Comprehensive American Energy Security and Consumer Protection Act

COMPREHENSIVE AMERICAN ENERGY SECURITY AND CONSUMER PROTECTION ACT -- (House of Representatives - September 16, 2008)

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Mr. SCALISE. I want to thank my colleague.

I am glad in one sense that we are finally having a real debate with people on both sides of the aisle. For the last 5 weeks, Republicans have been here debating this issue. For the last 4 months, we have actually had a proposal on the table.

What is very unfortunate is we hadn't seen a formal proposal by our friends on the other side until 10 o'clock last night. The bill was filed by dark of night, no inclusion of the membership on the other side, no bipartisan agreement. And yet now the bill is going to be thrown up here with no ability to offer amendments to the most important issue facing our country today, and that is solving this national energy crisis.

If you want to complain about Big Oil profits, you know how you can lower the profits of oil companies? You can increase the supply of American oil, which will immediately reduce the price of gas at the pumps. And, by the way, then their profits fall down.

But we need to be mostly concerned about what we can do to help the American consumer, and that means increasing the American supply. This bill does nothing to increase American supply. And you don't have to just ask me, you don't have to ask my Republican colleagues. You can ask my Democratic colleague, Senator Landrieu, across the aisle; Senator Landrieu, who said this bill, the Democrat House liberal energy bill, is dead on arrival in the Senate because of the provisions in the bill that literally will allow no drilling to occur to help increase American supply, to reduce our dependence on Middle Eastern oil.

Now, if you want to be relying on OPEC, this is your bill. This is the bill that takes away all of our leverage so that we can finally tell OPEC we are moving away from our dependence on Middle Eastern oil, we are not going to need you anymore, and then we have the money from all the billions that will be generated to bridge ourselves into all of the renewables we are trying to achieve in the American Energy Act.

This bill won't get us there, though, because by taking away revenue sharing, which, by the way, for States like Louisiana is what we would use to restore our coast, which is our barrier against hurricanes. Why would they want to take away the money that we would use to protect us from future hurricanes? That is one of many reasons why this bill is clearly dead on arrival in the Senate. They don't want to pass a bill if this is the only option they are going to put on the table.

Bring back the American Energy Act, a truly bipartisan bill, and let's solve this crisis together.

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