pots that are there that people are actually going and robbing these things and making a biodiesel fuel out of it. We've got some companies up in northeast Georgia that are making biodiesel out of chicken parts. The ingenuity is out there. We have just got to feed that and make these people have some ideas to come up with it. And we're not doing that. And that is an immediate thing that we could do. The other thing we could do is propane. You talk about natural gas. You know, propane conversion was going very well in this country. And it's clean burning. It was going great. And then the EPA said no, you've got to do these specific tests on every different type of engine, on every different make of car. And rather than going to the people that are making these propane conversion engines, these natural gas conversion engines, the hydrogen cell, we need to be putting every dime we've got towards technology and the hydrogen cell, because this is something that is very real that would really solve a whole bunch of our energy problems. But, rather than the government going to them and saying, how can we best help you develop a conversion energy from gasoline to natural gas, or from gasoline to propane, gasoline to a hydrogen cell, what can we do to help you? We don't do that. We put regulations on them and taxes that burden them from doing anything.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. Think about this. Think about the number of jobs that would come here, that we would have ourselves bringing new refineries, expanding them, drilling, taking this shale out of the ground. These would create good-paying American jobs. We have a lot of people from this country that are in OPEC countries and in other nations that are working on these rigs, they're making big money. They could be doing the same thing right here in this country. And we've got about 5 minutes left and so I want to just--I will end my part, and I will let everybody have a little bit of time. I want to end my part in saying that I have tried to come up with as simple a way of getting information to the people of this country, Mr. Speaker, as I knew how on drilling. Because like I said, I have heard and gotten e-mails from this petition on this site, this petition on that site, and the one most people are doing is the American Solutions site, which I think has over 500,000 signatures now about drilling. You have got radio stations in Florida sending drill bits. And then I listen to all of the talk down here, and it is so confusing for people to understand exactly what we have voted on, what got enacted, what didn't get enacted. So I wanted to come up with the simplest thing I could, and I came up with this petition: American energy solutions for lower gas prices. Brings onshore oil on line, bring deepwater oil on line, bring new refineries on line. And then it's simply asking 435 Members--we're giving 435 Members an opportunity to sign a petition, this is our energy petition, that says, I will vote to increase U.S. oil production to lower gas prices for Americans. And that's about as simple as we can get. Dr. Price, would you like to close?

Mr. WESTMORELAND. I yield back the balance of the time.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. And I think you're right. And Mr. Burton's been here a lot longer than you and I have. But we have seen what complete authority is in this body, and really one person controls any legislation that comes on to this floor. So it wouldn't matter. And we saw an example of that when we had the votes to pass the FISA bill, the national security bill. We had the votes to pass that in a letter that the Blue Dogs had sent to the Speaker. And our side we had enough to pass a good FISA bill that would have protected America, but we couldn't get it to the floor. And so I think you're right, Dr. Price. I think there are many Members on the other side of the aisle that realize that we need to be looking at our own natural resources that would vote with us for a good plan, for a good energy program. But they'll never have the opportunity to do it. And so that's the reason I felt the need to have this chart, so at least they can tell their constituents, hey, look, if leadership would bring this up, I'd be with you. But they won't bring it up. Mr. Burton.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. Well, we got about 20 signatures today just by showing it to people walking out the door.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. And keep in mind, we only use 3 percent of those offshore resources. Only 3 percent. Out of 101.76 billion acres, we only use 3 percent of it.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. Well, those resources, that shale that you're talking about, Mr. Udall from Colorado, if you'll remember, had an amendment on the bill that we passed in this House that said that was off, can't use it. Can't get it.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. 219-215.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. Yes, closed it down. Going back to Hurricane Katrina and the fact that a large number of our refineries are on that gulf coast which is subject to hurricanes, it seems like we would take some proactive decisions and look at other places where we could put some of these refineries where they would not be as subject to hurricanes. Once again, the people in New Orleans could not spend as much money as we sent down there as fast as they could. They needed action. They needed boots on the ground. They needed physical people down there helping them. So we have an opportunity now to do something physical. We can put 435 pairs of boots on the ground right now and let the American people know that we are here to help. And what we are going to do, we are going to be at the forefront for making sure that we give the ability to extract oil and natural gas and clean-burning coal and any type of energy that we can from our own natural resources. Now the Republican plan that Leader Boehner and others have put out talks about the on shore, online and that is estimated, and that is the shale and ANWR, that would save anywhere from 70 to $1.60 a gallon. And if you look at the deepwater drilling, the OCS, that would be between 90 and $2.50 a gallon. And then the new refineries. And Dr. Price, before you got here, I made a statement that we import 6.9 billion gallons of gas every year, plus probably just as much diesel. But if we built a new refinery, it would save us 15 to 45 cents. So taking just a conservative estimate, that's about $2 a gallon that that would save us. Now, if you look at the Democratic plan that they had, sue OPEC. Well, I don't think that's going to bring us in anything to reduce the price of gas. They want to launch their seventh investigation into price gouging, their seventh. They've already had six investigations of price gouging. They want to launch their fourth investigation into speculators, the fourth one. And they want $20 billion in new taxes on oil producers. Now, here again, I've looked at all those things and I've kind of weighed both sides, and their savings is zero. Nada. Ours would be about $2 a gallon. Is it going to happen immediately? No. Is it going to start happening immediately? Yes. And so, what I wanted the American people to do with this, Mr. Speaker, is to allow them to see who's on their team for bringing down the price of gas, and who's on their team for using our own resources, rather than sending our President into foreign lands begging for other people to increase their oil production. Dr. Price.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. Absolutely.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. Thank you, and it is real simple, too. It can't be confused with anything else. American energy solutions for lower gas prices simply reads, ``I will vote to increase U.S. oil production to lower gas prices for Americans.'' It is real simple. And what you were talking about, Dr. Price, is we are not going to drill in these leases that don't have oil. And when you've got I think it is 1.76 billion acres in the Outer Continental Shelf, and we have only opened up 3 percent of that. We have got 700 million on shore of Federal land that we have only opened up 6 percent to. And let's look at this. Let's remember back because Mr. Ryan made a statement that it would be 10 or 15 years before we get any oil, and then it would be only 40,000 barrels a day. Let me remind the American people of this. In 1995, this Congress passed drilling in ANWR. Then President Clinton vetoed that bill in 1995, 13 years ago. Today, by conservative estimates, we would be getting 1 million barrels a day out of ANWR. Today. Now Senator Schumer on the other side of the hall made a statement last week that if we could get Saudi Arabia or OPEC to increase production of a million barrels a day, it would reduce the price of gas 50 cents a gallon. Well, isn't that swell. That we are going to go to some people that haven't always been our friends, and we are going to say to the OPEC nations that we want them to drill. We want to use their natural resources, but we don't want to use ours. That doesn't make good sense. So just remember if President Clinton had not vetoed that bill in 1995, we would be getting a million barrels a day.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. And Senator Allard, from Colorado I believe, had an amendment in the Senate Appropriations Committee to overturn the Udall amendment, and it was defeated 15-14, along party lines.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. This might be a long-term plan, but you have to start some time. There has been a proposal by Senator McCain to give some temporary relief with a gas tax holiday during the summer to allow some people some extra spending money. It is not a great amount, but it is something. We could also take off-road diesel and let people burn it on road. If you remember after Hurricane Katrina, there was a shortage of diesel. They didn't have any diesel and the EPA and the IRS got together and said all right, let's start burning this off road and let them use it for 30 days, and then I believe we extended it for another 30 days until we got the supply of diesel back. So there are some commonsense things that we can do immediately. And Dr. Price hit on this. The day I believe that we pass some type of bill in this body that said we are going to look after our own solutions for energy from within our own natural resources, this oil speculation would come down. You wouldn't even have to put the first drill bit in the ground. Right now they understand that the majority that is in control of this Congress are being held hostage by the radical environmentalists and that we are not going to do anything such as this with long-term planning about our energy future. And while we all want to conserve, we cannot conserve ourselves out of the dilemma that we are in right now. And so we have got to do something. We have to have some initiative to go forward. And right now, we are laying around in the fetal position talking about a commonsense plan that we had 2 years ago that we have not done anything about. So it is time for action. You know, I have seen a knee-jerk reaction to everything up here. You let the least little thing happen, and we will have a knee-jerk reaction to it. And that is something. We have had tragedies that we have had. We put $140 billion down after Katrina, $62 billion in 2 weeks that we addressed down there, and it wasn't that we responded fast enough. So we have a habit of throwing money at things but not providing the boots on the ground or the substance to back it up. Well, this is something that we just can't throw money at. This is something that calls for action. We, as the duly elected people by our constituents, we are the representatives of this country, and they sent us here to do something, not just lay here in a fetal position. And I yield to Dr. Price.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. Let me say this, the American people sometimes get confused, just as you spoke about, the bill that was in the Senate. They don't hear all of the things that were in that bill. That's one of the reasons I wanted to make this as simple as I could. It is not confusing. This is not confusing. If anybody calls their Congressman and asks them if they signed this petition--and, by the way, the one petition I found online, I think, was American Solutions had over 500 now people, I think it has been up for less than 2 weeks, have already sent in and said we want to drill. There is a radio station in Tampa, Florida, that has started sending drill bits to Members of Congress and Members of the Senate to show their support for drilling. This is a radio station in Florida that's doing this, and I imagine it would probably catch on all over the United States, and we will probably have more drill bits. I hope they will send a whole set that we will have to remind these people that we need to rely on our own resources. That's the reason that we made it as simple as we could. All it says is, ``I will vote to increase U.S. oil production.'' Ninety-plus percent of the Republicans in this House have consistently voted for more domestic oil production. Eighty-six percent of the now majority party have consistently voted against more domestic production. This is going to put everybody on equal footing. Everybody has an opportunity to sign it. I hope we get 435 Members to sign it and then, Mr. Burton, we can get on with what you offered to Mr. Ryan that we could come together, because we really don't have an opportunity to come to the floor in front of the American people. We only have a certain time where we can do it. Maybe we ought to get a 2-hour thing where we could all come down here and talk and see if we can't straighten some of these facts out, because the facts are totally different from what I am getting from land management and evidently what somebody else has gotten from land management. Right now I am proud to yield as much time as he might take to my good friend from Georgia, Dr. Price.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. Thank you. As we continued listening to my friend and colleague Mr. Ryan talk about the amount of land that is open for drilling, it is only 3 percent of the Outer Continental Shelf. That is only 3 percent of it. There are only 6 percent of the Federal lands on shore that are open to drilling. Now, these oil companies may hold some of these leases, but why would you want to drill on something that did not have oil? I don't think that makes good sense. He is talking about the $14 billion tax. Well, you know, I am not the smartest guy in the world, but I had an economics teacher, Colonel Walford, in high school, who made it very clear to me that taxing a producer or manufacturer did not lower the price to the consumer. You don't have to be an economist to understand that if you raise taxes on somebody, it is not going to lower the price to the consumer. Now, the other thing is that the majority has been in control for 17 months. When they took over, the price of a gallon of gas was $2.26. Right now it is up over $4. I believe it was in April of 2006 that then Minority Leader Pelosi, now Speaker Pelosi, made the statement that the Democrats had a commonsense plan to bring down the skyrocketing price of gas. Now, it was probably $2.08 then, right at $2. So I don't know where this plan is. They passed an energy bill in about January of 2007 that Mr. Ryan referred to, and in that energy bill they had specific language that said our government could not use certain alternative fuels. So they are saying one thing and then doing something else, and it is real confusing to the American people. But I have something I want to unveil tonight, Mr. Speaker, for the American people. We have got some of it up here. What this is, Mr. Speaker, there have been all kind of petitions on the Internet. I went into a service station in my district and there was a petition there on the counter about the price of gas. There are petitions all over. Our constituents have an opportunity to go on the Internet and sign these petitions or go into their local grocery store or gas station and sign a petition for drilling, against drilling, for any variety of things as far as what the energy costs are that are affecting the average person. So as I thought about this I said, you know, we need to make this simple. We need to make it so we have a petition for the House of Representatives. We have 435 Members here, and the American people need to know how their Representative would vote. What would they be voting on? American energy solutions for lower gas prices, the things that we can control, our resources. You know, China and Cuba are fixing to start drilling 45 miles off the coast of Florida. That's our natural resource, we could be drilling there, but we are not. So we have got 97 percent of the Outer Continental Shelf that we control we are not drilling on, 94 percent of the Federal lands that we have in this country, we are not drilling on. So we have got a real simple thing, bring onshore oil on line, bring deepwater oil on line and bring new refineries on line. You might realize or might not realize that we haven't built a refinery since the late 1970s. We import, right now--this is probably going to surprise some people--we import 6.9 billion gallons of refined crude oil that's gasoline into this country every year, because we do not have the refining capabilities. We had a motion to recommit, I believe, on May 22 that Mr. Conaway offered that said, within the 90 days, that the government would identify three locations on some of our military bases that have environmental problems, maybe, that the BRAC has closed immediately and in 90 days identify three of those to build new refineries. The majority voted against it. They stand and say one thing, but their actions do something else. We need to build and expand our refineries, and we need to make this to where our oil companies are willing to invest. But when you import 6.9 billion gallons of gasoline and probably about the same amount of diesel fuel, that we come in. What we have got is a petition here, and this petition starts out with Alaska at large, it goes out through Alabama and goes all the way through every State in this Union, and we have got everybody a district line. Now, we just kind of, we had it back here in the corner today and some people came by and said hey, what you got, and I told them it's a petition. What the petition says, ``I will vote to increase U.S. oil production to lower gas prices for Americans.'' That's pretty simple. It's not convoluted, it doesn't have anything to do with anything other than Americans providing their own resources for our energy. Now, what's wrong with that? We are a country that is known for our resourcefulness. Mr. Ryan mentioned the technology. Germany, back in the late 1920s, had technology that converted coal to fuel. That was back in the late 1920s. Surely technology has come to where it's better. We have got over a trillion, that is a trillion with a ``T'', barrels of shale oil out west, a trillion, a trillion, and we are not doing anything with it. In fact, not only are we not doing anything with it, but Mr. Udall from Colorado last year passed an amendment that said we couldn't do anything with it, that we couldn't drill, and it passed this House 219 to 215. You might remember, I believe that was the stolen vote. But those are circumstances that we have got, and so we want the American people to know where their Congressman is at. We have got this petition, we are going to update it, every day we are going to have it back on the floor. I have got two pencils with me today, two markers. If anybody is listening that's still in town, wants to come down, they can certainly come down. I will give them some time to speak and they can tell their constituency why they want us to support us using our natural resources, our resources to provide energy for our people. I will yield some time to Mr. Burton of Indiana.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. I just wanted to say that in relation to that, between 2002 and 2007, 52 percent of all the exploration wells were dry, 52 percent of them, of all of them that they drill. So it's not all there.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. Yes.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. But Dr. Price, that's the problem that the majority has because a lot of their base is the radical environmentalists don't care if gas goes to $10 a gallon. They don't want us driving SUVs. They really don't want us driving cars. They want us riding bicycles or motor scooters like you would see in China or somewhere in an Asian country. They don't want us driving. And they don't care how high gas gets. That doesn't matter to them. And so that's a problem that the majority is facing. And I think one of the reasons they have not been quick to act is the fact that that has been a large part of their base. But hopefully, the American people are going to realize that they can have a voice in this. They can have a voice, and that they can see, on a chart, how their person stands; are they for U.S. energy independence or not? And so that's what we have given, a plain visual of them to be able to see. I yield to you.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. Sure.