Public Opinion
Floor Speech
PUBLIC OPINION -- (Senate - May 12, 2008)
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. BOND. Mr. President, it is time for us to get real about energy. It is time for us to get real about gas prices. Withholding from the American people new oil supplies needed to get gas prices down will only hurt our families and our workers more.
American families are suffering from record pain at the pump. Truckers and shippers face layoffs and losses. Farmers, processors, and packagers are sending their food to market with higher prices and higher costs, and airlines are once again threatened with bankruptcy.
Whether you drive a car, a big rig or a tractor, you know personally what I am talking about. With average gas prices now topping $3.70 a gallon, you have a right to demand some answers about our energy future. Your pain and suffering demands we supply you with relief. Relief comes in the form of economics 101. Folks, every time prices are too high, there is too much demand and too little supply. Now, maybe some of our colleagues did not take the economics course, but I believe in common sense, and I believe the American people have common sense. They realize that when you don't have enough of something, and the demand keeps going up, the price goes up.
That is how our system works. Answers that focus only on demand and not on supply are not enough to fix the problem. So we are where we are today with record high gas prices inflicting record pain at the pump.
Don't get me wrong. I support good, strong measures to reduce the demand for oil. Last year, I supported Congress's measure to increase aggressively but achievably high standards for corporate average fuel economy, or CAFE. That would force better gas mileage from cars and trucks. But those new fuel efficiency requirements will take years before they have an effect. In the meantime, families and workers will suffer through years of higher gas prices. Auto makers cannot go out tomorrow and build a new fleet of high gas mileage cars and trucks. New cars take years to design and build.
Even if highly efficient cars were available tomorrow, families in the middle of 4-year car loans probably cannot go out and buy a new car. They have to wait until they can purchase a more fuel-efficient car. In the meantime, these families will suffer through more years of higher prices.
We can cut demand with more people riding mass transit, and I have supported mass transit. I will continue to do so. But if you don't have mass transit in your area, such as where I live and where a whole lot of people in rural America live, you cannot move to the city or get a different job. In the meantime, you will suffer through years more of higher gas prices.
We can cut demand by subsidizing hybrid vehicles. Congress supported those tax credits, as I do. But hybrid cars are too expensive now and will take too many years to become affordable to most families. We are working in Missouri to get much more efficient, much lighter batteries that can help meet the needs for hybrid and plug-in cars. In the meantime, while we are working on those technologies, families will suffer through years more of higher gas prices.
I, for one, am unwilling to allow families to suffer years more of higher gas prices, while we wait for demand strategies to work.
To address supply, some say we should take our hat in hand and beg our Middle Eastern suppliers to produce more oil. Since when has increasing our dependence on the Middle East ever been a good idea?
Some propose raising taxes on suppliers searching and developing new domestic oil supplies. Since when has taxing something more ever increased its supply or lowered its price? Never. When we put taxes on those who are searching and developing for new domestic oil supplies, we ensure that there won't be as much and the price will be higher.
Some say we should investigate suppliers to probe what is making prices so high. I too support investigating wrongdoing, but since when has investigating something ever increased its supply or lowered its price?
The American people deserve more than begging, taxing, and investigating. American families and workers deserve real actions toward real solutions. America doesn't need to look that far. Indeed, the solutions to America's supply problems are right here in our own backyard. America's lands, ocean floors, and mountains hold billions of gallons of oil waiting for us to come and get it.
We have millions of gallons of oil beneath the frozen tundra of northern Alaska. Had there not been a veto in 1995 of the development of the sources above the Arctic circle in Alaska, we would be getting a million gallons of oil a day from Alaska. You cannot tell me that would not lower the price. It would have a huge impact. We also have millions of gallons of oil beneath the seabeds miles off our coasts. We have billions of gallons of oil trapped in the shale beneath our Rocky Mountains.
Tapping these new U.S. supplies will help relieve prices immediately. While it is true it will take years before new supplies will come on, we will send an immediate signal to the speculators in the oil trading markets that new suppliers are on their way. They cannot continue to push prices higher.
Today's prices built on limited supply and a world dependent on trouble spots will see America deciding to open vast and safe new oil supplies. Oil prices, built on predicting the future, will have no choice but to fall in the face of a future safe, new supply source for America.
We can also face the future using new technologies. America owns, and uses every day, environmentally friendly oil technologies that are cleaner than ever before for exploring, developing, and producing. We can drill sideways deep underground to avoid sensitive areas above. We can drill many locations from a single site to avoid sensitive areas around.
Environmentally friendly operations in northern Alaska can drill in the winter and be gone long before any animals are active in the spring.
Environmentally friendly operations could drill in the ocean and survive hurricanes such as Katrina with no spilled oil or gas. Does anybody recall the spills resulting when Hurricane Katrina tore through the Gulf of Mexico drilling rigs? No, because they didn't happen.
To say we would repeat the mistakes of the 1960s and 1970s with the same 40-year-old technology is like saying we will all continue to call ourselves on rotary telephones or write each other on typewriters.
Another source of transportation fuel from new technology is coal to liquids. The technology to turn coal into liquid jet fuel or diesel has been around for a hundred years. We now have the technology to capture carbon emissions and make it cleaner than refining conventional oil and, in addition, providing a greater supply.
We are also developing even cleaner and more affordable forms of biofuels. Technology giving us clean-burning corn ethanol today will give us cellulosic ethanol tomorrow with grasses and wood chips.
In my State of Missouri, gas is 10 cents cheaper than it otherwise would be because we require 10 percent ethanol in all pumps. This will save Missouri drivers $285 million this year. Some people say ethanol is driving up prices. Ethanol is a lot cheaper to produce, and it uses fermentation, not the cat cracking that goes into regular gasoline. It brings down prices; it doesn't drive up the price of the fuel. The overall shortage of fuel has driven up the price for food. But most importantly, the Government hoarding food is driving up the price. Don't make farmers the scapegoats. They are responding to the demand Congress made of them to go out and build ethanol-producing plants and produce the ethanol to get cleaner, cheaper, domestically-produced energy. That is what they are doing.
Now the future is brighter in many areas because of new, cleaner technologies. We can have a brighter future of energy supplies if we let all these new technologies work for us.
We can also have a brighter future of energy supplies if we stop being selfish and start thinking about the collective good. Too many individuals are willing to say ``not in my backyard,'' even if it means the group suffers. Too many groups pursue NIMBY strategies even if it means the Nation suffers.
Nobody here is trying to force Alaska to do something Alaska doesn't want to do. Alaskans want to open more of their oil reserves. But it is people in places such as Massachusetts saying no to Alaska.
No one here is trying to force Virginia to do something it doesn't want to do. Virginians want to explore for oil and gas off their coastline. It is people in places such as California and New Jersey saying no to Virginians.
Nobody here is trying to force Colorado to do something it doesn't want to do. Colorado wants to tap the shale beneath its mountains. It is people in places such as Washington, DC, saying no to Colorado.
This type of NIMBY sentiment must end. This type of selfishness must end. This type of inflicting multiyear pain waiting for demand strategies must end. We must no longer deny Americans the new supply solutions they need. We must no longer refuse American families and workers the lower gas prices they demand.
We must not only suspend shipments to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, we must also open new oil supplies in northern Alaska, open new oil and gas supplies under our oceans, and open new oil shale supplies under our mountains, and open our ability to refine more oil. We must open the ability of U.S. workers to manufacture more hybrid batteries.
I urge my colleagues to support the Republican amendment and provision that will be coming tomorrow.
I yield the floor.
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