National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017

Floor Speech

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Mr. WALZ. Mr. Chairman, I join my colleagues, national security experts, military leaders, and America's energy producers, and rise in strong opposition to this amendment.

The Department of Defense's use of alternative energy as accelerated in recent years and strengthened the military's ability to conduct combat operations, humanitarian response, and homeland defense.

In short, it has improved the readiness of the Armed Forces to protect freedom overseas. DOD is the largest consumer of energy in the world, 117 million barrels of oil. Every 25 cent increase in a gallon of gas costs $1 billion to the American taxpayers and $1 billion less to the troops.

DOD's fuel costs from 2005 to 2011 were so volatile, the costs went from to $4.5 billion to $17.3 billion, even though we reduced our usage by 4 percent. An example of this is the U.S. Pacific Fleet in 2012 faced a $200 million budget gap that had to be filled by taking money from elsewhere because of rising fuel costs.

This willingness to not look at all American homegrown energy and security is simply wrongheaded. And the idea that it costs more to do this--it costs $83 billion more to protect shipping oil coming from overseas.

I ask my colleagues to resist this amendment.

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