American-Made Energy and Good Jobs Act

AMERICAN-MADE ENERGY AND GOOD JOBS ACT -- (House of Representatives - May 25, 2006)

Mr. OLVER. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Today, we are engaged in a bait-and-switch exercise that Congress is exceptionally good at, but which is utterly shameful. We all know we have a problem, a broad problem. Ninety-eight percent of the fuel that is used by our vehicles, our autos and trucks for personal and commercial purposes, for highway and air travel operates on oil. The world has the same problem.

We have a now problem. Our gasoline prices are hovering at $3 a gallon, and that causes a serious problem for a lot of our commerce and a lot of our families. Yet, if we accept the solution offered today by this bill to explore and develop for oil on the coastal plain of ANWR, it will be 5 years, at least, and probably closer to 8 before the first barrel of oil flows from that effort. By then, we will be having $6 a gallon gasoline and only 1 to 2 years worth of the oil that we need every single year for our transportation.

The broad permanent solution, solar cars, hydrogen cars, electric cars, and total replacement of gasoline by ethanol cars, is most likely a generation away. But the real bait and switch is that we have the technology already available to increase the efficiency by 50 percent within the same 5 to 8 years that we would need to develop the first barrel of oil out of ANWR, which would save as much oil every single year that is provided for only 1 or 2 years by what we have had estimated as the ANWR capacity.

ANWR is a small part of Alaska. It is a small part of the north slope area of Alaska. Ninety percent, more than that, of the coastal plain of the north coast is already open to oil and gas exploration and development. The coastal plain within ANWR is an exceptionally concentrated productive habitat for caribou and migratory birds.

It provides calving for hundreds of thousands of caribou and nesting for a multitude of species of birds. The habitat also then becomes habitat for predator species.

It would be a tragedy to disrupt this very critical natural habitat by the utterly destructive action sanctioned by this bill which will not reduce by a single penny the gasoline prices which are our now problem. I hope we will not adopt either the rule or the legislation.

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