Energy

Floor Speech

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Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I thank the gentleman for bringing this up, and I would like to really put this in real terms for people.

When I went over to Afghanistan and Pakistan with a group of Members of Congress earlier this year, I, frankly, was surprised to find out that the two major funders, the two major governments putting money on the ground in Pakistan, were the United States of America and Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has the second largest presence on the ground in Pakistan with regard to the direct government funding of social service infrastructure, of educational infrastructure, and of health infrastructure. If you want a real example of how the money that we are paying in gas prices and in home heating oil prices are directly ending up contravening our national security interests, there is a perfect example.

Saudi Arabia is taking the money that it makes off of American consumers of oil, and they are putting that money on the ground in Pakistan to fund the madrasas, the religious schools and many of the efforts that are feeding this growing generation and generations of people who have adverse interests to the United States. They are the recruiting tools of the Taliban and of the al Qaeda funded on the ground in Pakistan by countries that get revenues from the use of their oil.

So, as we try to chart a path forward as to how we are going to make sense of the very direct threat presented to this country by al Qaeda's presence and by the Taliban's presence, giving them cover in Pakistan and in Afghanistan, we can't lose sight of the fact that this isn't just about how many troops we have there and what our role is vis-a-vis direct military action or the training of Afghan troops. This is also about the fact that, while we are funding all of those troops, as you have said, Mr. Boccieri, we are also funding at the very same time the efforts that are ongoing in both of those countries to undermine our efforts.

There are, frankly, a dozen great reasons that we need to progress towards energy independence, but with direct respect to the security of this country and to the threats presented to it in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, we have immediate, immediate imperatives to get ourselves off of the oil which is funneling the efforts against us.

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Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Boccieri, we have the best-educated, most highly trained, most productive, most innovative workforce in the world. You go back over the history of major invention over the last hundred years, almost every single one of them has come out of American ingenuity. Yet today with respect to the global industry that produces advanced battery technology, solar cells, solar technology and wind turbines, in all three of those areas, the United States today has either one or two of the top 10 producers in the world. We have lost ground to Asia, to Europe, because we have been unwilling to be a partner with those industries in getting them off the ground.

This place is obsessed with short-term thinking. Maybe it's because everybody in this Chamber is up for reelection every 2 years. But this is a problem. This is an opportunity that requires that vision that Mr. Perriello is talking about, to extend beyond 2 years, to be able to see payoffs that may not happen for 4 years, 5 years, 10 years. But the fact is that this place, Washington, D.C., the United States Congress, has been so focused on the short term, has been so focused on how we get from this year to next year that we have caught ourselves in a cycle, a downward spiral, with regard to energy and economic development policy that we are now so far beyond and behind the rest of the world.

This is absolutely about national security, but this is about putting ourselves back on the mantle of leadership with regard to the development of these technologies where we should be today. This is growing jobs in everyone's district, but it does involve some government help at the outset. To simply ask venture capitalists and private investors to put up all of the seed money required to develop these new technologies whose payoff may not come for another 5 or 10 years is unrealistic. And the reason why Japan and Germany and so many other countries are so far out ahead of us with respect to the development of wind turbines and solar panels and advanced battery technology is because they have at the outset partners in government who set market conditions that are hospitable to a public-private partnership in the development of these technologies.

This is going to be part of the story of the regrowth and resurgence of the American economy. But it only happens if we follow the example that unfortunately has had to have been set by these other countries, China included, as Mr. Perriello points out. We can get back to a leadership place on this issue, but it is going to take a Congress and a President and a House and a Senate that's willing to look out beyond the 2-year time horizon, that's willing to make some sacrifices and some tough votes right now in order to get us to that point of energy sustainability and independence in the long run.

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