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Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, I am proud to be able to stand to speak about the Violence Against Women Act, joining with some of my colleagues on the floor.
This is legislation I have supported in the past and look forward to supporting again. As we talk about those issues women care about, it is no surprise to most that we are talking about what is happening with the price of gas or the cost to fill the car tank and we are talking about the quality of our children's education and we are talking about the Postal Service in Alaska. We had a military townhall, and I met with some military spouses. They were quite concerned that some of the facilities they access are perhaps in jeopardy. We care about the security of our jobs and our spouses' jobs, and our friends' and neighbors' jobs and all that goes into working in a small business. We certainly care about our country's fiscal situation and the very dire situation we are in.
There is something else we all care about, which is the violent assaults women often endure--sisters, daughters, neighbors. The Violence Against Women Act is an important commitment to victims of domestic violence and sexual abuse. This is a promise that resources and expertise are available to prosecute those who would torment them. Also, it is a reason to believe that one can actually leave an abusive situation and transition to a more stable one. It is of the greatest importance that victims of domestic violence and sexual assault are confident there is a safety net available to address them and their immediate survival needs, as well as the needs of their children. Only on this level of confidence can one muster the courage to leave an abusive situation. These are some of the promises that are contained within the Violence Against Women Act.
There are additional reasons I feel as strongly as I do about the reauthorization of this act which relate to the safety of the people in Alaska. Unfortunately, as beautiful as the State is that I live in, our statistics as they relate to domestic violence and sexual assault are horrific. They are as ugly as they come.
Nearly one in two Alaskan women has experienced partner violence. Nearly one in three has experienced sexual violence. Overall, nearly 6 in 10 Alaskan women have been victims of sexual assault or domestic violence. In Alaska, our rate of forcible rape between 2003 and 2009 was 2.6 times higher than the national rate. Unfortunately, very tragically, about 9 percent of Alaskan mothers reported physical abuse by their husbands or partner during pregnancy or in the 12 months prior to pregnancy.
We have to do all we can to get a handle on these tragic statistics. As we know, they are more than just statistics; these are the lives of our friends, our neighbors, and our daughters. The Violence Against Women Act presents the tools to do so. In the villages of rural Alaska, oftentimes, victims of sexual abuse and domestic violence face some pretty unique challenges. Many of these villages have no full-time law enforcement presence whatsoever--nobody to turn to, no safe house, no place to go. A single community health aid must tend to every crisis within the community, including caring for victims of sexual assault and domestic violence. Oftentimes, they don't have the tools they need--the rape kits, the training.
Oftentimes, we will have a situation where weather can be an impediment to getting the victim on a plane and to a rural hub. In most of my communities--80 percent of them--there is no road out, no way to get out. If someone has been violated, and there is no law enforcement or shelter or nowhere to go, what do they do? Basically, the victim is stranded in their own community with the perpetrator for, potentially, days before help can arrive.
The Violence Against Women Act is a ray of hope for those victims of domestic violence and sexual assault within our villages. It devotes increased resources to rural and isolated communities, and it recognizes Alaska's Village Public Safety Officer Program as law enforcement so VAWA funds can be directed to providing a full-time law enforcement presence in places that currently have none. It establishes a framework to restart the Alaska Rural Justice and Law Enforcement Commission, which is an important forum for coordination between law enforcement and our Alaska Native leaders to abate the scourge of domestic violence and sexual assault.
I too believe the Senate needs to take up the Violence Against Women Act. I do feel strongly that we need to do it on a bipartisan basis. I am a cosponsor of the bill. Some of my colleagues do have some concerns. I have said we need to take these concerns into account so we can have--and we should have--an overwhelmingly bipartisan bill. This is too important an issue for women and men and families to not address it.
I know others wish to speak. I appreciate the indulgence of my colleagues.
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Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, there is a lot of discussion about energy going on. The President spoke about it this morning.
It is nice to hear us all saying the same thing; that this country should have an all-of-the-above energy policy. It is a phrase I have used for years now, and I suppose it is the highest form of flattery to have that scooped by others and carried. But I think it is important for us to remember that policies have to translate from mere words into action. With the President's comments today, unfortunately, I am not convinced he is intending to help turn our all-of-the-above policy into reality.
I think if he was serious about doing that, he would acknowledge that there is far more our country can do to increase our supply when it comes to oil and oil production. I think he would admit that with oil prices above $100 a barrel, gasoline edging up every day close to $4 a gallon, this is not a political opportunity for anyone; this is a legislative imperative--a legislative imperative--for us all. The question that needs to be asked is, What can we do?
I would agree with the President that there is no one silver bullet. There is no one quick fix. We can't snap our fingers and have the price at the pump go down. But I think it is important to talk honestly about what is going on with supply and with production in this country.
With much discussion over these past several months about the Keystone project out of Canada and that pipeline, it continues to amaze me, it makes me crazy to think we have an opportunity to have our closest neighbor and our best trading partner supply us with oil instead of receiving oil from OPEC. Keystone could come online very quickly, bring oil to our refineries and to our gas tanks. If the administration supports construction of a pipeline from Oklahoma to Texas, as they have suggested, I don't see why we can't allow construction of a pipeline from Alberta and North Dakota and then all the way down. I am confident there are enough construction workers who are ready and waiting to start on both ends. When you say it needs more consideration, more review, I would remind people this has been a project that has had at least 4 years of environmental review.
So this is one of those choices that I think is pretty clear and pretty stark.
Most Americans, I believe, would much rather get their oil from Canada than from OPEC. Yet some of what we are seeing come out of this Congress from Members of the Senate, the suggestion is that instead of going to Canada, we should go, tincup in hand, to Saudi Arabia and ask them for increased production. I can't imagine--I cannot imagine why it would be more preferable to producing more American oil or allowing more oil from Canada. This is a pretty clear choice for me. But, again, it is an argument we continue to have, and we don't seem to be making the necessary headway on it.
Earlier this week, the President said the best we can do about gas prices is reduce our dependence on foreign oil, which will reduce the price of gasoline over time. One year ago, he said producing more oil in America can help lower our oil prices. But, again, that is talk that is going on right now and talk that is not necessarily matching reality.
Yesterday, I was involved in two hearings of the Appropriations subcommittees. In one, we had a Department of Interior official who confirmed that the oil production on Federal lands is down and not up. There has been a lot of conversation, a lot of discussion about how we in this country are seeing more oil and gas production than ever before. But the fact is, we are seeing an increase in oil; we are seeing an increase in natural gas. But we are not seeing it on our Federal lands. We are seeing these increases on State lands and on private lands. When it comes to onshore oil, we have actually gone down by 14 percent from last year. When it comes to offshore oil, we have gone down from 17 percent last year. So to suggest somehow that we are doing astonishingly, when in fact in the area where the Federal Government does have some ability to incent some production, we are seeing production decrease.
We also heard confirmation in a hearing yesterday that producers are leaving the Federal lands--which, again, are the only lands the administration has control over--not because the resources are necessarily greater somewhere else but because of Federal taxes, of the Federal royalties, the bureaucracy, the permitting process that make State and private lands more attractive. It was quite clear in the testimony that it does indeed cost more to produce on Federal lands, and they do worry about that migration to go to State lands and private lands.
This is a chart I have about the number of applications for permits to drill on Federal lands. If we look at the timeline, we are going up and up and up. This is 2001, during the Bush administration, when we increased 92 percent. We hit 2008, and the number of permits to drill that have been approved during this administration is down 36 percent. Again, this is in the area where the Federal Government has control. So please, I think we need to get beyond the idea that we are allowing drilling everywhere.
America's largest untapped oilfields onshore and offshore are still off-limits. In Alaska, we have more than 40 billion barrels of oil that are trapped beneath Federal lands, and the administration is making clear they intend to keep much of that off-limits to development.
Again, we have money buried in the ground, literally, in Alaska, ready, waiting, and willing to advance not only the resource for American consumption, bringing the jobs, but also bringing important revenues to our Treasury.
I think it is quite apparent that supply matters. Again, I mentioned the request from one of our colleagues that we go to Saudi Arabia for 2.5 million barrels per day. I don't think that is an appropriate policy on which we should embark.
Since at least the mid-1990s, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle have claimed that since oil exploration takes a long time to bring online, we shouldn't do it. It was the senior Senator from Massachusetts who, back in 2002, said:
If you open the refuge today, you are not going to see oil until about 2012, maybe a couple years earlier.
Here we are at 2012. If we had started then, we wouldn't perhaps be having this discussion now. This argument has gone on for so long that even Jay Leno is making jokes about it on TV. It is amazing to me that we continue to say it is going to take too long to bring on, so we shouldn't start today.
I have two separate bills that allow access to the nonwilderness areas of ANWR, the 1002 area, to be carefully opened for development. That field would bring on roughly 1 million barrels of oil to market each day. Right now, had this not been blocked back in 1995, that would have been good for American workers, good for the price of oil, good for the Federal Treasury, and I believe it could have been conducted and completed without impact to the environment.
When we talk about our abilities, I think it is fair to say we do have a lot of oil in this country, and we can bring more of it to market. If we were to increase our domestic production by the 2.5 million barrels a day that has been suggested that we get from Saudi Arabia, if we were to access Alaskan oil along with the Keystone oil, that would double world spare capacity and insulate us almost entirely from OPEC.
When we talk about a way we can move ourselves as a nation away from the stranglehold OPEC holds over us, I think it is important to consider what our options are.
I know we will have more to add on this later. Some of my colleagues are coming to the floor later to speak on this matter. But at this time I yield the floor for my colleague from Louisiana, the energy breadbasket down there in the gulf.
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